Predicting tornadoes on UK cold fronts for the first time

by University of Leeds
 

Tornado damage on 17 November 2016, near Crewgreen, Shropshire Credit: Matthew Clark

Weather forecasters can more accurately predict when a tornado is likely to hit the UK thanks to a new tool devised in a partnership between the University of Leeds and the Met Office.

Around 30 tornadoes occur in the UK each year, 40% of which develop on cold fronts—but a lack of forecasting methods for these conditions means they strike without warning.

Now researchers at Leeds and the Met Office have for the first time created a prediction for how likely tornadoes are to occur on cold fronts, meaning a more accurate assessment of tornado risk can be made before a cold front crosses the UK.

Matthew Clark, a Met Office scientist who is currently studying for a Ph.D. at Leeds's School of Earth and Environment, said: "Tornadoes are a relatively common weather hazard on UK cold fronts, but the Met Office have never before had any way of predicting which cold fronts are likely to produce tornadoes, nor did we understand why tornadoes occurred in some fronts but not others.

"These findings should help to improve the UK forecasts of localized, intense wind damage associated with these kinds of weather system. This should enable organizations and people to take precautions and minimize damage and risk."
  

Damage caused by a tornado which struck on 17 November, 2016, in Ternhill, Shropshire Credit: Matthew Clark

Mr Clark and Douglas Parker, Professor of Meteorology at Leeds' School of Earth and Environment, analyzed tornado reports from the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO), radar imagery and surface analysis charts from 114 weather events over a 35 year period. One such event was the largest tornado outbreak in European history when 104 tornadoes touched down across England and Wales on 23 November, 1981, leaving a trail of damage in their wake.

The researchers identified patterns across the weather events, establishing which cold fronts were likely to produce a single tornado, which could produce several, and which would produce none. The research found that most of these tornadoes form when a region of strong winds approaches the front from the cold side. This creates a bulge in the front which helps to make it sharper, increasing the contrast in wind speed and direction across the front. Where this contrast increases over time, tornadoes are more likely to "spin up" along the front. Occasionally, relatively large outbreaks of tornadoes can occur in this situation. Forecasters can recognize these weather patterns, which alert them to the general risk of a tornado.

Clark and Parker also used their findings to create a predictive tool, which is already being used on an experimental basis by the Met Office to pinpoint regions at increased risk of tornadoes. Using the wind fields ahead and behind the cold front, forecasters can now compute a percentage probability that tornadoes will happen.

The tool is currently being tested in the Met Office, and was put to use on 29 February this year, successfully predicting the risk of tornadoes in southeast England, with a tornado occurring in Kent as the cold front swept through during the morning. Although use of the product is experimental at the moment, it is hoped that in time it will allow for appropriate messaging to be issued to local responders and other organizations such as airports.

Met Office Chief Meteorologist Paul Davies said: "By explaining, for the first time, "how" and "why" tornadoes form in a given weather system, meteorologists are much better prepared to anticipate events in advance, to interpret and challenge the results of numerical weather prediction models, and to communicate their confidence in a given forecast."

New map of the UK pinpoints tornado hotspots for the first time in two decades
More information: Matthew R. Clark et al, Synoptic‐scale and mesoscale controls for tornadogenesis on cold fronts: A generalised measure of tornado risk and identification of synoptic types, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (2020). DOI: 10.1002/qj.3898
Provided by University of Leeds

Chemists develop new material for the separation of carbon dioxide from industrial waste gases

by University of Bayreuth
  

Electron microscopic cross-sectional image of the new hybrid material. It was possible to produce the glass platelets very precisely and, interrupted by spacers, to layer them on top of each other. Credit: Martin Rieß

Chemists at the University of Bayreuth have developed a material that could well make an important contribution to climate protection and sustainable industrial production. With this material, the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be specifically separated from industrial waste gases, natural gas, or biogas, and thereby made available for recycling. The separation process is both energy efficient and cost-effective. In the journal Cell Reports Physical Science the researchers present the structure and function of the material.


The Green Deal presented by the European Commission in 2019 calls for the net emissions of greenhouse gases within the EU to be reduced to zero by 2050. This requires innovative processes that can separate and retain CO2from waste gases and other gas mixtures so that it is not released into the atmosphere. The material developed in Bayreuth has one fundamental advantage over previous separation processes: It is capable of completely removing CO2from gas mixtures without chemically binding CO2.

These gas mixtures can be waste gases from industrial plants, but also natural gas or biogas. In all these cases, CO2accumulates in the cavities of the material solely due to physical interaction. From there, it can be released without great expenditure of energy, to be made available again as a resource for industrial production. Hence, the separation process works, chemically speaking, according to the principle of physical adsorption. Like a spacious storage tank, the new material can be filled with and emptied of carbon dioxide in an energy-efficient way. In Bayreuth laboratories, it was designed in such a way as to only separate out CO2and no other gas from the most varied gas mixtures.

"Our research team has succeeded in designing a material that fulfils two tasks at the same time. On the one hand, the physical interactions with CO2are strong enough to free and retain this greenhouse gas from a gas mixture. On the other hand, however, they are weak enough to allow the release of CO2from the material with only a small amount of energy," says Martin Rieß M.Sc., first author of the new publication and doctoral researcher at the Inorganic Chemistry I research group at the University of Bayreuth.

The new material is an inorganic-organic hybrid. The chemical basis is clay minerals consisting of hundreds of individual glass platelets. These are only one nanometre thick each, and arranged precisely one above the other. Between the individual glass plates there are organic molecules that act as spacers. Their shape and chemical properties have been selected so that the pore spaces created are optimally tailored to accumulate CO2. Only carbon dioxide molecules can penetrate into the pore system of the material and be retained there. In contrast, methane, nitrogen, and other exhaust gas components must remain outside due to the size of their molecules. The researchers have used the so-called molecular sieve effect to increase the material's selectivity for CO2. They are currently working on the development of a membrane system based on clay minerals, designed to allow the continuous, selective, and energy-efficient separation of CO2 from gas mixtures.

The development of a hybrid material tailor-made for the separation and supply of CO2was made possible thanks to a special measuring system set up in the Bayreuth laboratories which allows the precise determination of quantities of adsorbed gases and of the selectivity of the adsorbing material. This has enabled industrial processes to be reproduced realistically. "All criteria relevant to the evaluation of industrial CO2separation processes have been completely fulfilled by our hybrid material. It can be produced cost-effectively, and stands to make an important contribution to reducing industrial carbon dioxide emissions, but also to the processing of biogas and acidic natural gas," says Rieß.

A controllable membrane to pull carbon dioxide out of exhaust streams
More information: Martin Rieß et al. Diammonium-Pillared MOPS with Dynamic CO2 Selectivity, Cell Reports Physical Science (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100210

A controllable membrane to pull carbon dioxide out of exhaust streams

by David L. Chandler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new system developed by chemical engineers at MIT could provide a way of continuously removing carbon dioxide from a stream of waste gases, or even from the air. The key component is an electrochemically assisted membrane whose permeability to gas can be switched on and off at will, using no moving parts and relatively little energy.


The membranes themselves, made of anodized aluminum oxide, have a honeycomb-like structure made up of hexagonal openings that allow gas molecules to flow in and out when in the open state. However, gas passage can be blocked when a thin layer of metal is electrically deposited to cover the pores of the membrane. The work is described in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by Professor T. Alan Hatton, postdoc Yayuan Liu, and four others.

This new "gas gating" mechanism could be applied to the continuous removal of carbon dioxide from a range of industrial exhaust streams and from ambient air, the team says. They have built a proof-of-concept device to show this process in action.

The device uses a redox-active carbon-absorbing material, sandwiched between two switchable gas gating membranes. The sorbent and the gating membranes are in close contact with each other and are immersed in an organic electrolyte to provide a medium for zinc ions to shuttle back and forth. These two gating membranes can be opened or closed electrically by switching the polarity of a voltage between them, causing ions of zinc to shuttle from one side to the other. The ions simultaneously block one side, by forming a metallic film over it, while opening the other, by dissolving its film away.

When the sorbent layer is open to the side where the waste gases are flowing by, the material readily soaks up carbon dioxide until it reaches its capacity. The voltage can then be switched to block off the feed side and open up the other side, where a concentrated stream of nearly pure carbon dioxide is released.

By building a system with alternating sections of membrane that operate in opposite phases, the system would allow for continuous operation in a setting such as an industrial scrubber. At any one time, half of the sections would be absorbing the gas while the other half would be releasing it.

"That means that you have a feed stream coming into the system at one end and the product stream leaving from the other in an ostensibly continuous operation," Hatton says. "This approach avoids many process issues" that would be involved in a traditional multicolumn system, in which adsorption beds alternately need to be shut down, purged, and then regenerated, before being exposed again to the feed gas to begin the next adsorption cycle. In the new system, the purging steps are not required, and the steps all occur cleanly within the unit itself.


The researchers' key innovation was using electroplating as a way to open and close the pores in a material. Along the way the team had tried a variety of other approaches to reversibly close pores in a membrane material, such as using tiny magnetic spheres that could be positioned to block funnel-shaped openings, but these other methods didn't prove to be efficient enough. Metal thin films can be particularly effective as gas barriers, and the ultrathin layer used in the new system requires a minimal amount of the zinc material, which is abundant and inexpensive.

"It makes a very uniform coating layer with a minimum amount of materials," Liu says. One significant advantage of the electroplating method is that once the condition is changed, whether in the open or closed position, it requires no energy input to maintain that state. Energy is only required to switch back again.

Potentially, such a system could make an important contribution toward limiting emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and even direct-air capture of carbon dioxide that has already been emitted.

While the team's initial focus was on the challenge of separating carbon dioxide from a stream of gases, the system could actually be adapted to a wide variety of chemical separation and purification processes, Hatton says.

"We're pretty excited about the gating mechanism. I think we can use it in a variety of applications, in different configurations," he says. "Maybe in microfluidic devices, or maybe we could use it to control the gas composition for a chemical reaction. There are many different possibilities."


Lego-like assembly of zeolitic membranes improves carbon capture
More information: Electrochemically mediated gating membrane with dynamically controllable gas transport, Science Advances (2020). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup … .1126/sciadv.abc1741
Journal information: Science Advances


Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.

What cold lizards in Miami can tell us about climate change resilience

by Washington University in St. Louis
  

Central American brown basilisks (Basiliscus vittatus) are among the members of a lizard community that converged on a lower temperature tolerance after a cold snap in Miami. Credit: Day's Edge Productions

It was raining iguanas on a sunny morning.

Biologist James Stroud's phone started buzzing early on Jan. 22. A friend who was bicycling to work past the white sands and palm tree edges of Key Biscayne, an island town south of Miami, sent Stroud a picture of a 2-foot long lizard splayed out on its back. With its feet in the air, the iguana took up most of the sidewalk.

The previous night was south Florida's coldest in 10 years, at just under 40 degrees Fahrenheit. While most people reached for an extra blanket or a pair of socks, Stroud—a postdoctoral research associate in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis—frantically texted a collaborator:

"Today's the day to drop everything, go catch some lizards."

When temperatures go below a critical limit, sleeping lizards lose their grip and fall out of trees. From previous research, Stroud and his colleagues had learned that different types of lizards in Miami can tolerate different low temperatures, ranging from about 46 to 52 degrees Fahrenheit, before they are stunned by cold. This cold snap provided a unique opportunity to understand how they are affected by extreme climate events.

But when the researchers collected the scaled survivors of that coldest night, they discovered that the lizard community responded in an unexpected way: all of them could tolerate cold temperatures down to about 42 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of their species' previous ability to withstand cold. The findings are reported Oct. 21 in the journal Biology Letters.

"Prior to this, and for a different study, we had measured the lowest temperatures that six lizard species in south Florida could tolerate," Stroud said. "We realized after the 2020 cold event that these data were now extremely valuable—we had the opportunity to re-measure the same lizard populations to observe if their physiological limits had changed; in other words, could these species now tolerate lower temperatures?"


In the days that followed the January cold snap, researchers collected representatives of as many different kinds of lizards as they could find in the local area, rounding up small and large lizards and those that are active during the day and at night. Then the researchers tested their response to cold.

"A major unexpected result of this study was that all species converged on the same new, lower level of thermal tolerance," Stroud said. "While there was great variation in temperature tolerance before the cold event—some, like the large-bodied brown basilisk, were very intolerant of low temperatures, while others like the Puerto Rican crested anole were more robust—we observed that all species could now tolerate, on average, the same lowest temperature.

"Given great variation in body size, ecology and physiology, this was unexpected," he said.
  

On January 21, 2020, the National Weather Service in Miami tweeted: "Falling Iguanas Possible Tonight" Credit: National Weather Service / Miami

Only one of the species in the study is native to the area; the rest have been introduced to Florida over the past century, researchers noted.

The results provide evidence that tropical, cold-blooded creatures—often characterized as unable to withstand rapid changes in climatic conditions—can sometimes endure conditions that exceed their established physiological limits.

"The shifts to tolerate significantly lower temperatures that we observed were so large that we found it unclear whether natural selection was responsible," Stroud said. "And so in our paper we discuss other alternative processes which may also have led to this pattern."

"The results of this study are surprising and unexpected. Who would have thought that tropical lizards from places like Puerto Rico and Central America could withstand temperatures near freezing?" said Jonathan Losos, the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor and professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University.

"What we now need to find out is how this was accomplished. Is this evidence of natural selection, with those lizards that just happened to have a lower cold tolerance surviving and others freezing to death, or was it an example of physiological adjustment—termed 'acclimation'— in which exposure to lower temperatures changes a lizard's physiology so that it is capable of withstanding lower temperatures?"

Regardless of the underlying mechanism, the new study provides a critically important piece of information for understanding the impacts of climate change.

Scientists expect that air temperatures will gradually become warmer under climate change, but also that temperatures will become more chaotic.

Events that spike temperature to extremes—both exceptionally hot and exceptionally cold episodes—will increase in frequency and magnitude. As such, it is important to understand both the effects of gradual, long-term increases in air temperatures as well as the consequences of abrupt, short-term extreme events.

"It is widely thought that tropical and subtropical species are going to be especially vulnerable to changes in temperature—particularly extreme spikes of heat or cold—as tropical areas do not typically have strong seasons," Stroud said. "Unlike temperate species, which are adapted to summer highs and winter lows, tropical species have typically evolved in very thermally stable environments.

"While there is no doubt that climate change represents a major threat to species and ecosystems around the world, and deserves as much research attention as possible, this study provides fascinating insight and a glimpse of hope," he said. "Perhaps tropical and subtropical species can withstand more extreme climatic conditions."


Hummingbird reduces its body temperature during nightly torpor
More information: An extreme cold event leads to community-wide convergence in lower temperature tolerance in a lizard community, Biology Letters (2020). royalsocietypublishing.org/doi … .1098/rsbl.2020.0625

Journal information: Biology Letters

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis

Indo-Americans solidly behind Joe Biden in US election, survey shows

Indian Americans make up less than 1 per cent of registered voters for the November 3 election, but are important if the vote is close

Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden arrives to pay respects to American Indian veterans during a campaign stop at the American Indian Veterans National Memorial at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona,. Reuters

Nearly three-quarters of Indian Americans plan to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in the US election next month, believing the country is headed in the wrong direction under President Donald Trump, according to a survey on Wednesday.

Indian Americans, the second largest immigrant group in the United States, make up less than 1 per cent of registered voters for the November 3 election. But both parties have reached out to the community in case they become important in the event of a close vote.

The Indian community is also in the spotlight after Mr Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, as his running mate. Harris is the first Black woman and Asian American in history to make the presidential ticket for a major party.

The survey found 72 per cent of registered Indian American voters supported Biden for president compared to 22 per cent for Mr Trump. The rest either chose "others" or said they did not intend to vote.

The survey, a collaboration between the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and the University of Pennsylvania, covered 936 Indian Americans.

It was conducted between September 1 and September 20 in partnership with YouGov with an overall margin of error of +/- 3.2 per cent.

The Indian community has traditionally supported the Democratic Party, but strong personal ties between Mr Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have raised expectations of a shift.

In an effort to win support from Indian-American voters, Mr Trump hosted a 50,000-person "Howdy Modi" rally in Texas with Mr Modi last year. Mr Modi returned the favour in February, organising a 110,000-attendee rally for Mr Trump in India.

There has been speculation the Indian community in the US may not favour a potential Biden presidency, fearing he may be tougher on India on issues such as human rights and civil liberties that activists say are increasingly at risk under Mr Modi.

Still, the survey showed little erosion in support for Mr Biden.

"The big takeaway from these numbers is that there is scant evidence in the survey for the widespread defection of Democratic voters towards Trump," said Milan Vaishnav from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Devesh Kapur from Johns Hopkins and Sumitra Badrinathan in their assessment.

Voters who were polled listed the economy and healthcare as their top two concerns in the lead-up to the vote. US-India ties were near the bottom of the list.

Ms Harris's run for vice president has galvanised Indian Americans to turn out to vote, especially the Democrats.

About 49 per cent of respondents indicated that Ms Harris’s nomination made them more enthusiastic about Mr Biden’s candidacy while just 15 per cent said it made them less enthusiastic.

Ms Harris is born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both emigrated to the United States in their youth to study.

Covid: Lebanese spy chief tests positive after visit to White House and CIA

Abbas Ibrahim's planned trip to Paris for meetings with French officials has been postponed while he self-isolates

Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon's General Security agency, received an award on Friday from the Foley Foundation for his efforts to help release hostages. Reuters

Lebanon’s spymaster, Maj Gen Abbas Ibrahim, has tested positive for Covid-19 after his visit to Washington, which ended on Sunday, Lebanese authorities said.

Lebanon’s General Security made the announcement on Monday evening local time.

Mr Ibrahim is in quarantine in Boston and reports being asymptomatic, The National has learnt. His trip to Boston was scheduled for work meetings.

A planned trip to Paris for meetings with French officials has been postponed while he isolates himself.

In Washington, he met CIA director Gina Haspel, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, who had Covid-19 last month, and undersecretary of state David Hale.


Senior US officials who met with Mr Ibrahim are self-isolating, Politico reported. CIA Director Gina Haspel has continued to test negative, according to Bloomberg.



#بيان 1-أجرى المدير العام للأمن العام اللواء عباس إبراهيم فحص covid 19 قبل مغادرته العاصمة الأميركية، وقد جاءت النتيجة إيجابية. #الأمن_العام_اللبناني#تضحية_خدمة— الأمن العام اللبناني (@DGSG_Security) October 19, 2020

The Foley Foundation also hosted a dinner for Gen Ibrahim on Saturday. He was in Washington on a four-day visit to meet officials from the White House, State Department and the CIA.

Gen Ibrahim leads Lebanon’s most powerful security service after the military, and has a reputation as a savvy negotiator who has helped to secure the release of US residents and nationals.

He has also brokered deals with extremists such as ISIS and militant Palestinian factions to end bouts of fighting in Lebanon.

Despite his close relationship with Hezbollah, Gen Ibrahim received a warm welcome from the Trump administration.

READ MORE

Lebanon spymaster holds ‘positive’ US talks on hostages and sharing intelligence

He is looking to young but growing relations with the US for sharing intelligence.

Gen Ibrahim was involved last year in securing the release of US citizen Sam Goodwin from Syria, and of US permanent resident Nizar Zakka from prison in Iran.

Austin Tice, an American journalist kidnapped in Syria in 2012 and believed to be in the custody of Damascus, is a top priority for the Trump administration.

In March, US President Donald Trump sent a letter to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad urging him to release Mr Tice.

Gen Ibrahim is regarded as a key mediator in the Tice case and was known to be in Damascus in May, where he said he was discussing cross-border security and smuggling.


Updated: October 20, 2020 09:49 AM

Expert races against time to save Egypt’s 4,600-year-old Bent Pyramid

Delays have hampered work to prevent one of the best-preserved Egyptian pyramids from crumbling to dust

Peter James has been racing to save Egypt’s 4,600-year-old Bent Pyramid. Courtesy Peter James







PHOTOS 

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/expert-races-against-time-to-save-egypt-s-4-600-year-old-bent-pyramid-1.1096163


On first appearances, few structures could seem more a permanent part of the landscape than the Bent Pyramid that rises 100 metres into the sky from the desert 40 kilometres south of Cairo.

The man-made monument was constructed in 2,600BC during the reign of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Snefuru. Older than the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Bent Pyramid, by virtue of its eccentric shape, is also better preserved than the last surviving wonder of the ancient world.

However, a closer inspection would reveal that the uniquely wonky pyramid is crumbling into the sands that surround the royal necropolis at Dahshur.

Again, if appearances were to be judged, Peter James, a stocky engineer from south Wales, might not be the most likely saviour of the magnificent edifice.

But the managing director of the structural engineering company Cintech, who rattles off mathematical equations and the details of elaborate restoration solutions in quick-fire bursts, is a man on a mission – and fast

.

The Bent Pyramid of Dahshur is even older than the Great Pyramid of Giza - the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World. AFP


“The situation does need something put in and fairly rapidly,” Mr James, 76, told The National. “Not only is it broken up at all the points that you can see, which is all the way around the outside, but it's also broken in some of the sections in the middle.”

In the 10 years that the Newport engineer has been monitoring the Bent Pyramid, which is the only remaining pyramid to retain most of its outer limestone casing, he has seen it deteriorate significantly.

In fifty years’ time, something altogether more drastic could happen, he said. Thermal expansion is slowly turning the Bent Pyramid to dust.

Debunking received archaeological wisdom

In 2014, Structure magazine published Mr James’s findings on the damage to Egypt’s pyramids through thermal expansion.

But archaeologists had previously blamed the damage on compromised foundations or on thieves stealing pieces of the pyramids' outer casings.

The Welsh engineer’s contribution to the thinking on how the pyramids have worn down over time is now widely accepted in Egypt and around the world. “It was then I realised that I've done something that was really notable,” he said. “I really think that it was something that was ground-breaking.”

Mr James says that he feels those early engineers who first planned and constructed the pyramids reaching out to him across the vast expanse of history through the legacy they left in stone. He hopes that the work he has done on their pyramids might be his own shot at immortality. 

 

Peter James has reframed the narrative around pyramid restorations. Courtesy Peter James

The Welsh expert began the process of restoration on the Bent Pyramid roughly two years ago.

Cintech has carried out preliminary surveys, infra-red scans of the edifice and, finally, inserted test anchors to track the movement of the building.
Restoration techniques honed over 35 years

Mr James wants to install dozens of anchors on the inside and outside of the pyramid, but serious delays to the project, not least of which was the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, have stopped work from continuing for the moment.

“The elasticity of the steel will be enough to let the outer wall move but then bring it back at night so it's almost like a very slow moving spring,” he explained.

READ MORE


  

Curse of the pharaohs in the time of Covid: should Egypt be unearthing mummies?

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Egypt reopens its oldest pyramid after 14-year restoration – in pictures

The restoration techniques that Mr James plans to use on the Bent Pyramid have been perfected at Cintech for the past 35 years.

While some of the work that Mr James has presided over is perhaps more prosaic - he has inserted a million wall ties and reinforced about 400 bridges - other aspects of his portfolio are more attention grabbing.

He has worked on palaces and national landmarks around the world, such as Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and The White House, is now in talks about restoration work on Big Ben in London, and wants to take a look at the warping of stones in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

These are just the jobs for which he has not had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Cintech has been engaged on top-secret government and military installations, including The Pentagon and Britain’s secretive medical testing facility at Porton Down.

Recently, Mr James and his team have been using massive water cushions to protect the German bomb squad as they defuse unexploded weapons and IEDs.

Above all things, the engineer considers himself a man with solutions. “We have a reputation for solving problems,” Mr James said. “It's like a car. If you went to a garage and the mechanic said there’s something wrong with your wheel ... well, is it your tyres, your brakes, what is it? You’ve got to ask what it is before you can repair it. And that's what we do,” he said.
Egyptian restorations the pinnacle

Of the many problems that Mr James has tackled, he cites the restoration of buildings in Egypt as the most challenging with the pinnacle of that work the pyramids.

He began restoring the 500-year-old Al Ghuri Mosque in Cairo’s old city following the earthquake in Egypt in 1992. Since then, he has been involved in projects working on 22 mosques and the Temple of Hibis in the Kharga Oasis.

However, in spite of the many historical structures he has laboured on, the structural engineer said he felt that he had “arrived” when he embarked on his first pyramid, Egypt’s oldest, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara.

As with his current work on the Bent Pyramid, the restoration was plagued by impediments and setbacks. Over a period of three years, the stabilisation of the 62-metre pyramid had to be put on hold after the 2011 uprisings in Egypt.

Egypt’s Pyramid of Djoser or Step Pyramid – the country’s oldest – reopened in March 2020 after a 14-year restoration..AFP

The project, which involved using self-filling bags of water – the same kind as those deployed as protection for bomb disposal teams – to prop up the structure, was also treacherous. Tonnes of stones, the Cintec team discovered, were being held up only with the trunks of palm trees that were thousands of years old.

As the engineers drilled their first hole in the pyramid, an ambulance crew was placed on standby outside. “It was extremely dangerous. It really was,” Mr James explained. “Extremely bloody dangerous.”

The Welsh engineer does not claim to be an archaeologist. “Don't, don't ask me what pot goes where and when and all the rest,” he said. “I don't know.”

He does, though, feel a kinship with the original builders and masons who worked on the ancient pyramids. His knowledge of construction has given him special insight into how these intriguing monuments were created

In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1818 poem Ozymandias, the Pharaoh Ramses II calls out from beyond the grave for great men to: “Look upon my works, ye mighty and despair!”

The enduring sonnet by the Romantic poet, who would himself die four years later, was inspired by the discovery among the ruins of Luxor of a broken statue depicting the ancient pharaoh.

Ramses II might have wished that Peter James had come on the scene a little earlier than the 20th century.


Updated: October 19, 2020 10:14 PM

'We are here for revenge': thousands march in Beirut to mark Lebanon protest anniversary

Anger at Lebanese politicians has grown as the country went through a series of crises in the past year

A whirlwind of hope and despair has gripped the country in the year since protests began, with an economic crisis and a devastating August 4 port explosion pushing Lebanon deeper into decay. AFP

Thousands of Lebanese marched through Beirut to mark a year since protests erupted that led to an anti-government movement in the country.

The mood was upbeat, but the crowd was sparse compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in the capital last year, angered by an economic crisis that has only grown worse and pushed more than half of Lebanese into poverty.

Protesters set off in the afternoon from the city centre to the central bank, where they called for the resignation of its deeply unpopular governor Riad Salameh.

At Beirut port, they lit a torch and observed a minute of silence to commemorate the at least 190 people who died in an explosion that ripped through the capital on August 4. People staged similar protests in other parts of the country, although in smaller numbers than in Beirut, according to local media.


Protesters chanted “the people want the fall of the regime” and insults directed at the most influential politicians, including President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.


“Today, we want revenge, not a discussion about accountability,” said protester Roula Seghaier.

"This government is not legitimate and never has been since the general amnesty after the [1975-1990 civil] war. They are warlords that have been ruling here for 30 years," she added.

She blamed the economic crisis for discouraging more people from joining the protest.

“If they need to secure a roof over their head, of course they will retreat from the streets, because they have suffered a lot,” she said. “It’s up to us, who have the privilege of an economic income that comes from elsewhere, who don’t need to do the dance of nepotism within this corrupt sectarian system."

READ MORE

'I went to rock bottom': how Lebanon’s middle class lost everything

'How did we fall apart this fast?'

Don’t despair and unite, MP Chamel Roukoz urges Lebanon

Lebanon has gone through one of its toughest years yet. The financial crisis has caused the Lebanese pound to collapse on the black market and inflation hit 120 per cent last August, with the price of food soaring by 367 per cent in a year. Media reports suggest that many Lebanese are emigrating.

Several countries, including France, have offered to help financially, but only if Lebanon implements reforms to increase transparency and fight corruption. Despite multiple promises, political leaders have failed to follow through. Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned in the wake of the port blast, and diplomat Mustafa Adib, appointed to succeed him on August 31, gave up three weeks later because of political infighting.

On Saturday, the rally in the capital remained largely peaceful until the early evening, when security forces fired tear gas at some protesters gathered in central Beirut. Many of the protesters were young and said they worried about their future.

“Those who have the money to go have left,” said Mark Badrou, 19. The mechanical engineering student said he could not pay tuition fees abroad because of banking restrictions.

“I have been unemployed since I graduated from my master’s degree in chemistry three years ago,” said Aya Huweiji, 24, from the eastern city of Baalbek.

“We don’t have any other choice than to keep protesting.”


Updated: October 17, 2020 11:15 PM

Coronavirus remains infectious in the air, animal experiment suggests

The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, shows ferrets could transmit the virus from more than a metre away
 

Ferrets were used to test the transmission of the coronavirus. Getty

The coronavirus can remain infectious in the air, a new animal research showed.

The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, proved ferrets were capable of transmitting the virus, despite being more than a metre apart.

Researchers from the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam set out to examine the transmission of the virus, also known as Sars-Cov-2, and its close cousin Sars by infecting ferrets and keeping them away from healthy animals.

While the infected ferrets were kept at a distance, researchers ensured the air flow in the transmission chamber was channelled in a way that it reached the healthy ferrets.

“Both viruses caused a robust productive respiratory tract infection resulting in transmission of Sars-Cov-2 to two of four indirect recipient ferrets and Sars-Cov to all four,” the authors said in a report on online science archive BioRxiv.

“These results demonstrate that Sars-Cov and Sars-Cov-2 can remain infectious while travelling through the air.”

Researchers ensured that air flowed in such a way that ferrets were "constantly at the right place at the right moment".

That may have contributed to the "relatively high efficiency of virus transmission via the air", they said.

The ferret transmission model is extensively used to assess the effects of respiratory viruses.

The lungs and airways of the animals resemble humans and they contract viruses in a similar way.

Previous studies proved the coronavirus can be found in minuscule droplets that float in the air long after an infected person coughs, breathes, or sneezes.

But scientists said it was not clear how many particles were needed to infect people.




Stephen Price winces as he receives a nasal swab to test for Covid-19 in the US state of Tennessee 

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The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recently said virus particles in the air can and do infect others under "certain circumstances".

However, the agency said such events typically involved an infected person producing respiratory droplets for longer than 30 minutes in an enclosed space.

Ferrets are part of the mustelidae family, which also includes mink.

The virus has torn through mink farms in the US and Europe, causing the cull of hundreds of thousands of the animals.

This month, the Danish government ordered the cull of more than one million mink in farms across the country after a series of Covid-19 outbreaks.

In May, it was announced a Dutch worker caught the virus from a mink in the first recorded case of its kind.

Subsequent studies provided further evidence of transmission from mink to humans, providing strong evidence of zoonotic transmission.

The virus is believed to have originated in bats.

Bats are one of the biggest reservoirs of viruses and many of these can be transmitted to people.

Research shows the lineage from which the virus came has been circulating among bats for decades and diverged from other bat viruses between 40 and 70 years ago.

Pandemic no excuse to cut climate-change budgets, former Unilever boss Paul Polman says

Brexit, the Trump administration, inequality and global instability left the world ill-equipped to face the pandemic, former multinational chief says


Activists from various environmental groups take part in a protest against climate change in New Delhi, India, September 25. Rajat Gupta / EPA 

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Using the pandemic as an excuse to cut spending to tackle climate change will have devastating consequences, a leading businessman said.

Veteran multinational boss Paul Polman said a failure to rebuild economies with a focus on sustainability could be catastrophic.

“The biggest risk I see right now is many governments are saying 'we have run out of money and have to pull back now',” said Mr Polman, a former chief executive of Unilever, who now works with businesses to tackle climate change.

“It would be a tragedy if we cannot ensure more capital flows into greener directions.

Mother Nature is sending us the invoices. It’s not a battle between nature and humanity, because nature is going to win

Paul Polman

“We absolutely need governments to make that happen at the right scale and speed.”


Mr Polman was addressing an online seminar hosted by Masdar to promote Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January 2021.

He also said that the current political climate could have severe repercussions for the green economy.

“Unfortunately, we are at a very, very low point in global governance,” he said.

“Even issues like Covid-19 cannot be co-ordinated. Lots of money is being wasted.

“Climate change has been politicised to the extent that millions and millions of people are suffering.”

Next month’s presidential election in the US may be a tipping point, he said.

Smoke and steam rise from a coal processing plant in Hejin in central China's Shanxi Province in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic has proved an unlikely push for green transition amid falling emissions from halted air and ground travel. AP

“Progress will be influenced by the outcome of the US elections,” said Mr Polman, a Dutch businessman who ran Unilever for a decade until 2019. He co-founded Imagine, which works with company chief executives to combat climate change.

“That will be an indicator of how quickly governments come together and align their policies across the world to have the right frameworks in place.”

US President Donald Trump was widely criticised when he withdrew his country from the Paris climate accords, which were negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in the election, has pledged to re-join the Paris climate agreement if he is voted in.

Mr Polman said too much was at stake for governments and businesses to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to dealing with an ecological crisis.

“There are millions of people who have been exposed to climate risk and are becoming refugees,” he said.

“There are people drowning because of floods and there are fires in the US and Australia on a scale we have never seen before.



Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg onboard the racing boat Malizia II in the Atlantic Ocean on August 24. EPA

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“Mother Nature is sending us the invoices. It’s not a battle between nature and humanity, because nature is going to win.”

The first Ecological Threat Register, produced by the Institute of Economics and Peace, was released last month.

It said that up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050.

Lessons must be learnt from the financial crisis of 2008 when governments and businesses failed to put the green economy at the top of their growth agenda, Mr Polman said.

“We missed a huge opportunity. A lot of money was spent to keep the banks afloat because there was a feeling that banks were too big to fail and people were too small to matter,” he said.

Middle East among 'world's most vulnerable' for ecological threats

Only 2.5 per cent of the money spent to boost economic recovery was spent in building a greener economy.

“Climate change and income inequality went up further and this was expressed in the polls,” he said.

Mr Polman cited Brexit, Trump's administration, rising inequality and broader global instability as factors that had not left the world as well equipped to tackle the pandemic.

“The cost of acting is significantly lower than not acting. To go back to where we came from is simply not an option,” he said.

“Even before Covid-19 we saw the enormous costs of not being in balance with the planet.

“Climate change and the destruction of biodiversity are increasing costs that businesses have to bear.

“Covid-19 has shown that we cannot have healthy people on an unhealthy planet.

“The reason we have pandemics is because of the encroachment on biodiversity and the mixing of our wildlife with our human life.”

Coral reefs in the Arabian Gulf 'talk' to each other to repair areas under stress

A study by the American University of Sharjah found how corals move larvae to maintain areas in need


Efforts are under way to protect the UAE's coral on the east coast. Volunteer divers are taking fresh coral from Dibba Port and replanting it further out at sea. Reem Mohammed / The National



Coral reefs in the Arabian Gulf talk to each other to help repair areas under stress.

Researchers from the American University of Sharjah discovered a connectivity phenomenon allows corals to transport larvae from areas where it is abundant to regions in need of supply.

That may be enough to maintain areas facing degradation and help them recover.

Coral is made up of thousands of tiny animals that float freely in the ocean during their larval, or immature, stage.

But once they settle down, they anchor themselves to a reef for the rest of their lives.

“We have noticed that there is great potential for ‘self-recruitment’, where the larvae settle on their parental reef, and for ‘inter-regional connectivity’, where larvae move from one region to other, for example, moving from Kuwait to Bahrain and onwards to the UAE,” said Georgenes Cavalcante, a research fellow at the university who was involved in the study.

Any further increase in temperatures puts them at risk

Cavalcante, research fellow at AUS

The mechanism helped to resupply degrading reefs along the UAE coast, from Abu Dhabi to Ras Al Khaimah, he said.

Coral communities exist in all eight nations on the Arabian Gulf. But they are under huge pressure because of climate change.

“Global warming is affecting coral communities throughout the world,” said Mr Cavalcante.

“In the Arabian Gulf, the warming effect is particularly relevant as the corals in the region are already subject to extremely high temperatures.

“Any further increase in temperature, therefore, puts them at immediate risk.”

The team plans to study what happened in other years, since the flow of larvae depends on water circulation patterns

A brain coral off the breakwater near Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi. Corals are vital for the marine ecosystem. Antonie Robertson / The National

“Such a strategy will give us a better representation of the different oceanographic conditions present in the Gulf and improve our knowledge of the locations with more potential to serve as a source [areas that supply larvae] or sink [area of recruitment] region,” said Mr Cavalcante.

The team did not say specifically how the phenomenon works, but a 2018 study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US provided a clue.

Researchers found that corals chose their home based on the sounds made by animals living nearby. The sounds are loud in healthy reefs.

In that study, more larvae chose to settle in healthy sites.

Coral communities around the world are at risk because of bleaching events, which are becoming more frequent.

UAE's corals suffer 'catastrophic' damage in record summer heat

Some 85% of key fish species in Arabian Gulf wiped out, UAE study finds

They occur when the water is too warm, causing coral to expel algae living in their tissues, which give them their colour and provide 90 per cent of their energy.

If the water temperature remains high, coral do not let the algae back in, and the coral dies.

It was revealed this month that the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 1995.

In 2015, a global coral bleaching event lasted for 36 months causing many reefs to die off.

Coral communities in the Gulf, which are used to enduring high heat, were the last to be affected by the event but by 2017, reef bottom temperatures in the region reached record levels and vast areas died off.

In total, 94.3 per cent of corals in the southern Gulf bleached and about 67 per cent of corals died between April and September 2017, according to a study by New York University Abu Dhabi and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi.

“Given the increasing frequency of mass bleaching in the Gulf and the above global rates of regional warming, the capacity for recovery and the prognosis for the future of Gulf reefs are not optimistic," said the study.

Efforts are under way to save and bolster coral reefs in the region, including a project in Fujairah that will plant 1.5 million corals across 300,000 square metres of the emirate's coast.