Science & TechnologyS


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Flawed paper behind Covid-19 testing faces being retracted, after scientists expose its ten fatal problems

Peter Andrews
RT
Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:15 UTC
nurse performs a PCR test
© ReutersA nurse performs a PCR test at the Hospital de la Tour during the COVID-19 outbreak in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland
A publisher admitted it is urgently re-investigating research, following revelations that the PCR test it extols is defective, giving too many false-positives. The news comes as a new group plans a legal challenge over the checks.

Last week I reported on an astonishing review conducted by a group of senior scientists on a paper on which most Covid testing is based. It comprehensively debunked the science behind the Corman-Drosten paper, which described a protocol for using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to detect Covid, finding 10 fatal flaws, including major failings in the operating procedure and potential conflicts of interest among its authors.

The team behind the review demanded that Eurosurveillance, the journal that published the original research, retract it at once, as in their view it clearly failed to meet proper standards. This is of vital importance because the Corman-Drosten paper laid the path for mass PCR testing as the main source of data on the coronavirus. Almost all case numbers, infection rates and even deaths attributed to Covid are based on PCR tests (and all the attendant lockdowns and restrictions on people), and a huge amount of them use the method set out in the Corman-Drosten paper.

But now, the organisation Retraction Watch have reported that Eurosurveillance is considering retracting the paper. In a statement, Eurosurveillance said that they were "seeking further expert advice and discussing the current correspondence in detail. We will, according to our existing procedures, evaluate the claims and make a decision as soon as we have investigated in full.'' So no retraction yet, but it would not be surprising if one came soon.

Comment: You NEVER see the MSM referencing false positives in any of its reports about "cases". Why is that?


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Telescope

Astronomers detect gigantic x-ray bubbles stretching out above and below the Milky Way


RT
Thu, 10 Dec 2020 19:23 UTC
xray spectrum milky way
© J. Sanders, H. Brunner, eSASS-TeamSurvey of the sky in the X-ray spectrum
A new survey of the sky in the X-ray spectrum has captured hitherto unseen, but incredibly large, structures hiding in plain sight in the Milky Way and beyond.

The structures in question are giant bubbles composed of X-rays, emanating from the galactic center and extending beyond, both above and below, the galactic plane.

They are so big that they dwarf the Fermi bubbles of gamma radiation humanity has already observed.

The findings were made by a team of astrophysicists led by Peter Predehl of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
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Rocket

SpaceX Starship prototype EXPLODES on attempted landing


RT
Wed, 09 Dec 2020 22:58 UTC
Rocket, explosion
© Twitter/@SpaceX/screenshotSpaceX's SN8 starship prototype is seen exploding on impact as it attempted to land during a test flight, near SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas, December 9, 2020.
Elon Musk's ambitious Starship project seems to have suffered a setback when the SN8 prototype underwent a rapid unscheduled disassembly event while attempting to land after a high-altitude suborbital flight test in Texas.

The Starship serial number 8 (SN8) took off from the SpaceX site in Cameron County on Wednesday evening. At first everything went well, with the vehicle launching successfully, reaching the apogee and flipping over to begin its descent... only to end in a fiery crash as it just missed the landing pad.
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Attention

We should worry about Virtual Reality sex

Ewen Lavoie
Real Clear Science
Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:39 UTC
Virtual Reality
© Image courtesy of Brainlab
You may not own a Virtual Reality (VR) headset, but someone you know probably does. VR is growing rapidly and it's going to change our world. Gaming, entertainment, education, and healthcare are just a few of the areas that will benefit from VR technology. However, its use in one less commonly discussed industry could put more at risk than we realize. VR sex platforms raise profound questions, forcing us to confront VR's potential to affect our minds for better and for worse.

VR affects us in powerful ways for three main reasons. Firstly, computer-generated visuals have become so convincing that it can be difficult to decipher whether you're looking at a real-world video recording or a computer-generated virtual creation [1]. Moreover, modern VR headsets have advanced to provide a consistent first-person view. Even while turning your head quickly, you rarely lose the illusion of a first-person perspective.

Secondly, the synchronization of other sensory forms like sound, smell, and most importantly, touch, with convincing visuals, amplifies the experience. In one groundbreaking experiment, the synchronized stroking of a rubber hand positioned parallel in space with a participant's real, hidden hand created the sensation that the rubber hand replaced their real hand [2], an insight that has since been expanded in countless ways in VR [3]. When sensory streams are paired, the brain knits them together, enhancing the illusion of the virtual experience.

Finally, VR translates your own movements to control analogous movements in virtual worlds. When you reach out in a virtual world using the motor pattern you use in everyday life, see a virtual arm extend from your body to touch a virtual object, and feel that object, you experience an embodiment illusion [4]. When the visual, tactile, and motor information are delivered and received close enough in time, your brain is fooled. The body you see is no longer a virtual body, but your body.
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Question

Unusual deep space signals in Antarctica defy explanation

Stephen Ornes
Astronomy
Tue, 08 Dec 2020 16:26 UTC
Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna
© The University Of Hawai‘iThe balloon-based Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) floats over Antarctica.
Last spring, a report from the world's largest neutrino telescope — a sprawling grid of detectors woven into Antarctica's ice — coincided with a blaze of hyperbolic headlines. They teased the possibility of an anti-universe where, from our point of view, time runs backward and the Big Bang represents an end, not a beginning. While it's too soon to start searching for our reverse-aging, other-handed doppelgängers, physicists are still wrestling with strange signals coming in from space that, to date, have defied easy explanation.

The signals were flagged by a NASA-funded collection of horn radio antennas held aloft over Antarctica by a giant balloon. The device, called the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), picks up radio signals produced when high-energy particles coming from deep space encounter our atmosphere. Some waves skim the Earth before they hit ANITA, and others bounce off the ice. ANITA can tell the difference. During its first float in 2006 and again in 2014, the device picked up anomalous signals that resembled the kind that skim the Earth — but strangely, they seemed to be coming from the surface.

"That means they had to pass through a huge chunk of the Earth," says physicist Stephanie Wissel of Penn State, who works on the ANITA experiment.

At the heart of this mystery are neutrinos: ghostly, high-energy particles that can stream through almost any material unscathed but can produce the telltale radio pulses that ANITA catches. To further investigate the unusual signals, physicists turned to IceCube, a neutrino telescope made up of long strings of detectors buried near the South Pole. A neutrino passing through the ice may produce other particles that emit tiny flashes of light that IceCube's sensors can detect.
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Info

The world's first DNA 'tricorder' developed

Luis Sandoval,
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Mon, 07 Dec 2020 23:38 UTC
Aspyn Palatnick
© Cold Spring Harbor LaboratoryAspyn Palatnick holding the world's first mobile genetics laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's 125th anniversary Open House. The combination of the new iPhone app, iGenomics, a DNA analyzer, and Oxford Nanopore's USB-sized MinION, a DNA sequencer, make genome analysis portable and accessible.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists developed the world's first mobile genome sequence analyzer, a new iPhone app called iGenomics. By pairing an iPhone with a handheld DNA sequencer, users can create a mobile genetics laboratory, reminiscent of the "tricorder" featured in Star Trek. The iGenomics app runs entirely on the iOS device, reducing the need for laptops or large equipment in the field, which is useful for pandemic and ecology workers. Aspyn Palatnick programmed iGenomics in CSHL Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Schatz's laboratory, over a period of eight years, starting when he was a 14-year-old high school intern.

The iPhone app was developed to complement the tiny DNA sequencing devices being made by Oxford Nanopore. Palatnick, now a software engineer at Facebook, was already experienced at building iPhone apps when joining the Schatz laboratory. He and Schatz realized that:
As the sequencers continued to get even smaller, there were no technologies available to let you study that DNA on a mobile device. Most of the studying of DNA: aligning, analyzing, is done on large server clusters or high-end laptops.
Schatz recognized that scientists studying pandemics were "flying in suitcases full of Nanopores and laptops and other servers to do that analysis in the remote fields." iGenomics helps by making genome studies more portable, accessible, and affordable.
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Info

New knowledge of the 'abdominal brain'


Karolinska Institutet
Mon, 07 Dec 2020 20:07 UTC
Neuronal Types
© Illustration: Mattias KarlénThe KI researchers identified 12 different neuronal subtypes (confetti) in the small intestine of mouse, and discovered that these develop through two embryonic neuron prototypes (sprinkled confetti streams).
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have succeeded in mapping the neuron types comprising the enteric nervous system in the intestine of mice. The study, which is published today in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience, also describes how the different neurons form during fetal development, a process that follows different principles to brain neurons.

Our approximately seven-metre long gastrointestinal (GI) tract has its own functionally distinct neurons. Since this enteric nervous system (ENS) operates autonomously, it is sometimes referred to as the "second" or "abdominal" brain.

While the ENS controls muscle movement (peristalsis) in the gut and its fluid balance and blood flow, it also communicates with the immune system and microbiome. It therefore has a systemic affect on the body and is thought to be involved in a wide range of diseases. Some 30 percent of the population are estimated to live with permanent gastrointestinal complications.

Using single-cell sequencing, a method that enables scientists to functionally categorise and classify individual cells by determining which genes are active in them, researchers from Karolinska Institutet have now mapped the neurons that make up the mouse ENS.
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Target

'Havana Syndrome' likely caused by pulsed microwave energy, government study finds

Brenda Breslauer, Ken Dilanian
Yahoo News
Sat, 05 Dec 2020 12:51 UTC
U.S. Embassy in Havana
© Alexandre Meneghini/ReutersU.S. Embassy in Havana
The mysterious neurological symptoms experienced by American diplomats in China and Cuba are consistent with the effects of directed microwave energy, according to a long-awaited report by the National Academies of Sciences that cites medical evidence to support the long-held conviction of American intelligence officials.

The report, obtained Friday by NBC News, does not conclude that the directed energy was delivered intentionally, by a weapon, as some U.S. officials have long believed. But it raises that disturbing possibility.

The report was transferred to Congress after bipartisan calls led by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire who is a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. She issued the following statement:
"The health effects from these mysterious injuries have tormented those afflicted. Their illnesses and suffering are real and demand a response from Congress. American public servants and their families - who have been targeted - have requested that Congress receive and review this report, so I'm glad the State Department heeded our bipartisan call so we can get to work."
NBC News reported in 2018 that U.S. intelligence officials considered Russia a leading suspect in what some of them assess to have been deliberate attacks on diplomats and CIA officers overseas. But there was not — and is not now — conclusive intelligence pointing in that direction, multiple officials who have been briefed on the matter said.

Comment: Of course it was Russia microwaving US officials in Cuba and China. It must be true. MSM says so:
The US media were quick to draw a link with the old boogeyman Russia, saying it confirms Moscow's maliciousness. The implication is that US diplomats and intelligence officers were attacked with a sophisticated weapon that the US could not detect.
"The mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the US government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats."
Russia had already been widely described by the US media as a likely culprit behind the American officials' health problems. The country is mentioned in the study only briefly, in the context of past research into the effects of pulsed microwave exposure. It showed no proof that the supposed victims of the hypothetical attack were actually subjected to microwave radiation, yet alone that it was intentional.

But outlets covering it didn't hesitate to draw an explicit connection. NBC News and the New York Times were the first to report on the release of the research on Friday, having had access to it prior to publication. The study itself was finished months ago and was previewed in a story printed by GQ in October, to which both media outlets refer.

National Academies of Sciences sent it to the State Department in August, and for months US lawmakers "pressed the department to publicly disclose the findings, saying its failure to release the information fit with a pattern of secrecy and inaction by the Trump administration," according to NYT.

The reportage fits a pattern of stories which paint Russia as a power hostile to the US and willing to launch clandestine attacks against it, while President Trump sits on his hands reluctant to push back. Such stories also tend to suffer from a shortage of actual evidence.

One could see how pushing stories about a Russian menace is in the interest of the US' national security apparatus. The coverage of the 'microwave weapon' study may seem a particularly blatant case, however, considering the identity of one of the reporters given a preview, something many commenters pointed out.

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Info

New particle in the blood of septic patients discovered

Madeline McCurry-Schmidt
La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Fri, 04 Dec 2020 16:52 UTC
Appearance of ENDS
© Image courtesy of Alex Marki, M.D., Ley Laboratory, La Jolla Institute for ImmunologyThis time-lapse image shows the appearance of an ENDS and how it curls over time.
LA JOLLA — Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have found that people with sepsis have never-before-seen particles in their blood. The scientists are the first to show that these particles, called elongated neutrophil-derived structures (ENDS), break off of immune cells and change their shape as they course through the body.

"We actually found a new particle in the human body that had never been described before," explains LJI Instructor Alex Marki, M.D., who served as first author of the study. "That's not something that happens every day."

The research, published December 4, 2020 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine shows the importance of understanding how immune cells change over the course of a disease.

"ENDS are not normal — they are not detectable in healthy people or mice," says LJI Professor Klaus Ley, M.D., who served as senior author of the study. "But ENDS are very high in sepsis, and I would not be surprised if they were high in other inflammatory diseases."
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Laptop

A quantum computer that measures light has achieved quantum supremacy

Leah Crane
New Scientist
Thu, 03 Dec 2020 08:08 UTC
Lasers
© IM_VISUALS/ShutterstockLasers are used in a new type of quantum computing called boson sampling
A new type of quantum computing called boson sampling is capable of calculations that no classical computer could accomplish in any reasonable amount of time. This is the second time this feat, known as quantum supremacy, has been claimed for a quantum algorithm after Google said in 2019 that its Sycamore device had achieved this.

Boson sampling relies on a strange quantum property of photons - particles of light - that is displayed when they travel through a beam splitter, which divides a single beam of light into two beams propagating in different directions. If two identical photons hit the beam splitter at exactly the same time, they don't split from one another. Instead, they stick together and both travel in the same direction.

If you shoot many photons through a sequence of beam splitters many times in a row, patterns begin to emerge in the paths of the photons that are extraordinarily difficult to simulate or predict with classical computers. Finding possible sets of photon paths in this set-up is called boson sampling, and a boson sampling device is a type of quantum computer, albeit one with a very narrow purpose.

Comment: See also: Google AI touts a 'quantum supremacy' experiment using a programmable superconducting processor

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