A story that keeps on giving!
We still do not know how compromised the demented and senile 45th President of the United States is! What do the Russians or Chinese have on him?
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Hunter Biden Says He Lost *ANOTHER* Laptop to Russian Drug Dealers in Naked Pillow Talk
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Vogue Scandinavia features Greta Thunberg on cover
This is so pathetic! Hypocrisy defined!
I expressed my concerns about this young woman here in October 2019.
"The Wonders of Greta Thunberg: Read our interview with the voice of a generation"
DHS Uses Small Texas Airport to Disperse Illegal Immigrants Released from Detention
Incredible! The demented and senile 46th President is turning the U.S. into a banana republic! High time to impeach him!
"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly using a small regional airport in central Texas to disperse large groups of illegal immigrants throughout the U.S. after releasing them from detention facilities in other parts of the state, city and federal sources confirm. Local authorities in the city where this is occurring, Abilene, are being kept in the dark and a federal lawmaker is demanding an end to the “reckless and irresponsible practice” as well as answers from DHS after a series of local news reports exposed the covert operation. ..."
Buzz Off, Bees. Pollination Robots Are Here
Good news! What about robots to make honey? 😄
"Farmers have long relied on insects, wind and even human workers to help pollinate their crops. Now, advances in artificial intelligence are helping some startups develop another way to pollinate plants: robots.
Across the globe, startups are testing robots to pollinate everything from blueberries to almonds. And in Australia, one company is so confident in robots’ abilities that it will soon deploy a fleet of them to pollinate tomatoes in its greenhouses. ..."
"... Farmers in Australia and the U.S. are using robots from Israeli startup Arugga Farming to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes, The Wall Street Journal reported.
How it works: The system is designed for growing tomatoes, which self-pollinate when their pollen is stirred up by the beating of insect wings. Robots equipped with cameras, vision algorithms, and air compressors wheel themselves between rows of plants. When they recognize a flower that’s ready to produce fruit, they blast it with air to release its pollen. ..."
Credits: Andre Ng's The Batch
Identifying Race: AI Recognises Patient's Racial Identity In Medical Images
What is so unusual about this? E.g. do not black skin colored athletes routinely outrun other athletes on short distances? The physique of Asians tends to be shorter and thinner than whites, right? Asian athletes are more adapt to martial arts than the typical white or black athletes.
Are not e.g. certain cancer types more prevalent in some population groups than in others like whites and Asians?
Does this not suggest most likely there are some physiological or skeletal differences between e.g. white and black skin colored or Asian humans? Would this not be reflected in CT scans or x-ray images?
Caveat: I have not yet read the preprint paper below! However, the researchers of the paper below have a long and comprehensive chapter on "Investigation of possible mechanisms of race detection" and a chapter on " Impact of image resolution and quality".
To debias the systems, as suggested by researchers, seems to be bad advice e.g. for my reasons given above! Skin color blindness maybe generally desirable in society etc., but it maybe dangerous and irresponsible when it comes to medicine!
What else? As usual the term "racial bias" (Why not systemic racism? I am being facetious) applied here to suggest something sinister is possibly going on has been!
"... Algorithms trained to diagnose medical images can recognize the patient’s race — but how?
What’s new: Researchers from Emory University, MIT, Purdue University, and other institutions found that deep learning systems trained to interpret x-rays and CT scans also were able to identify their subjects as Asian, Black, or White. ...
Behind the news: Racial bias has been documented in some medical AI systems"
Behind the news: Racial bias has been documented in some medical AI systems"
"... Standard deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities. Our findings hold under external validation conditions, as well as when models are optimized to perform clinically motivated tasks. We demonstrate this detection is not due to trivial proxies or imaging-related surrogate covariates for race, such as underlying disease distribution. Finally, we show that performance persists over all anatomical regions and frequency spectrum of the images suggesting that mitigation efforts will be challenging and demand further study. ...
However, our findings that AI can trivially predict self-reported race - even from corrupted, cropped, and noised medical images - in a setting where clinical experts cannot, creates an enormous risk for all model deployments in medical imaging: if an AI model secretly used its knowledge of self-reported race to misclassify all Black patients, radiologists would not be able to tell using the same data the model has access to. ...
These findings suggest that not only is racial identity trivially learned by AI models, but that it appears likely that it will be remarkably difficult to debias these systems. ..."
Anti-aging research pioneer Aubrey de Grey placed on leave over sexual harassment allegations
Sex is apparently not good for (career) longevity?
Will those allegation hamper future research of gerontology?
Will sex as an anti-aging remedy never be researched again (e.g. older men with younger women or vice versa)?
Will sex as an anti-aging remedy never be researched again (e.g. older men with younger women or vice versa)?
Does this researcher not look like Rasputin, the infamous Russian mystic?
(Caution: Irony, Parody)
"Aubrey de Grey, the jet-setting gerontologist who co-founded the SENS Research Foundation to discover ways to reverse the ravages of aging, has been placed on leave by the foundation after being accused of sexual harassment by two prominent entrepreneurs in the field of healthy life span extension.
On Tuesday night, Laura Deming, the 27-year-old founder of the Longevity Fund, and Celine Halioua, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of Loyal, a biotech startup developing drugs to help dogs live longer, posted accounts on their blogs and to Twitter of experiences they had with de Grey as young scientists trying to gain a foothold in the field. ..."
Biden Rolls Out Red Carpet for COVID-Infected Illegal Immigrants
Anything is possible with this demented and senile 46th President of the United States! Impeachment would serve him right!
"President Joe Biden is the root cause of today’s COVID-19 superspreader extravaganza on the southern frontier. His come-and-get-it, no-borders policy offers a laurel and hearty welcome to COVID-19-infected illegal aliens.
Biden’s red carpet for COVID-19 carriers on the U.S.-Mexico boundary—atop his mandatory vaccines for U.S. military personnel and vaccination papers for lawful foreign visitors—epitomizes hypocrisy, reckless endangerment, and quite likely negligent homicide. ..."
Google's Allstar aims to fix vulnerabilities in open source projects
Given that I am almost exclusively relying on free, open source software for my daily work etc., I welcome this initiative!
Finally, let the hackers from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran etc. gnash their teeth! High time these many, dangerous open source software vulnerabilities are taken more seriously!
How important is this news? "Security gaps increasingly plague large open source projects. The number of open source software vulnerabilities more than doubled in 2019 compared with 2018, according to RiskSense. The implications are far-reaching, considering that an estimated 91% of commercial applications contain outdated or abandoned open source components. ..." (VentureBeat Daily RoundUP newsletter 8/11/2021)
"GitHub [owned by Microsoft] and Google today announced the launch of Allstar, an app that provides automated continuous enforcement of security best practices for GitHub projects. Allstar, which was created by Google and the wider Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), can check for security policy adherence, set enforcement actions, and enact those enforcements when triggered by a setting or file change in a repository. ..."
🇺🇸 Report: Why the US residential housing market has become a home for dirty money
Money laundering by criminals buying and selling U.S. residential homes seems to be good business. May also partially explain why the U.S. housing market is so hot!
"At least $2.3 billion has been laundered via U.S. real estate transactions in the last five years, according to a new report by a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. ..."
‘A Kleptocrat’s dream’: US real estate a safe haven for billions in dirty money, report says Based on a review of more than 100 money-laundering cases, a new study finds that the U.S. has become a preferred destination for those looking to stash illicit funds through property.
The specter of widespread price inflation is real in Western economies
Western countries are facing the possible rise of widespread price inflation for consumers, retirees, and businesses affecting many products & services, wages, home & energy prices and much more. Price inflation, once kicked in, has the historical tendency to feed on itself and to accelerate or spiral upwards and to remain high for several years or even decades to come.
Those who are younger than 30-40 years old will not even remember what price inflation means or have little experience with it. E.g. from the late 1960s through about 1983 there was above 5% annual consumer price inflation in the U.S. (see chart below) Similar inflation was also observed in Western Europe!
The Consumer Price Index (All Urban Consumers) increased by about 3.7% year to date (July) in 2021 (See chart below. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics).
For many years, reckless and artificially low interest rate monetary policies in Europe and the U.S. combined with the enormous expansion of government spending and government debt are causal factors. The idiocy of Global Warming hoax a.k.a. Climate Change religion and its significant impact on misguided energy policies etc. is also to blame! Elected politicians can live beyond an economy's means for some time, but not for very long!
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished over the long term!
CCP Proxies Call for Mutiny, Violence, and Overthrow of the Tsai Government
If you think, the Communist Party of China will militarily invade Taiwan anytime soon, think again! It is not necessary! There are other, powerful means available to take control of or to disrupt Taiwan! Hope, the internal situation in Taiwan does not get more serious!
You wonder why Taiwanese politicians like Chang An-le, who calls for e.g. an armed overthrow of the elected government, are not in prison yet!
"While the world focuses on the threat posed by a potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese military, pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elements in Taiwan are increasing their calls for the overthrow of the Tsai Ing-wen Administration. Although such elements remain in the marginal minority, the groups nevertheless tap into extremist sentiment within the pro-CCP and Deep-Blue camp that could potentially result in isolated acts of violence against government officials.
Two recent incidents involving Chang An-le, the founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), and Kao An-kuo, a retired Republic of China (ROC) Army general, raise the specter of efforts by sub-state actors—possibly acting in conjunction with, or at the direction of, the CCP—to destabilize state institutions.
During a July 15-16 forum in Shanghai titled “Chinese Compatriots Across the Strait, Joining Hands to Realize the Chinese Dream”, the CUPP’s Chang said “I have made the proclamation in Taiwan that China must annex Taiwan.” Chang spoke of the need to “make friends” and network with retired and active military personnel within Taiwan. “I have called on them to surrender […] on the day that China starts its military invasion of Taiwan. We will launch a revolt, an armed insurrection against the government here. […] The youth groups at many temples in Taiwan with which we have been networking will join us when this day comes.” ..."
Calls for Uprisings and Military Mutiny
Japan’s Policy Shift on Taiwan Centers on Okinawa
Good news! The self declared dictator for life Xi Jinping is finding out how his hegemonic policies created a storm of alarm and opposition! This is just one example!
"On July 13, the Japanese Ministry of Defense released its annual white paper, Defense of Japan 2021. For the first time, the publication mentioned the importance of Taiwan for Japan’s security, stating that “Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community.” Building on this, it continued: “Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before.”
In contrast to past defense white papers that tiptoed around Tokyo’s stance on the Chinese military threat to Taiwan, the recent statement referencing Taiwan’s role in Japanese national security is a reflection of a perceptible Japanese policy shift, which has reduced some ambiguity regarding Tokyo’s willingness to enter a potential military conflict in the Taiwan Strait. In a departure from its previous, risk-adverse approach towards China, a number of high-level Japanese officials have been increasingly outspoken on the need to defend Taiwan. This rhetorical shift in Japanese official statements on Taiwan, which is driven largely by concerns over protecting Okinawa, ..."
6 Troubling Leftist Wins in $1.1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill
Recommendable! Why 19 Republican Senators voted including Mitch McConnell voted for this is unfathomable! This is almost treasonous!
"... 1. Tees Up Partisan $3.5 Trillion Social Spending Package
Leading Democrats have vowed that the infrastructure bill will not become law unless it’s paired with a $3.5 trillion package passed on party lines through the budget rule known as reconciliation.
The Senate will work on a budget resolution this week with detailed instructions for a variety of key committees. Its publicly stated goals read like a progressive wish list: a generational welfare expansion, job-killing tax hikes, an aggressive climate agenda, an attempt to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, and more.
Finalizing the infrastructure bill only serves to speed up the largest tax-and-spend measure in history. ..."
Litauen errichtet Grenzzaun gegen illegale Einwanderer aus Weißrussland
Massenweise Migration als politische Waffe bzw. Instrument! Es geschieht immer wieder und überall auf der Welt!
Der demente und senile 46. Präsident der USA macht es umgekehrt. Er öffnete die südliche Grenze der USA mutwillig für Millionen von Migranten (inklusive Kinder) aus aller Welt.
"In den vergangenen Wochen hatte Weißrußlands Machthaber Alexander Lukaschenko Migranten unter anderem aus dem Irak in sein Land geholt und sie gezielt Richtung EU weitergeleitet. Damit reagierte er auf Sanktionen der Europäischen Union gegen sein Regime. ..."
Schwache olympische Medaillenbilanz – Symptomatisch für dieses Deutschland
Interessante These! Mit Gendersternchen, Klimawahn, und Covid-19 Hysterie gewinnt man keine sportlichen Wettbewerbe! Vielleicht sind ja auch die Bürger der Bananenrepublik in ein anderes geistiges Zeitalter transzendiert, wo solche Dinge wie antiker Sport als Relikt oder esoterisch angesehen werden.
The Future of Clean Meat - Lab Grown Meat Explained
Recommendable! Still too expensive, but prices are falling!
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Greg Kelly: "Interesting details" about Capitol Hill 'drama queen' Fanone emerge
Recommendable! What a phony police officer!
Israeli, Egyptian energy ministers discuss natural gas trade plans
Good news! Despite the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, progress in their relations seems slow. E.g. a closer and close economic cooperation and foreign trade between both countries could be so beneficial in so many ways!
"Energy Minister Karin Elharrar (Yesh Atid) spoke to her Egyptian counterpart, Tariq El Molla, on Monday to discuss future plans for Israeli gas to be liquefied at Egyptian natural-gas liquefaction plants for re-exportation, they said in a joint statement.
During their phone conversation, they discussed ongoing cooperation in the field of natural gas and future plans to strengthen it within the framework of the East Mediterranean Gas Form (EMGF). ...
One future initiative between Israel and Egypt would see Israel’s natural gas be liquefied in Egyptian factories and then re-exported for use.
Israel has been exporting natural gas to Egypt since January 2020 in what was seen as a historic step in the working relationship between the two countries. ..."
Make Every feature Binary: A 135B parameter sparse neural network for massively improved search relevance
Recommendable! Impressive work! A look behind the scenes of how online searches are mad more relevant and return better results for the user! Unfortunately, it seems Microsoft has not yet published a research paper on their latest advances.
"Recently, Transformer-based deep learning models like GPT-3 have been getting a lot of attention in the machine learning world. These models excel at understanding semantic relationships, and they have contributed to large improvements in Microsoft Bing’s search experience and surpassing human performance on the SuperGLUE academic benchmark. However, these models can fail to capture more nuanced relationships between query and document terms beyond pure semantics. ..."
National Geographic: We Have To Stop Emitting Immediately!
With the new IPCC report out, the hysteria, panic, and doomsday fanatics are as usual in overdrive. E.g. National Geographic!
So much propaganda and demagoguery in the 21st year of the 21st century as if we are still living in the medieval ages! It is insane, irrational, and absurd!
"The “code red alert” for the planet, issued Monday by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is an unsurprising, if unsettling message. It means there’s no going back—the warming of the planet will intensify and keep pushing key climate systems toward irreversible change."
OpenAI Codex: Translating natural language into programming language code
Exciting stuff! Coding without code! This could be a game changer!
"We’ve created an improved version of OpenAI Codex, our AI system that translates natural language to code, and we are releasing it through our API in private beta starting today. Codex is the model that powers GitHub Copilot, which we built and launched in partnership with GitHub a month ago. Proficient in more than a dozen programming languages, Codex can now interpret simple commands in natural language and execute them on the user’s behalf—making it possible to build a natural language interface to existing applications. ..."
Diese Corona-Maßnahmen haben Bund und Länder beschlossen
Der Impfperialismus geht um in der Bananenrepublik Deutschland unter der Regie von SED Kanzlerin Merkel! Zum Klimawahn gesellt sich mehr Irrationalität! Eine Irrationalität jagt die andere in der Bananenrepublik! Zu viele lebenslange, unfähige Berufspolitiker hat das Land! Staatlicher Paternalismus ist ausgeufert! Mehr protestierende Querdenker braucht das Land!
Nur zur Erinnerung: In der Bananenrepublik sind inzwischen über 92 Millionen Impfungen verabreicht worden. Was wohl bedeutet, das mindestens über 50% der Bevölkerung per Impfung voll immunisiert sind. Der Anteil unter der erwachsenen Bevölkerung liegt also weit höher, vielleicht bei deutlich über 60%. Man darf weiter annehmen, das insbesondere die gefährdete ältere Bevölkerung weit über 50% voll geimpft wurde, vielleicht sogar über 80%! Dazu kommen noch etwa 4 Millionen Bürger, die genesen und daher natürlich immunisiert sind. Kurzum: Deutschland hat quasi Herdenimmunität erreicht (> 67% oder >75% für die anfällige Bevölkerung)! Z.B. die USA hat die Herdenimmunität ebenfalls vor einigen Wochen erreicht.
New drug combo shows early potential for treating pancreatic cancer
Good news! Cancer is history!
This research was funded by the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research ("the nation’s largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research")! "... At the time the Lustgarten Foundation was established [in 1999/2000], pancreatic cancer was an “orphan” disease with less than $16.2 million, or less than half of one percent of the total National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) budget supporting fewer than 15 researchers nationally. Because this was the only funding available at the time, young investigators opted not to dedicate their careers to the study of the disease. Knowing research follows dollars, in 2000, the Foundation awarded ten, $100,000 grants totaling $1 million to stimulate pancreatic cancer research. Over time, our support of pancreatic cancer research has stimulated the NCI to increase its pancreatic cancer research funding to more than $152 million in 2016 and inspired the creation of other pancreatic cancer organizations. Today, there are thousands of researchers from all disciplines working to solve this problem, many of whom are leaders in their fields."
What a pleasure garden (Lustgarten) to behold! 😃
What a pleasure garden (Lustgarten) to behold! 😃
"Pancreatic cancer, which affects about 60,000 Americans every year, is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. After diagnosis, fewer than 10 percent of patients survive for five years. While some chemotherapies are initially effective, pancreatic tumors often become resistant to them. The disease has also proven difficult to treat with newer approaches such as immunotherapy. ...
The new therapy, which is a combination of three drugs that help boost the body’s own immune defenses against tumors, is expected to enter clinical trials later this year. ...
However, when they combined CD40 agonist antibodies with both a PD-1 inhibitor and a TIGIT inhibitor, they found a dramatic effect. Pancreatic tumors shrank in about half of the animals given this treatment, and in 25 percent of the mice, the tumors disappeared completely. Furthermore, the tumors did not regrow after the treatment was stopped. ..."
However, when they combined CD40 agonist antibodies with both a PD-1 inhibitor and a TIGIT inhibitor, they found a dramatic effect. Pancreatic tumors shrank in about half of the animals given this treatment, and in 25 percent of the mice, the tumors disappeared completely. Furthermore, the tumors did not regrow after the treatment was stopped. ..."
The CD155/TIGIT axis promotes and maintains immune evasion in neoantigen-expressing pancreatic cancer (open access)
Think tanks around the world sound alarm on declining democratic norms
Cause for concern! Liberty and democracy in decline around the world!
Excerpts from this study:
"The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated several troubling global trends, including increasing authoritarianism, economic protectionism, and threats to human rights and civil liberties. It threatened to undo the significant gains in global economic and political development since the end of the Cold War. Today, 2.6 billion people—35 percent of the global population—live under regimes that are becoming more authoritarian. By contrast, just 8 percent of the world’s population live under regimes that are becoming more democratic. For the first time since 2001, democracies are not the majority regime type in the world. ...
However, in recent years, concerning trends have threatened to undo the progress achieved since the 1990s. Democratic progress has lulled into backsliding and growing authoritarian populism worldwide,10 including in developed democracies such as the United States, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy. This decline has been matched by reductions in civil liberties and personal freedoms. ... For the first time since 2001, democracies are no longer the predominant type of government in the world. ...
The pandemic has caused severe economic disruptions virtually everywhere, from shocks to supply chains and personal incomes to border closures and trade disputes. It has pushed 115 million additional people into extreme poverty, and disruptions of food supply chains, economic activity, and medical resources needed for COVID-19 response have frustrated ongoing human development efforts in numerous spheres. One estimate suggests that low-income countries will require an additional $200 billion in financing until at least 2025 to support their pandemic responses, including vaccination support, virus containment strategies, and financial support for workers and companies."
However, in recent years, concerning trends have threatened to undo the progress achieved since the 1990s. Democratic progress has lulled into backsliding and growing authoritarian populism worldwide,10 including in developed democracies such as the United States, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy. This decline has been matched by reductions in civil liberties and personal freedoms. ... For the first time since 2001, democracies are no longer the predominant type of government in the world. ...
The pandemic has caused severe economic disruptions virtually everywhere, from shocks to supply chains and personal incomes to border closures and trade disputes. It has pushed 115 million additional people into extreme poverty, and disruptions of food supply chains, economic activity, and medical resources needed for COVID-19 response have frustrated ongoing human development efforts in numerous spheres. One estimate suggests that low-income countries will require an additional $200 billion in financing until at least 2025 to support their pandemic responses, including vaccination support, virus containment strategies, and financial support for workers and companies."
Riesen-Asteroid nähert sich: So sehen Sie ihn von der Erde aus
An alle Klimawahnsinnigen in der Bananenrepublik Deutschland: Der Einschlag eines solchen oder eines grösseren Asteroiden löst eine Klimakatastrophe aus, nicht das Spurengas Kohlendioxid!
Teurer Strom: Diese Energiewende macht uns keiner nach
Wer glaubt mit sog. erneuerbaren Energien die Stromversorgung in ganz Deutschland verlässlich zu gewährleisten lebt in einer Bananenrepublik. Sonnen- und Windenergie sind ein gewaltiger umwelt- und naturschädlicher Rückschritt ins Mittelalter!
Ein Land im Klimawahn! Geht es noch absurder in der Bananenrepublik Deutschland! Im Umgang mit Covid-19 hat ist die Lage auch nicht besser! Gendersternchen darfs auch sein!
"Die Stunde der Wahrheit schlägt erst nach der Bundestagswahl. Dann geben die Netzbetreiber turnusgemäß bekannt, welche Kosten Verbraucher nächstes Jahr für den Ausbau von Ökostrom (EEG-Umlage) und Stromleitungen (Netzentgelte) erwartet. Energieversorger informieren ihrerseits über die „Anpassung“ ihrer Tarife.
Dass Elektrizität für Verbraucher abermals teurer wird, steht zu befürchten. Dazu beitragen dürfte, dass die Weltwirtschaft wächst und Brennstoffe wie Erdgas und Steinkohle deutlich mehr kosten als voriges Jahr. Aber auch der gestiegene CO2-Preis im EU-Emissionshandel treibt den Strompreis. ..."
"... Eine Umfrage des Instituts der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) unter 2.000 Unternehmen zeigt ... 70 Prozent der Unternehmen berichten von mittelstark oder stark steigenden Energiepreisen. ..."
Von Mauerbau und Mauerfall
1961 wurde die Mauer gebaut. 1990 fiel die Mauer. President Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Der U.S. Präsident hätte sich wohl nie vorstellen können was dann folgte.
Kommunismus breitete sich in ganz Deutschland aus. Die Farbe wechselte von Rot auf Grün!
Die freiheitliche Bundesrepublik Deutschland verwandelte sich in eine Bananenrepublik! Energiewende! Klimawahn! Abrupte Abschaltung aller Kernkraftwerke! Unkontrollierte Einwanderung usw.
Die letzten 16 Jahre wurde Bananenrepublik von der SED Kanzlerin Merkel regiert! Wie war das möglich!
Steve Turley: France ERUPTS Over Vaccine Passports!!!
Recommendable! Vive la revolution! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
Outsiders Weather and Ice Age Watch: 'The Sun runs on 11-year cycles'
Recommendable! Sun activity is not stationary nor constant! We humans probably do not even understand how many cycles or periodic changes sun activity actually has. We only know about the 11 year cycle or the sun spot cycle! I bet there are more sun activity cycles or oscillations etc.
When did the last Ice Age end? About 1850! I am sure you knew this? Right!
Why are humans such irrational suckers for doomsday scenarios! Probably, something wrong with our genes!
Oh Happy Day - Edwin Hawkins Singers 1969
Enjoy! Oh happy Day!
Yeah if you go there (Oh happy day)
Yeah, before I do, yeah (Oh happy day)
Just tell my friends I'm there (Oh happy day)
Then I'm coming too, yeah (Oh happy day)
Stinchfield: Washington Sell Outs are driven by greed
Recommendable!
"GOP Swamp creatures have given into the demands from the Left, selling out the American people. "
Monday, August 09, 2021
'Complicit': Meet the 18 Republicans Who Sold Out on Radical Democrat 'Infrastructure' Plan Without Reading Bill
Hope these 18 GOP idiots will be voted out of office ASAP! Shame on them! There is still some hope that some of the Dimocratic Party U.S. members of the U.S. Congress will come to their senses!
This so called infrastructure bill goes far beyond the usual political pork barreling and sausage making! This about transforming the U.S. economy using communist central planning into a green, government controlled economy and about expanding welfare and extreme leftist ideologies! It adds hundreds of billions of dollars in budget deficits and government debt!
Mitch McConnell (KY) what a regrettable fool! Why is he even the Senate Minority Leader for the GOP???
Lindsey Graham (SC) is also such a quixotic RINO!
Mitt Romney (UT) again! Will he ever learn anything???
Arsonists Behind More than Half of Italy's Wildfires, Officials Say
It was also reported that forest fires in Greece were the work of arsonists!
Exposing the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion as what they are!
"About 800 wildfires have struck Italy this year, tripling the normal annual average and causing millions of dollars in damage. But more than half of them were likely started by arsonists or farmers breaching fire rules, authorities say.
A 50-year-old sheep and goat farmer was arrested last week after a surveillance camera captured him setting undergrowth afire Thursday near the town of Montesarchio, 48 kilometers from Naples in southern Italy, near to where another wildfire raged last year.
Local officials say the farmer likely wanted to renew his pasture by burning it off in defiance of strict rules regulating such burns. ..."
Italien: Feuerwehrleute werden als Brandstifter verdächtigt
Auch in Griechenland wird Brandstiftung vermutet! Dem Klimawahn zum trotz. Fakten sind irrational, wenn es darum geht Menschen des eingebildeten Weltuntergangs zu bezichtigen!
Apple wirbt mit Datenschutz – in China wirkt das wie eine Farce
Apple's Kotau angesichts der Kommunistischen Diktatur! Hätte der 2010 verstorbene Steve Jobs dem zugestimmt? Möglicherweise nicht!
69 Hamas members sentenced to prison in Saudi Arabia
Good news! Bravo Saudi Arabia! Are witnessing the positive effects of President Trump's Abraham Accords? I bet!
If Saudi Arabia wants to modernize and become a normal, prosperous country, then it has to stop supporting terrorism and militant groups.
"Hamas has expressed “shock” at the ruling issued by a Saudi court against a large number of Palestinians and Jordanians residing in the Kingdom.
According to Hamas, 69 of its Palestinian and Jordanian members and supporters were sentenced by a Saudi court on Sunday to prison terms ranging from three to 21 years. ..."
Saudiarabien «schockiert» die Hamas mit langen Haftstrafen gegen ihre Mitglieder Ein saudisches Gericht hat Dutzende von palästinensischen Mitgliedern der Hamas zu teilweise langen Haftstrafen verurteilt. Riad handelt damit im Interesse Israels und setzt ein Zeichen gegen militante Widerstandsbewegungen.
Security services use outdated technology in the retail industry
Security services is big global business dominated by less than 10 companies or so (e.g. Securitas AB, Allied Universal, G4S).
However, many of the jobs the security service industry are low tech, low paid, and not too attractive. Take a typical shopping mall security guard in the United States. In the 21st year of the 21st century, he or she will be still equipped with a clunky, analog radio (typically Motorola) and an old fashioned paper notepad plus ballpoint pen. Security guards usually have to memorize all the many procedures applicable (e.g. all valet service locations and their differences), locations of many of the myriad things in a shopping mall (e.g. access to roof hatches for HVAC technicians), many other arcane things, and much, much more.
Of course, the security guard is encouraged to use his or her personal smartphone to e.g. take pictures of an incident and forward it to his or her supervisor by text message.
Supervisors or other security guards still spend enormous amounts of time sitting in front of usually only one or two PCs to enter their daily or incident reports.
Training is frequent, but boring! The security guard gets to sit in front of the one or two PCs in the break room to study text heavy learning material often quite irrelevant to the job at hand.
One of the few consolations to such security guards, police officers still use old fashioned paper notepads as well while attending to e.g. a shoplift. However, they are also frequently equipped with laptop computers and their radios are better.
In brief what a waste of resources and a hit on providing better relevant and comprehensive security for retail businesses.
Equipping these security guards with e.g. tablet computers would significantly improve premise security and all the other related services that security professional provide on a daily basis. With tablets perhaps more shop lifters would be quickly apprehended, more incidents would be better identified, reported for later analysis and better remedies etc.
The security industry is ripe for some serious overhaul to bring them into the 21st century!
NVAE: A Deep Hierarchical Variational Autoencoder
Recommendable! Well written, nice combination of several approaches! State of the art!
Hezbollah fires 19 rockets at Israel in worst fighting since 2006 war
Very serious stuff! How dysfunctional or much of a failed state is Lebanon for something like this to be allowed to happen from its soil!
"Israel and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah are engaged in their heaviest fighting since the 2006 Lebanon War.
On Friday morning, Hezbollah fired 19 rockets at Israel. Ten were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, and they caused no injuries or damage. ..."
Bundeswehr: Womit will sich Deutschland verteidigen?
Muss eine Bananenrepublik wie Deutschland noch verteidigt werden nach 16 Jahren unter der SED Kanzlerin Merkel und zwei sukzessive, weiblichen Bundesverteidigungsministern seit 2013? Eine Fallstudie, wie man sich einen Lachanfall beim potentiellen Feind vergewissert! 😄
So lange nicht mehr Frauen in der Bundeswehr gedient haben und sich so oder anderweitig mehr Kenntnisse erworben haben in Sachen Verteidigung, sollte man vielleicht etwas mehr zurückhaltend sein in der Zukunft mit Frauen als Bundesverteidigungsminister!
"Die Bundesregierung verzichtet seit vielen Jahren darauf, die deutschen Streitkräfte bestmöglich für etwaige Konflikte auszustatten. In der ablaufenden Ära der Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel und unter insgesamt fünf Verteidigungsministern der Union hat sich die Situation gravierend verschlechtert. Nach einer Phase der Konzentration auf internationale Friedenseinsätze wendet sich die Sicherheitspolitik erst seit der russischen Krim-Aggression wieder mehr der Landesverteidigung zu. ..."
Think before you ‘speak’: brain–computer interface restores speech in paralysed man
Good news!
"... A team of neuroscientists and engineers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) used deep-learning and natural-language models to decode the brain waves of a clinical trial participant with severe paralysis and anarthria as he attempted to produce words and sentences. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed a promising median decoding rate of 15.2 words per minute (with a median word error rate of 25.6%). This is approximately three times faster than the computer-based typing interface that the participant normally relies on for communication.
“We think that an ideal speech neuroprosthesis would allow a paralysed user to voluntarily and autonomously engage the system to communicate and interact with their personal devices ..."
"... We implanted a subdural, high-density, multielectrode array over the area of the sensorimotor cortex that controls speech in a person with anarthria (the loss of the ability to articulate speech) and spastic quadriparesis caused by a brain-stem stroke. Over the course of 48 sessions, we recorded 22 hours of cortical activity while the participant attempted to say individual words from a vocabulary set of 50 words. We used deep-learning algorithms to create computational models for the detection and classification of words from patterns in the recorded cortical activity. We applied these computational models, as well as a natural-language model that yielded next-word probabilities given the preceding words in a sequence, to decode full sentences as the participant attempted to say them. ..."
Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Pandemic
Very recommendable! Very long overview article! Just to put the relative harmless Covid-19 pandemic a little bit in perspective!
Did you know that there is still only one TB vaccine approved in the past 100 years! And it has shortcomings!
"TB is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and it most often affects the lungs. TB is spread through the air when people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected.
Every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis (TB). Despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die from TB each year – making it the world’s top infectious killer.
TB is the leading cause of death of people with HIV and also a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance.
Most of the people who fall ill with TB live in low- and middle-income countries, but TB is present all over the world. About half of all people with TB can be found in 8 countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and South Africa.
About one-quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be infected by TB bacteria [that is 2 billion people]. Only 5-15% of these people will fall ill with active TB disease. The rest have TB infection but are not ill and cannot transmit the disease. Both TB infection and disease are curable using antibiotics." (Source)
Among India’s religious believers
Recommendable! Fascinating! Tolerance through segregation!
"... India isn’t a melting pot like the United States. Rather, it’s a thali—a collection of different dishes in separate bowls that don’t necessarily flow into one another, but nonetheless combine satisfyingly on your palate. ...
For starters, India is deeply religious: 97% of Indians say they believe in God and about 80% are certain that God exists. ‘Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists,’ the Pew study observes. ...
Disappointingly, Indians also prefer making friends within their own religious community. ..."
For starters, India is deeply religious: 97% of Indians say they believe in God and about 80% are certain that God exists. ‘Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists,’ the Pew study observes. ...
An overwhelming majority (84%) of respondents say that respect for other religions is a fundamental aspect of their identity. ‘Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation,’ ... ‘Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.”’ Tolerance is also a religious value: ‘Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.’
But for all this mutual respect, segregationist impulses remain strong. For example, 36% of Hindus do not want Muslims as neighbors (though that does mean 64% are willing to accept them). Likewise, opposition to interfaith and intercaste marriages is widespread. About 80% of Indian Muslims disapprove of, and wish to prevent, interfaith marriages. Roughly two-thirds of Hindus feel the same way.
Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately
Erneuerbare Energien: Deutsche Exporte fallen zurück
Da bastelt die Bananenrepublik Deutschland unter der SED Kanzlerin seit einigen Jahren an dem Hirngespinst und umwelt- und naturschädlichen Erneuerbaren Energien! An stelle von modernen Atomkraftwerken (z.B. Thorium basiert) wird die deutsche Wirtschaft mit kommunistischer Zentralplanung (auch genannt Energiewende) in den Harakiri getrieben, um den Klimawahn zu huldigen!
"... China hat die Nase vorn
Bei Wechselrichtern, die auch in Solaranlagen eingesetzt werden, kommt China inzwischen auf das Dreifache des deutschen Exportvolumens. Bei Windkraftanlagen hat Deutschland zwar noch die Nase vorn, doch droht China hier mittelfristig ebenfalls vorbeizuziehen: Allein zwischen 2015 und 2019 haben sich entsprechende chinesische Exporte mehr als verdreifacht, während die deutschen Exporte leicht sanken. Auch bei Elektrolysegeräten, die verwendet werden, um Wasserstoff herzustellen, gibt es Schwierigkeiten – seit Jahren gehen die deutschen Exporte hier im Trend zurück. ..."
Measuring brain function with three techniques simultaneously offers new insight into the working mind
Amazing stuff!
"The link between spatial (where) and temporal (when) aspects of the neural correlates of most psychological phenomena is not clear. Elucidation of this relation, which is crucial to fully understand human brain function, requires integration across multiple brain imaging modalities and cognitive tasks that reliably modulate the engagement of the brain systems of interest. By overcoming the methodological challenges posed by simultaneous recordings, the present report provides proof-of-concept evidence for a novel approach using three complementary imaging modalities: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), event-related potentials (ERPs), and event-related optical signals (EROS) [not the Greek god of love]. ..."
Proof-of-concept evidence for trimodal simultaneous investigation of human brain function (technical report, open access)
Unusual superconductivity appears in a Kagome metal
More advances on the holy grail of superconductivity! Unfortunately, at 3.5 Kelvin, this is not exactly room temperature.
"... In 2018, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory created the first Kagome metal in the laboratory. The material in that work was an electrically conductive crystal consisting of layers of iron and tin atoms arranged in a Kagome lattice pattern, but the discovery of a whole family of Kagome materials with the chemical formula 𝐴V3 Sb5 (where 𝐴 = K, Rb, Cs) came hot on its heels. ..."
"... We systematically measure the superconducting (SC) and mixed state properties of high-quality CsV3Sb5 single crystals with Tc ~ 3.5 K. ... Our results suggest an intriguing superconducting state emerging in the complex environment of Kagome lattice, which, at least, is partially driven by electron-electron correlation."
Anisotropic Superconducting Properties of Kagome Metal CsV3Sb5 (no public access)
Georgia ballots rejected by machines were later altered by election workers to count
Very recommendable! Long, detailed article!
"Welcome to the arcane process known as adjudication, where human judgment is substituted for machine scanning in cases where voters incorrectly filled out a paper ballot. Election officials and official observers have dealt with it for years, with everyday citizens mostly oblivious to the process.
But in 2020, adjudication played a much larger role in states like Georgia, which allowed hundreds of thousands of additional citizens to vote absentee for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In all, more than 5,000 of the 148,000 absentee ballots cast — or about 3% — in Georgia's largest county required some form of human intervention ...
Just the News reviewed 1,604 pages of adjudication logs from Fulton County and reviewed 4820 of the 5064 ballot images where human vote counters reviewed or overrode the Dominion Voting machines. ...
The adjudication ballots alone are not enough to change a Georgia election in which Biden and Trump were separated by less than 13,000 votes. However, they reveal an imperfect system vulnerable to chaos, subjectivity, or political dirty tricks, especially in a county like Fulton where state officials documented widespread irregularities and misconduct and now want to take over election counting.
It also raised another troubling question, at least in Georgia, where election regulations create two conflicting imperatives. One regulation, which is quoted on each absentee ballot, emphatically declares that a paper ballot should be deemed "spoiled" and uncountable if a voter makes any mistakes or unauthorized marks. ...
Just the News reviewed hundreds of ballots that met the "spoiled" definition — ballots that voters had in some way altered, defaced, or corrected — that were still allowed to count after adjudication. The reason? Another Georgia regulation gives election officials broad discretion to try to determine the intent of a confused voter, and actually encourages them to find a way to make flawed ballots count. ...State officials said Fulton County should have adjudicated ballots using a panel of two Democrat judges, two Republican judges and one independent judge, but they did not know for sure whether each ballot went through that process. ..."
Vindication for the Swedish model of non-coercive pandemic mitigation?
Bravo! The Swedes were smart! They defied hysteria, panic, and overbearing government paternalism in the face of a relative harmless disease.
Despite much less protective government mandates, the death rate as of 8/9/2021 is only 0.1%, which is very good! Plus, over 10.6 million vaccine doses were administered with a population of 10.3 million.
Currywurst gestrichen – Volkswagen macht weitere Kantine fleischfrei
Leben in der Bananenrepublik Deutschland unter der SED Kanzlerin Merkel!
Anscheinend sind die Currywürste beliebt bei der Belegschaft. Was soll dieser ideologische Unsinn! Für mich wäre so etwas ein Kündigungsgrund als Mitarbeiter!
"Die VW-Currywurst ist beliebt und gehört für viele Beschäftigte regelmäßig auf den Teller: Vom Speiseplan der Kantine im Wolfsburger Markenhochhaus verschwindet der Klassiker aber bald. Das Betriebsrestaurant soll nach dem Werksurlaub fleischfrei sein, wie aus einer internen Ankündigung hervorgeht. Die rund 150 Rezepte sollen dann ohne Fleisch auskommen. Nur hin und wieder werde Fisch zum Angebot gehören. ..."
Sunday, August 08, 2021
India’s Afghanistan quandary
Recommendable! Afghanistan remains at the crossroads of foreign ambitions and transit routes. Let's not forget that Afghanistan is rich in natural resources, which could make this country and its people prosperous under good government.
I don't share the opinion of the article's author that it is a "harsh reality of a Vietnam-like retreat" for the U.S. with regards to Afghanistan. Actually, this comparison is quite wrong: The Vietnam War severely divided American society, the Afghanistan war did not.
"The only country with a major stake in the future of Afghanistan that is unhappy with the American decision [to leave Afghanistan] is India—and for very good reasons. India has already pumped US$3 billion since 2001 in developmental assistance into Afghanistan in order to prevent the exact scenario that is emerging now. ...
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to India tried to paper over the cracks between American and Indian perceptions of the future of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was at the top of the agenda during Blinken’s talks with Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, which ended with the bland statement that India and the US ‘largely see Afghanistan in the same light. We’re both committed to the proposition that there is no military solution to the conflict that afflicts Afghanistan.’ This meaningless declaration ignores the fact that after withdrawal neither Washington nor New Delhi has any means of preventing a power grab in Afghanistan or a takeover of the country by the Taliban. ...
India faces a quandary in terms of its policy towards Afghanistan. India was opposed to the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001 primarily because it saw it as a tool of Pakistani policy in two spheres. First, a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul was expected to provide Islamabad defence in depth in times of future conflict with India, thus to some extent neutralising India’s conventional-power superiority. Second, Afghanistan under the Taliban had become a safe haven for Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists that Islamabad deployed on the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kashmir in an effort both to make the state of Jammu and Kashmir ungovernable and to divert substantial Indian military capabilities into fighting the insurgency and keeping order in Kashmir. This is why India supported and secretly armed the Northern Alliance that was fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. ...
India is worried not only about Pakistan’s increasing clout in Afghanistan but also about potential moves by India’s other nemesis, China, in post-withdrawal Afghanistan, especially in light of Beijing’s interest in roping in Afghanistan as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. A meeting between a Taliban delegation and the Chinese foreign minister on 28 July in China has heightened these concerns. In the meeting, Mullah Baradar, who led the Taliban delegation, called Beijing a ‘trustworthy friend’ and said that the group wouldn’t permit ‘anyone to use’ Afghanistan’s territory. The reference to ‘anyone’ was obviously meant to reassure China that the Taliban won’t allow insurgent Uyghur groups already active in Afghanistan to use the country to attack targets in China. Incidentally, this meeting followed a joint statement issued by the Pakistani and Chinese foreign ministers on 24 July that the two countries will coordinate their policies and closely cooperate on Afghanistan, further adding to Indian apprehensions. ..."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to India tried to paper over the cracks between American and Indian perceptions of the future of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was at the top of the agenda during Blinken’s talks with Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, which ended with the bland statement that India and the US ‘largely see Afghanistan in the same light. We’re both committed to the proposition that there is no military solution to the conflict that afflicts Afghanistan.’ This meaningless declaration ignores the fact that after withdrawal neither Washington nor New Delhi has any means of preventing a power grab in Afghanistan or a takeover of the country by the Taliban. ...
India faces a quandary in terms of its policy towards Afghanistan. India was opposed to the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001 primarily because it saw it as a tool of Pakistani policy in two spheres. First, a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul was expected to provide Islamabad defence in depth in times of future conflict with India, thus to some extent neutralising India’s conventional-power superiority. Second, Afghanistan under the Taliban had become a safe haven for Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists that Islamabad deployed on the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kashmir in an effort both to make the state of Jammu and Kashmir ungovernable and to divert substantial Indian military capabilities into fighting the insurgency and keeping order in Kashmir. This is why India supported and secretly armed the Northern Alliance that was fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. ...
India is worried not only about Pakistan’s increasing clout in Afghanistan but also about potential moves by India’s other nemesis, China, in post-withdrawal Afghanistan, especially in light of Beijing’s interest in roping in Afghanistan as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. A meeting between a Taliban delegation and the Chinese foreign minister on 28 July in China has heightened these concerns. In the meeting, Mullah Baradar, who led the Taliban delegation, called Beijing a ‘trustworthy friend’ and said that the group wouldn’t permit ‘anyone to use’ Afghanistan’s territory. The reference to ‘anyone’ was obviously meant to reassure China that the Taliban won’t allow insurgent Uyghur groups already active in Afghanistan to use the country to attack targets in China. Incidentally, this meeting followed a joint statement issued by the Pakistani and Chinese foreign ministers on 24 July that the two countries will coordinate their policies and closely cooperate on Afghanistan, further adding to Indian apprehensions. ..."
China’s coal conundrum
Recommendable! Why are not more nuclear power plants are built to safely, reliably, and environmentally friendly meet the global power demand?
How many new coal power plants are opened in China per year? A lot!
China is and continues to be heavily dependent on coal for energy supply decades into the future, while Western countries willfully mutilate their economies like Harakiri using communist central planning to meet ridiculous environmental/climate goals based on the Global Warming hoax/Climate Change religion. This self imposed paradox by Western countries is unfathomable and totally irrational!
"In 2020, China brought 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation, more than three times what was brought on line everywhere else. ... A total of 247 gigawatts of coal power is now in planning or development, nearly six times Germany’s entire coal-fired capacity. China has also proposed additional new coal plants that, if built, would generate 73.5 gigawatts of power, more than five times the 13.9 gigawatts proposed in the rest of the world combined. Last year, Chinese provinces granted construction approval to 47 gigawatts of coal power projects, more than three times the capacity permitted in 2019. ..." (Source)
"In the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party last month, hundreds of Chinese coal mines were ordered to shut down to ensure the celebrations weren’t marred by any fatal accidents [and smoke filled air]. ...
According to the South China Morning Post, 130 mines with a combined capacity of 186 million tonnes a year were closed in Shanxi, the biggest coal-producing province, while similar measures were implemented in other provinces. ...
It wants to lower carbon emissions in line with Xi Jinping’s promise to the United Nations last year of a peak in China’s emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2060. China’s embrace of ambitious climate targets was designed to get ahead of America on the eve of last year’s US presidential election. ...
In pursuit of these goals, the government has ordered steel production this year not to exceed the 1.05 billion tonnes produced in 2020. It has also handed out some economic punishment to Australia by banning purchases of Australian coal, on which it had spent $14 billion in 2018–19. ...
at the meeting of G20 climate and energy ministers in Italy last month, China joined India and Russia in opposing a resolution to mandate the shutdown of coal-fired power and to ban international finance of coal mining. ...
The decision to ban Australian coal, which has been enforced since last October, has been problematic for both China’s steel mills and its power stations. Although the steel mills have been able to replace Australian coal with Mongolian coal, the latter is lower quality and industry analysts say its use without blending with the high-quality coal that Australia is known for will result in damage to the coke ovens at the major mills and ultimately the loss of steel-making capacity. ...
A drought in southern China cut the availability of hydro power. Although China has been rolling out wind and solar power, their intermittent supply means the country has been relying more heavily on coal to meet the surge in demand for power over the summer. ..."
According to the South China Morning Post, 130 mines with a combined capacity of 186 million tonnes a year were closed in Shanxi, the biggest coal-producing province, while similar measures were implemented in other provinces. ...
The coal market highlights the irreconcilable pressures confronting the Chinese government.
In pursuit of these goals, the government has ordered steel production this year not to exceed the 1.05 billion tonnes produced in 2020. It has also handed out some economic punishment to Australia by banning purchases of Australian coal, on which it had spent $14 billion in 2018–19. ...
at the meeting of G20 climate and energy ministers in Italy last month, China joined India and Russia in opposing a resolution to mandate the shutdown of coal-fired power and to ban international finance of coal mining. ...
The decision to ban Australian coal, which has been enforced since last October, has been problematic for both China’s steel mills and its power stations. Although the steel mills have been able to replace Australian coal with Mongolian coal, the latter is lower quality and industry analysts say its use without blending with the high-quality coal that Australia is known for will result in damage to the coke ovens at the major mills and ultimately the loss of steel-making capacity. ...
A drought in southern China cut the availability of hydro power. Although China has been rolling out wind and solar power, their intermittent supply means the country has been relying more heavily on coal to meet the surge in demand for power over the summer. ..."
Opinion: How Biomedicine Could Transform Human Reproduction
Recommendable! Prenatal gene editing is an option that ought to be considered! The referenced article below is written by author of the MIT Press book CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans.
As I wrote before, one of the first genes, if not otherwise relevant, to be permanently removed is the sneezing gene! I am sure, there are other genese, we actually do not need. As a man, I would also strongly advocate to remove the facial hair genes. Shaving is an unnecessary chore.
I blogged her in 2019, about the possibility of an artificial womb to give birth outside of a human body. I think, it is entirely possible that in 30 years or so from now, women don't have to be pregnant and give birth anymore.
"In November 2018, the world was shocked to learn that two babies had been born in China with DNA edited while they were embryos—as dramatic a development in genetics as the 1996 cloning of Dolly the sheep."
"... Today, bad news from prenatal testing leaves would-be parents with two options: terminate the pregnancy or prepare for the birth of an ill or at-risk child. For over 30 years, parents have been able to avoid this dilemma by turning to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This procedure starts with in vitro fertilization (IVF), but then tests embryos before they are transferred into the uterus. ...
PGD opens yet another door. One might edit the genes of those at-risk embryos, using CRISPR or other methods, before using them to try to start a pregnancy. ... changing the babies’ DNA in ways they could pass on to their children, because changed cells in the embryo would eventually become eggs or sperm. This argument against heritable changes would also apply when the change is made to correct disease-causing mutations—or when it is used to try to “enhance” the resulting babies. Whether such germline editing should be a “line in the sand,” not to be crossed, is hotly disputed. ...
Most of us look forward to this when it involves disease, while the (distant) prospect of “enhancement” of traits such as height or intelligence causes very mixed feelings. ...
Now, consider that we may soon be able to make eggs and sperm from stem cells derived from a person’s skin. This technique, which has already worked in mice and is being researched with human cells, offers hope to people who cannot have their own genetic children because they lack functional sperm or eggs, as well as a potential pathway for LGBTQ couples who want to have children who are biologically their own. If the technique becomes an easy source of human eggs, it may also allow people to bypass the uncomfortable, risky, and expensive process of harvesting eggs for IVF, which could lead to a vast expansion of the use of PGD. ...
Finally, in several decades, one might be able to make a living uterus outside the body using stem cells and, by mechanically giving it blood with oxygen, nutrients, and the right hormones, use it to gestate a baby. This not-exactly-artificial womb could transform pregnancy entirely, and with it, the lives of billions of people."
Most of us look forward to this when it involves disease, while the (distant) prospect of “enhancement” of traits such as height or intelligence causes very mixed feelings. ...
Now, consider that we may soon be able to make eggs and sperm from stem cells derived from a person’s skin. This technique, which has already worked in mice and is being researched with human cells, offers hope to people who cannot have their own genetic children because they lack functional sperm or eggs, as well as a potential pathway for LGBTQ couples who want to have children who are biologically their own. If the technique becomes an easy source of human eggs, it may also allow people to bypass the uncomfortable, risky, and expensive process of harvesting eggs for IVF, which could lead to a vast expansion of the use of PGD. ...
Finally, in several decades, one might be able to make a living uterus outside the body using stem cells and, by mechanically giving it blood with oxygen, nutrients, and the right hormones, use it to gestate a baby. This not-exactly-artificial womb could transform pregnancy entirely, and with it, the lives of billions of people."
Can viruses be beneficial?
Recommendable! Virus can kill cancer (viral cancer therapy).Without virus in the placenta human life would be impossible. Virus kill bacteria so we can live like in the digestive system.
Saturday, August 07, 2021
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