By Andrew
Galbraith , Lawrence Delevingne
SHANGHAI/BOSTON
(Reuters) - Stocks in Asia fell on Friday, following on from selloffs in the
United States and Europe as investors feared the economic impact of an
accelerating rise in coronavirus infections.
The United States has reported fresh daily
records for new COVID-19 case hospitalisations this week, prompting cities and
states, including Chicago, Detroit and California, to re-impose public health
restrictions.
European officials have also warned against
complacency and said measures to control infections must continue despite hopes
that vaccines under development could help to slow the spread of the novel
coronavirus.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
said on Thursday during a discussion with other central bankers that progress
in developing a coronavirus vaccine was welcome news but that near-term
economic risks remain as infections accelerate, underscoring the likely need
for additional government stimulus.
Against that grim backdrop, MSCI's broadest
index of Asian shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dipped
0.25% in early trade as shares across the region stumbled.
Chinese blue-chips .CSI300 led losses, falling
1.21%. Australian shares .AXJO
lost 0.47%, Seoul's Kospi .KS11
was down 0.16% and the Hang Seng .HSI
was 0.55% lower.
Japan's Nikkei 225 .N225 fell 0.95%.
Some investors saw a buying opportunity in
the slump.
---- On
Thursday, top Democrats in the U.S. Congress urged renewed negotiations over a
multitrillion-dollar coronavirus aid proposal, but the top Republican
immediately rejected their approach as too expensive, continuing a months-long
impasse.
Wall Street dropped on Thursday in a broad
sell-off.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1.08%, pulled lower by
industrial and financial companies sensitive to economic growth. The S&P
500 .SPX lost 1.00% and the
technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
dropped 0.65%.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-stocks-fall-as-virus-spread-accelerates-idUKKBN27T027
Europe "must
grit our teeth" on COVID-19 as vaccine euphoria fades by Reuters Thursday, 12 November 2020 15:48 GMT
PARIS/BERLIN, Nov 12 (Reuters) - European officials warned against
COVID-19 complacency on Thursday and said measures to control a surge in
infections as winter approaches must remain in force despite hopes that new
vaccines can bring the pandemic under control.
This week's announcement by Pfizer Inc of a potentially effective
vaccine spurred optimism that an end to months of crisis could be in sight,
sending financial markets soaring and fuelling public longing for a nearly
normal Christmas.
But France and the World Health Organization urged people to continue
complying with lockdowns as it became clear that the new vaccines would not
come soon enough for many COVID-19 sufferers and shrinking economies.
"This is definitely not the moment to loosen up," French Prime
Minister Jean Castex told newspaper Le Monde in an article published hours
before he was due to deliver a keynote speech.
While Pfizer and German partner BioNTech aim to produce 50 million doses
this year if the vaccine is approved in time, it will not become more widely
available until 2021, leaving strained health systems to manage until then.
In Italy, which reported 623 deaths on Wednesday and passed the 1
million case milestone, and in Germany, which has also seen infections climb
back to levels seen earlier in the crisis, officials said any return to normal
would take time.
Germany's Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.
"Unfortunately it will take a while until everyone who wants to can get
vaccinated."
The dire situation facing Italy, the country at the centre of the first
wave of the pandemic, was underlined by a video on social media showing a
corpse sprawled in a hospital lavatory, after the patient apparently died while
waiting for a test.
After achieving a degree of control over the pandemic following the blanket
lockdowns earlier in the year, governments across the region have scrambled to
impose new restrictions to try to curb the alarming rise in case numbers in
recent weeks.
But while some signs have emerged that those measures may be helping
slow infection rates in some areas, authorities said more was needed.
More
https://news.trust.org/item/20201112145345-b7e40
In other real
world news, yet more trouble in the end of the Atlantic hurricane season. The
worst since records began.
Further north and
west, Washington State and Oregon are preparing for the return of winter.
Developing
tropical system could worsen disaster caused by Eta By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather
senior meteorologist
Published Nov. 12, 2020 4:44 PM | Updated Nov. 13, 2020 12:42 AM
Central America is facing a humanitarian crisis following Hurricane
Eta's deadly blow. Millions are enduring dangerous conditions in the storm's
wake -- with concerns over waterborne diseases and COVID-19 complicating
recovery. And the situation could become even more dire. Forecasters are
warning that a brewing tropical system in the Caribbean may strengthen enough
to become a hurricane before it takes aim on the reeling nations of Nicaragua,
Honduras and Guatemala.
"I am greatly concerned we may soon have another major disaster on
our hands in Central America if this Caribbean tropical system pans out like we
suspect," AccuWeather's top hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski said.
----This image, captured on Thursday morning, Nov. 12, 2020, shows a
mass of clouds associated with showers and thunderstorms over the eastern half
of the Caribbean Sea with a weak swirl on the edge of the clouds (center of
image) just south of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. (CIRA at Colorado
State/GOES-East)
A disturbance, known as a tropical wave to meteorologists, was spinning
across the central Caribbean and triggering a large area of showers and
thunderstorms to the south of Hispaniola on Thursday. Satellite images showed
that the feature was becoming better organized with a weak swirling motion
visible in the clouds.
Conditions will be conducive for further strengthening as waters remain
very warm -- around 84 degrees Fahrenheit -- in the area where the disturbance
is churning. The weak wind pattern over the Caribbean will also likely factor
into intensification of the system over the next several days.
A tropical cyclone is threatening to take shape in nearly the same exact
place that Eta formed less than two weeks ago.
"This feature is likely to become a
tropical depression on Friday, a tropical storm this weekend and then perhaps a
hurricane during Sunday night or Monday as it moves westward," Kottlowski
said.
More
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/developing-tropical-system-could-worsen-disaster-caused-by-eta/848694
'Beast of a
storm' about to slam into Pacific Northwest By Ryan Adamson, AccuWeather
meteorologist
Updated Nov. 13, 2020 12:44 AM
The most powerful storm since last winter is expected
to pound the Northwest later this week with fierce winds, heavy rain and
disruptive snow. Forecasters are saying that it could end up being one of the
most intense storms of the entire wet season, which typically begins in the
fall and lasts through the winter months.
Initially, rain began to fall along the coast in
cities such as Seattle and Portland during the midday hours on Thursday. As
precipitation moves farther inland on Thursday night, some snow may fall in the
Cascades. Neither rain nor snow amounts are forecast to be particularly high
with this first round of precipitation.
Snow levels will dip to around 2,000 feet, which is
low enough to make for a fresh dose of slippery conditions over the passes in
the Cascades during the first round into Thursday night. On Wednesday, snow remained on
the high spots of the passes due to a storm that brought snow earlier this week
and forced the closure of some passes. Motorists should be prepared for a new
round of winter driving conditions over Snoqualmie Pass along Interstate 90 and
Stevens Pass along U.S. Route 2, both in Washington, as a result.
More
https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/beast-of-a-storm-about-to-slam-into-pacific-northwest/847692
Finally, so who
really won the US presidential election? (Spoiler: Sleepy beat Grumpy.)
Gambling
Sites Are Holding Onto Millions in Payouts in Case Trump Wins Recounts and litigation mean winners could
be waiting for a while. Donald Moore
Gamblers who made big bets on the results of the U.S. presidential election
News networks on Saturday called the contest for former
Vice President Joe Biden, but major betting companies are withholding payouts
on hundreds of millions of wagers throughout the world. In the meantime,
they’re continuing to take bets as the odds fluctuate and President Donald
Trump continues to press his legal case.
People have been gambling in record numbers with
prediction markets and betting platforms. By the time polls closed on Election
Day, London-based betting site Betfair had booked $440 million in wagers on the
winner of the presidency, a figure that grew to nearly $600 million by the next
day — more than double the $258 million bet on the 2016 contest.
Someone — Betfair won’t say who
With Trump refusing to concede and votes still being
counted in several states — including a recount in Georgia — Betfair has
delayed closing out bets. “We will only settle the markets when there is
certainty around which candidate has the most projected Electoral College
votes,” the platform said on its website.
There’s industry precedent that shows it’s prudent to wait
and see. In 2016, a decision by Irish betting site PaddyPower backfired when it
paid more than $1 million
Gambling on politics is technically illegal in the U.S.,
but New Zealand-based platform PredictIt has been granted an exemption by the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The platform, started by Victoria
University of Wellington as a research tool, hosts futures-trading markets
PredictIt won’t close its markets until recounts and any
litigation by both campaigns are finished, said Brandi Travis, chief marketing
officer for Aristotle International, a firm that provides support for the
platform.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-12/u-s-presidential-election-bets-millions-tied-up-on-delayed-outcome?srnd=premium-canada
Winter
Watch.
The Arctic winter sea-ice expansion and
northern hemisphere snow cover. From around mid-October, the northern
hemisphere snow cover usually rapidly expands, while the Arctic ice gradually
expands back towards its winter maximum.
Over simplified, a rapid expansion of
both, especially if early, can be a sign of a harsher than normal arriving northern
hemisphere winter. Perhaps more so in 2020-2021 as we’re in the low of the
ending sunspot cycle, which possibly also influenced this year’s record
Atlantic hurricane season.
Adding to this year’s winter concerns,
a developing La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific. While the La Nina effect
on the winter weather of western Europe is weaker than that of an El Nino
pattern, which tends to make for a milder winter, a La Nina pattern tends to
make for a colder winter.
Northern Eur-Asia turned snowy fast in
mid-October. The Arctic sea ice
expansion was slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with
the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation sped up.
With the Kara and Laptev sea ice
speeding up fast now, especially in the Laptev Sea which is virtually back to
normal, at the end of the first week of November I’m starting to think that it will
likely be a normal to slightly colder winter ahead for western Europe.
US National Ice
Center.
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
"Before
anything else, preparation is the key to success."
Alexander Graham
Bell
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Can a nose-full of chicken
antibodies ward off coronavirus infections? By Jon Cohen Nov. 10, 2020 ,
5:45 PM
While the world waits for a widely available, safe, and
effective COVID-19 vaccine, scientists are becoming ever more creative in their
search for other ways to protect people from the disease. Now, a clinical trial
has begun in Australia to find out whether nasal drops that contain chicken
antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 can offer temporary protection.
The Stanford University team that’s sponsoring the unusual
phase I study hopes the antibodies can safeguard people at increased risk of
infection for several hours. If the idea pans out—and there are no animal data
yet showing it can work—people could sniff the nasal drops before getting on a
plane, working in a crowded space, entering a college dormitory, or joining a
family get together. “There is a huge opportunity,” says Daria Mochly-Rosen,
the Stanford protein chemist spearheading the project.
Other protective nasal sprays are in development, but the Stanford
approach is unusually low-tech, relying on antibodies harvested from egg yolks
of chickens immunized with spike, the surface protein of SARS-CoV-2. The trial
will assess the safety of those antibodies given intranasally and how long they
persist in the nose. The research team also plans to test whether the
antibody-laden nasal drops protect hamsters deliberately exposed to the
coronavirus.
“The concept, in principle, sort of makes sense,” says Michael Diamond,
an infectious disease clinician at Washington University School of Medicine in
St. Louis who is developing a nasal-administered vaccine for COVID-19. “But
there are a couple of issues to think about.” One is how long the chicken antibodies
will last before they degrade, he says, and the other is whether humans will
develop an immune response against them.
Mochly-Rosen is confident the antibodies will pass those tests, but
says, “The proof is in the pudding”—the placebo-controlled safety trial now
taking place in 48 people in Australia.
The project is part of SPARK, a nonprofit Mochly-Rosen launched in 2006
to help academics conduct proof-of-concept studies that could translate
biomedical research ideas into medicines. Labmade antibodies for human
medicines are expensive to develop and then manufacture, usually relying on
huge numbers of cells grown in bioreactors. To make the chicken antibodies, in
contrast, researchers inject the spike protein into the chests of chickens. The
birds mount a vigorous immune response to it, which includes laying eggs that
contain antibodies against the coronavirus protein. Researchers harvest the
antibodies—a distinctive chicken variety called immunoglobulin Y (IgY)—from the
yolks and formulate the nasal drops. The team thinks a dose of the egg derived
product could cost just $1.
---- Other
researchers are eyeing nasal COVID-19 protections. A team led by scientists
from the Columbia University Medical Center showed in a preprint published
5 November that they could protect ferrets from
SARS-CoV-2 with a nasal spray containing a lipopeptide that binds to spike and
prevents the virus from fusing with cells. Another group engineered about
35,000 mimics of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, the main receptor the virus
latches onto, selected the most potent decoy and
then showed that, given as a nasal spray, it protected hamsters from infection.
More
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/can-nose-full-chicken-antibodies-ward-coronavirus-infections
AstraZeneca's cancer drug disappoints
as potential COVID-19 treatment November 12,
2020 7:58 AM
(Reuters) - AstraZeneca’s blood cancer treatment, Calquence, failed to
improve survival rates and prevent lung failure in patients hospitalised with
symptoms of COVID-19, the drugmaker said on Thursday, citing results from
mid-stage trials.
The company called the outcome “disappointing”. It said its other
efforts to combat the pandemic - a possible vaccine developed with Oxford
University, and an experimental antibody-based COVID-19 treatment - were not
affected.
AstraZeneca is among leading contenders in the race for a working
vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Competitor Pfizer Inc this week published
efficacy data that were seen as a major milestone on the way to a global
immunisation campaign next year.
Calquence, chemically called acalabrutinib, belongs to a class of drugs
called Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors which can suppress autoimmune
diseases - conditions where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the
body itself.
COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms including pneumonia are believed
to suffer from an overreaction of the immune system known as cytokine storm.
AstraZeneca had aimed to test whether Calquence, which suppresses
certain elements of the immune system, can contain this immune response.
Results from the trials will not impact approved indications or pending
approvals for Calquence in patients with blood cancers, the British company
said.
The drug, which is already used to treat certain types of cancers of the
blood, is an approved treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic
leukaemia in the United States and several other countries.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca/astrazenecas-cancer-drug-disappoints-as-potential-covid-19-treatment-idUKKBN27S0VP?il=0
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/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
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 heat into electric power
with efficient organic thermoelectric material Date:
November 11, 2020
Source:
University of Groningen
Summary:
Thermoelectric materials can turn a temperature difference into electricity.
Organic thermoelectric materials could be used to power wearable electronics or
sensors; however, the power output is still very low. An international team has
now produced an n-type organic semiconductor with superior properties that
brings these applications a big step closer.
Thermoelectric materials can turn a temperature difference into
electricity. Organic thermoelectric materials could be used to power wearable
electronics or sensors; however, the power output is still very low. An
international team led by Jan Anton Koster, Professor of Semiconductor Physics
at the University of Groningen, has now produced an n-type organic
semiconductor with superior properties that brings these applications a big
step closer. Their results were published in the journal Nature
Communications on 10 November.
The thermoelectric generator is the only human-made power source outside
our solar system: both Voyager space probes, which were launched in 1977 and
are now in interstellar space, are powered by generators that convert heat (in
this case, provided by a radioactive source) into an electric current. 'The
great thing about such generators is that they are solid-state devices, without
any moving parts,' explains Koster.
Conductivity
However, the inorganic thermoelectric material used in the Voyager's
generators is not suitable for more mundane applications. These inorganic
materials contain toxic or very rare elements. Furthermore, they are usually
rigid and brittle. 'That is why interest in organic thermoelectric materials is
increasing,' says Koster. Yet, these materials have their own problems. The
optimal thermoelectric material is a phonon glass, which has a very low thermal
conductivity (so that it can maintain a temperature difference) and also an
electron crystal with high electrical conductivity (to transport the generated
current). Koster: 'The problem with organic semiconductors is that they usually
have a low electrical conductivity.'
Nevertheless, over a decade of experience in developing organic
photovoltaic materials at the University of Groningen has led the team on a
path to a better organic thermoelectric material. They focused their attention
on an n-type semiconductor, which carries a negative charge. For a
thermoelectric generator, both n-type and p-type (carrying positive charge)
semiconductors are needed, although the efficiency of organic p-type
semiconductors is already quite good.
Buckyballs
The team used fullerenes (buckyballs, made up of sixty carbon atoms)
with a double-triethylene glycol-type side-chain added to them. To increase the
electrical conductivity, an n-dopant was added. 'The fullerenes already have a
low thermal conductivity, but adding the side chains makes it even lower, so
the material is a very good phonon glass,' says Koster. 'Furthermore, these
chains also incorporate the dopant and create a very ordered structure during
annealing.' The latter makes the material an electric crystal, with an
electrical conductivity similar to that of pure fullerenes.
'We have now made the first organic phonon glass electric crystal,'
Koster says. 'But the most exciting part for me is its thermoelectric
properties.' These are expressed by the ZT value. The T refers to the
temperature at which the material operates, while Z incorporates the other
material properties. The new material increases the highest ZT value in its
class from 0.2 to over 0.3, a sizeable improvement.
More
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201111122840.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
Another weekend, and
another week closer to a President Biden. Just don’t tell anyone in the White
House. Have a great weekend everyone.
Good luck is when
opportunity meets preparation, bad luck is when lack of preparation meets
reality.
Anon.
No comments:
Post a Comment