October
7, 20201:12
AM By Anthony
Esposito
CANCUN,
Mexico (Reuters) - Mexicans formed long lines at supermarkets near Cancun on
Tuesday to stock up in preparation for a hit overnight from powerful Hurricane
Delta, which weakened slightly as it bore down on the Caribbean resort and its
famous shoreline.
Late on Tuesday, the Category 4 hurricane on the five-step
Saffir-Simpson scale was packing maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour
(209 kph), down from 145 mph earlier in the evening, the U.S. National
Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
“In the Yucatan Peninsula, potentially catastrophic hurricane conditions
are expected in portions of the warning area late tonight and early Wednesday,”
the NHC said.
Late on Tuesday, Delta was about 135 miles (217 km) east-southeast of
the island of Cozumel off the coast.
Expectations of tropical storm conditions led to evacuations of coastal
areas in Cuba. Delta is forecast to weaken and linger over Mexico’s Yucatan
peninsula before strengthening again in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies
were bracing for impact on their installations and ports closed.
---- The Yucatan peninsula was hit on the
weekend by Hurricane Gamma, a smaller storm that nonetheless damaged property
and forced restaurants and attractions to close, including the famed Chichen
Itza pyramids.
The region at the heart of Mexico’s tourist industry has suffered
various setbacks in recent years, most recently from the coronavirus pandemic.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-storm-delta-mexico/mexicos-cancun-braced-for-possibly-catastrophic-hurricane-delta-idUKKBN26S00N?il=0
Next,
Oh Canada. The dangers of trade deals in international trade. Where do GB’s
supermarket raspberries come from anyway? Scotland, but are we really sure? Who
can forget the EUSSR 2013 “horsemeat” scandal, where “Shergar” was passed off
as finest EU beef?
How a Chilean raspberry scam
dodged food safety controls from China to Canada October 6,
202011:07 AM
SANTIAGO (Reuters)
- In January 2017, Chilean Customs inspectors acted on a tip from a
whistleblower: The country’s prized crop of raspberries was under threat.
Inspectors raided the offices of Frutti di
Bosco, a little-known fruit trading company on the second floor of a tower
block in downtown Santiago.
The files, company data and sales records
they seized revealed a food trading racket that spanned three continents.
At its heart was a fraud centered on
raspberries. Low-cost frozen berries grown in China were shipped to a packing
plant in central Chile. Hundreds of tons of fruit were repackaged and rebranded
by Frutti di Bosco as premium Chilean-grown organics, then shipped to consumers
in Canadian cities including Vancouver and Montreal, according to documents
prepared by Chilean Customs as part of its investigation. The agency calculated
that at least $12 million worth of mislabeled raspberries were sent to Canada
between 2014 and 2016.
Much of that product, the documents showed,
came from Harbin Gaotai Food Co Ltd, a Chinese supplier. Canadian health
authorities later linked berries from Harbin Gaotai to a 2017 norovirus
outbreak in Quebec that sickened hundreds of people. Canadian authorities
issued a recall on Harbin Gaotai berries coming directly to Canada from China
dating back to July 2016.
What they didn’t realize is that Harbin
Gaotai raspberries had also entered Canada through a backdoor during that
period in the form of falsely labeled fruit shipped from Chile by Frutti di
Bosco.
The scheme, pieced together for the first
time by Reuters, lays bare the ease with which mislabeled, potentially risky
products can be slipped past the world’s health and customs agencies, even as
authorities across the globe scramble to ensure foods entering their countries
are free of a new scourge - COVID-19.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-chile-crime-raspberries-insight/how-a-chilean-raspberry-scam-dodged-food-safety-controls-from-china-to-canada-idUKKBN26R1LP
2013 horse meat
scandal The 2013 horse meat scandal was a food
industry scandal in parts of Europe in which foods advertised as containing
beef were found to contain undeclared or improperly declared horse meat
– as much as 100% of the meat content in some cases.[1] [2] DNA had been discovered
in frozen beefburgers
sold in several Irish and British supermarkets.[3]
The analysis stated that 23 out of 27
samples of beef burgers also contained pig DNA; pork is a taboo food in the Muslim and Jewish
communities.[4]
While the presence of undeclared meat was not a health
issue, the scandal revealed a major breakdown in the traceability of the food
supply chain, and the risk that harmful ingredients could have been included as
well. Sports horses, for example, could have entered the food supply chain, and
with them the veterinary drug phenylbutazone
which is banned in food animals. The scandal later spread to 13 other European
countries, and European authorities decided to find an EU-wide solution. They
initiated meat testing of about 4,000 horse meat samples for the veterinary
drug.
More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal
“The
world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”
Mad
Magazine.
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Global
infections will pass 36 million later today.
Trump Ire Over Vaccine Rules;
Biden Debate Warning: Virus Update Bloomberg News October
7, 2020, 12:01 AM GMT+1 Updated on October 7, 2020, 5:52 AM GMT
President Donald Trump accused
Democratic nominee Joe Biden told
Trump halted talks with Democratic leaders on a new
pandemic stimulus returning
Key
Developments:
Global Tracker :
Cases pass 35.7 million; deaths top 1.04 millionTop U.S. officials in charge
of vaccine wave caution flags Covid has wiped out the economic dreams
of an Asian generation ‘My brain’s not as sharp ’: Covid woes stalk
workers back on job Even mild Covid-19 cases can lead to
symptoms for months Virus test results for U.S.
politicians and officials: a list https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-06/vaccine-caution-mounts-trump-called-symptom-free-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus
German Cases Climb; Italy Set for
Stricter Rules: Virus Update October 6, 2020, 12:03 AM GMT+1 Updated on October 6, 2020,
10:47 AM GMT+1
Germany’s new coronavirus cases jumped the most since
mid-April, highlighting Europe’s struggles to keep the pandemic in check.
Italy’s government is set to order stricter measures, including a decree that
masks be worn outdoors.
Europe’s drugs regulator started reviewing data on an
experimental Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, potentially speeding
the shot’s assessment and reducing its time to market. British and Dutch
hospitals reportedly face shortages of Gilead
Sciences Inc .’s remdesivir, the antiviral drug that President Donald Trump
has received as part of his treatment for the disease.
The U.K.’s chancellor of the exchequer rejected the idea
that his program to subsidize dining to boost the economy increased
transmission of Covid-19 over the summer. The virus is spreading
again across most of the U.S. while India, the newest epicenter of the
pandemic, reported the lowest number of new infections in more than a month.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-05/covid-s-big-u-s-comeback-trump-leaves-hospital-virus-update?srnd=premium-europe
Estimated Surface Decay of
SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19) on
surfaces under a range of temperatures and relative humidity
Enter temperature and enter relative humidity. The
resulting natural decay of SARS-CoV-2 is shown in the table below.
----Relative humidity and temperature can
be used to provide an estimated half-life for SARS-CoV-2 with this model with
some degree of certainty. The predictive power is limited to temperature
between 74°F-95°F and Relative Humidity between 20-60%. The formula below was
developed in °C, but has been modified in the web calculator to use °F.
Background Preventing person-to-person
spread of SARS-CoV-2 is the only means to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in
the absence of an effective therapeutic. Transmission occurs
primarily through respiratory droplets produced by talking, coughing and
sneezing. Contact with contaminated
surfaces and objects may also contribute to spread. SARS-CoV-2 will survive in
saliva and respiratory fluids on surfaces for extended periods of time
under certain conditions. DHS S&T has studied the
stability of SARS-CoV-2 in simulated saliva, using droplets of varying
size deposited on a non-porous surface under a range of temperature and RH
conditions. Viral survival on surfaces
is driven by temperature, relative humidity (RH), and matrix (e.g., bodily
fluids). These data have been used to
develop a predictive model to estimate virus decay under a limited range
of environmental conditions. Testing performed on non-porous
surfaces, specifically stainless steel, ABS plastic, and nitrile rubber. There was no significant
difference found in the decay of the virus found between stainless steel
ABS plastic, and nitrile rubber. More
https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/sars-calculator
Identify the Different Symptoms
of the Flu and Covid-19 With fears of a “twindemic” in the
United States this fall, here’s a guide to understanding what’s making you feel
terrible.
Updated Oct.
6, 2020
As influenza season approaches, some Americans, and
especially parents, are worried that, if they or their children should become
ill, it may not be easy to know which disease they have — the flu or Covid-19.
They are correct. Most symptoms of the two diseases are so
similar that, short of a test — or two or three tests — it won’t be possible to
know for sure. But there are some clues. (And it is possible to have both infections at the same time ; some patients in
China this year were found to have both.)
It is not yet clear whether the United States will have
much of a flu season this year. Flu activity in the Southern Hemisphere, which
is often predictive of activity in the United States, was 99 percent below normal
----There are at least 100 viruses that can cause the
common cold, but only four that cause seasonal flu. Many people who catch colds
assume they have the flu, but experts consistently say the same thing about how
to tell the difference: “Flu makes you feel as if you were hit by a truck.” The
fever, aches and headaches of a bad case of influenza are generally worse than
a case of respiratory syncytial virus, rhinovirus or other common cold viruses.
Everyone knows the symptoms of the flu: fever, headaches,
body aches, sore throat, runny nose, stuffed sinuses, coughing and sneezing —
and, for infants, ear infections. Some victims, especially children, get
diarrhea or vomiting too.
More
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/at-home/coronavirus-flu-symptoms.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
Turning diamond into metal Normally an
insulator, diamond becomes a metallic conductor when subjected to large strain
in a new theoretical model Date:
October 5, 2020
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
Researchers have discovered a way to tweak tiny needles of diamond in a
controlled way to transform their electronic properties, dialing them from
insulating, through semiconducting, all the way to highly conductive, or
metallic. This can be induced dynamically and reversed at will, with no
degradation of the diamond material.
Long known as the hardest of all natural materials, diamonds are also
exceptional thermal conductors and electrical insulators. Now, researchers have
discovered a way to tweak tiny needles of diamond in a controlled way to
transform their electronic properties, dialing them from insulating, through
semiconducting, all the way to highly conductive, or metallic. This can be
induced dynamically and reversed at will, with no degradation of the diamond
material.
The research, though still at an early proof-of-concept stage, may open
up a wide array of potential applications, including new kinds of broadband
solar cells, highly efficient LEDs and power electronics, and new optical
devices or quantum sensors, the researchers say.
Their findings, which are based on simulations, calculations, and previous
experimental results, are reported this week in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences . The paper is by MIT Professor Ju Li and
graduate student Zhe Shi; Principal Research Scientist Ming Dao; Professor
Subra Suresh, who is president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
as well as former dean of engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor Emeritus at
MIT; and Evgenii Tsymbalov and Alexander Shapeev at the Skolkovo Institute of
Science and Technology in Moscow.
The team used a combination of quantum mechanical calculations, analyses
of mechanical deformation, and machine learning to demonstrate that the
phenomenon, long theorized as a possibility, really can occur in nanosized
diamond.
The concept of straining a semiconductor material such as silicon to
improve its performance found applications in the microelectronics industry
more than two decades ago. However, that approach entailed small strains on the
order of about 1 percent. Li and his collaborators have spent years developing
the concept of elastic strain engineering. This is based on the ability to
cause significant changes in the electrical, optical, thermal, and other
properties of materials simply by deforming them -- putting them under moderate
to large mechanical strain, enough to alter the geometric arrangement of atoms
in the material's crystal lattice, but without disrupting that lattice.
In a major advance in 2018, a team led by Suresh, Dao, and Lu Yang from
the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong showed that tiny needles of diamond,
just a few hundred nanometers across, could be bent without fracture at room
temperature to large strains. They were able to repeatedly bend these
nanoneedles to tensile strain as much as 10 percent; the needles can then
return intact to their original shape.
More
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005170845.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
US Politics Betting Odds https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
Battle
of Lepanto October 7, 1571. The Battle of Lepanto was a naval
engagement that took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League , a coalition of Catholic
Christian
states arranged by Pope Pius V , inflicted a major defeat on the fleet of
the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf
of Patras . The Ottoman forces were sailing westward from their naval
station in Lepanto
(the Venetian name of ancient Naupactus—Greek Ναύπακτος, Ottoman
İnebahtı ) when they met the fleet of the Holy League which was sailing east
from Messina , Sicily . The Spanish
Empire and the Venetian Republic were the main powers of the
coalition, as the league was largely financed by Philip II of Spain and Venice was the
main contributor of ships.[7]
In the history of naval
warfare , Lepanto marks the last major engagement in the Western world to be
fought almost entirely between rowing vessels,[8] galleys
and galeasses
which were the direct descendants of ancient trireme
warships. The battle was in essence an "infantry battle on floating
platforms".[9] largest naval battle in Western
history since classical antiquity, involving more than 400 warships.
The victory of the Holy League is of great
importance in the history of Europe and of the Ottoman Empire, marking the turning-point of Ottoman military
expansion into the Mediterranean, although the Ottoman wars in Europe would continue for
another century.
More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto
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