Very recommendable! Syria, what a mess! How many countries are interfering in Syria (at least five)! Another failed state in the Middle East like Lebanon!
Hope and pray that this does not blow up in an already volatile region!
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Trump and Elon Musk dance to YMCA at Mar-a-Lago Thanksgiving dinner
Recommendable! This video also features an interview with Elon Musk's father who comes across a little bit like mephisto. Apparently, Elon Musk and his father are into pronatalism (whatever that exactly is), but to breed humans may be a concern.
Georgia protests: Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili says government 'not legitimate' as thousands take to streets
Putin the Terrible at work again! Pray and hope Georgia stays independent! Support the civil disobedience!
The Foreign Fighters from the 70 countries in Ukraine to Battle Russia
Very recommendable!
I have for a long time suspected that there is a significant foreign legion fighting for Ukraine! Unfortunately, very little is reported about it.
Why has Support for the German Greens Collapsed?
Recommendable! Besides the socialist and horrible Chancellor Merkel, the Greens party is one of the other major reasons why Germany became a banana republic!
BREAKING: Trump nominates Kash Patel as FBI director
Good news! This will be at least the third Indian American in Trump's administration besides Vivek Ramaswamy and Usha Vance!
Russen-Söldner wollen Zentralafrika erobern mit Julian Röpke
Sehr empfehlenswert! Putin der Schreckliche greift auch nach Afrika!
Google account annoyances
Just cleared my Google Chrome browser data as usual!
Next thing I noticed is am signed out of my Gmail account!!!! I don't think, this has ever happened before when I cleared the browser data!!!!
Then Google forced me to go some very awkward two step verification through my Samsung phone, which I have been using for years. Google claimed they sent me a message that I needed to tap on. However, there the never was any message to tap on despite repeated requests to resend!!!!
For some odd reason, Google would also not recognize my password when I entered it on my phone even though I have used this same password for a long time. Android is the OS on my phone. The Gmail app and Chrome browser is also installed and used on my phone.
Of course, I tried some of the other options Google offered, but of no use!
Thus, I turned off this horrible two-way notification!!! And voila, I was able to sign in again with my usual password!
I bet, I will now be annoyed with frequent nudgings to activate two-way notification again!
Extreme temperatures are rising in these global ‘hotspots’. Really!
A case for the urban heat island effect and flawed surface temperature measurements!
There is a strong suspicion here again that we are dealing with pseudo science produced by Columbia University and published in the prestigious PNAS!
This study might very well be another example of climate models being junk!
Keep in mind: Global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion! It is being used as a pretext by Big Government and the elite to interfere with our lives. It is among the greatest scams and scandals of at least the last 30 years!
Is it not curious that most of these mapped hotspots coincide with centers of urbanization and areas of dense population around the world! A strong indication that actually the urban heat island effect is in effect!
Just look at Europe and Australia and Chile. Take in particular the very thinly populated continent of Australia, where these so called hotspots happen to coincide with Sidney, Melbourne, Canberra, and Adelaide, the major urban centers of Australia. Then we have Chile. Again the map below shows the so called hotspots are located where the major urban centers (Santiago, Valparaiso, Concepcion) are of Chile!
The map below also shows so called hotspots in the very northern and thinly populated regions of Canada. I strongly suspect flawed or even non existent historical surface temperature measurements. Similar the huge island of Greenland.
"New research has identified several regions of the globe where heatwaves are increasing at a rate far higher than state-of-the-art climate models have been projecting. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
Heatwaves can lead to considerable impacts on societal and natural systems. Accurate simulation of their response to warming is important for adaptation to potential climate futures. Here, we quantify changes of extreme temperatures worldwide over recent decades. We find an emergence of hotspots where the hottest temperatures are warming significantly faster than more moderate temperatures. In these regions, trends are largely underestimated in climate model simulations. Globally aggregated, we find that models struggle with both ends of the trend distribution, with positive trends being underestimated most, while moderate trends are well reproduced. Our findings highlight the need to better understand and model extreme heat and to rapidly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to avoid further harm.
Abstract
Multiple recent record-shattering weather events raise questions about the adequacy of climate models to effectively predict and prepare for unprecedented climate impacts on human life, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Here, we show that extreme heat in several regions globally is increasing significantly and faster in magnitude than what state-of-the-art climate models have predicted under present warming even after accounting for their regional summer background warming. Across all global land area, models underestimate positive trends exceeding 0.5 °C per decade in widening of the upper tail of extreme surface temperature distributions by a factor of four compared to reanalysis data and exhibit a lower fraction of significantly increasing trends overall. To a lesser degree, models also underestimate observed strong trends of contraction of the upper tails in some areas, while moderate trends are well reproduced in a global perspective. Our results highlight the need to better understand and model the drivers of extreme heat and to rapidly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions [???] to avoid further harm from unexpected weather events."
Unexplained [???] Heat-Wave ‘Hotspots’ Are Popping Up Across the Globe (original news release)
Fig. 3 Regional trends of extreme temperatures are underestimated in climate model experiments in multiple regions globally.
Regions where observed heat waves exceed trends from climate models.
Superior photosynthesis abilities of some plants could hold key to climate-resilient crops
Good news! Human ingenuity can handle climate change! Not all photosynthesis is created equal! This could be game changer!
Maybe C3 plants can easily be converted to C4 plants allowing for more efficient agriculture.
Keep in mind: Global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion!
"More than 3 billion years ago, on an Earth entirely covered with water, photosynthesis first evolved in little ancient bacteria. In the following many millions of years, those bacteria evolved into plants, optimizing themselves along the way for various environmental changes. This evolution was punctuated around 30 million years ago with the emergence of a newer, better way to photosynthesize. While plants like rice continued using an old form of photosynthesis known as C3, others like corn and sorghum developed a newer and more efficient version called C4.
There are now more than 8,000 different C4 plant species, which grow particularly well in hot, dry climates and are some of the most productive crop species in the world. ...
There are now more than 8,000 different C4 plant species, which grow particularly well in hot, dry climates and are some of the most productive crop species in the world. ...
Around 95% of plants use C3 photosynthesis, in which mesophyll cells—green spongy cells that live inside leaves—turn light, water, and carbon dioxide into plant-powering sugars. Despite its high prevalence, C3 photosynthesis has two major shortcomings:
1) 20% of the time, oxygen is accidentally used instead of carbon dioxide and must be recycled, which slows down the process and wastes energy, and
2) pores on the leaf surface are open too frequently while waiting for carbon dioxide to enter, causing the plant to lose water and become more vulnerable to drought and heat.
Fortunately, evolution has solved these issues with C4 photosynthesis. C4 plants recruit bundle sheath cells, which normally serve as leaf vein support, to photosynthesize alongside mesophyll cells. As a result, C4 plants eliminate those oxygen-use mistakes to conserve energy and keep plant surface pores closed more often to conserve water. The result is a 50% increase in efficiency compared to C3 plants. ...
Fortunately, evolution has solved these issues with C4 photosynthesis. C4 plants recruit bundle sheath cells, which normally serve as leaf vein support, to photosynthesize alongside mesophyll cells. As a result, C4 plants eliminate those oxygen-use mistakes to conserve energy and keep plant surface pores closed more often to conserve water. The result is a 50% increase in efficiency compared to C3 plants. ...
"We were surprised and excited to find that the difference between C3 and C4 plants is not the removal or addition of specific genes,” says Ecker. “Rather, the difference is on a regulatory level, which could make it easier for us in the long run to turn on more efficient C4 photosynthesis in C3 crops.” ...
These experiments revealed that both C3 and C4 plants contain the necessary genes and transcription factors required for the superior C4 photosynthesis process—a promising discovery for scientists hoping to nudge C3 plants to use C4 photosynthesis. ...
When measuring gene expression in rice and sorghum plants, the scientists found that a transcription factor family commonly referred to as DOFs were in charge of turning on the genes to make bundle sheath cells in both species. They also noticed that DOFs were binding to the same regulatory element in both species. However, in C4 sorghum plants, this regulatory element was not only associated with bundle sheath identity genes—it was also turning on the photosynthesis genes. That suggested that C4 plants had at some point tacked ancestral regulatory elements for bundle sheath genes onto photosynthesis genes, so that DOFs would turn on both sets of genes at the same time. This would explain how bundle sheath cells in C4 plants gained the ability to photosynthesize.
Next on the docket for the team is determining whether rice can be engineered to use C4 photosynthesis rather than C3. ..."
From the abstract:
"C4 photosynthesis is used by the most productive plants on the planet, and compared with the ancestral C3 pathway, it confers a 50% increase in efficiency. In more than 60 C4 lineages, CO2 fixation is compartmentalized between tissues, and bundle-sheath cells become photosynthetically activated. How the bundle sheath acquires this alternate identity that allows efficient photosynthesis is unclear. Here we show that changes to bundle-sheath gene expression in C4 leaves are associated with the gain of a pre-existing cis-code found in the C3 leaf. From single-nucleus gene-expression and chromatin-accessibility atlases, we uncover DNA binding with one finger (DOF) motifs that define bundle-sheath identity in the major crops C3 rice and C4 sorghum. Photosynthesis genes that are rewired to be strongly expressed in the bundle-sheath cells of C4 sorghum acquire cis-elements that are recognized by DOFs. Our findings are consistent with a simple model in which C4 photosynthesis is based on the recruitment of an ancestral cis-code associated with bundle-sheath identity. Gain of such elements harnessed a stable patterning of transcription factors between cell types that are found in both C3 and C4 leaves to activate photosynthesis in the bundle sheath. Our findings provide molecular insights into the evolution of the complex C4 pathway, and might also guide the rational engineering of C4 photosynthesis in C3 crops to improve crop productivity and resilience."
Fig. 5: A cell-type-specific cistrome in C3 rice and C4 sorghum drives the partitioning of photosynthesis between mesophyll and bundle-sheath cells.
Cross sections of C3 rice (left) and C4 sorghum (right) shoots. Both grain crops evolved from a common ancestor, but sorghum evolved to photosynthesize more efficiently.
How humans evolved to be ‘energetically unique’
Amazing stuff! Sweating, long recognized as one of humans advantages, is not the only factor that improved intelligence, reproduction and longevity.
"Humans, it turns out, possess much higher metabolic rates than other mammals, including our close relatives, apes and chimpanzees, finds a new Harvard study. Having both high resting and active metabolism, researchers say, enabled our hunter-gatherer ancestors to get all the food they needed while also growing bigger brains, living longer, and increasing their rates of reproduction. ...
Using a new comparison method that they say better corrects for body size, environmental temperature, and body fat, the researchers found that humans, unlike most mammals including other primates, have evolved to escape a tradeoff between resting and active metabolic rates. ...
In other primates, there is a distinct tradeoff between resting and active metabolic rates, which helps explain why chimpanzees, with their large brains, costly reproductive strategies, and lifespans, and thus high resting metabolisms, are “couch potatoes” who spend much of their day eating ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
There is debate over whether primate and human metabolic rates are lower than those of other animals and whether higher physical activity levels cause lower resting metabolic rates. Here, we describe a method for comparing metabolic rates using quotients of measured metabolic rates versus those predicted from a large sample of mammals corrected for the effects of body size and composition, environmental temperature, and evolutionary relatedness. Applying these metabolic quotients to several human populations reveal that humans evolved exceptionally high metabolic rates that, unlike other mammals including nonhuman primates, do not trade off energy allocation to maintenance versus physical activity. Humans’ uniquely high metabolic rates helped fuel the evolution of our species’ large brains, high reproductive rates, and extended longevity.
Abstract
All organisms use limited energy to grow, survive, and reproduce, necessitating energy allocation tradeoffs, but there is debate over how selection impacted metabolic budgets and tradeoffs in primates, including humans. Here, we develop a method to compare metabolic rates as quotients of observed relative to expected values for mammals corrected for size, body composition, environmental temperature, and phylogenetic relatedness. Contrary to previous analyses, these quotients reveal that nonhuman primates have total metabolic rates expected for similar-sized mammals in similar environments. In addition, data from several small-scale societies show that humans evolved exceptionally high resting, activity, and total metabolic rates apparently by overcoming tradeoffs between resting and active energy expenditures that constrain other primates. Enhanced metabolic rates help humans fuel expanded brains, faster reproductive rates, extended longevity, and high percentage of body fat."
Metabolic scaling, energy allocation tradeoffs, and the evolution of humans’ unique metabolism (no public access)
Comparisons of resting, active, and total metabolic quotients among various species and human populations, as defined by the Harvard researchers’ new method.
How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny. Really!
Interesting claims about democracy among American natives preceding the Democracy in America by the Founding Fathers and Mothers.
However, is this also again glorification of the Noble Savage or romanticizing of indigenous people? Summed up in one term: wishful thinking or embellishment.
One issue is e.g. the lack of contact with other, external powers by the Native Americans as far as we know. E.g. they did not have to worry to much about invasions until the Europeans (other than Spaniards/Portuguese) came. Nature's abundance may have also helped to reduce warfare and strife.
The article also mentions the Little Ice Age (which only ended around 1850 CE) as one of the reasons why some large civilizations declined.
"When the founders of the United States designed the Constitution, they were learning from history that democracy was likely to fail – to find someone who would fool the people into giving him complete power and then end the democracy.
They designed checks and balances to guard against the accumulation of power they had found when studying ancient Greece and Rome. But there were others in North America who had also seen the dangers of certain types of government and had designed their own checks and balances to guard against tyranny: the Native Americans.
Although most Americans today don’t know it, there were large centralized civilizations across much of North America in the 10th through 12th centuries. They built massive cities and grand irrigation projects across the continent. Twelfth-century Cahokia, on the banks of the Mississippi River, had a central city about the size of London at the time. The sprawling 12th-century civilization of the Huhugam had several cities of more than 10,000 people and a total population of perhaps 50,000 in the Southwestern desert. ...
In the 13th century, though, a global cooling trend began, which has been called the Little Ice Age. In part because of that cooling, large-scale farming became more difficult, and these large civilizations struggled to feed their people. Elites began hoarding wealth. The people wanted change. ...
As they formed these new and more dispersed societies, the people who had overthrown or fled the great cities and their too powerful leaders sought to avoid mesmerizing leaders who made tempting promises in difficult times. So they designed complex political structures to discourage centralization, hierarchy and inequality and encourage shared decision-making.
These societies intentionally created balanced power structures. For example, the oral history [???] of the Osage Nation records that it once had one great chief who was a military leader, but its council of elder spiritual leaders, known as the “Little Old Men,” decided to balance that chief’s authority with that of another hereditary chief, who would be responsible for keeping peace.
Another way some societies balanced power was through family-based clans. Clans communicated and cooperated across multiple towns. They could work together to balance the power of town-based chiefs and councils.
An ideal of leadership
Many of these societies required convening all of the people – men, women and children – for major political, military, diplomatic and land-use decisions. Hundreds or even thousands might show up, depending on how momentous the decision was.
They strove for consensus, though they didn’t always achieve it. In some societies, it was customary for the losing side to quietly leave the meeting if they couldn’t bring themselves to agree with the others. ..."
Social media influencer nearly gets away with Target thefts, but cops notice her flaunting shoplifted goods on TikTok: Police
Maybe TikTok is not so suitable as a black market for stolen goods! 😊
Pseudomonas Bacteria Escape Immunity by Disrupting Energy Production in Macrophages
Good news! Human ingenuity will defeat antimicrobial resistance!
"... Often a hospital-acquired pathogen, it tends to infect people with burns or weakened immunity, and it has evolved to resist multiple antibiotics and counteract the immune system, rendering it difficult to treat. ...
In a recent publication ... molecular microbiologists ... found that these bacteria release a chemical that inhibits energy generation in the mitochondria of macrophages, thus dampening the immune response.
In a recent publication ... molecular microbiologists ... found that these bacteria release a chemical that inhibits energy generation in the mitochondria of macrophages, thus dampening the immune response.
This work identified a new tactic that P. aeruginosa uses to subvert host immunity, and it intimated a new approach for treating the recalcitrant infection. ..."
From the eLife assessment and abstract:
"eLife assessment
This important study demonstrates that the Pseudomonas aeruginosa-derived quorum sensing signal, 2-aminoacetophenone, induces immune tolerization in macrophages by perturbing metabolism, particularly in the context of mitochondrial respiration and bioenergetics. The authors present convincing evidence for 2-aminoacetophenone-mediated reduction of pyruvate transport into mitochondria, with downstream effects that result in reduced ATP production in tolerized macrophages. The work will be of interest to those studying host-pathogen interactions.
Abstract
How bacterial pathogens exploit host metabolism to promote immune tolerance and persist in infected hosts remains elusive. To achieve this, we show that Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA), a recalcitrant pathogen, utilizes the quorum sensing (QS) signal 2’-aminoacetophenone (2-AA). Here, we unveil how 2-AA-driven immune tolerization causes distinct metabolic perturbations in murine macrophages’ mitochondrial respiration and bioenergetics. We present evidence indicating that these effects stem from decreased pyruvate transport into mitochondria. This reduction is attributed to decreased expression of the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (Mpc1), which is mediated by diminished expression and nuclear presence of its transcriptional regulator, estrogen-related nuclear receptor alpha (Esrra). Consequently, Esrra exhibits weakened binding to the Mpc1 promoter. This outcome arises from the impaired interaction between Esrra and the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (Ppargc1a). Ultimately, this cascade results in diminished pyruvate influx into mitochondria and, consequently reduced ATP production in tolerized murine and human macrophages. Exogenously added ATP in infected macrophages restores the transcript levels of Mpc1 and Esrra and enhances cytokine production and intracellular bacterial clearance. Consistent with the in vitro findings, murine infection studies corroborate the 2-AA-mediated long-lasting decrease in ATP and acetyl-CoA and its association with PA persistence, further supporting this QS signaling molecule as the culprit of the host bioenergetic alterations and PA persistence. These findings unveil 2-AA as a modulator of cellular immunometabolism and reveal an unprecedented mechanism of host tolerance to infection involving the Ppargc1a/Esrra axis in its influence on Mpc1/OXPHOS-dependent energy production and PA clearance. These paradigmatic findings pave the way for developing treatments to bolster host resilience to pathogen-induced damage. Given that QS is a common characteristic of prokaryotes, it is likely that 2-AA-like molecules with similar functions may be present in other pathogens."
Iceland: China’s Trojan Horse in Europe? by Michael Rubin
How China conquers the world one island at a time in the South China Sea/Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean.
The island of Iceland (a NATO founding member) is strategically located like Guam!
Very clever! Like taken out of the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
"... Whereas Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama saw China as a partner, even if also a “near peer” competitor, Trump recognized China as an enemy and existential threat to the United States. ..."
While Bjarni Benediktsson, a conservative, led Iceland for ten months in 2017 and since April 2024, Iceland’s other prime ministers since 2009 have all hailed from left-of-center parties: Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of government, arose from the Social Democratic Alliance. The next two prime ministers, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson and Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson, were progressives. Katrín Jakobsdóttir, prime minister between 2017 and 2024, was chair of the Left-Green Alliance.
Iceland’s China problem began with the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis when the country’s three largest private banks all defaulted sparking what, proportional to Iceland’s size, was the world’s largest banking collapse. A joke at the time asked, “What’s the capital of Iceland?” The answer was not Reykjavik, but rather “25 cents.” ... Sigurðardóttir also sought Chinese assistance after Western countries objected to Russia helping to bailout one of NATO’s founding members. In June 2010, Beijing and Reykjavik agreed to a three-year $500 million currency swap deal to enable Iceland to pay for Chinese imports in the kronur, Iceland’s currency. The two countries subsequently renewed the swap. While Icelandic negotiators said China’s interest and investment in Iceland was to tap Icelandic expertise in geothermal and hydroelectric generation, China’s record in the Atlantic and Arctic suggests Beijing had ulterior motives. ...
While the crisis passed, the Iceland-China relationship continued to solidify with successive Icelandic leaders looking at China as a cash cow. On April 15, 2013, Iceland and China signed a Free Trade Agreement, the first such agreement between China and a European country. The agreement affirmed the rights of Iceland and China to invest directly in the other. For Iceland, this was theoretical; its major exports to China are frozen fish, tin foil, and processed crabmeat. Icelanders pin their hopes on geothermal cooperation, a market they say could translate into more than $11 billion. In 2006, Sinopec, China’s leading energy firm, and an Icelandic company Enex-China partnered to produce geothermal energy for Xianyang, a city of around five million people in central China. The results were mixed ...
China’s expansion into Iceland was multifaceted. The Confucius Institutes are a major pillar of Chinese soft power. The Institutes say they provide language lessons and sponsor cultural events, but they promote an exclusively pro-Chinese Communist Party line and often serve as bases to both spy on Chinese abroad and to disrupt events that counter Chinese positions on Tibet, Taiwan, or Tiananmen. As China began to see Iceland as its de facto base in the North Atlantic, it opened the Northern Light Confucius Institute at the University of Iceland. ...
China proceeded to open a number of supposedly scientific institutions that, much as in Svalbard, enable Chinese intelligence and security deployment to the island under the guise of scientific research. In October 2018, for example, the Polar Research Institute of China and the Icelandic Center for Research opened a joint China Iceland Arctic Research Observatory in Karholl, a small town in northern Iceland. ..."
China likely sought the ability to build factories in Iceland and both monitor NATO movements and access the Arctic’s strategic minerals represents a major strategic gain. Between 2012 and 2017, Chinese investment in Iceland amounted to almost six percent of Iceland’s gross domestic product, though that percentage fell because of both the COVID pandemic and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)’s decision to cease exploration off Iceland’s coast.
China has sought to establish a strategic position in Iceland in other ways. In 2011, Huang Nubo, a Chinese businessman, sought to buy 100 square miles of land in Iceland in a deal backed by the China Development Bank. While Huang talked up a golf course as the project’s focal point, his plans also included a private airfield.
Marc G. flog den Eurofighter für die deutsche Luftwaffe. Nun bildet er in China Kampfpiloten aus
Wie China westliches Fachwissen erwirbt! Habe hier, hier vor kurzem schon zum poaching von Fachwissen durch China gebloggt. Nun hat auch die Schweizer NZZ das Thema aufgenommen.
UK MPs vote in favour of historic Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill following fierce debate
British parliament procedures are still quite quaint! An expression of British charm? 😊
Assisted suicide is certainly a controversial issue, e.g. the Hippocratic Oath and slippery slope or abuse come immediately to mind.
What about an individual right to commit suicide?
Friday, November 29, 2024
China, US exchange prisoners in breakthrough deal
What do Xi Jinping and Putin the Terrible have in common? Hostage diplomacy!
New book explores roots of Western pop music and global influences that shaped it
Very recommendable! Too bad, the author did not explore the reverse influence, which, I am convinced, also occurred!
Celebrating Jagadish Chandra Bose’s 167th birth anniversary, the pioneer of modern Indian science
Recommendable!
Do not confuse this Indian scientist with e.g. Satyendra Nath Bose of Bose-Einstein condensate fame or with Bose speakers (Amar Gopal Bose). 😊
Australia Bans Social Media for Children. Will it Help? with Palki Sharma
This is clearly government overreach! It is primarily the responsibility of the parents! Phone and Internet service providers can also more easily restrict the access of children etc. when parents request it.
How to implement this is a huge problem!
Chad Tears up Defence Deal with France, Wants French Troops Out with Palki Sharma
Recommendable! More bad news for French President Macron! The French defense minister just visited Chad. What a slap in the face!
Senegal also considers to expel French troops. This comes after three other central African nations have recently kicked out France.
Putin suffers ‘deadliest day’ with 2,000 SOLDIERS lost on 11/28 as troops wade through fallen comrades
When will the lethargic, apathetic, and Russian Slav(e)s finally get rid of their last tsar, the megalomaniac and war criminal Putin the Terrible! How many more young Russian men have to die or be maimed because Putin the Terrible has conducted a “special military operation” since February of 2022!
On 11/12/2024, 1950 Russian soldiers died!
It is estimated that Russia lost a minimum over 500,000 soldiers in this war so far not counting the maimed and severely injured!
Post-poll Chaos Grips Georgia and Romania With Palki Sharma
Recommendable! The case of Romania seems to be suspicious indeed!
Canada Prime Minister Trudeau meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago
Good news! Trump can maybe straighten out this fool a little bit! Trump is not even in office yet!
Defeating Hezbollah Inside Lebanon Is Only Half the Battle (the other half is the large Lebanese diaspora) by Michael Rubin
Recommendable! Here is some more background about these Hezbollah terrorists, which is perhaps not very well known.
"... Lebanon’s greatest export has always been its people. Historically, the country’s Shi’ite community was largely feudal. Shi’ites were subsistence farmers with little hope for political power or advancement. In The Innocents Abroad, American writer Mark Twain described his 1867 travels through Lebanon to Palestine; the Shi’ites whom he surely saw did not merit his inclusion. With little prospect for upward mobility, many Shi’ites emigrated to engage in business and trade, especially elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Today, the Lebanese diaspora population just in Brazil and Argentina is equal to Lebanon’s population. Not all Lebanese emigrants were Shi’ite, of course, but they were disproportionately so.
Into the mid-twentieth century, the lack of domestic prospects led Shi’ites who remained in Lebanon to embrace either Marxism or Arab nationalism. As the late historian Fouad Ajami explained in The Vanished Imam, Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935-2010) sought to channel Shi’ite identity and discord into Shi’ism. He became the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. His influence extended past Lebanon, however, to the Shi’ite communities abroad. ... Many have close ties to those who remained inside Lebanon. As Hezbollah’s tentacles grew through the 1980s and 1990s, the Lebanese diaspora became an important component of Hezbollah’s broader network.
In the Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, for example, Hezbollah launders drug money and engages in organized crime. Between 2007 and 2011, Hezbollah operatives ran a scheme to ship used and stolen cars to West Africa, with Hezbollah then using profits to fund its military operations. The Lebanese Shi’ite diaspora in the United States also ran a cigarette-smuggling scheme to fund the terror group.
Nor does the diaspora only support Hezbollah financially. Iran’s 1992 assassinations at the Mykonos Café relied on Lebanese sleeper agents, and the agents responsible for the Iran-sponsored 1994 attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires also drew upon the Lebanese diaspora community in the “triangle border” area between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.
In essence, there are two Hezbollahs—one in Lebanon and one spread out across the world. ...."
Fast-charging lithium-sulfur battery for eVTOLs nears production
Good news! Potentially, a breakthrough!
"Researchers at Australia's Monash University are close to solving one of the biggest challenges with eVTOL aircraft. The team's new lithium-sulfur battery tech is designed to deliver roughly twice the energy density of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, as well as speedy charging and discharging – enabling the sort of power delivery needed in the skies. ..."
"Monash University engineers have developed an ultra-fast charging lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery, capable of powering long-haul EVs and commercial drones. ...
“Inspired by the chemistry of betadine, a common household antiseptic, we found a way to accelerate the charge and discharge rates, making them a viable battery option for real-world heavy-duty use,” ...
In an electric car, the Li-S batteries could power an extra 1000 kilometres on a single charge while cutting recharge time to a few hours. ...
“Our catalyst has significantly enhanced the C-rate performance of Li-S batteries, demonstrated in early proof-of-concept prototype cells. With commercial scaling and larger cell production, this technology could deliver energy densities up to 400 Wh/kg.”
“This makes it well-suited for applications requiring dynamic performance, such as aviation, where batteries must handle high C-rates during take-off and efficiently switch to low C-rates during cruising.”
Li-S batteries are also a greener alternative to the materials used in traditional Li-ion batteries, which rely on limited and often environmentally harmful resources like cobalt.” ..."
From the abstract:
"Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are considered as a viable technology offering energy-dense electrochemical energy storage systems. However, the inherently slow reaction kinetics manifested in the slow charge and discharge characteristics constrain their real-world applications. Here, it is reported that polyiodide species held within a complex polar network of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) accelerate the rate-limiting solid-liquid phase transitions both in the reduction and oxidation steps during battery cycling. Density functional theory calculations support a mechanism in which a combination of enhanced binding of polysulfides and additional energy states in the PVP-iodine-polysulfide complexes accelerates the reaction pathways mediated by inter-valance polyiodide reactions within the working voltage of Li–S batteries. These studies show that PVP-iodine (PVP-I) complexes enhance the rate capability of cells with practical sulfur loadings delivering a high areal capacity of ≈7 mAh cm−2 at the practical 0.5C rate. This advantage is demonstrated in one of the highest-rate pouches reported in Li–S literature, attaining energy densities of 215 and 156 Wh kg at 0.1C and 0.3C, respectively. The results demonstrate a subtle but powerful shift in the design of molecular binder systems, which have functional roles above and beyond the role of simply holding the active materials together."
Electric aircraft on the horizon as Monash commercialises rapid-charge lithium-sulfur battery technology (original news release)
Role of Polymer-Iodine Complexes on Solid-Liquid Polysulfide Phase Transitions and Rate Capability of Lithium Sulfur Batteries (no public access)
Unlike Li-ion batteries, Li-S batteries use inexpensive Sulfur as a cathode material. Yes, it's cheaper - but this tech also brings drawbacks like fewer charge cycles and slow charging
Trump After Call with Mexico President: 'She Has Agreed to Stop Migration'
Good news! Trump is not even in office yet!
Although, there were news reports today according to which the Mexican President has qualified Trump's remarks in a statement.
"Just had a wonderful conversation with the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border. We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, U.S. consumption of these drugs. It was a very productive conversation!"
People in 43 out of 68 countries trust climate researchers less than scientists in general
Good news! Common sense prevails over daily alarmism and hysteria!
Too many scientists have openly and publicly discredited themselves by engaging in demagoguery, ideology and indoctrination! They lost their credibility, they have become purveyors of a pseudo science!
Higher trust was found in China, a country ruled by a communist dictatorship! What a joke! But also in Israel, which seems to be odd and may indicate a flaw in the study.
Remember: Global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion!
"... Past research has identified this trust gap in the United States, but the new paper is the first to find it in a large, detailed international survey ...
in six countries trust [Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Bangladesh, Philippines], in climate scientists was higher—including in China, where scientists were rated 3.67 and climate scientists 4.14. ..."
in six countries trust [Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Bangladesh, Philippines], in climate scientists was higher—including in China, where scientists were rated 3.67 and climate scientists 4.14. ..."
From the abstract:
"Public trust in scientists may be essential for widespread acceptance of science-based solutions to societal problems, including climate change. Across 68 countries (N = 69,534), individuals expressed less trust in climate scientists than scientists in general. In most countries and overall, conservative political orientation was more strongly associated with lower trust in climate scientists than with trust in scientists in general."
Was wählen 8 Millionen neu Eingebürgerte bei der nächsten Bundestagswahl, darunter viele Muslime?
Gute Frage! Wird aus der Bananenrepublik D. ein Morgenland im laufe der Zeit! 😊
Davor waren es die Türken! Deren Einbürgerung weitgehend gelungen ist.
"Nie wurden so viele Ausländer in das deutsche Gemeinwesen eingebürgert wie in den letzten Jahren. Blickt man auf die Zahlen, wie sie das Statistische Bundesamt liefert, dann gab es hier noch bis 2018 eine ziemliche Gleichmäßigkeit: Jährlich wurden rund 110.000 im Ausland geborene Personen eingebürgert. In den Folgejahren stieg die Zahl der Einbürgerungen – von Corona und der damit verbundenen Gesellschaftsparalyse nur kurz gebremst – rasch an. Inzwischen sind es so mehr als acht Millionen zu Bürgern geworden, und dieselben machen damit gut 13 Prozent, also mehr als ein Achtel der rund 61 Millionen wahlberechtigten deutschen Bürger aus. ..."
Polish Foreign Minister confirms mutual agreement with Ukraine on Volhynia masscre victims
Good news! Bravo!
Poland is a major supporter of the Ukraine and host of Ukrainian refugees!
In 1943, a horrible massacre of about 100,000 Poles and others was committed in the Ukraine.
Polish FM confirms mutual agreement with Ukraine on Volhynia victims | Polska Agencja Prasowa SA "Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, has confirmed that mutual agreement was reached with Ukraine on the exhumations of Polish victims killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two."
More war crimes against the Ukraine by Putin the Terrible!
Stalin's Holodomor was not enough!
These latest, massive attacks against the power supply of the Ukraine before Winter sets in is clearly targeting the civilian population!
It is outrageous!
The world needs Nuremberg Trials for Putin the Terrible!
What are the requirements for transgender legitimacy?
I am afraid, this is still an open question. It appears, lawmakers in many Western countries have not really addressed this issue.
Most people and commons sense most likely agree that when an adult personally declares one day to be of the other sex/gender is not enough. Further, there is probably also a broad agreement that some adults have a substantial urge or need or seriously prefer to live of the other gender as best as possible.
So what could be the legal criteria to make a transgender adult legitimate?
How about double mastectomy + penis or castration as a minimum? Seems extreme or too narrowly focused on physical appearance? Any better suggestions?
Just some food for thought.
P.S. Juveniles and transgender is a another subject.
Chart of the day
Not only the US, but other Western countries too experience mass immigration.
Like the UK with about 1.3 million immigrants in the most recent 12 months for which data is available.
The mainstream media like BBC only stressed that there was a slight fall in net immigration. What a sleight of hand! Nice try!
Elon Musk's massive AI data center xAI Colossus gets approved for 150MW of power, enabling all 100,000 GPUs to run concurrently
150 MW of power that is roughly equivalent to 10-20% of a single nuclear power plant! Just imagine how many solar panels this requires!
The huge power consumption of data centers and machine learning & AI are a very serious issue.
"... Elon Musk’s ‘Gigafactory of Compute,’ the xAI Colossus, received approval from the Tennessee Valley Authority in early November to receive 150MW from the state’s power grid. This increases the site’s initial supply of 8MW by almost twenty times, triggering concerns from local stakeholders about how this much power demand from xAI would impact supply reliability and power prices across the Tennessee Valley. Furthermore, Power Grid International reports that Elon plans to double the site’s computing capacity, doubling the facility’s energy requirements. ...
However, the site only had 8MW available at the time of its opening in July. So, Musk used massive portable power generators to meet the company’s needs. While Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) upgraded the existing substation to 50MW over the summer, running all 100,000 GPUs concurrently on the site is insufficient. ..."
On The Super Weight in Large Language Models
Very recommendable! Nice paper by mostly Apple researchers. The senior authors of this paper are largely unknown.
This paper clearly demonstrates that large language models are overhyped! Some more serious research to understand how machine learning models work is in order.
From the abstract:
"Recent works have shown a surprising result: a small fraction of Large Language Model (LLM) parameter outliers are disproportionately important to the quality of the model. LLMs contain billions of parameters, so these small fractions, such as 0.01%, translate to hundreds of thousands of parameters. In this work, we present an even more surprising finding: Pruning as few as a single parameter can destroy an LLM's ability to generate text -- increasing perplexity by 3 orders of magnitude and reducing zero-shot accuracy to guessing. We propose a data-free method for identifying such parameters, termed super weights, using a single forward pass through the model. We additionally find that these super weights induce correspondingly rare and large activation outliers, termed super activations. When preserved with high precision, super activations can improve simple round-to-nearest quantization to become competitive with state-of-the-art methods. For weight quantization, we similarly find that by preserving the super weight and clipping other weight outliers, round-to-nearest quantization can scale to much larger block sizes than previously considered. To facilitate further research into super weights, we provide an index of super weight coordinates for common, openly available LLMs."
"... However, not all outliers are equally important. In this paper, we study a tiny yet important set of outliers in LLMs, termed super weights. In Llama-7B, pruning the super weight, a single scalar, completely destroys the model’s ability to generate text; the average accuracy of zero-shot down-stream tasks effectively plummets to zero. Conversely, pruning the other top 7,000 outliers, including outliers that are larger than the super weight, affects no more than a few percentage points. Intriguingly, super weights behave similarly across model families and sizes. For one, the super weight is always found in the mlp.down proj weight, always in an early layer.
We also find that the super weight amplifies input activation inliers to ultimately produce the exceptionally large magnitude activation observed by Sun et al. (2024) – we term this the super activation. This super activation persists throughout the model at exactly the same magnitude and position regardless of the prompt, and we find this is uniquely enabled by skip connections. Finally, super weights suppress stopword likelihood. Taken together, pruning the super weight destroys quality by dampening the super activation and shifting almost all logit probability mass to stopwords. ..."
Thursday, November 28, 2024
1000 Tage Krieg: Deutsche Kämpfer in der Ukraine
Sehr empfehlenswert! Tolle Reportage! Ein Hoch auf diese deutschen Kämpfer!
Syrian Islamist rebels launch major offensive against President Assad, hundreds killed
More trouble in the already tough neighborhood of Israel. How much is Syria a failed state like Lebanon? Since the death of dictator Hafez Assad in 2000! As so often is the case, his son and current ruler of Syria since 2000 is a disappointment (e.g. another example is Justin Trudeau)!
Chinas Geheim-Polizisten operieren weiter in Deutschland (und Spanien)
Unglaublich, dieses YouTube Video wurde innerhalb von wenigen Tagen entfernt (2.12.2024)
Ziemlich Übel! Tolle Recherche! Bravo! Zustände, wie in einer Bananenrepublik D!
When will YouTube finally make the thumbs down votes for videos visible again!!!!
This is so idiotic! So ludicrous! So annoying!
Why is the Ruble Crashing?
Recommendable! Since the lethargic and apathetic Russian Slavs (citizens) are unable or unwilling to oust the megalomaniac and war criminal Putin the Terrible, maybe deteriorating economic conditions and war spending will do the trick!
Why the Philippines' Government is at War With Itself
Recommendable! When two powerful families have a feud!
French Farmers Erect Concrete Walls & Dump Manure Outside Govt Offices with Palki Sharma
Recommendable! The French farmers may have a point! Too much regulation and environmental restrictions of European farmers!
Will There be Delay in India's one time passwords (OTP) Delivery from December 1? with Palki Sharma
Recommendable! There are about one billion OTPs issued in India every day. It appears, the government wants to make sure OTP scammers are frustrated by requiring OTP message end-to-end tracing.
Is Huawei Stealing the West’s Top Tech Talent? with Palki Sharma
Recommendable!
From stealing IP and imitation to poaching! I blogged here earlier about this subject. Western countries, Taiwan, South Korea are already responding to this.
Why Xi Jinping is Removing His Top PLA Generals in China with Palki Sharma
Very recommendable!
How corrupt is the PLA and who is left to lead the PLA?
All purges since 2023
1,400 Tonnes of Drugs Intercepted in 62-Country Historic 6-week long Operation with Palki Sharma
Good news on Thanksgiving Holiday! Very recommendable!
"A massive international operation, with 62 countries, has intercepted 1,400 tonnes of drugs worth $8.5 billion. Operation Orion has made history as biggest drug bust and uncovered a new trafficking route from Colombia to Australia. How did the operation play out? Why does it matter?"
With semi-submersible vessels from Colombia to Australia
3600 Euro Geldstrafe für Volksverhetzung: Islamismus Anschlags-Opfer Michael Stürzenberger wird wegen seiner Islamkritik verurteilt
Zustände wie in einer Bananenrepublik D!
Kritiker sollen mit Geldstrafen mundtot gemacht werden, wenn nicht ein islamistischer Mörder dem nachhilft!
"... Der Islamkritiker Michael Stürzenberger erlebte am 31. Mai 2024 den schlimmsten Tag seines Lebens. Die Horror-Szenen gingen um die ganze Welt. Mitten auf dem Mannheimer Marktplatz verübte der Afghane Sulaiman Ataee ein islamistisches Attentat auf den Islamkritiker. Der IS-Sympathisant stach auf Stürzenberger mehrmals mit einem Messer ein. Weitere sechs Menschen wurden schwer verletzt. Schrecklich: Ein Polizist, Rouven L., wurde bei dem Attentat auf Stürzenberger brutal durch einen Stich in den Nacken ermordet. ...
Am Montag hat das Hamburger Landgericht den Islamkritiker für Äußerungen verurteilt, die er auf einer Kundgebung im Oktober 2020 in Hamburg getätigt hatte. In erster Instanz wurde der Aktivist bereits zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilt, wogegen er in Berufung ging. Als er bei der zweiten Verhandlung ein Hafturteil auf Bewährung erhielt, ging er in Revision. ..."
Am Montag hat das Hamburger Landgericht den Islamkritiker für Äußerungen verurteilt, die er auf einer Kundgebung im Oktober 2020 in Hamburg getätigt hatte. In erster Instanz wurde der Aktivist bereits zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilt, wogegen er in Berufung ging. Als er bei der zweiten Verhandlung ein Hafturteil auf Bewährung erhielt, ging er in Revision. ..."
Opfer und Held?
To curb plastic pollution, we need to do these four things. Really!
The alarmism and hysteria about plastics is unbearable! It is being used/abused like the global warming hoax and climate change religion to impose big government!
And this ideology and indoctrination or pseudo science is spread by none other than the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Interesting also how these pseudo scientists try to link plastic pollution to climate change! Nice try!
Most of the authors of this study are affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. Does this ring a bell?
Alert: Plastophobia is a serious disorder. Please seek immediate medical help!
Like the global warming hoax, this research also relies on what most likely are junk computer model simulations into the future.
Certainly more research is needed to find better ways to break down plastics and/or to convert them back into useful precursors. Maybe that could be e.g. incentivised as an opportunity for private businesses. I just blogged e.g. here about the catalysis of so called forever plastics (PFAS).
"Ever since the invention of plastics, humanity has been littering the planet with them. Plastic pollution has become such a huge, global issue that governments large and small have sought solutions. Now, a sophisticated model has weighed the effects of the most common proposals, finding that a combination of four strategies could reduce plastic pollution by 91% by 2050.
First, the team built a comprehensive database of the plastic lifecycle, including production, consumption, and end-of-life management, from already-available sources around the world. Then, using machine learning, they looked at how eight policy options being discussed currently might impact plastic pollution.
The single most effective option was to mandate a 40% minimum recycled content for any newly manufactured plastics,
followed by enforcing limits on new plastic production. Those two strategies plus a packaging tax and investment in waste management were the most effective combination, the team found. ...
The study arrives just as final negotiations on a global plastics treaty are about to be held in South Korea. ..."
followed by enforcing limits on new plastic production. Those two strategies plus a packaging tax and investment in waste management were the most effective combination, the team found. ...
The study arrives just as final negotiations on a global plastics treaty are about to be held in South Korea. ..."
From the abstract:
"Plastic production and plastic pollution negatively affect our environment, environmental justice, and climate change. Using detailed global and regional plastics datasets coupled with socio-economic data, we employ machine learning to predict that, without intervention, annual mismanaged plastic waste will nearly double to 121 Mt (100 - 139 Mt 95% CI) by 2050. Annual greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic system are projected to grow by 37% to 3.35 Gt CO2 equivalent (3.09 - 3.54 CO2e) over the same period. The United Nations plastic pollution treaty presents a unique opportunity to reshape these outcomes. We simulate eight candidate treaty policies and find that just four could together reduce mismanaged plastic waste by 91% (86% - 98%) and gross plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions by one third."
Pathways to reduce global plastic waste mismanagement and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (open access)
Fig. 4. Projected Impacts of Potential Policies.
Fat cells remember being bigger—and act like it e.g. the yo-yo effect of dieting
Good news! Yesterday, I blogged here how the fat cell size might be related to diabetes and how fat cell grow and become skinny again.
Apparently, the duration of obesity is also affecting the success of weight loss treatment suggesting an early as possible treatment.
"When a person gains weight, the number of fat-storing cells in their body doesn’t really change. Instead, each cell expands to store more fat within it, and in so doing changes the way it responds to and stores nutrients. New research suggests that even after substantial fat loss, these cells (called adipocytes) “remember” their larger selves—which may help explain why it can be difficult to maintain weight loss.
... leading to “yo-yo” fluctuations in weight. Researchers studying human tissues first observed gene expression differences between the adipocytes of people diagnosed with obesity and those from people who had never been diagnosed. These differences persisted in participants who had lost weight after bariatric surgery.
Follow-up experiments in mice revealed durable tweaks to gene expression in fat cells that occur during obesity; they persist long after the cells have shrunk again, especially if the cells spent more time in an obese state. These changes “ prepare the adipocyte to quickly regain weight once high calorie intake is resumed,” ...
It remains unclear just how long this memory persists , the team notes, so it may fade with enough time. ..."
From the abstract:
"Reducing body weight to improve metabolic health and related comorbidities is a primary goal in treating obesity. However, maintaining weight loss is a considerable challenge, especially as the body seems to retain an obesogenic memory that defends against body weight changes. Overcoming this barrier for long-term treatment success is difficult because the molecular mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon remain largely unknown. Here, by using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, we show that both human and mouse adipose tissues retain cellular transcriptional changes after appreciable weight loss. Furthermore, we find persistent obesity-induced alterations in the epigenome of mouse adipocytes that negatively affect their function and response to metabolic stimuli. Mice carrying this obesogenic memory show accelerated rebound weight gain, and the epigenetic memory can explain future transcriptional deregulation in adipocytes in response to further high-fat diet feeding.
In summary, our findings indicate the existence of an obesogenic memory, largely on the basis of stable epigenetic changes, in mouse adipocytes and probably other cell types. These changes seem to prime cells for pathological responses in an obesogenic environment, contributing to the problematic ‘yo-yo’ effect often seen with dieting. Targeting these changes in the future could improve long-term weight management and health outcomes."
Fig. 1: Human AT [adipose tissue] retains cellular transcriptional changes after BaS [bariatric surgery]-induced WL [weight loss].
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