Good news! Bravo!
Saturday, September 12, 2026
CIA declassifies dozens of never-before-seen intelligence reports dating before and related to 9/11
It appears nothing new here! If there were any warnings prior to 9/11 from the US intelligence community, they were to vague and unspecific.
AOC and Mamdani seen laughing and smiling as 9/11 families weep at Ground Zero. Really!
This is a piece of lousy, deplorable junk journalism!
Some other junk news article even titled it "giggle-gate"! What a nonsense!
"House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, who is leading efforts to gird America against future terror threats, is blasting fellow Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for failing to display appropriate decorum during Friday's solemn commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"It's an absolute travesty [???]," Crawford, R-Ark.,"
Xi tells Modi China and India bear ‘significant responsibilities’ as global powers at BRICS summit
Hopefully, India will assume more responsibilities as a superpower going forward. The old ways of being neutral or non-aligned are hopefully over!
Their first responsibility would be to pressure Putin the Terrible to end the Russo-Ukrainian War going on since 2022!
Meteorite dust holds records of magnetism that may have helped form the sun
Amazing stuff!
"Around 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was little more than a giant ball of gas and dust. Over the next few million years, this “solar nebula” underwent a huge transformation, flattening into a disk of matter that then condensed to form the central sun and orbiting planets.
Scientists have assumed that the early solar system was shaped mainly through gravity. But a new study finds that magnetism also likely played a role.
... scientists have discovered records of ancient magnetism in the oldest samples of meteorites known today. The team analyzed microscopic grains embedded in a meteorite that was discovered in Antarctica in 2008. These grains, called calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, or CAIs, originally formed during the solar system’s first 200,000 years, making the samples the oldest known solar system material.
The findings suggest that a magnetic field existed very early on, during the time of the solar nebula. The researchers estimate that this nebular magnetic field was stronger than Earth’s magnetic field today, and likely played a significant role in pulling together primordial matter to form the early sun. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
A key step in the formation of planetary systems is the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust into a protoplanetary disk. It has been unclear what forces transformed the disk into the final configuration of a central massive star surrounded by planets. In particular, it has been proposed that in the earliest stages of disk evolution gravity and/or magnetism played a central role.
Here we report studies of the remanent magnetization in calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, the oldest known solar system solids. We find that they record ancient magnetic fields with intensities stronger than that of the Earth today. This supports the hypothesis that magnetism played a key role in driving mass transport in the early protoplanetary disk.
Abstract
The initial stage of planet formation is expected to take place in a nascent protoplanetary disk (PPD) accreting onto the protostar embedded in an infalling envelope.
This stage is likely accompanied by the formation of high-condensation temperature solids resembling calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), the oldest known solar system solids. However, it is unknown whether magnetism and/or gravity dominantly drove accretion in the youngest evolutionary stages of PPDs and the solar nebula.
Here we report paleomagnetic measurements of CAIs indicating that they record a nebular magnetic field of ∼150 to 600 μT.
This intensity is consistent with magnetic fields playing a key role driving disk accretion while also heating the very inner disk to 103 K at the earliest stages of solar system formation."
Paleomagnetic evidence for a nebular magnetic field from calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (open access)
Fig. 3 Summary of high-resolution imaging of CAI 11 indicating the presence of primary magnetic phases.
There and Back Again: Bidirectional Diffusion Bridges for Multimodality Translation
This could be an interesting new paper by Stefano Ermon and his team!
From the abstract:
"Multimodality translation (e.g., text-to-image) is a core generative AI task. However, existing approaches
(1) follow generative paths that do not directly represent the source modality, limiting the flexibility of some sampling algorithms; and
(2) are unidirectional, preventing inversion (e.g., image-to-text).
We propose BIT: Bidirectional Image-Text Diffusion Bridges.
In contrast to previous approaches, BIT starts directly from text and interpolates into images, providing
(1) a source-aware generative path that enables diverse and flexible sampling algorithms; and
(2) an endpoint-conditioned process that can be traversed from image to text, providing a unified, bidirectional generative framework.
BIT is derived through stochastic calculus, yielding SDE forms amenable to simulation and tractable loss functions that scale to high dimensions.
Our experiments show that BIT is competitive with denoising-diffusion and deterministic-flow baselines, and outperforms them on several vision--language and natural-science evaluations."
Autonomy pivots to gas vehicles to keep the dream of car subscriptions alive
Good news! Competition is good, more competition is better!
I like the idea of car subscriptions! Seems to be long overdue. Another business model besides leasing or renting a car, purchasing a used car.
Caveat I am not familiar with the offerings of this company nor with the company itself.
"Four years ago, California startup Autonomy pledged to buy 23,000 EVs from 17 automakers, including Tesla, and make them available as part of a vehicle subscription service. It was a combination of two trends that had taken off in the early 2020s.
It didn’t work out. ..."
Weight-loss drug slows ageing in female mice (one inbred strain of laboratory mice). Really!
Amazing stuff! However, this was only reported for a very narrowly defined population of mice. I am not sure why Nature journal highlighted this research.
You get another chance to gain weight again! Just kidding!
"The GLP-1 medication semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) has anti-ageing properties, at least in mice, write gerontologists ... Older female mice that received semaglutide lived longer than those that didn’t receive the drug, and had better outcomes for inflammation, cellular senescence, and neurodegeneration outcomes. The treated mice also performed better on cognitive tests than untreated mice fed a strict diet, suggesting the drug has benefits that aren’t explained by calorie reduction alone."
From the abstract:
"Pharmacological glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) activation reduces food intake and is an effective therapy for type 2 diabetes and obesity.
The use of GLP-1 medicines has revealed pleiotropic beneficial effects beyond glucose and weight control but little is known about the underlying basis of the pleiotropic effects.
Here, treatment of 20-month-old female C57BL/6 mice with the GLP-1R agonist semaglutide for 3 months improved physiological function, attenuated hallmarks of ageing and modulated nutrient sensors and conserved genetic regulators of ageing. Continued treatment extended mouse lifespan.
These effects parallel key features of calorie restriction, a dietary intervention that slows ageing, extends lifespan and alleviates a wide spectrum of ageing-associated diseases.
In a longitudinal study in direct comparison to matched calorie restriction, semaglutide treatment preserved baseline function and recapitulated many functional benefits of calorie restriction by attenuating age-associated decline, while also producing improvements above baseline and more favourable trajectories than calorie restriction in exploratory drive, spatial memory and glucose control.
Together, these findings demonstrate that GLP-1R activation initiated late in life slows ageing and extends lifespan in female mice, supporting its function as a calorie restriction mimetic and providing a mechanistic framework that may help to explain its broad beneficial effects while revealing effects beyond those attributable to reduced calorie intake."
Weight-loss drug slows ageing in female mice (behind paywall) "In one inbred strain of laboratory mice, late-life treatment with a GLP-1 drug extends lifespan. This effect might be more than just a consequence of calorie restriction."
Fig. 1: GLP-1R activation late in life extends lifespan and improves physiological function.
Venezuela's Maduro is gone, but his digital surveillance apparatus made in China still continues
Certainly a concern!
"... Yet one of the most consequential pieces of Maduro’s authoritarian legacy remains intact.
As we show in our new report, Warning Signals: Venezuela and the risk of Chinese AI-enabled digital authoritarianism, Venezuela retains an apparatus of digital surveillance and political control built partly with Chinese technology. Before Maduro’s removal, Caracas had also begun preparing to add something new: Chinese artificial intelligence. ...
For two decades, Venezuela imported much of the plumbing of digital authoritarianism, such as telecommunications equipment, identity systems, cameras, command centres and technology for controlling the internet.
In July 2025 it took a potentially more consequential step: signing an agreement with Chinese AI company iFlytek.
After years of buying the infrastructure, Venezuela had contracted for the intelligence that could run on top of it. That AI layer has not yet been built. There is no public evidence that iFlytek, or any other Chinese company, is currently operating an AI surveillance system inside Venezuela. ..."
"... Now Venezuela is primed to upgrade its surveillance technology. This report shows that in the months before Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in January 2026, the Venezuelan government signed an agreement to adopt Chinese-built AI systems, an initiative led by Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez, and signalled its intent to use Chinese AI to enhance existing state-sponsored surveillance.
The US has installed Rodríguez, who once supervised Venezuela’s repressive intelligence agency, as the country’s acting president. Under her leadership the Venezuelan government has neither liberalized nor dismantled the surveillance regime.
If Caracas continues to implement its plan to use Chinese AI for surveillance — and it has given no signal that it won’t — Venezuela will become one of the first countries outside China to import China’s new generation of LLM-based AI systems for surveillance and control, and the most advanced adopter in the Western Hemisphere. ..."
The titles of at least 3200 research papers directly quote or make puns related to The Beatles song names or lyrics
Amazing stuff! One of the greatest pop music bands of all times lives on! Or how contagious is the Beatlemania?
Tells you something about the age of the researchers! Just kidding!
Apparently, the authors of medical articles make the most use of the song lyrics/titles of the Beatles (see chart below)
However, it is a drip in the bucket. "The worldwide annual output of science and engineering research articles totals roughly 3.3 million peer-reviewed papers per year" (Google Search)
"Scientists seeking to make an academic paper more engaging often get by with a little help from The Beatles . References to the “Fab Four” are here, there and everywhere, researchers have found: The titles of at least 3200 papers directly quote or make puns related to their song names or lyrics ..."
From the abstract:
"The Beatles’ cultural influence reaches well beyond music into television, fashion, and global media.
As we show, it reaches into scientific publishing too. This study documents how often Beatles song titles and lyrics appear in academic article titles, identifying 2,237 exact references and 963 instances of creative wordplay in data from Scopus.
Working from a curated list of Beatles songs and lyrics, we combine automated title queries with large-language-model screening, followed by manual verification, to detect both exact references and wordplay.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically identify wordplay on Beatles song titles and lyrics in scientific article titles. We report which titles and lyrics are referenced most often, trace how their use has grown over the decades, and show that this growth has outpaced the expansion of the scientific literature as a whole while varying systematically across disciplines.
The result is the first large-scale, cross-disciplinary account of how the Beatles have left their mark on scientific writing."
Fig 1. Comparison of exact matches of Beatles song titles in academic article titles on a log-log scale: Scopus vs. Google Scholar.
Fig 3. Subject areas of articles referencing the 10 most frequently matched Beatles song titles.
Many millions of tons of microplastics are released into the environment every year. Really!
I bet the author of this article confused plastics and microplastics!
When one suffers from Plastophobia please seek immediate medical help!
"The world produces over 430 to 460 million metric tons of plastic every year." (Google Search)
This junk journalism was again published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)!
"Many millions of tons of microplastics are released into the environment every year. How much of that load is transported to the ocean by rivers? Qin et al. have provided a global dataset of daily riverine concentrations and export fluxes of microplastics. They found that microplastic export by rivers is much higher than previously realized; that the great majority of that export occurs in the global south; and that rainfall creates dramatic spikes in microplastic concentrations and fluxes, the overwhelming majority of which occur in developing countries. Better waste management is essential if these fluxes are to be reduced."
How psychoactive substances formed Andean civilization in South America
Very Recommendable!
The article "High Society" is quite long, I did not read all of it.
"The journey of humans into South America was a strange trip—literally. When people arrived some 15,000 years ago, they encountered an ecologically diverse continent peculiarly rich in psychoactive plants. Botanists estimate more than 100 species there significantly alter human consciousness, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global total.
Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that psychoactive substances played a starring role in many of the empires that arose there, particularly in the Andes. ..."
"Chavín De Huántar, Peru ... Archaeologists have long believed this 3000-year-old temple complex in a high and remote valley in the central Peruvian Andes was a center of drug rituals ...
Such finds strongly suggested the practice of mind-altering rituals, but in 2016 a team ... began to unearth what he calls “the smoking gun.” They uncovered a new gallery ... including 21 bone tubes,” ... which yielded traces of tobacco and something considerably more potent: seeds from the vilca tree, which contain bufotenine; dimethyltryptamine (DMT); and 5-MEO-DMT, a combination that produces short-lived but extremely intense visions. ...
Drug-based rituals, it is now becoming clear, played a central role in the emergence of Andean civilization. ... believes Chavín’s ritual leaders invited elites from other regions to take part in elaborate ceremonies centered on ingesting powerful substances amid a dramatic sound and light show. In so doing, “they harnessed the process of mental alteration to establish powerful levels of authority.” ...
Chavín’s success spawned imitators throughout the region. In subsequent centuries, the Tiahuanaco and Wari peoples built on these traditions to cement political, social, and religious power as their territories expanded to encompass vast swaths of western South America.
Widespread ritual drug use fell into decline only when the Inca rose after 1200 C.E.; Spanish conquerors suppressed remaining practices after their 1532 invasion. Although psychoactives remained in use for medicinal and small-scale religious purposes—many can still be found for sale in open-air markets—their powerful and pervasive influence on Andean society was relegated to the shadows. ...
Scattered evidence suggests early societies along the Peruvian coast experimented with psychoactives as early as the third millennium B.C.E. More solid evidence is found at Chavín, which emerged 150 kilometers to the north by 1200 B.C.E. The temple complex remained in continuous use until decline set in after an earthquake around 550 B.C.E. Notably, it lacks defenses, palaces, or signs of an organized military. Chavín was not the center of a political state, but a pilgrimage site that for centuries drew visitors from afar. ..."
High culture "How psychoactive substances helped spur Andean civilization"
Snuff trays and tubes, like these found at San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, were used to ingest crushed seeds of the psychoactive vilca plant
Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI companies are threatening their intellectual work
That is almost unheard of! They say mathematics is the queen of all sciences (according to Carl Friedrich Gauss)!
Maybe machine learning and AI are dethroning math to a regular science! Maybe the once elite club of mathematicians ("mathematical community") lost its nimbus!
"Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work as they seek to one-up each other with solutions to famous math problems. Each signatory has been awarded the Fields Medal, considered the most prestigious prize in mathematics. ..."
"Over the last few months, the mathematical capabilities of LLMs have improved dramatically, to the point that they can solve major outstanding problems in many fields of mathematics. However, the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics, and to the mathematical community. The goals of the AI companies and the goals of the mathematical community are severely misaligned. We see these as part of broader alignment issues impacting other scientific and creative professions, as well as the whole of society. ...
The mathematical community functions, in many ways, as a miniature version of humanity. It consists of individuals using a wide variety of different approaches, joined by core values. The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas, and these we nurture with great care. ..."
Friday, September 11, 2026
France's military jets go on a 40-day global flight to project power and alliance. Really!
All show and nothing to show for! President Macron is weak!
When will the French military attack the Houthis in Yemen?
'That's Your Problem': Trump Ditches MBS As Houthis Rain Bombs On Saudi Arabia
Recommendable, but bad news! I hope the report is largely wrong as fas as President Trump is concerned!
Where are the coward European powers when you need them!
'We Believe In Ourselves': Traore Launches New $30 Mn Burkina Faso Textile Hub
Recommendable! Maybe strongman tactics! Nationalization of foreign companies is also questionable.
200 people jumped, others fell from the twin World Trade Center towers on 9/11
I had almost forgotten about these horrible images!
Individuals hanging from the windows
Chronic interferon exposure prompts a switch from anti-tumor activity to immunosuppression
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"Type II interferon (IFN-II) normally activates the immune system to fight cancer. However, prolonged IFN-II exposure can promote an immunosuppressive tumor environment that supports cancer growth, a confounding factor in cancer therapies. Johnson et al. explored why IFN-driven inflammation can be tumor suppressive in certain contexts but tumor promoting in others.
Chronic IFN-II stimulation unveiled secondary protumorigenic type I IFN (IFN-I) signaling that increased production of prostaglandins, bioactive lipids that inhibit anticancer immune responses.
Suppressing prostaglandin synthesis restored the ability of the immune system to attack tumors and reversed resistance to immunotherapy in melanoma cells.
The IFN-II–mediated IFN-I response was instigated by the release of mitochondrial RNA that activated innate immune signaling.
Timely inhibition of IFN-I signaling or blocking mitochondrial RNA release may therefore provide a means to promote antitumor immunity."
"Highlights
- ... researchers identify what flips a molecular “switch” that causes anti-cancer interferon activity to transition into pro-cancer activity, a longstanding mystery in cancer biology
- Chronic interferon activates a mitochondrial signaling pathway that, when turned off, effectively reverses tumor growth and immunotherapy resistance in a mouse model of melanoma
- The study could reveal new therapeutic targets to sustain anti-tumor immune responses
..."
From the abstract:
"Interferons (IFNs) are proinflammatory cytokines that promote immune cell engagement to eliminate malignant cells.
Paradoxically, chronic interferon signaling can also activate anti-inflammatory mechanisms that allow cancer cells to evade the immune system.
In this study, we sought to determine the cellular mechanisms underlying this switch from antitumorigenic to protumorigenic interferon activity.
We show that chronic type II interferon (IFN-II) exposure distinctively induced tumor growth by activating a type I interferon (IFN-I) response mediated by release of double-stranded mitochondrial RNA (ds-mtRNA) into the cytoplasm. This IFN-I signal synergized with IFN-II to enhance tumor growth by increasing immunosuppressive prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) synthesis through increased cyclooxygenase 2 expression.
Elimination of PGE2 synthesis in immunotherapy-resistant melanoma cells restored their responsiveness to anti-PD1 treatment, indicating that this covert mtRNA-IFN-prostaglandin pathway could be a therapeutic target to combat immunotherapy resistance."
Why does the immune system sometimes help tumors grow? (original news release) "Salk Institute researchers define how chronic interferon exposure prompts a switch from anti-tumor activity to immunosuppression in mice, revealing a key target to sustain anti-tumor immune responses and combat immunotherapy-resistant cancer"
Representative images showing mitochondrial RNA (mtRNA) transcripts (red) present outside of the confines of mitochondria (cyan) in a melanoma cell following chronic interferon II exposure. Arrows point to specific examples of mtRNA outside the mitochondria.
Detroit Schools pay Students and parents a lot of money to Show Up
This program seems to be insanely expensive and ill conceived!
The current mayor of Detroit is Mary Sheffield (D, age 39) who took office on January 1, 2026. She is a career politician since age 26. Her resume is very thin!
First female (and female black) mayor of Detroit!
"The program launched in January 2026 for high schoolers, offering $100 gift cards for every five-day period of perfect attendance — up to $1,000 over 10-weeks. Middle school parents will now receive $50 gift cards for their children’s perfect attendance under the same five-day structure. ..."
"The Detroit Public Schools Community District is expanding its program [Perfect Attendance Pays] that pays students for perfect attendance.
Middle school students, not just high school students, can earn money this year, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email. ..."
Detroit schools pay students for perfect attendance on certain weeks "$100 gift cards aim to boost attendance"
Mary Sheffield
Somali Pirates continue Hijackings of vessels since April 2026 of at least 8 vessels
Another reason why crude oil prices are so high!
Where are the coward European powers when you need them! These pirates e.g. should be arrested and subjected to martial law by the European powers!
"Somali pirates have hijacked at least four international commercial vessels off the coast of northern Somalia’s Puntland state during this period, including two in mid-August.
Three of the vessels were fuel tankers, while the other ... was a cargo ship reportedly carrying Turkish military equipment. Suspected Somali pirates have also attempted at least four additional hijackings since May, according to the UN International Maritime Organization. ...
This level of piracy has not occurred since the peak of Somali piracy over a decade ago. Somali pirates averaged 33 hijackings annually from 2005 to 2011 and conducted 15 hijackings in 2012. ..."
Anthropic details distillation attack campaigns from China (Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and DeepSeek)
Bad news! Serious stuff! The Communist Party of China is well known for its intellectual property theft and espionnage of the West. Competing by illegal means! Very troubling!
What seems to be particularly troubling is that these Chinese companies are apparently sharing the illegal means facilitating these distillation and other attacks.
"A new report released Thursday by Anthropic alleged persistent distillation attacks by China-based AI companies, which have escalated in recent months as competition in the space has intensified.
“Over the last several months, unauthorized labs have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to circumvent our defenses and harvest the capabilities of US frontier models,” the report reads. “The campaigns we identified targeted some of Claude’s most valuable capabilities, including agentic capabilities and tool use, coding and data analysis, and logical reasoning.”
Anthropic previously spoke out about distillation attacks in February, even calling out specific labs.
OpenAI has reported similar activity, which it attributed to DeepSeek specifically. But the campaigns detailed in Anthropic’s new report are both larger and more aggressive. All told, the company observed nearly 200 million exchanges linked to distillation attacks, attributed to five separate campaigns. ..."
"... We define illicit distillation as an industrial-scale, covert campaign to extract a model’s capabilities and replicate them in another model without authorization. Illicit distillation is typically enabled by fraud: sophisticated networks of fake accounts created with stolen credit cards, login credentials, and API keys. ...
Beyond distillation, Alibaba also used Claude to advance its AI R&D efforts. Alibaba used Claude to help develop its internal infrastructure for model development. Claude was used to help develop Alibaba’s reinforcement learning (RL) environments and advance model architecture research.
Alibaba accessed Claude through two main pools of fraudulent accounts. The first consisted of nearly 5,000 fraudulent accounts leveraging residential proxies, disposable emails, and virtual-card payments to obfuscate their access.
When we banned this pool of accounts, Alibaba quickly shifted its traffic through the second pool.
Some of these accounts were found to have been funneling requests from DeepSeek and Xiaomi, demonstrating that the same proxy service networks are often used by a variety of organizations. ..."
The graphic below illustrates the life cycle of an illicit distillation campaign.
Flight 93 National Memorial
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11 let's not forget the heroes of flight 93!
"A common field one day, a field of honor forever. We honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93 who perished in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001. Their courageous action will be remembered forever.
— Congressional Gold Medal"
"Passengers and crew began making phone calls to officials and family members starting at 09:30 using GTE airphones and mobile phones. Altogether, the passengers and crew made 35 airphone calls and two cell phone calls from the flight. Ten passengers and two crew members were able to connect, providing information to family, friends, and others on the ground. ..." (Wikipedia)
UA 93's flight path from Newark, New Jersey, to Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania
Mayday calls
Passengers calling their loved ones
Flight 93 crash site
Flight 93 National Memorial
Was Gondwana actually a larger and a true supercontinent? Call it Greater Gondwana
Amazing stuff! What a jigsaw puzzle!
"... Now, Gondwana is posing a new challenge. By studying the age of basement granites known to have existed near the continent’s edge, a team of geologists has found that Gondwana was much bigger than previously thought, encompassing up to 80% of the continental crust at the time, and adding some 127 million square kilometers to its extent. Such size, they suggest, makes it a true supercontinent, nearly on par with Pangea, which formed several hundred million years later.
The finding, if it holds up, challenges the notion of supercontinent cycles—the idea that the continents break apart and smoosh together, driven by shifts in the mantle, in regular cycles of 500 million years or so. ..."
"... Geologists have long gone back and forth on the status of Gondwana, which was discovered more than 100 years ago when common plant fossils were found on widely separated continents.
In 2012, Joseph Meert, a paleogeographer at the University of Florida, concluded supercontinents should at a minimum encompass 75% of all known continental crust. At the time, Gondwana was mostly thought to comprise present-day India, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, and South America—64% of known land. The 75% threshold was always arbitrary ...
In 2012, Joseph Meert, a paleogeographer at the University of Florida, concluded supercontinents should at a minimum encompass 75% of all known continental crust. At the time, Gondwana was mostly thought to comprise present-day India, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, and South America—64% of known land. The 75% threshold was always arbitrary ...
But since then, Gondwana’s size has grown, as geologists added continental fragments in the eastern United States, southern Europe, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. But other fragments that existed at the time, including much of China, have not traditionally been assigned to Gondwana. Magnetic signals preserved in rocks that can help determine where ancient crust was located are difficult to interpret during this period. The jigsaw puzzle is further complicated by the repeated opening and closing of narrow oceans in East Asia at the time. ..."
From the abstract:
"Profound global biogeochemical shifts marked the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition [550–500 million years (Ma)], a phenomenon often ascribed to the dynamics of supercontinent cycles.
However, Gondwana is frequently denied supercontinent status due to its perceived spatial deficit (∼64% of continental landmass). Leveraging continental-scale Nd isotopic mapping based on a vast database of 25,346 felsic-intermediate igneous rocks, we reveal extensive buried Precambrian terranes beneath Phanerozoic orogens in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Our results expand Gondwana’s reconstructed area to ∼80% of the global landmass, firmly establishing its identity as a true supercontinent—termed “Greater Gondwana.” We propose that the assembly and peripheral subduction of this “Greater Gondwana” played a pivotal role in driving the geodynamic and environmental perturbations that culminated in the Cambrian metazoan radiation."
Fig. 1. Continental-scale Nd isotopic (TDM2) map of southwestern Asia, central Europe, and southeastern North America (encompassing peri-Gondwana terranes and orogens).
Fig. 4. Reconstruction of Greater Gondwana at ca. 500 Ma or at 550 to 500 Ma compared with conventional paleogeographic interpretations (inset).
Antivenom derived from rattlesnake blood can neutralize other venomous snake species
Good news! This might be a breakthrough! It was already discovered in 2022.
It has been known for a long time that snakes are protected from their own venom. Why was this fact not explored much earlier?
"Antivenom derived from rattlesnake blood can “powerfully neutralize” venom from a range of venomous snake species, finds a new study published in PNAS; researchers found that combinations of toxin-blocking proteins from the snake’s blood were ~10X times more potent than a current commercial antivenom."
"... researchers discovered a new approach to treating venomous snake bites—using the same toxin-blocking proteins that snakes evolved to protect themselves. The team found that specific combinations of blood proteins from western diamondback rattlesnakes provided unprecedented neutralizing power against the venom of multiple dangerous snake species. ...
Snakebites remain one of the world's most neglected tropical diseases. ...
In 2022, ... lab found part of the answer: a single protein called FETUA-3 that blocked the activity of many metalloproteinase toxins in the western diamondback’s venom. FETUA-3 also bound to and inhibited the toxins of venoms from several other rattlesnakes. ...
For the new study, ... investigated the individual roles of all FETUA proteins. They found that while one FETUA protein might reduce bleeding and another might affect enzyme activity, no one FETUA protein completely prevented death from a bite.
However, combining several of these proteins dramatically increased their ability to neutralize venom’s damaging effects. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
Snakebite remains an undertreated tropical disease that affects over one million people annually, and new therapeutic approaches are needed. Here, we develop an approach to viper antivenoms inspired by the observations that these snakes are typically resistant to the hemorrhagic and lethal effects of their own venoms and that this resistance can be transferred to experimental animals through snake sera. We show that a small set of serum metalloproteinase inhibitors from the Western Diamondback rattlesnake are potent inhibitors of the lethality of its own venom, and able to block the lethality of other rattlesnakes and evolutionarily distant vipers. Recombinant natural antitoxins offer a promising approach for formulating more potent viper antivenoms.
Abstract
Snakebite maims or kills several hundred thousand people each year.
For more than a century, treatment has relied on antivenoms derived from animals immunized with whole venoms, but their efficacy, safety, and availability are highly variable, and it is often not well understood which specific venom components must be inhibited to prevent mortality and major morbidities.
New therapeutic approaches are needed.
Here, we take an evolutionary approach to antivenom design inspired by the longstanding observation that vipers have evolved serum-borne toxin inhibitors that confer resistance to their own venoms. We have investigated the abilities of a family of four rattlesnake metalloproteinase (MP) inhibitors derived from the ancestral serum glycoprotein Fetuin-A (FETUAs) to neutralize the enzymatic, hemorrhagic, and lethal activities of viper venoms.
We find that while certain individual FETUA proteins are able to inhibit enzymatic or hemorrhagic activity, they are unable or only partially able to inhibit venom lethality.
However, we show that specific combinations of FETUA proteins complement one another’s activities and are sufficient to fully neutralize rattlesnake venom lethality with approximately 10 times greater potency than commercial antivenom.
Moreover, we demonstrate that FETUA proteins are well conserved among viper subfamilies and that rattlesnake FETUAs are able to inhibit the MPs and neutralize the lethality of several evolutionarily distant pit viper or true viper venoms.
Our results highlight the critical importance of inhibiting MPs in hemorrhagic venoms and the potential general utility of combinations of naturally evolved, recombinant MP inhibitors in the treatment of viper snakebite."
Scientists Discover an Antidote to Lethal Snake Bites that Comes Straight from the Source (original news release) "A new UMD-led study provides a blueprint for the next generation of antivenoms—using snakes’ natural molecular defenses against their own deadly venom."
US Senator John Fetterman came closer to Republicans because of his stroke. Really!
Nice try by the left to sow more doubts about this US Senator after accusing him of being a lazy, absent US Senator!
Major global terrorist attacks since 9/11
I don't know whether the list below is complete (I trust Google Search here).
What are some commonalities:
- All of them were carried out by either Arab and/or Islamist terrorist groups
- More shocking how often a large numbers of children were killed.
"Major Global Terrorist Attacks Since 9/11
- October 7, 2023 (Israel): Hamas-led militants launched coordinated attacks across southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people. It is recorded by the Global Terrorism Index as the largest single terrorist attack globally since September 11, 2001.
- October 14, 2017 (Mogadishu, Somalia): Twin truck bombings in a bustling district of Mogadishu killed 587 people and injured over 300 others, making it one of the deadliest attacks in modern history, attributed to the al-Shabaab militant group.
- October 12, 2002 (Bali, Indonesia): Suicide car bombings at popular nightclubs in Kuta killed 202 people (including 91 Australians), orchestrated by Jemaah Islamiyah with al-Qaeda links.
- November 26–29, 2008 (Mumbai, India): Ten members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist terrorist organization carried out 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai lasting four days, leaving 175 people dead (including the attackers) and over 300 wounded.
- December 16, 2014 (Peshawar, Pakistan): Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) gunmen attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar, killing 149 people, mostly school children.
- March 11, 2004 (Madrid, Spain): Coordinated bomb explosions aboard four commuter trains during the morning rush hour killed 191 people and injured about 1,800, carried out by an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell.
- September 1–3, 2004 (Beslan, Russia): Chechen Islamist terrorists seized a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, taking over 1,000 hostages. The crisis ended in a deadly shootout and explosions, resulting in 334 fatalities, including 186 children.
" (Google Search. I am not sure how Google sorted these terrorist attacks)
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