Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 29 Sep 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Biohazard

Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex - Pt. 1 Dark Winter

Dark Winter
The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis - Event 201 and Crimson Contagion - share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.' top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens - anthrax and ebola among them - had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.

In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled "unknown" - "an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret," according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was "likely some were simply thrown out with the trash."

An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct "unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax," the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.


Comment: The same governmental organization that Bill Gates-lackey Dr. Anthony Fauci now heads, incidentally.


Info

Design redundancy is in our DNA

PRC2 and cPRC1
© University of Southern California
Design redundancy is not only an invention of engineers for building machines, but also a principle of nature for designing organisms. This principle is at play in the regulation of the genes responsible for directing stem cells to multiply themselves in the developing mouse embryo, as described in a new study in Science Advances.

In the study, scientists Oliver Bell, Jorge Zepeda-Martinez, and their collaborators from the Vienna BioCenter and USC studied the "silencing" of key genes that direct stem cells to differentiate into specific cell types or lineages. When these lineage-specific genes are silenced, the stem cells produce more stem cells, enabling the normal embryonic development of a mouse.

Silencing these genes involves a group of proteins called Polycomb repressive complexes, or PRCs. The PRCs make what are known as epigenetic changes, which reduce the activity of the lineage-specific genes that would commit a stem cell to becoming a more specialized cell type.

The redundancy is that there are two separate groups of PRCs, and both groups independently and simultaneously work to silence the same lineage-specific genes. If PRC group one stops working, then group two can handle the job. If PRC group two fails, then group one is a capable backup.

Microscope 2

Ancestral type of COVID-19 virus mainly found in the US: study

covid 119
Recent research conducted into the genetic network analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, done jointly by British and German experts, testified the variant of novel coronavirus that is closest to that discovered in bats was actually found mainly among cases from the US, rather than in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province.

To explain the pandemic origins, experts from the University of Cambridge and their peers from Germany analyzed 160 virus genomes that were extracted from human patients around the world and they found the coronavirus mutated into three distinct strains.

They found that most cases carried type A virus - the ancestral type of virus, which is bat coronavirus, with 96 percent sequence similarity to the human virus - were largely seen in patients from the US and Australia.

Fire

Krakatoa's 1883 eruption produced a sound so loud it circled the Earth four times

krakatoa lithograph
© Parker & Coward; via Wikipedia.
A lithograph (c. 1888) of the massive 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. From The eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena.
On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.

It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands ("extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing"); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia ("a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction"); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius* ("coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns."[1]) In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.

Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you're in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you're probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we're talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Travelling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history.

Snowflake Cold

Mussels that hitched a ride to Antarctica didn't survive brutal winter conditions

Antarctic
© Center for Dynamic Research of High Latitude Marine Ecosystems
Scientists suspect invasive mussels are hitching rides on ships to waters around the Antarctic.
Given its geographic isolation and bone-chilling temperatures, Antarctica has long held up a "no soliciting" sign when it comes to invasive species. But now the first successful marine invaders have breached the White Continent's door.

Scientists found a colony of mussels, most likely transported from Patagonia via ship, near the largest of the South Shetland Islands some 75 miles north of the Antarctic Peninsula. This discovery, published last month in Scientific Reports, is a harbinger of future invasions, the researchers suggest, particularly as climate change afflicts the Southern Ocean and ship traffic in the region increases.

Paulina Bruning, a marine biologist at Laval University in Québec City, never set out to find mussels in Antarctica. When Ms. Bruning dove in the 36-degree water of Fildes Bay on King George Island, she was focused on collecting native coral and sea sponges.

Comment: The researchers seem a little disappointed, probably because this puts a damper on the baseless claims that Antarctica is experiencing record warming:


Chalkboard

COVID-19: genetic network analysis provides 'snapshot' of pandemic origins

coronavirus origins chart genetic
Study charts the "incipient supernova" of COVID-19 through genetic mutations as it spread from China and Asia to Australia, Europe and North America. Researchers say their methods could be used to help identify undocumented infection sources.

Researchers from Cambridge, UK, and Germany have reconstructed the early "evolutionary paths" of COVID-19 in humans - as infection spread from Wuhan out to Europe and North America - using genetic network techniques.

By analysing the first 160 complete virus genomes to be sequenced from human patients, the scientists have mapped some of the original spread of the new coronavirus through its mutations, which creates different viral lineages.

Comment: The study is available here. Notice how this research only covers COVID-19 samples from December 2019 until March 2020 from a very specific database. If more and earlier samples are examined, they could better track patient zero phylogenetically.

If variant 'A' is "the root of the outbreak", it will be interesting to further study why such a large number of A-type viruses were found in patients from the US and Australia.


Beaker

The COVID-19 virus may have been in humans for years, study suggests

Covid-19
As COVID-19 has hitchhiked around the globe, causing lockdowns, pneumonia and fear, scientists have been racing to determine where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has come from.

While we don't have all the answers yet - including whether it came from an animal reservoir - a new analysis has definitively put to rest the conspiracies that claim it's a lab-made disease.

The study raises some interesting possibilities regarding the origin of the new coronavirus. One of the scenarios suggests the virus may have been circulating harmlessly in human populations for quite a while before it became the pandemic that's now stopped the world in its tracks.

Galaxy

Top five mysteries of Mercury that BepiColombo mission will solve

Mercury

To the human eye, Mercury may resemble a dull, grey orb but this enhanced-colour image from NASA’s Messenger probe, tells a completely different story. Swathes of iridescent blue, sandy-coloured plains and delicate strands of greyish white, create an ethereal and colourful view of our Solar System’s innermost planet.
The European-Japanese BepiColombo mission - launched in 2018 and due to arrive at the sun's innermost planet, Mercury, in December 2025 - successfully performed its first and only flyby of Earth last night. It used Earth's gravity to alter its course slightly, boosting it toward the innermost regions of the solar system. Before BepiColombo, the only spacecraft to have visited Mercury are NASA's Mariner 10 and MESSENGER missions. Those missions revealed much more to the sun's smallest and innermost planet than meets the eye. Despite temperatures on its surface rising up to 450 degrees Celsius (850 degrees Fahrenheit), there seems to be water ice on Mercury. The planet also appears to have a much too large inner core for its size and a surprising chemical composition.

Comment: We may be able to shed some light on the above questions by looking at other planets in our solar system, such as Venus; Pierre Lescaudron in Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle writes:
In this sense, the fundamental difference between a comet and planet is not a matter of composition but a matter of electrical activity (which is related, among other factors, to the eccentricity of the orbit).

Thus, a comet is simply a glowing planet and a planet is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an planet, then a comet, etc., depending on variation in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.
See also:


Fireball 2

Asteroids to skim past Earth this Easter weekend in a series of four close fly-bys


Comment: Still they keep coming...


asteroid 2004 FG11 close pass april 2020

Asteroid 2004 FG11 is the largest of the four April fly-bys
Never knew the 4 horsemen rode asteroids now!

The space rocks are traveling up to 57,000mph and the largest of the bunch is as tall as the Empire State Building.

NASA has classed the asteroids as "near-Earth objects" (NEOs) and is keeping them under constant supervision.

Tens of thousands of NEOs are tracked by scientists to ensure they don't collide with our planet. One small change to their trajectories could spell disaster for our planet.


Comment: Yeah, NASA's gonna save us!


Comment: It appears things are getting more lively overhead every month. One might argue that it it improved detection techniques finding what was already there. But more and more "moons" are also being found around the gas giant planets. Would it not be more logical to conclude the solar system is entering a 'dustier', more densely populated, and therefore more dangerous region of space?

A sample from the last 12 months:


Butterfly

Scientists shocked to find lizard that can both lay eggs and give birth, speculate it's undergoing an evolutionary shift

Saiphos equalis

Scientists from the University of Sydney observed the three-toed skink giving live birth and laying eggs at the same time, something no one has ever documented before
An Australian lizard shocked scientists with its unique ability to both give birth and lay eggs. There have been studies of animals being able to evolve, not only in appearance, but also with their way of life. Animals that used to lay eggs could eventually be able to give birth. Scientists believe this lizard could be caught somewhere in between.

The Three-toed Skink

If you didn't know before, a skink is a type of lizard. The three-toed skink, scientifically known as Saiphos equalis, is found in eastern Australia. It is also known as the yellow-bellied skink.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: