The sharp rise in the prices of things from
oil and metals to wheat is expected to push up the cost of many everyday items
from food to petrol and heating.
Russia is the second-biggest exporter of
crude oil, and the world's largest natural gas exporter, which is vital to
heating homes, powering planes and filling cars with fuel.
The UK gets only 6% of its crude oil and 5%
of its gas from Russia, but the EU sources nearly half of its gas from the
country.
If one country reliant on Russian supplies
receives less gas, they have to replace it, impacting the supplies of gas for
other countries - that's why British energy prices and bills are still affected
in a similar way to European ones.
UK
food producers don't import many items from Russia or Ukraine, but prices here
may still rise because of an increase in associated costs, such as tinned cans
and packaging and transport.
Meanwhile, the cost of everyday food
items might rise in places like Turkey and North Africa, which rely on wheat
and corn from Ukraine and Russia.
Both countries, once dubbed
"the breadbasket of Europe", export about a quarter of the world's
wheat and half of its sunflower products, like seeds and oil. Ukraine also
sells a lot of corn globally.
Analysts have warned that war could
impact the production of grains and even double global wheat prices.
More than 40% of Ukraine's wheat and
corn exports went to the Middle East or Africa last year - and disruptions to
supply could affect availability in these areas.
The UK, by contrast, typically
produces more than 90% of the wheat consumed in the country. But farmers here
might find themselves paying more for fertiliser, which is one of Russia's
biggest exports.
More
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60509453
Feature: Russian invasion
disrupts Ukrainian sunflower oil industry 01
Mar 2022 | 15:47 UTC
Russia's
invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has significantly disrupted the Ukrainian
sunflower oil industry and supply chain, with Ukraine the top exporter of
sunflower oil globally. A prolonged conflict also threatens the next growing
season, sources said.
Russia's invasion caused commodity
prices across oil, gas, and agricultural markets to spike as attacks on cities,
ports, and infrastructure sent shockwaves through supply chains. This led
S&P Global Commodity Insights to suspend price assessments of Black Sea
sunflower oil for Feb.24 – 25, as trading had stopped.
"The market is very much
stressed over the current situation – oilseed crush and the industry in Ukraine
has completely stopped, there are shipment delays also," said a source
Feb. 28. "If this continues for 2-3 weeks or longer, it may delay spring
plantings for soybeans and sunflowers and risk the goals for average hectares
for the next campaign."
The invasion poses a threat of
disruption on several fronts to farmers. With Russian troops having already
entered the major seed producing regions of Kharkiv and Luhansk, seeds stored
in those regions will be no longer accessible to export crushers. Additionally,
logistical constraints threaten to hamper farmers in their access to fertilizer
and other inputs, as they approach the crucial planting season.
Sunflower seeds are sown in April
and May ahead of the summer season, and then harvesting typically begins in
September. "There is risk for supply and demand for the next campaign when
there are some tensions and military actions in agricultural areas – many roads
are blocked, commercial companies are not working, farmers cannot do planting
and may reduce average acreage if some areas are occupied," said a market
participant.
The major growing regions for sunflower
seeds in Ukraine are in the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Ukraine, located
in the central and eastern provinces of the country. According to Latifundist
and Ukrainian Department of Agricultural Development data, Ukraine sowed 6.5m
ha in the 2020-21 marketing year (Sep. to Aug.) with sunflower seeds. The main
producing regions are Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia,
Nikolaev, Luhansk, Odessa, and Poltava, which combined account for 62% of the
country's total sown area.
SUNFLOWER SEED TRANSPORTATION
The Russian invasion has also
threatened the railway and road systems in Ukraine used to transport seeds from
production regions to crushing facilities or export terminals.
State-rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia
is prioritizing its capacity for the evacuation of citizens and industrial and
commercial traffic has suffered, with steelmakers and iron ore producers also
reporting disruption to their activities.
Ukrainian sunflower seed crushing
plants started purchasing additional seeds around Feb. 21, but it is unclear
whether any of these purchases were successfully loaded and shipped before
restrictions on rail freight were introduced. Although market sources reported
that crushers were largely covered for February, longer term supplies are now
threatened.
As well as using the seeds for
crushing and oil and meal production, Ukraine also exports sunflower seeds to
major consumers such as Turkey. Ukraine was expected to export 350,000 mt of
seeds this season, making around 10% of global exports, according to Platts
Analytics data.
CRUSHING FACILITIES
Further along the supply chain, the
invasion has prevented Ukraine crushing facilities from operating.
"There's no logistics, no production, farmers have stopped, no origination
and no crush," said a source. "The majority of crushing plants have
completely stopped."
Crushing capacity exceeds sunflower
seed production within Ukraine, meaning crushers are typically competing for
seeds. In 2020 for example, the total oilseed crush capacity in Ukraine was around
23 million mt, with 19 million mt dedicated to sunflower seeds, according to
USDA data.
Due to being orientated around the
export market, most Ukrainian crushing facilities are located close to Black
Sea ports for logistical convenience, often at some considerable distance from
the seed producing areas in the center and east of the country. Ukraine's
sunflower oil industry is geared toward the export market, with 91% of its
production destined overseas, according to USDA data. In comparison with Russia,
the other major producer, Russia consumes almost 35% of its own sunflower oil
production domestically. Overall, the Black Sea accounts for almost 80% of
global sunflower oil exports.
More
https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/market-insights/latest-news/agriculture/030122-feature-russian-invasion-disrupts-ukrainian-sunflower-oil-industry
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Chinese city of Qingdao reports
Omicron outbreak among students March 6, 2022
3:19 AM GMT
BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - The
Chinese port city of Qingdao reported 88 new coronavirus cases for March 5, all
of them of the Omicron variant, fuelling China's highest number of daily
locally transmitted cases so far this year.
China recorded 329 new coronavirus
cases on the mainland on Saturday, 175 of them locally transmitted, the
National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday, compared with 102 local cases
a day earlier.
The Qingdao outbreak was mainly
among middle school students in Laixi county, the Qingdao Municipal Health
Commission said.
Laixi county will implement a second
round of mass testing on March 7, a Qingdao official said at a news conference
on Sunday, adding that there was no major risk of further outbreak.
China's "dynamic
clearance" approach to COVID-19 aims shut off transmission routes as soon
as new cases are detected.
The Qingdao outbreak helped send
China's total local confirmed case count to its highest since Dec. 31, with
other cases reported mainly in Jilin, Guangdong and Hebei provinces, according
to the NHC.
The number of new asymptomatic
cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 209, compared
with 166 a day earlier.
As of March 5, mainland China had
confirmed 110,868 COVID-19 cases and 4,636 fatalities.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-city-qingdao-reports-omicron-outbreak-among-students-2022-03-06/
First Possible Case of Covid-19
Spreading From Deer to Humans Experts say the discovery is not reason for panic, but
underscores the importance of monitoring wildlife for diseases that could
infect humans
March 4, 2022 3:25 p.m.
Scientists in Canada have discovered the first potential
case of deer passing coronavirus to a human, according to the new research that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed. The event
has raised new concerns that wildlife could host Covid-19 strains that could
eventually spill over to humans.
The team also identified new, highly-mutated strains of
Covid-19 in white-tailed deer, highlighting the potential dangers of
wildlife hosting the virus. Like humans, animals can act as reservoirs for a
pathogen as it spreads and mutates—sometimes into a more deadly or contagious
version of itself.
In their study, the Canadian scientists collected samples
from the noses and lymph nodes of hundreds of white-tailed deer hunted in
southwestern Ontario last fall. Their analysis revealed that 17 of the 298 deer
they tested were positive for a “new and highly divergent lineage” of the
coronavirus, per the Guardian ’ s Leyland Cecco.
When researchers compared the “highly divergent” version of
Covid-19 to human cases, they found a person with a similar strain, indicating
the virus jumped from deer to humans. The infected person lived in southwestern
Ontario and had close contact with deer, Rachael Rettner reports for Live Science . The study was released last
week on the preprint server bioRxiv and is awaiting formal review.
The discovery underscores the importance of monitoring
wildlife for diseases that could jump to humans but isn’t yet cause for
panic.
“This particular case, while raising a red flag, doesn’t
seem to be hugely alarming,” says Finlay Maguire, one of the study authors and
an epidemiologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, to Jaela Bernstien
for CBC News .
Before researchers identified the recent case, scientists
weren’t sure humans could get Covid-19 from white-tailed deer. Typically the
virus spreads from humans to deer (and then deer to deer), not the other
way around. Scientists aren’t sure how deer originally contracted the virus
from humans, but suspect it could have been spread through water, food,
other animals, or close contact with people.
The recent Covid-19 lineage identified in the study isn’t
related to the Delta or Omicron variants, per Carolyn Crist for WedMD . Instead, Maguire notes
that the closest genetic relative came from samples taken from humans and mink
in Michigan two years ago.
More
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-possible-case-of-covid-19-spreading-from-deer-to-humans-180979676/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220304-daily-responsive&spMailingID=46495149&spUserID=NjUwNDIzNTUzNDE0S0&spJobID=2200532120&spReportId=MjIwMDUzMjEyMAS2
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada.
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
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/
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.
NGI uses twist to engineer 2D
semiconductors with built-in memory functions Date: March 3, 2022
Source: University of Manchester
Summary: A team of researchers has demonstrated that
slightly twisted 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) display room-temperature
ferroelectricity.
A team of researchers at The
University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute (NGI) and the National
Physical Laboratory (NPL) has demonstrated that slightly twisted 2D transition
metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) display room-temperature ferroelectricity.
This characteristic, combined with
TMDs' outstanding optical properties, can be used to build multi-functional
optoelectronic devices such as transistors and LEDs with built-in memory
functions on nanometre length scale.
Ferroelectrics are materials with
two or more electrically polarisable states that can be reversibly switched
with the application of an external electric field. This material property is
ideal for applications such as non-volatile memory, microwave devices, sensors
and transistors. Until recently, out-of-plane switchable ferroelectricity at
room temperature had been achieved only in films thicker than 3 nanometres.
2D heterostructures
Since the isolation of graphene in
2004, researchers across academia have studied a variety of new 2D materials
with a wide range of exciting properties. These atomically thin 2D crystals can
be stacked on top of one another to create so-called heterostructures --
artificial materials with tailored functions.
More recently, a team of researchers
from NGI, in collaboration with NPL, demonstrated that below a twist angle of 2o ,
atomic lattices physically reconstruct to form regions (or domains) of
perfectly stacked bilayers separated by boundaries of locally accumulated
strain. For two monolayers stacked parallel to each other, a tessellated
pattern of mirror-reflected triangular domains is created. Most importantly,
the two neighbouring domains have an asymmetric crystal symmetry, causing an
asymmetry in their electronic properties.
---- This work clearly demonstrates that the twist degree of freedom can
allow the creation of atomically thin optoelectronics with tailored and
multi-functional properties.
Wide scope for tailored 2D materials
Lead author Astrid Weston (pictured
right) said: "It's very exciting that we can demonstrate that this simple
tool of twisting can engineer new properties in 2D crystals. With the wide
variety of 2D crystals to choose from, it provides us with almost unlimited
scope to create perfectly tailored artificial materials."
Co-author Dr Eli G Castanon added:
"Being able to observe the pattern and behaviour of ferroelectric domains
in structures that have nanometre thickness with KPFM and SEM was very
exciting. The advancement of characterisation techniques together with the
extensive possibilities for the formation of novel heterostructures of 2D
materials paves the way to achieve new capabilities at the nanoscale for many
industries."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220303102757.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
No comments:
Post a Comment