JAKARTA
(Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Tuesday urged his ministers to
prepare for the potentially hazardous impact of an upcoming La Nina weather
pattern that can cause flooding, landslides and impact agricultural output.
In an online meeting, Jokowi, as the president is widely known, said
reports from Indonesia’s weather agency (BMKG) indicated monthly rain volumes
in the country could increase by between 20%-40% over normal levels.
“I want all of us to prepare in anticipation of possible
hydrometeorological disasters and to really calculate the impact of La Nina on
agricultural production,” Jokowi said.
Palm oil prices are likely to jump in the first half of 2021, three
leading industry analysts said last week, as the La Nina weather pattern hits
edible oil supplies amid lower soybean crushing in Argentina and rising
sunflower oil prices.
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, which is used in
a wide array of products from food to cleaning products.
The Southeast Asian country is also a big producer and exporter of crops
such as coffee, cocoa and rubber.
A La Nina pattern is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the
equatorial Pacific Ocean.
BMKG said in a statement posted on its website that the weather pattern
is expected to last until around March-April 2021.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-indonesia-weather/indonesia-president-warns-risk-of-floods-agriculture-damage-from-la-nina-idUKKBN26Y0H8?il=0
October 2020 La Niña update Author: Emily Becker
October
8, 2020
La Niña’s reign continues in the tropical Pacific, with an
approximately 85% chance
The temperature of the ocean surface in the Niño3.4 region
was about 0.8°C cooler than the 1986–2015 average, according to the ERSSTv5 here La Niña threshold Oceanic Niño Index ENSO
The atmosphere is responding to La Niña’s cooler-than-average
ocean surface. A strengthened Walker circulation
More
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/october-2020-la-ni%C3%B1a-update
El Nino And La Nina El
Nino is a warm ocean current that appears off the coast of Peru during the
winter. On some years it flows much further south than usual, and this has an
affect on weather patterns in many areas. This is known as an El Nino event.
The areas that are most affected by El Nino are North America, South America
Asia and Australia. El Nino can sometimes bring warmer winters to Europe and
the UK, and La Nina will usually bring colder winters, but to make it clear, both
events can bring extreme weather to many areas. It is just that the effects
locally are reversed, depending on location. The average duration of an El Nino
event is about eighteen months. These events tend to repeat themselves roughly
every five to seven years.
More
https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twoother/twocontent.aspx?type=libgen&id=1457
“No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever
expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during
the off-season of winter.”
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
U.S. adds nearly 45,000 COVID-19
cases after 4 days topping 50K Oct. 12, 2020 /
12:07 PM
Oct.
12 (UPI) -- After four straight days of adding
more than 50,000 new COVID-19 cases -- something that hadn't been seen since
early August -- the United States saw nearly 45,000 on Sunday, according to
updated data Monday.
Research at Johns
Hopkins University showed 44,600 new cases and 400 deaths nationwide. Since
the start of October, however, both cases and deaths are way up compared to
September.
Nationally, the average was about 45,000 per day in
September. So far this month, the average is more than 48,000. There were
nearly 60,000 new cases on Friday, the most since mid-August.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 7.76
million cases and 214,800 deaths nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins.
Thirty-one states reported a rise
Hospitalizations and cases reached record levels over the
weekend in North Dakota, which leads the nation in new cases per 100,000
residents, according to
There are fewer than 20 intensive care beds statewide and
just one in Bismarck, state health officials said
In Wisconsin, cases surpassed 150,000 and the positivity
rate is 26%, officials said
In Iowa, officials said
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/10/12/US-adds-nearly-45000-COVID-19-cases-after-4-days-topping-50K/4171602506998/
Hong Kong researchers find common
ulcer drug could be effective in halting coronavirus replication in patients ·
·
Published: 6:00pm, 12 Oct, 2020
A drug commonly used to treat stomach ulcers has
shown promise in preventing the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus from replicating in an
animal model, a study by Hong Kong’s top university has found.
The findings of the research, led by University of
Hong Kong (HKU) scientists and published in Nature Microbiology on
Wednesday, could provide a new and readily available treatment option for
Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease Covid-19.
The researchers said the drug, ranitidine bismuth
citrate (RBC), could achieve similar outcomes to the coronavirus drug
remdesivir, but at a lower cost.
RBC contains a metal called bismuth, which
researchers said could reduce viral loads in coronavirus-infected human and
animal cells to less than a thousandth of their previous levels.
In a hamster model, meanwhile, RBC was able to
reduce viral loads to just one-hundredth of their previous levels in both the
upper and lower respiratory tracts, and to mitigate virus-associated pneumonia.
“RBC shows potency comparable with remdesivir … It
is safe and can be readily repurposed in clinical trials,” Dr Runming Wang,
from HKU’s department of chemistry, said at a press conference on Monday.
The team discovered that RBC can target the vital
non-structural protein 13 (Nsp13), a viral helicase – a type of enzyme – that
is essential for Sars-CoV-2 to replicate. They are believed to be the first to
reveal that the helicase is targetable with drugs.
Wang said the helicase acted like scissors in the
unwinding process of DNA by severing its double helix structure, leaving the
resulting single-stranded DNA to serve as a template for the virus to be copied.
RBC and its bismuth compounds, however, kick out
the zinc ions in the zinc-binding domain of the helicase, making it
dysfunctional and unable to unwind DNA.
“Once the helicase doesn’t work, the virus will
lose its ability to replicate or multiply,” Wang said.
Professor Hongzhe Sun, also of HKU’s department of
chemistry, said any concerns of antiviral resistance were low.
“RBC targets the helicase and it cannot mutate too
much, otherwise the cell will not survive,” he said. “It can be used in the
form of drug cocktails that target multiple areas so it is harder for the virus
to build resistance.”
Sun estimated the price of RBC was less than a
quarter of that of remdesivir, which is in the midst of a global shortage and
costs more than US$3,000 for a course.
The team said it has applied for a patent in the
US to use RBC to treat Covid-19 patients.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3105179/hong-kong-researchers-find-common-ulcer-drug
AstraZeneca’s Covid Antibody Drug
Heads Into Advanced Trials By Marthe
Fourcade and Suzi Ring October 12, 2020, 7:27 AM GMT+1 Updated on October 12, 2020,
9:38 AM GMT+1
AstraZeneca Plc started late-stage trials for an
antibody medicine against Covid-19 with a large investment from the U.S., after
President Donald Trump credited a similar therapy with aiding his recovery.
Two trials for more than 6,000 people are starting in the
next few weeks looking at prevention, with plans for a further 4,000 adults to
test the antibody medicine as a treatment, Astra said in a statement .
The drug will be assessed for its ability to avoid infections for as much as a
year in some people and as a pre-emptive medicine once patients have been
exposed to the virus in others.
Astra is one of a number of companies exploring monoclonal
antibodies as a way to prevent and treat Covid-19, which could be key for
high-risk populations who may not respond well to a vaccine. The U.S. has
already secured hundreds of thousands of doses of the experimental treatments.
Eli Lilly & Co. and Regeneron
Pharmaceuticals Inc. last week asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
for emergency-use authorizations but haven’t yet received clearance. Trump
has said Regeneron’s antibody cocktail was key to his apparent recovery
from coronavirus.
Early data from both Eli Lilly and Regeneron suggest the
medicines are effective in keeping infected people out of the hospital. GlaxoSmithKline
Plc and Vir Biotechnology Inc. also started advanced tests
on a possible antibody treatment last week .
Astra has agreed to supply as many as 100,000 doses to the
U.S. by the end of 2020, with an option for the country to purchase one million
additional doses in 2021. The U.S. previously gave the British pharmaceutical
company $25 million for the discovery and evaluation of the monoclonal
antibodies, and the phase I trial started in August.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-12/astrazeneca-s-coronavirus-antibody-starts-last-stage-of-tests?srnd=coronavirus
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.
Pensana Rare Earths looks into UK
processing facility October 12,
202010:14 AM
(Reuters) - Pensana Rare Earths PRE.L , which is developing
the Longonjo rare earths project in Angola, has appointed Wood Group to study
the potential for the company to set up a rare earth oxide production facility
in Britain.
Rare earths are a group of minerals,
including neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, used in magnets helping
power a range of products from iPhones to wind turbines.
The projected production from Longonjo,
combined with a processing facility in Britain, would be enough to supply the
wind turbines at Dogger Bank - a wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire - for the
next 20 years, Pensana said on Monday.
Each turbine requires over 7 tonnes of
permanent magnets, Pensana said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week
announced a 160 million pound investment as part of a drive to quadruple
Britain’s offshore wind capacity to 40 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, in a bid to
build a “green” recovery from the pandemic.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pensana-rare-britain/pensana-rare-earths-looks-into-uk-processing-facility-idUKKBN26X12Q?il=0
Graphene microbubbles make
perfect lenses
Date: October 9, 2020
Source: SPIE--International Society
for Optics and Photonics
Summary: Researchers are developing a method to
generate precisely controlled graphene microbubbles on a glass surface using
laser pulses.
Tiny bubbles can solve large problems. Microbubbles -- around 1-50
micrometers in diameter -- have widespread applications. They're used for drug
delivery, membrane cleaning, biofilm control, and water treatment. They've been
applied as actuators in lab-on-a-chip devices for microfluidic mixing, ink-jet
printing, and logic circuitry, and in photonics lithography and optical
resonators. And they've contributed remarkably to biomedical imaging and
applications like DNA trapping and manipulation.
Given the broad range of applications for microbubbles, many methods for
generating them have been developed, including air stream compression to
dissolve air into liquid, ultrasound to induce bubbles in water, and laser
pulses to expose substrates immersed in liquids. However, these bubbles tend to
be randomly dispersed in liquid and rather unstable.
According to Baohua Jia, professor and founding director of the Centre
for Translational Atomaterials at Swinburne University of Technology, "For
applications requiring precise bubble position and size, as well as high
stability -- for example, in photonic applications like imaging and trapping --
creation of bubbles at accurate positions with controllable volume, curvature,
and stability is essential." Jia explains that, for integration into
biological or photonic platforms, it is highly desirable to have well
controlled and stable microbubbles fabricated using a technique compatible with
current processing technologies.
Balloons in graphene
Jia and fellow researchers from Swinburne University of Technology recently
teamed up with researchers from National University of Singapore, Rutgers
University, University of Melbourne, and Monash University, to develop a method
to generate precisely controlled graphene microbubbles on a glass surface using
laser pulses. Their report is published in the peer-reviewed, open-access
journal, Advanced Photonics .
The group used graphene oxide materials, which consist of graphene film
decorated with oxygen functional groups. Gases cannot penetrate through
graphene oxide materials, so the researchers used laser to locally irradiate
the graphene oxide film to generate gases to be encapsulated inside the film to
form microbubbles -- like balloons. Han Lin, Senior Research Fellow at
Swinburne University and first author on the paper, explains, "In this
way, the positions of the microbubbles can be well controlled by the laser, and
the microbubbles can be created and eliminated at will. In the meantime, the
amount of gases can be controlled by the irradiating area and irradiating power.
Therefore, high precision can be achieved."
Such a high-quality bubble can be used for advanced optoelectronic and
micromechanical devices with high precision requirements.
More
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201009114201.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
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary
freezing of water.”
Carl Reiner.
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