Space, Health, and the snake at Chili's

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Jenny Mack with five good news stories. Good news if you've been trying to get in touch with Voyager one. Yeah, I know that Voyager one launched in nineteen seventy seven, but it is an incredible machine, currently fifteen billion miles from Earth, well beyond the heliosphere. Well. Recently a communications blackout which triggered after radio command sent by Earth to turn on the probe's heaters messed up for some reason. The heating command activated a failsafe that shut off all non essential functions to conserve power. One of those functions the radio transmitter.

0:43 Uh oh, so they tried the backup radio band. Now, if you want to get into radio band weeds. They've been using the X band, which takes twenty three hours for a message to arrive. They switched back to the S band, which they hadn't used since nineteen eighty one. Bruce Wagoner is the Voyager mission are EN's manager, and said the S band signal is two weeks to use long term. So they sent some commands out and everything restarted. Suzanne Dodd is Voyager's project manager, and told CNN we never know for sure what's going to happen with the voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going. Good news for a four year old girl who doctor said would never walk, she was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, a genetic condition that causes severe physical and learning disabilities.

1:25 Her parents were told to expect that her daughter wouldn't be able to walk. A year later, they received a call from doctors reporting that the child had been misdiagnosed. She actually had a similar, but less severe disorder. Mom said seeing her take her first steps felt so good, like seeing all the work pay off. Having a physical therapist who believes in her and knows her potential has made a huge difference. We know the day is coming when we can confidently let her walk completely on her own. A new study from Penn State suggests that your attitudes about aging, whether positive or negative, can lead to that result. The Penn State team found the people who had positive expectations of aging tended to report less frequent cognitive problems.

2:05 Nicki Hill is an associate professor and said aging expectations are malleable and influence in individual's perceptions of their cognitive functioning. Do people's perceptions of what they expect asan to be in the future affect the way they perceive their cognitive performance. Hill says, if it does, then that gives us more clues about how to interpret people's reports of cognitive changes and potentially how to intervene earlier to support people to maximize the reaching outcomes. It's a good episode for science. On today's show, AI has successfully detected a woman's breast cancer after routine scan evaluated by humans came back as normal. Sheila was given the all clear after her recent memo. However, the place where she had her appointment was participating in research to see if AI could improve early detection, and it did. The AI spotted cancer cells which were undetectable by the human eye. They were able to find the cancer so early she was able to have a lumpectomy and didn't need any further treatment, She says, being sixty eight, this may have been my last mammogram, so any early cancer might have developed into invasive cancer in my seventies.

3:03 So I'm deeply grateful for it. I've been caught so early. Good news. We found your lost snake, you know, the one that's been out for two months. We found it at Chili's. I love these stories. A large python was found in the Chilies parking lot in North Carolina. Oh it wasn't a random python. It was the one that the police department had been looking for for two months. On social media, the police wrote, we believe this may have been someone's bet and got loose. The police were right. It was Kristen's. She told the local TV. This beautiful snake is my beautiful girl Una. She's the best snake anyone could ever have, and I've been missing her deeply for the past two months. Seems like the snake had a bit of a rough outing. Kristen tells us she has rubs or burns on her, which I'm going to treat tonight with some idin and polysporn. And she was very dehydrated. I had to give her a little bath with electrolytes in it, and she was just chugging water.

3:53 But other than that, she's a happy girl. I just wanted chicken figures. That's true. I'm Kidneys Stories for today. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it. They might like it too. If you enjoy my company, I host another podcast that's called Daily Comedy News seven days a week. I talk about what's happening in the world of stand up comedy. Think Sports Center, but for comedians something like that. Have a great day.