Tag: science

USDA approves first ever vaccine for HONEYBEES – it makes them immune to a deadly bacteria that was only contained by burning the hive

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the world’s first vaccine for honeybees to protect the endangered insects from a deadly disease caused by spore-forming bacteria, Paenibacillus larva.

The disease, known as American Foulbrood, was only contained by burning the colony and hive.

The vaccine is developed with killed whole-cell Paenibacillus larva bacteria that is mixed with food fed to the queen and passed on to her offspring, which will then be immune to the disease. 

The treatment has been approved under a conditional license, which is issued to meet an emergency condition.

And for the case of honeybees, these creatures are a critical component of agriculture – one-third of the global food supply relies on pollination.

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What’s Inside the Budget for the Secretive DARPA?

The Economist has called DARPA the agency “that shaped the modern world,” and listed weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet on the list of innovations for which “DARPA can claim at least partial credit.” These technologies were originally invented for the military aims of the Pentagon. 

DARPA was providing funding and technical support to Moderna’s mRNA vaccine technology since at least 2013. DARPA also had long-time associates and partners at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

A look at their new budget provides a glimpse at what the U.S. Military sees as part of the future of warfare. 

Using machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate information or human behavior seems to be a priority for DARPA judging by the budget. 

A project named AAI aims to further the “facilitation of operator-machine interface, knowledge management and dissemination, and social context-informed AI forecasting.” The project also aims to include a “focus on measuring and aggregating preconscious signals and how these can be used to determine what people believe to be true.” 

Project SemaFor is being earmarked for hundreds of millions of dollars and will use AI “to identify false information, its origin, and its intent [emphasis added]. A project named ASED is developing “counter-social engineering bots.” A little description of this project is given. 

Once thought to be a thing of only movies and television shows, DARPA plans to further its development of a type of “ray gun.” Project Warden is being earmarked millions of dollars to “amplify the range and lethality of high-power microwave systems and weapons.” 

The World Economic Forum idea of Fourth Industrial Revolution technology, which is partly defined as the merging of the digital, technical and biological systems is also highlighted in the DARPA budget. 

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Could a zombie virus frozen in the remains of a woolly mammoth leak from a Russian lab and spark a new pandemic? Scientists aim to extract cellular material containing the viruses that killed Siberian beasts for testing

The majestic creature had lain silently in the permafrost for more than a million years. But all it took was a curious scientist, tinkering with its long-dead body, to unleash a terrible new pandemic on the world.

No, it’s not the plot of a woolly mammoth sequel to Jurassic Park, nor another theory on the origins of Covid-19 — though the result of this scientific investigation could be horribly similar.

It’s the story of how, right now, Russian researchers are unearthing the bodies of long-dead mammals in an attempt to ‘reawaken’ Stone Age viruses.

Such viruses are thought to have remained dormant for millennia in the frozen remains of mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species in northeast Siberia.

Like the virus that caused Covid-19, these prehistoric ‘paleoviruses’ are unfamiliar to the human body and, were they ever to find their way across the species barrier, catastrophe could follow. We would, after all, have no natural defence.

The woolly mammoths that roamed the Siberian steppes — until the last one died some 10,000 years ago — were fearsome creatures. The size of an elephant, they had sharp tusks that could spear a human unwise enough to get near.

For biologists, they seem to hold an enduring fascination. Last year, a project called Colossal was launched, aiming to tweak the genetic code of the mammoth’s closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to create a hybrid animal that could survive in the Arctic Circle.

This latest project — carried out by Russia’s State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector — aims to extract cellular material containing the viruses that killed these frozen beasts, and take it back to the lab for experimentation.

What could possibly go wrong? To conjure up the all-too-real nightmare scenario, you only have to hear the history of Vector.

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Dartmouth College’s $100 Million STEM Program: White Men Need Not Apply?

Earlier this month, Dartmouth College announced a new $100 million STEM program.

According to a press release, the program will help “historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”

But it appears that white male students need not apply. The press release identifies those who will benefit from the initiative as “Black, Latinx, and Native Americans” as well as women.

The College Fix reports:

Several experts on Title IX sex discrimination and Title VI race discrimination law are concerned about the legality of the program, according to comments they made to The College Fix.

The program will be partially funded by a $25 million grant from Penny and James Coulter, a billionaire couple who made money through their private equity company TPG Capital. In addition to the Coulters’ grant, Dartmouth has raised $35 million to fund the program and seeks to raise an additional $40 million, bringing the total cost to $100 million.

The Fix reached out multiple times to Dartmouth’s media team and the Coulters through their company to ask about the specifics of the program and if they had any concerns about granting awards based on race rather than merit but did not receive a response to inquiries sent in the past week.

The initiative will include “an undergraduate scholarship program,” “curricular innovation,” and “enhanced career and graduate school advising,” all with the goal of “advanc[ing] STEM participation and leadership of underrepresented groups,” according to the university’s news release.

The program is a “three-year, cohesive diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan that cuts across both academic and administrative areas of the institution.”

Bion Bartning, the founder and president of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a civil rights legal advocacy group, told The Fix in an email that a scholarship program which excludes individuals based on skin color would not be “lawful.”

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Feds funded study proving Thanos couldn’t snap his fingers while wearing Infinity Gauntlet

The U.S. federal government funded a study that determined the Marvel supervillain “Thanos” would not have been able to snap his fingers in the movie Avengers: Infinity War, a new report from Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., revealed last week.

The study, spearheaded by researchers at Georgia Tech, focused on the speed at which humans can snap their fingers, ultimately reporting a finger snap “produces the highest rotational accelerations observed in humans, even faster than the arm of a professional baseball pitcher.”

For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated with how we can snap our fingers,” Saad Bhamla, one of the researchers involved in the study, said in a press release. “It’s really an extraordinary physics puzzle right at our fingertips that hasn’t been investigated closely.”

Prior to conducting the study, Bhamla and his fellow researchers developed a “framework” to explain “ultrafast motions” in living beings. Seeing Thanos snap his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet in Avengers: Infinity War inspired the researchers to apply their framework to the massively popular cinematic franchise.

Despite deriving inspiration from Thanos, the study focused more broadly on the human finger snap, raising questions about why humans snap their fingers in the first place and whether other primates have the ability to do so.

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Scientists Develop Gelatinous Robots to Crawl Through Human Body to Deliver Medical Payloads or Diagnose Illnesses

Scientists have developed miniature gelatinous robots that can crawl through the human body to deliver medicine or diagnose illnesses.

The “gelbot” is powered by little more than temperature changes, and its innovative design, which resembles an inchworm, is one of the most promising concepts in the field of soft robotics, according to Jill Rosen of John Hopkins University.

“It seems very simplistic, but this is an object moving without batteries, without wiring, without an external power supply of any kind—just on the swelling and shrinking of gel,” said David Gracias, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a senior project leader.

“Our study shows how the manipulation of shape, dimensions, and patterning of gels can tune morphology to embody a kind of intelligence for locomotion.”

The 3D-printed robot, which is made out of gelatin, is intended to replace pills or intravenous injections, which could cause problematic side effects.

The prototype was announced in the journal Science Robotics, on Dec. 14.

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Mysterious shock wave CRACKS Earth’s magnetosphere that protects our planet from dangerous space radiation

A shock wave barreled toward Earth last night that cracked its magnetosphere, the region that shields our planet from harmful radiation.

The origin of the shockwave is unknown, but astronomers believe it came from an ejection of energetic and highly magnetized, superheated gas released from the sun – also known as a coronal mass ejection (CME).

The ejection may have been released from sunspot AR3165, which launched at least eight solar flares into space on December 14 that caused blackouts over the Atlantic Ocean, according to Space Weather.

While scientists are not sounding the alarm just yet, a crack can stay open for hours and let solar winds flow through.

The sunspot was observed crackling on December 14 and then released an M6-class explosion that hit Earth.

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‘Major breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion that will go down in history: Scientists produce more energy than what was used to activate it – unlocking potential for endless clean energy

The US Department of Energy announced an accomplishment in nuclear fusion that will go down in history – scientists have produced more energy in fusion than what was used to activate it.

The feat, called ‘net energy gain,’ has been the holy grail of scientists who have been on a decades-long quest to harness the same energy that powers the sun and stars 

A team of scientists made the breakthrough at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California on December 5, which houses a sports stadium-sized facility equipped with 192 lasers. 

The experiment saw the high-energy laser converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn, heating a capsule of hydrogen to more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and ‘briefly simulated the conditions of a star,’ said Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Director Dr Kim Budil.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the breakthrough a ‘landmark achievement.’ 

Granholm said scientists at Livermore and other national labs do work that will help the US ‘solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.’

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Governments are NOT the “One Source of Truth” – Public Debates challenging Policies and Narratives are essential

The New York Times is a respected broadsheet newspaper. It maintains a staunchly pro-vaccine stance. On Nov 26 2022 it published a catch-up article ‘Happy Birthday, Omicron’ (since the variant is now one year old). The article is written by their well-known science correspondent Carl Zimmer, author of 14 books.

Zimmer interviews numerous researchers working in the field who point out that there has been an evolutionary explosion of Omicron variants. Hundreds are now circulating which according to virologist Dr. Jesse Bloom “is making it more challenging for scientists to plan new vaccines and treatments.”

This was not unexpected. Even before the pandemic it was well known that vaccines which fail to prevent transmission drive variant mutation towards the development of strains resistant to vaccines. See this 2015 paper in Plos Biology for example: ‘Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens’.

The NYT article reports: “In February, Theodora Hatziioannou, a virologist at Rockefeller University in New York, and her colleagues ran an experiment that suggested Omicron was primed for an evolutionary explosion. Dr. Hatziioannou’s team tested Omicron against 40 different antibodies that could still block the variant. They discovered that it was remarkably easy for a few extra mutations to make it resistant to almost all of those antibodies.”

The net result is that even the latest versions of Covid vaccines and treatments are easily evaded by a growing number of variants: “The new mutations are building up quickly, most likely because they are providing the viruses with a big evolutionary edge” the NYT article reported. “The [viral] evolution that’s happening is the fastest rate it has been up to this point,” Sergei Pond, a virologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, said.

The outcome is something you are probably already aware of through personal experience or through that of your friends. Covid vaccines are not working. Researchers are trying to develop new approaches, but I think you can see that the rate of mutation and adaptation of the Covid-19 virus is likely to outstrip these efforts, as is the case for example with other coronaviruses such as the common cold and the flu. Fortunately, Omicron variants are at this stage still relatively mild, but their future trajectory remains uncertain which is concerning.

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