In a New Jersey
suburb seven miles west of Midtown Manhattan, the American Dream is on shaky
ground.
The Dream in question isn’t the
mythological notion that upward social mobility is within reach for all
hardworking Americans. It’s a $5 billion, 3 million-square-foot shopping and
entertainment complex in East Rutherford featuring an indoor ski slope, an
ice-skating rink, and a Nickelodeon-branded amusement park. The complex finally
opened last fall, but it’s now facing huge new challenges.
The development’s complicated
17-year history, marked by ownership changes, false starts, and broken
promises, had already put American Dream in a precarious situation. The Covid-19
Around 100 storefronts in American Dream opened their doors
to customers in October and November, but the complex’s future is not
guaranteed. Its owners, Triple Five Group, missed several mortgage payments
this summer, and it’s not clear who might fill the enormous holes left by the
three fallen department store chains, or which other retail tenants will opt
out of their leases now that the development is missing three of its anchors.
More
https://www.vox.com/recode/21717536/department-store-middle-class-amazon-online-shopping-covid-19
Dutch bank ABN Amro to shed
almost 3,000 jobs in pull back from abroad November 30,
2020 9:49 AM By Reuters Staff
AMSTERDAM
(Reuters) - Dutch bank ABN Amro said on Monday it would cut almost 3,000 jobs
by 2024 as it retreats to the Netherlands and limits its international exposure
to northwest Europe.
ABN, one of the three dominant lenders in the Netherlands, said it would
cut 15% of its current staff of about 19,000 by 2024, as it seeks to bring down
costs by 700 million euros ($838 million) to 4.7 billion euros per year.
Its shares, which have lost almost half their value since the COVID-19
pandemic, fell almost 5% in early trading, after the bank delivered a cautious
outlook for the years to 2024.
Once a banking giant with well over 100,000 employees around the world,
ABN has already cut tens of thousands of jobs since its bail out by the Dutch
state in 2008 as it refocuses mainly on the Dutch market. The state still has a
56% stake.
In August, it said it would end all trade and commodity financing,
exiting the United States, Asia, Australia and Brazil, except for clearing
operations.
This will cut about 800 jobs, while other cuts would be made “across the
bank”, mainly from 2022 onwards, Chief Financial Officer Clifford Abrahams told
Reuters.
“We will digitise processes, so over time you will need fewer staff, who
will have more demanding roles as basic operations are automated,” he said,
adding that most layoffs would be made through natural attrition.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-abn-amro-outlook/dutch-bank-abn-amro-to-shed-almost-3000-jobs-in-pull-back-from-abroad-idUKKBN28A12U?il=0
Credit Suisse commercial property
fund to liquidate amid big discount November 30,
2020 6:31 AM
ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) - A Credit Suisse Group global property fund
will wind down against the backdrop of low trading volume and a discount of
more than 20% to underlying assets due to market corrections triggered by the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Swiss bank said.
“The fund management company has decided to liquidate the Credit Suisse
Real Estate Fund Global, partly because of the trading discount that has arisen
on the stock market,” it said.
The properties held by the real estate fund are to be transferred to the
Credit Suisse Real Estate Fund International , in the first half of 2021, and
the liquidation proceeds will be paid out to the investors, according to the
bank.
Trading in the fund units on the SIX Swiss Exchange has been suspended
with immediate effect, and the units are being delisted, the statement added.
“The fund’s performance is no longer consistent with the fundamentally
high location and asset quality of the underlying real estate portfolio”, which
consisted of 12 top-end commercial properties in America, Asia-Pacific and
Europe, it said.
The Credit Suisse Real Estate Fund International, which is traded over
the counter and aimed at institutional investors, will acquire the properties,
whose transfer value will be set by valuation experts and confirmed
independently, the bank said. The fund has seen a 13% drop in performance in
the past year, according to Swiss Fund Data.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-credit-suisse-gp-fund/credit-suisse-commercial-property-fund-to-liquidate-amid-big-discount-idUKKBN28A0I8?il=0
Almost one-third of small
businesses in New Jersey have have closed: report By Joseph Choi - 11/29/20 02:38 PM EST
A third of small businesses in New Jersey have closed down in 2020,
according to a report from The Star-Ledger newspaper.
“It’s really bad… And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey,
the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through
the winter.” said Eileen Kean, the state director of the National Federation of
Independent Business.
Harvard-based data project TrackTheRecovery.org estimated that 31
percent of businesses have closed down so far as of Nov. 9. This number is just
above the national average estimated by the website. The New Jersey
Business & Industry Association reported similar numbers, estimating 28
percent of businesses had closed down by October.
The newspaper notes that despite the holiday shopping season, business
leaders are still concerned that the trend could get worse as stimulus talks
stall on Capitol Hill.
New Jersey, like most of the U.S., is currently experiencing a surge of
new cases. Over 329,000 cases and nearly 17,000 deaths have been reported. On
Nov. 21, New Jersey recorded 4,669 cases, the most it has ever reported in a
single day.
More
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/527901-almost-one-third-of-small-businesses-in-new-jersey-have-have-closed
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.
Update: we seem to have started new sunspot cycle 25 this month ,
though it’s unlikely to affect 2020-2021s coming 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 Laptev sea ice virtually back
to normal, at the end of the third week of November I’m starting to think that
it will likely be a normal to slightly warmer winter ahead for western Europe.
The failure of the Kara Sea ice to
return to normal, leads me to bet on a warmer western European winter ahead.
Interestingly, the Hudson’s Bay sea ice is far above normal this season.
Arctic
and Antarctic Sea Ice.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow
just as well.”
Mark Twain.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
'No-swab' coronavirus test from
OptiGene highly sensitive, UK says December 1, 2020 12:08 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - A type of COVID-19 test that can be taken without the
need for a nose or throat swab has been found to be highly effective in
identifying infectious cases, including for people not showing symptoms, the
British government said on Tuesday.
The RT-LAMP tests, made by privately-held British company OptiGene, have
been studied in a pilot programme in the southern English city of Southampton,
where they were used to test some health service staff as well as 55,000 people
connected to the local university.
“We’ve shown through carefully conducted studies that the OptiGene LAMP
test is fast, reliable and easy to use, and dependent on testing format can
work directly with saliva samples as well as with swabs,” said Sue Hill, chief
scientific officer for England in the National Health Service’s Test and Trace
programme.
LAMP is short for loop-mediated isothermal amplification, the technology
used to process the tests. The LAMP tests can produce results more rapidly than
the commonly used gold standard PCR tests. In the Southampton pilot programme,
the tests were used in four different configurations, involving swabs as well
as saliva.
The health ministry said the LAMP tests were found to have a sensitivity
of 79% and specificity of 100%, meaning they were effective in identifying the
people who were infectious and most likely to transmit the disease.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-optigene/no-swab-coronavirus-test-from-optigene-highly-sensitive-uk-says-idUKKBN28B3AA
One person in the room with you
has COVID-19. Here’s how long it takes to get infected MIT researchers have built a
simple tool to give clear guidelines on indoor safety in the midst of a
pandemic. 11-30-20 7:00 am
Keep six feet of distance. Issued by the CDC and adopted by many businesses, it’s the guideline that
most of us have lived by during COVID-19.
But as the climate has turned cold and some of us have
moved indoors, John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, calls such
a rule of thumb “dangerous” and “overly simplistic.” Because when you’re
inside, microscopic droplets are trapped right alongside you in a confined space, and
standing six feet away from someone doesn’t stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from
floating in the air of your living room where you can potentially inhale it.
So are any of us safe indoors during the COVID-19 era? Can
we go to a grocery store? Can we meet with a loved one? Bush, alongside his MIT
colleague Martin Z. Bazant, have answered that question with a complex mathematical model , which simulates the fluid
dynamics of virus-loaded respiratory droplets in any space, from a cozy kitchen
to a gigantic concert hall.
And because the equation is far too complicated for most
people to understand, they turned their findings into a free online tool. Go to
this
website , and you can create your own custom scenario to judge COVID-19
risks for yourself.
The tool assumes
one person in a room with you has COVID-19. Then, it hands you an incredible
amount of control to tweak the variables at play. These variables include
details about the building: What’s the square footage? What’s the height of the
ceiling? How about the HVAC system—is it a standard domestic furnace or does it
have a fancy HEPA filter? What’s the
humidity ? Is a window open? The variables also include all sorts
of details about human behavior: How many other people are there with you? Are
they wearing masks? Cotton or surgical? Do they wear masks properly or pull
them down their face a bit? Are they whispering or singing?
At first glance, all of these controls might seem
overwhelming. (And they are!) But the payoff is worth it. Because the tool
gives you a very clear answer of how long how many people can safely be in a
space together.
More
https://www.fastcompany.com/90580290/one-person-in-the-room-with-you-has-covid-19-heres-how-long-it-takes-to-get-infected
COVID SCIENCE-Strong immune
response found in asymptomatic patients; virus crosses throat membrane into
brain by Reuters Monday, 30 November 2020 20:06 GMT
Nov 30 (Reuters) - The following is a roundup of some of the latest
scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and
vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.
Immune system responds strongly in asymptomatic COVID-19
Asymptomatic people infected with COVID-19 are mounting robust immune
responses that differ from responses in those who become ill, according to a
study that appears to contradict previous thinking by health experts.
Researchers studied immune system T cells in 76 symptomatic COVID-19 patients
and 85 infected individuals without symptoms and reported their findings on
Friday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. Some of these cells - CD8+ T cells -
can recognize virus-infected cells and destroy them. They also produce
inflammatory proteins, or cytokines, that help to prevent the virus from making
copies of itself. Others known as CD4 helper T cells help the body produce B
cells, which make antibodies. Everyone in the study had similar frequencies of
T cells that could recognize the virus and destroy infected cells, regardless
of whether they had symptoms. But the T cells of asymptomatic individuals
produced higher levels of cytokines important for fighting the virus, including
interferon-gamma and interleukin-2. "What we still need to understand is
whether those T cells can persist over time and offer long-term immunity,"
said coauthor Antonio Bertoletti of Duke-NUS Medical School,
Singapore.(https://bit.ly/37oBDof)
New coronavirus crosses membranes between throat and brain
The novel coronavirus uses the nose as a gateway into the brain, autopsy
findings suggest. The presence of the virus in the brain and cerebrospinal
fluid has been linked with neurological symptoms, but exactly how the virus
enters the central nervous system has not been clear. During autopsies of 33
patients who died of COVID-19, researchers examined the nasopharynx - the
region where the nasal cavity connects with the back of the throat - which
happens to be in close proximity to the brain. By dissecting cells and
following the path of infection, they saw that the virus invades the brain by
crossing through the mucous membranes that separate it from the nasopharynx.
From there, according to a report published on Monday in Nature Neuroscience, it
may travel along the nerve fibers that connect the nasal cavity to the part of
the brain involved in the sense of smell, which would explain "some of the
well-documented neurological symptoms in COVID-19, including alterations of
smell and taste perception." The researchers also found virus particles in
brain regions with no direct connection to the nose, which suggests there may
be additional routes of viral entry into the brain.
(https://go.nature.com/2Vl41SU)
More
https://news.trust.org/item/20201130191010-ibnfr
World’s Largest Vaccine Maker
Denies Trial Volunteer’s Illness Claims
Muneeza Naqvi 22
hrs ago
(Bloomberg) -- The Serum Institute of India Ltd. denied
allegations that a Covid-19 trial volunteer in India suffered serious side
effects from a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University, and
said it would take legal action over the claims.
Serum, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is
conducting trials of AstraZeneca’s shot locally as part of a manufacturing
agreement. It’s being sued by a volunteer in the southern Indian city of
Chennai, who said he suffered from serious neurological and psychological
symptoms after taking the experimental shot, according to news reports
The volunteer is seeking compensation of 50 million rupees
($676,000). Serum said in a statement on Sunday that the volunteer’s illness
had nothing to do with the vaccine and that it would counter-sue.
The incident adds to the global attention on AstraZeneca’s Covid-19
vaccine, a fast-moving shot that’s one of three western efforts which could be
approved before the end of the year. Development that usually takes years has
been compressed into months due to the urgency of the pandemic, and questions
are growing over whether safety has been compromised in the rush.
The volunteer in India was given the Covishield vaccine on Oct. 1 and
had to spend time in an intensive care unit for the side effects that followed,
said reports.
More
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/worlds-largest-vaccine-maker-denies-trial-volunteers-illness-claims/ar-BB1btNKW
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
The Spectator https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
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.
Deflating graphene balloons act
as sensors for hard-to-detect gases By Nick Lavars November 29, 2020
With
excellent strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity, graphene has a lot
of potential in a lot of different areas, and that may extend to the detection
of odorless, colorless gases. Scientists have fashioned the nanomaterial into
microscopic balloons they say can distinguish between different kinds of these
hard-to-detect noble gases, by measuring how long they take to escape through
tiny perforations in the surface of the balloons.
Graphene
has a lot of attractive properties for material scientists working to develop
everything form next-gen computer
chips , to advanced solar
cells and more sensitive
microphones . But the research team behind this new
breakthrough, from Delft University of Technology and the University of
Duisburg-Essen, looked to leverage two properties in particular.
At just one-atom thick, graphene is incredibly thin, but despite that is
able to withstand large amounts of stress, which in the team’s view makes it
well suited to the job of filtering and detecting gases. While it is not
permeable itself, the team addressed this by making perforations as small as 25
nanometers in bilayer graphene, which was used to create tiny balloons from
which pressurized gases can escape.
This was achieved by first using a laser to heat different gases inside
the ballon, causing them to expand and then filter through the small
perforations. Depending on their mass and molecular velocity, different gases
pour out of the balloon at different speeds. This makes the balloons a tool
well-suited to the detection of noble gases, which is traditionally quite
difficult as they don’t react with other materials.
"Picture a balloon that deflates when you let the air
run out," says TU Delft researcher Irek Rosłoń, "We measure the time
it takes the balloon to deflate. At such a small scale, this happens very
quickly – within around 1/100.000th of a second – and interestingly, the length
of time depends strongly on the type of gas and the size of the pores. For
example helium, a light gas with high molecular velocity, escapes five times faster
than krypton, a heavy and slowly moving gas."
The team hopes to build on this proof-of-concept technology
by using this approach to develop new types of sensors that can be used to
detect noble gases in industrial settings, or for use as low-cost air quality
monitors. Beyond that, they say the work also demonstrates how graphene can
used to study gas dynamics on microscopic scales.
The research was published in the journal Nature
Communications .
https://newatlas.com/materials/deflating-graphene-balloons-gas-sensor/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=c6dd92eede-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_30_09_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-c6dd92eede-90625829
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have
them and not deserve them.”
Mark Twain.
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