Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared on ByDanJohnson.com.

FAA proposed regulation has powerfully captured the attention of many pilots. Pilots have tons of questions. We have some answers. Everyone has a lot to read.

Overall, FAA’s Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC) regulation proposal has been warmly received as it opens the door to more capable aircraft that a sport pilot can fly. That’s good, but the document has problems, too. Following are four examples.

MOSAIC’s language invigorated many readers when the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) expressed support for a sport pilot certificate holder to fly at night, with proper training and a logbook endorsement. Yet the proposal refers to other FAA regulations requiring BasicMed or an AvMed. If you must have a medical, you are not exercising the central privilege of a sport pilot certificate. Why suggest that a sport pilot can do things that are blocked by other regulations? This conflict should be resolved.

Another opportunity gap involves aerial work. We’re pleased the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association (LAMA’s) request was included, but it requires a commercial certificate to fly for compensation, and this requirement eliminates powered parachutes and weight shift trikes, for which no commercial certificate is available. This is discriminatory and should be fixed.

Maintenance experts have lots of questions; see the video at bottom.

ASTM standards writers raised questions about the value of noise regulations included for no present gain, “requiring solutions before the problem exists.” This appears to have political motivations.

You may find other aspects of MOSAIC that urge you to comment. If so, you may find the following helpful.

MOSAIC Study Guide

I can’t imagine anyone genuinely enjoys studying MOSAIC. The NPRM encompasses many pages in dense language; it’s tedious to review.

It just got a lot easier, thanks to Roy Beisswenger. [Beisswenger is founder and proprietor of Easy Flight]

Beginning in 2014—well before MOSAIC existed—Beisswenger and I spent years advocating on behalf of the LSA industry and the pilots that fly those light aircraft to the FAA. Beisswenger was the lead author on several white papers LAMA submitted to support each of its requests. They went over so well with the FAA that they are mentioned in the footnotes.

As you will see in the attached PDF study guide, Beisswenger has done a monster amount of work in reformatting the documents so that you can walk through it and find what you want much easier.

Beisswenger also addressed specific comments I had, whereupon studying one section, the FAA refers to another, and then to another. Before long, you forget where you started and struggle to retrace your steps. You also need internet access to study the FARs published outside the NPRM. The continuous back-and-forth makes studying the document slow, yet the clock is ticking on public comments. At this writing we have just over 60 days left.

Reviewing the NPRM is far easier with this PDF study guide because of the bookmarks, links, and backlinks, plus already-highlighted text which shows what current FARs could be changed plus some lightly-colored text that illustrates where the FAA will insert new language.

MOSAIC will still take a significant effort to review carefully, but Beisswenger made the task much easier and faster.

The Magic of Bookmarks

If you open the study guide with Adobe Acrobat on almost any device or computer—or if you use Preview on Apple laptops/desktops—you will gain access to the bookmarks (look for a small icon in the upper right of a tablet or a smart phone; in Preview, show the Table of Contents. On both, use the triangles to drop down further and further). Bookmarks are your navigation friend, helping you jump to places of interest or study.

Beisswenger even embedded back buttons on some pages when reviewing the FARs. This helps readers not get lost in their investigations.

Of course, within Acrobat (or Preview), you can search for specific text.

I observe for you that such ease of review was not possible when the SP/LSA regulation was released in 2004 (three years before the iPhone was introduced).

When reviewing MOSAIC I recommend you follow aspects of particular interest to you rather than try to absorb the whole thing.

However deep you go, Beisswenger made it much easier. 

When you are ready to comment to FAA, use this link. We’ll have more advice on commenting as soon as possible but here’s some basic tips:

• Keep your remarks to a purpose; ask for something.
• Make specific requests.
• Reference language when changes are needed.
• Be constructive; no ranting.
• Be original; use your own words.

To see MOSAIC comments already made, use this link.

More About MOSAIC

John Zimmerman, president of Sporty’s, thought our conversation in this edition of the “Pilot’s Discretion” podcast conveyed a lot of good information (audio—42 minutes). John was an excellent interviewer.

Diagnoses of early-onset cancers — those affecting people 50 and younger — spiked between 2010 and 2019, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open this week.

The fastest-growing type was gastrointestinal cancer, which rose 14.80%, followed by cancer of the endocrine system (8.69%) and breast cancer (7.7%).

Gastrointestinal cancer originates anywhere along the digestive tract, including the esophagus, small intestine, stomach, pancreas, colon, bile duct, gall bladder, liver, anus and rectum.

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Despite gastrointestinal cancer’s sharp increase, breast cancer still had the highest total number of cases among those 50 and under in 2019.

A team of researchers led by the National University of Singapore analyzed data from 17 national cancer registries from Jan. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2019, according to the journal article discussing the study.

The researchers found that in the study period, the overall incidence of early-onset cancers increased — while it decreased for those over 50.

"The increase in early-onset cancers is likely associated with the increasing incidence of obesity as well as changes in environmental exposures, such as smoke and gasoline, sleep patterns, physical activity, microbiota and transient exposure to carcinogenic compounds," the study authors wrote in the journal.

5 HEALTHY HABITS MAY BE THE SECRET TO LIVING LONGER, FLORIDA NEUROSURGEON REVEALS

"Early-onset cancer is associated with substantial mortality and morbidity," the authors added.

Findings confirm ‘disturbing trend,’ says expert

Dr. Monique Gary, medical director of the Grand View Health/Penn Cancer Network in Pennsylvania, where she also serves as director of the breast program, was not involved in the study but reviewed the findings.

"The study is further evidence of a disturbing trend that physicians have more than anecdotally known to be true, which is that cancer rates are increasing in younger individuals," she told Fox News Digital.

"It is not surprising that the risk factors associated with increased cancer incidence are largely preventable," she added.

"Future studies will be very telling with respect to the impact that COVID-19 has had upon these preventable risk factors in younger populations."

These risk factors — obesity, tobacco and alcohol intake, sedentary lifestyles, and decreased quality and lack of adequate rest — were all exacerbated during the pandemic, the doctor noted.

"Future studies will be very telling with respect to the impact that COVID-19 has had upon these preventable risk factors in younger populations," she added.

Among all the risk factors cited, the impacts of stress and a sedentary lifestyle have been most underestimated, the doctor said.

"While we are becoming more adept at understanding lifestyle factors that influence cancer risk, a lot of work still needs to be done to understand the biological mechanisms," she said.

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"Every day, we are uncovering new information regarding the complexities of cancer, and we are at a crossroads now, where we should challenge our understanding of cancer as a disease of aging."

Know the ways to keep cancer at bay

While there are underlying genetic factors and biomarkers of the disease, Dr. Gary emphasized the need to find ways to reduce chronic and preventable illness to "reverse the trend of climbing rates of malignancy."

"Breast and gynecological cancers continue to have the highest incidence in 30- to 39-year-olds, and this should prompt a close examination of the screening, best practices, guidelines and risk-reducing strategies for individuals within this age group — especially those with family history and other non-preventable risk factors," she said.

NEW AI TECH AIMS TO DETECT THE ORIGIN OF CANCERS FOR OPTIMAL TREATMENTS: ‘AN IMPORTANT STEP’

The doctor also stressed the need to focus on mental health and diet, as well as social determinants of health that influence these risk factors. 

"The most important thing to do is to act, to move your body," she said. "COVID forced people of all ages to shelter at home, and most of us have adapted to an increased sedentary lifestyle as a result."

She added, "We need to make sure we prioritize an active lifestyle, and even a small action can make a big difference."

"The most important thing to do is to act, to move your body."

It is also important to adopt the principle of "food as medicine," Gary said. 

"Plant-forward diets high in antioxidants and cruciferous vegetables help to decrease cancer risk," she noted. 

"We also know, as highlighted in this study, that tobacco (in all forms, including vaping) and alcohol intake is a major factor, and it’s important to be aware of our habits and how to manage them."

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"The beauty of wellness is that when we work to Strengthen one area, the benefits extend to other areas as well," she said. 

"Cancer risk is an important and major consideration and risk factor, but we also must be mindful of the impact of other chronic illnesses on our overall well-being."

The study had limitations

As with any study, there were some limitations with this one, Gary noted. 

One is the study period itself; it was done between 2010 and 2019. 

"It does not paint the full picture of the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on comorbidities and cancer risk factors," the doctor said. 

"Additionally, as the study notes, the utilization of body mass index (BMI) as a screening tool for chronic disease such as obesity, which is linked to cancer risk, has been called into question," she told Fox News Digital.

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"It’s an important consideration as we look to reevaluate the ways in which we measure these comorbidities for more accurate reporting," she added.

In the future, parallel studies that look at patterns of other chronic illnesses in young people, including the impact of sedentary lifestyles and diet, are needed, said Gary.

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"While knowledge is power, we need to act on the data and on this knowledge so that ‘wellness’ is no longer just a buzzword or a mindset, and that the actions to achieve wellness are clearly defined, personalized, accessible and integrated into all that we do."

Fox News Digital reached out to the study authors for comment.

Artificial intelligence-generated text can appear more human on social media than text written by genuine humans, a study found.

Chatbots, such as OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT, are able to convincingly mimic human conversation based on prompts it is given by users. The platform exploded in use last year and served as a watershed moment for artificial intelligence, handing the public easy access to converse with a bot that can help with school or work assignments and even come up with dinner recipes.

Researchers behind a study published in the scientific journal Science Advances, which is supported by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, were intrigued by OpenAI’s text generator GPT-3 back in 2020 and worked to uncover whether humans "can distinguish disinformation from accurate information, structured in the form of tweets," and determine whether the tweet was written by a human or AI.

One of the study’s authors, Federico Germani of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich, said the "most surprising" finding was how humans more likely labeled AI-generated tweets as human-generated than tweets actually crafted by humans, according to PsyPost.

HUMANS STUMPED ON DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REAL OR AI-GENERATED IMAGES: STUDY

"The most surprising discovery was that participants often perceived information produced by AI as more likely to come from a human, more often than information produced by an genuine person. This suggests that AI can convince you of being a real person more than a real person can convince you of being a real person, which is a fascinating side finding of our study," Germani said.

With the rapid increase of chatbot use, tech experts and Silicon Valley leaders have sounded the alarm on how artificial intelligence can spiral out of control and perhaps even lead to the end of civilization. One of the top concerns echoed by experts is how AI could lead to disinformation to spread across the internet and convince humans of something that is not true.

OPENAI CHIEF ALTMAN DESCRIBED WHAT ‘SCARY’ AI MEANS TO HIM, BUT CHATGPT HAS ITS OWN EXAMPLES

Researchers for the study, titled "AI model GPT-3 (dis)informs us better than humans," worked to investigate "how AI influences the information landscape and how people perceive and interact with information and misinformation," Germani told PsyPost.

The researchers found 11 courses they found were often prone to disinformation, such as 5G technology and the COVID-19 pandemic, and created both false and true tweets generated by GPT-3, as well as false and true tweets written by humans.

WHAT IS CHATGPT?

They then gathered 697 participants from countries such as the U.S., UK, Ireland, and Canada to take part in a survey. The participants were presented with the tweets and asked to determine if they contained accurate or inaccurate information, and if they were AI-generated or organically crafted by a human.

"Our study emphasizes the challenge of differentiating between information generated by AI and that created by humans. It highlights the importance of critically evaluating the information we receive and placing trust in reliable sources. Additionally, I would encourage individuals to familiarize themselves with these emerging technologies to grasp their potential, both positive and negative," Germani said of the study.

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Researchers found participants were best at determining disinformation crafted by a fellow human than disinformation written by GPT-3.

"One noteworthy finding was that disinformation generated by AI was more convincing than that produced by humans," Germani said.

The participants were also more likely to recognize tweets containing accurate information that were AI-generated than accurate tweets written by humans.

The study noted that in addition to its "most surprising" finding that humans often can’t differentiate between AI-generated tweets and human-created ones, their confidence in making a determination fell while taking the survey.

"Our results indicate that not only can humans not differentiate between synthetic text and organic text but also their confidence in their ability to do so also significantly decreases after attempting to recognize their different origins," the study states. 

WHAT IS AI?

The researchers said this is likely due to how convincingly GPT-3 can mimic humans, or respondents may have underestimated the intelligence of the AI system to mimic humans. 

"We propose that, when individuals are faced with a large amount of information, they may feel overwhelmed and supply up on trying to evaluate it critically. As a result, they may be less likely to attempt to distinguish between synthetic and organic tweets, leading to a decrease in their confidence in identifying synthetic tweets," the researchers wrote in the study.

The researchers noted that the system sometimes refused to generate disinformation, but also sometimes generated false information when told to create a tweet containing accurate information.

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"While it raises concerns about the effectiveness of AI in generating persuasive disinformation, we have yet to fully understand the real-world implications," Germani told PsyPost. "Addressing this requires conducting larger-scale studies on social media platforms to observe how people interact with AI-generated information and how these interactions influence behavior and adherence to recommendations for individual and public health."

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As the climate warms, scientists have suggested that “time-traveling pathogens” unleashed by thawing Arctic permafrost may pose a risk to modern ecosystems.

Permafrost is a hard layer of frozen ground made of soil, sand and rocks in high-latitude or high-altitude areas such as Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau and northern Canada. This icy layer traps microbes that remain dormant for long periods of time — but a warming planet could create conditions suitable for these pathogens to return from the past, according to new research.

To better understand the possible ecological effects, an international team of researchers digitally modeled the interactions between an ancient virus and modern bacteria in a study published July 27 in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Through tens of thousands of iterations, the study team tracked how the virus affected species diversity of a bacterial community. About 1% of the ancient viruses caused major disruptions to the digital ecosystems. The pathogen either increased diversity by up to 12% or, conversely, decreased species diversity by 32%. The viral invaders not only survived but evolved over time, throwing the system off-balance.

Researchers used a software called Avida to simulate whether pathogens would be successful at infiltrating an ecosystem. In a two-dimensional grid, bacterial organisms interacted with their environment to compete for energy and space. Competitors who found their niche could reproduce and live on through the cycles.

In doing so, there were slight errors in reproduction that created genetic diversity, resulting in a more complex ecosystem. When the virus entered this environment, like any other parasite, it was only able to get energy by leaching off suitable bacterial hosts. The hosts were then unable to receive the energy they needed to survive or reproduce and, subsequently, died.

Does this mean that nearly one-third of humans and other living organisms will soon be at risk of dying from a reawakened viral disease? No, but lead author Giovanni Strona and coauthor Corey Bradshaw said the findings add yet another layer of concern to the risks from an ever-warming climate.

In the past two decades, more research has been dedicated to understanding the consequences of permafrost melt in Arctic regions, such as a January 2022 NASA study that investigated the effects of carbon release during abrupt thawing events and Jean-Michel Claverie’s decade-long look into potentially infectious pathogens locked in permafrost.

Claverie, a professor emeritus of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine, revived what he called “zombie” viruses from permafrost in 2014 and 2015, and he and his team reported five new families of ancient viruses capable of infecting amoebas in a February study, as previously reported by CNN. The research led by Claverie proved that ancient microbes could still be infectious despite lying dormant for tens of thousands of years.

Using that assumption from Claverie’s work, Bradshaw, director of the Global Ecology Laboratory at Flinders University in Australia, and Strona, a senior researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, designed a simulation to quantify the consequences these pathogens could have.

While 1% of pathogens causing major disruption seems low, 4 sextillion cells escape from permafrost every year, Bradshaw said. That’s far more than the number of stars in the galaxy.

“One percent of 4 sextillion is a number most people can’t even conceive. There’s so many, many opportunities for this to happen. … The probability is rare for one individual virus, but there are so many potential viruses,” he told CNN in a phone interview.

Bradshaw likened the viruses within permafrost to any other invasive species. In the real world, most invasions fail, which the study mirrored. But the reason we still have problems with invasive species, he said, is that there are so many introductions to an ecosystem.

READ MORE: Invasive species around the world in pictures

During the study’s successful invasion events, the resulting 32% loss of species diversity doesn’t mean that the virus killed one-third of all bacteria in the digital ecosystem, Strona said. Rather, it means that the entire ecosystem saw a loss in bacterial diversity by 32%.

When the viruses infected the bacteria and killed their hosts, the effects on the ecosystem were catastrophic. The resources that existed at equilibrium simply weren’t available anymore, so the remaining species were forced into an arms race for survival, Bradshaw said. Predators and prey fought for use of the resources that were left, throwing the system off-balance. If there were less predators to consume prey, prey thrived, overpopulated and then used too many resources. The overproduction then reduced prey populations in a natural culling. If there were more predators, they would consume too much prey for sustainable survival, leading to the same result.

The introduction of the virus was the only cause for this major species diversity fluctuation, researchers found.

Modern organisms, including humans, have few, if any, natural defense mechanisms for ancient pathogens. But for the research team, the study is more of a call to action than a true warning, Strona and Bradshaw said.

“We don’t need to sound the alarm just yet,” said Dr. Kimberley Miner, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She said she believes there are more pressing concerns with the climate crisis that are far more controllable, such as slowing the output of carbon into the atmosphere.

The study is a great first step in quantifying the risks from these unknown variables, said Miner, who was not involved with this research. But the chance of infection from these emerging pathogens is still “highly improbable.”

The areas containing Earth’s permafrost are sparsely populated. If ancient pathogens did somehow manage to escape, they would have trouble finding people to infect. Moreover, permafrost melts gradually throughout the year at a rate of about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) per season, and most of the 4 sextillion cells are released during this gradual thaw, Miner said.

Abrupt thaws in Arctic permafrost, sometimes occurring as quickly as a matter of days, are “what we are most concerned about in terms of releasing organisms that we’re not familiar with,” she explained.

With the average global temperature increasing, these abrupt thaws will only become more common. After record high temperatures in July, drone footage captured Siberia’s largest permafrost crater sinking as the ice below ground melted.

Strona and Bradshaw cited the need for more research to extend the implications of their findings to human or animal populations. Both researchers said their intention was to supply a framework for assessing the risk of biological invaders from a bygone era.

The only preventive action in all these cases — be it sea level rise, deadly heat or emerging pathogens — is to slow or stop carbon emissions that lead to global warming and protect Arctic ecosystems, the study authors said. Without doing so, the cascading ecological effects will no longer be science fiction, they said.

An experiment is conducted to see whether cats pinpoint their owners’ locations by hearing. (Provided by Saho Takagi, a research fellow at Azabu University)

This might make your heart skip a beat.

Microplastics commonly found in food packaging and paints have been discovered in the human heart for the first time.

The alarming find was made by a team of scientists from Beijing Anzhen Hospital in China, who analyzed the heart tissue of 15 patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery, according to the study published by the American Chemical Society.

Microplastics, which are less than 5 millimeters wide — or about the size of a pencil eraser, can enter the human body through the mouth, nose and other body cavities. 

Doctors Kun Hua, Xiubin Yang and their team wanted to investigate whether these particles can enter people’s cardiovascular systems through indirect and direct exposures, according to a statement about the study.

Researchers collected and analyzed the heart tissue of the patients as well as blood samples from half of the participants. 

They “detected tens to thousands of individual microplastic pieces in most tissue samples” and found plastic samples in all of the blood samples.

Nine types of plastic were found in five types of heart tissue. The study also found evidence suggesting that some microplastics were inadvertently introduced to the subjects during the surgeries.

Plastics found in three different parts of the heart included poly(methyl methacrylate), a plastic commonly used as a shatter-resistant alternative to glass. These particles, researchers said, “’cannot be attributed to accidental exposure during surgery.

Polyethylene terephthalate, which is used in clothing and food containers, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is widespread in window frames, drainage pipes, paint and more, were also found. 

“The detection of in vivo MPs [microplastics] is alarming, and more studies are necessary to investigate how the MPs enter the cardiac tissues and the potential effects of MPs [microplastics] on long-term prognosis after cardiac surgery,” the research team concluded.

Last year, a study suggested that humans consume about 5 grams of small plastic particles every week, or roughly the weight of your credit card.

The plastic particles make their way into the human food chain from packaging waste, and enter the body through sea salt, seafood and even drinking water, scientists at the Medical University of Vienna found.

The changes in the gastrointestinal tract caused by the microplastic have been linked to metabolic diseases like obesity, diabetes and chronic liver disease.

A significant number of cancer patients coping with their diagnosis turn to alcohol consumption, with many considering themselves binge drinkers, according to a new study.

On Thursday, the JAMA Network Open released a study that looked at the alcohol consumption of 15,199 participants who were diagnosed with cancer, with 1,839 of those patients undergoing treatment including chemotherapy, surgery, hormone therapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

Researchers found that 77.7% of adults with cancer self-reported as current drinkers. Among those, 13% exceeded moderate drinking, 23.8% reported binge drinking, and 38.3% engaged in hazardous drinking — based on a standardized test, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Consumption.

“It is so difficult to hear of and live with a cancer diagnosis. There are feelings of isolation and fear, and alcohol can help dull those feelings,” Dr. Marleen I. Meyers, an oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, told The Post.

“The stress of treatment and inadequate pain management can cause sleep troubles, extreme fatigue and feelings of loneliness and social isolation,” Meyers added. “All of these can be risk factors for substance abuse.”

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The study also detailed the health risks that can come with increased alcohol consumption among cancer patients. In an analysis involving 209,597 cancer survivors, alcohol consumption was associated with a 17% increased risk of cancer recurrence and an 8% increased risk of overall mortality, according to the report.

Additionally, alcohol use worsens post-surgical outcomes, including increased risk of surgical complications, longer hospitalizations, more surgical procedures, prolonged recovery, and more.

“These substances can interfere with treatment by interfering with metabolism of certain drugs that may make them less effective or more toxic,” Meyers told the outlet. 

“In addition, pain medications and anti-anxiety medications may be prescribed without the practitioner being aware of the survivor’s substance abuse, and this can increase the effects of these drugs and cause impairment,” she added. “Impairment from substance abuse may make patients less aware of certain symptoms such as fever that may be life-threatening.”

Researchers advise clinicians to collect information about their cancer patients’ alcohol consumption and explain the potential harm that can come from drinking. 

They also stress the importance of providing support and guidance to patients who are identified as alcohol users.