TransAlta completes first of three coal-to-gas conversions; company aims to be off coal entirely by 2022

TransAlta Corp. has completed the first of three planned coal-to-gas plant conversions, a major milestone for the Calgary-based company that says it is on track to be off coal entirely by Jan. 1, 2022. 

“This is the first step toward phasing out coal in Alberta by 2023, well ahead of the 2030 timeline that Alberta had put forward,” 

© Provided by Calgary Herald TransAlta's Sundance generating station is pictured in Parkland County.

The company announced Monday that it has completed the full conversion of Sundance Unit 5, the first of three planned boiler conversions from thermal coal to natural gas at its Sundance and Keephills power generation facilities near Wabamun.


In 2021, TransAlta will complete its second and third coal-to-gas conversions, with Keephills Unit 2 by mid-June followed by Keephills Unit 3 by mid-December. In addition, TransAlta is repowering its Sundance 5 unit into a highly efficient combined-cycle gas-powered facility, which is expected to come online at the end of 2023.

By the end of this year, TransAlta will end operations at its Highvale thermal coal mine west of Edmonton and will be exclusively generating with natural gas.

In total, TransAlta is investing approximately $1 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its Alberta fleet, CEO Dawn Farrell said in an interview. She said the company is on track to reduce its emissions by more than 70 per cent from 2005 levels by the end of 2022.

“The greenhouse gas emissions that you generate on gas is about half of what you generate on coal,” Farrell said. “If we were a country, we would have the No. 1 performance globally on our emissions reduction performance.”

In 2014, 55 per cent of Alberta’s electricity was produced from coal. The Alberta government announced in 2015, under Rachel Notley’s NDP, that it would eliminate emissions from coal power generation by 2030.

The province is now on track to meet that goal much sooner, thanks to accelerated phase-out plans by electricity producers. Edmonton-based Capital Power has said it will transition its two coal-fired units at its Genesee generating station to natural gas and will shift completely off of coal by 2023. ATCO Ltd. announced three years ago that it would convert to gas by the end of 2020.

Farrell said for TransAlta, the ambitious conversion time frame was driven largely by provincial and federal carbon policy that makes coal a liability. She said the company — which was able to finance the project with the help of a $750-million investment from Brookfield Renewable Partners — is now positioned to be a highly competitive provider of low carbon electricity for the market and its customers.

“A lot of investors are looking for companies that have strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals,” Farrell said. “On the environment side, investors see us reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, frankly, very quickly and very deliberately.”

Dawn Farrell, CEO of TransAlta Corp.

Binnu Jeyakumar, an analyst with clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute, called TransAlta’s completion of the Sundance Unit 5 conversion a “big deal.”

“This is the first step toward phasing out coal in Alberta by 2023, well ahead of the 2030 timeline that Alberta had put forward,” she said.

Jeyakumar said the rapid phase-out of coal is the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, and it also makes economic sense for companies.

“Forty-two per cent of coal plants across the world are running at a loss. Projections say that new wind and new solar will be cheaper than most existing coal plants by 2030,” she said.

While other jurisdictions have moved faster than Alberta to phase out coal — Ontario entirely eliminated coal-fired electricity generation in 2014, for example — Jeyakumar said Alberta’s rapid progress deserves praise because its electricity mix was so coal-heavy for so long.

“Coal was generating almost 50 per cent of our power for a very long time. So for a sector that was that dependent on coal to phase it out this quickly, I would say makes us among the front-runners,” Jeyakumar said.

astephenson@postmedia.com

Twitter: @AmandaMsteph

Coastal First Nations ahead of the curve in cultivating seaweed industry

Larry Johnson takes the responsibility of his traditional name — Anii-tsa-chist, or Keeper of the Sea — bestowed to him three decades ago by a much-respected uncle very seriously.

“I’m very proud of the name,” said Johnson, the president of Nuu-chah-nulth (NCN) Seafood, and a fisherman descended from generations of fishermen.

“It is an honour to hold it and to try to live up to that name, and that's what I try to do every day,” he said.

It’s why Johnson is so excited by the prospects of seaweed aquaculture, one of the newest ventures NCN Seafood has undertaken in partnership with Cascadia Seaweed.

The First Nation owned enterprise had already been exploring opportunities around the commercial cultivation of seaweed though research projects with North Island College (NIC) when the newly formed aquaculture company, Cascadia, reached out, Johnson said.

Shared goals of providing economic diversification, employment opportunities and skills training for coastal First Nations communities make for a good partnership, he added. The two companies' operations on the west coast of Vancouver Island are expected to yield approximately 80 tonnes of seaweed this spring.

However, true to his name, Johnson thinks seaweed farming is ideal because it’s rooted in First Nations tradition and commitment to the sustainable use of resources.

“We knew exactly where we belonged and our role within this environment,” he said.

“It was to maintain a balance of nature and resources, so that the resources and Mother Earth would be there for seven generations.”

Cultivating seaweed, a nutritional plant-based food, requires no land, freshwater or fertilizer. It absorbs its nutrients from water alone and provides variety of ecosystem services such as carbon capture and marine habitat regeneration, noted Johnson.

“It ticks off a lot of the boxes,” Johnson said, adding he believes seaweed farming is going to be a growth industry in B.C.

“It’s a sector perfectly suited to First Nations up and down the coast.”

The Klahoose First Nation, based on Cortes Island northeast of Vancouver Island, is another coastal community ahead of the curve when it comes to cultivating seaweed.

Qathen Xwegus Management Corporation (QXMC), the Klahoose economic development arm, is working with Cascadia to cultivate seaweed in conjunction with the nation’s existing shellfish sites, said Paul Muskee, operations manger of Klahoose Shellfish.

“We're so excited about it,” said Muskee, adding kelp has been seeded adjacent to the Klahoose’s geoduck nursery in Squirrel Cove and alongside a mussel operation in Gorge Harbour.

Beyond the fact the seaweed might protect shellfish from increasingly acidic ocean due to warming waters, the fast-growing algae provides income and harvest opportunities while waiting for longer growing shellfish to mature, he said.

Kelp typically has about a six-month winter growing season while geoducks take seven years to grow to maturity.

“Geoducks are a longer-term game, so it would be just amazing to be able to grow kelp overtop of (them),” Muskee said.

If the initial seaweed cultivation projects perform well, the Klahoose hope to apply to the province to add seaweed licences to three other deep-water geoduck tenures, he said.

However the regulatory process is unwieldy and time-consuming, even with an existing shellfish tenure in place, Muskee said.

“It took eight months just to get kelp added as an accepted species,” he said.

Other First Nations applying from scratch for aquaculture tenure as well would likely face a much longer timeline, he added.

“I believe the biggest challenge for this industry is going to be getting enough tenures permitted in the next year,” Muskee said.

“We feel like (the regulatory process) is probably understaffed.”

But if they can get all their kelp licences online, the Klahoose hope to become a centre of regional production with the attendant sustainable jobs, Muskee said.

“We want to produce enough so we could become a hub and, maybe in the future, attract Cascadia to set up a nursery here or a processing facility,” Muskee said.

The small Kwiakah First Nation is taking a curious but cautious approach to the possibilities of seaweed cultivation, said Frank Voelker, Kwiakah band manager and economic development officer.

The Kwiakah Nation’s first priority is exploring kelp cultivation as a means to support its conservation goal of regenerating seaweed forests that have diminished in its traditional waters in the Phillips and Frederick Arm region on B.C.’s isolated central coast, Voelker said.

“The principle of seaweed farming is intriguing,” Voelker said, adding the sustainable and regenerative aspects of the sector are appealing.

But it’s early days in the industry, and the Kwiakah want to ensure cultivating seaweed on a widespread commercial basis won’t have unintended consequences or pose environmental risks typically associated with industrial farming, he added.

“If it really is as benign as it looks like right now, that would be fantastic,” Voelker said.

However, there are also logistical and economic factors that play into cultivating seaweed, he added.

Seaweed farming might not make sense for every coastal First Nation, he said.

Remote coastal First Nations may not be close enough to processing facilities to make the transport of a fragile, perishable product economically viable, he added, noting Kwiakah traditional territories are 70 kilometres away by water from the nearest port of Campbell River.

But it’s worth exploring what processing could be done in a remote community for seaweed products, even if not destined for the more rigorously regulated food market, Voelker said.

“But does it make sense that every individual band creates their own products, and having their own processing facilities?” he asked. “I don't think so.”

Plus, First Nations communities would have to find enough capital to start up and maintain the infrastructure, he said.

“I'm cautiously optimistic that there is a business case for seaweed farming,” Voelker said, adding he’s not suggesting those already involved in the sector have jumped the gun.

The Kwiakah are simply doing more research to answer questions around seaweed cultivation based on their individual circumstances and location, he said.

“We're just exploring whether there are ways to do it that are economically feasible.”

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer

HIP CAPITALI$M

More Psychedelic Companies Are Going Public

THE NASCENT PSYCHEDELIC industry is booming as several companies have gone public and more are expected to follow this route in 2021 to attract more capital from institutional and retail investors.

© (Getty Images) Psylocibin mushrooms growing in magic mushroom breads on an isolated plastic environment being collected by expert hands wearing white latex medical gloves. Fungi hallucinogen drugs production concept

Competition among the dozens of biopharmaceutical companies is fierce. Many are seeking more capital to conduct expensive and lengthy drug trials and develop intellectual property to synthesize the molecules to help treat various mental disorders. The companies that can bring their psychedelic drugs to the market first will emerge from the pack and could likely hit a home run.

"Within the next six to 12 months, we will see an arms race in the psychedelic space as companies try to innovate and get their drugs to trials and to the market," says Jason Spatafora, co-founder of marijuanastocks.com and head trader at truetradinggroup.com. "These psychedelic companies can cut into the multibillion-dollar industry that is completely dominated by pharmaceutical companies."

Atai Life Sciences, a Berlin-based biotech company that is researching both psychedelic and nonpsychedelic compounds, is expected to go public in 2021.

"This will be the most anticipated IPO coming (out) of this space, and I wouldn't be surprised if it performed similarly to Compass or Cybin in the hundreds of millions," he says, referencing two other biotech companies.

The company closed its $125 million Series C financing round in November, including $32 million of its 2020 convertible debt that converted in connection with the Series C. The round was co-led by Apeiron Investment Group, the family office of Atai's founder Christian Angermayer, Peter Thiel and Catalio Capital Management and joined by other existing investors including Future Ventures and Galaxy Investment Partners, as well as new investors including Falcon Edge Capital and Pura Vida Pro.

The proceeds will fund preclinical and clinical development of Atai's existing mental health programs, expand its drug candidate pipeline and advance ATAI's technologies. The funding will also help with phase 2 trials focused on arketamine for treatment-resistant depression and ibogaine for opioid use disorder.

In January, the company acquired a majority stake in Recognify Life Sciences, an entity developing a treatment for cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. Recognify's lead compound has exhibited an effect on three mechanisms that are central to learning and memory.
Going Public to Raise Capital

A handful of psychedelic biotech companies went public in 2020 to access more capital, allowing them to increase their intellectual property that could be later sold to pharmaceutical companies with millions of dollars of cash on hand to conduct expensive phase 3 clinical trials.

Several biopharmaceutical companies listed their companies in Canada since regulators allowed them to go public. In Canada, psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, mescaline and DMT are considered Schedule 3 drugs, unlike in the U.S. The U.S. is also conducting dozens of psychedelic clinical trials.

MindMed (ticker: MMEDF), a New York-based psychedelic medicine biotech company, has raised $183.8 million since May 2019 from Canaccord Genuity, Eight Capital and CIBC Capital Markets to finance its research and development and expand its clinical trial pipeline.

"We are still in the early innings here," said JR Rahn, co-founder and co-CEO of MindMed. "The industry is growing a lot faster and more than anyone anticipated."

MindMed is conducting multiple clinical trials of psychedelic substances. The company began a trial combining MDMA and LSD in January at the University Hospital Basel Liechti Lab in Basel, Switzerland. The combination could increase positive drug effects such as positive mood and empathy and lower the negative emotions and anxiety that are sometimes associated with LSD, the company said.

MindMed began a study evaluating the effects of daytime and evening administration of low doses of LSD on cognitive performance, sleep quality, mood, neuroplasticity markers, emotion and immune system response. The company is also undertaking a commercial phase 2a adult ADHD clinical trial evaluating microdoses of LSD and is in the process of applying to start a phase 2b clinical trial evaluating LSD assisted therapy for anxiety disorders.

The company has high-profile investors, including Bail Capital; Bruce Linton, former CEO of cannabis company Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC); and Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank."

Compass Pathways (CMPS), a U.K.-based startup working on a formulation of psilocybin to help people with treatment-resistant depression, went public in 2020. The company is working on a phase 2b clinical trial of COMP360 psilocybin therapy and reported it had cash of $196.5 million as of Sept. 30, which should fund operations into 2023.

Toronto-based Cybin (CYBN), a psychedelic pharmaceutical therapies company, went public in November 2020 and acquired Boston-based pharmaceutical company Adelia Therapeutics in December for $15.75 million in an all-stock transaction. Cybin could acquire additional companies in 2021, says the company's CEO Doug Drysdale.

The company raised nearly 90 million Canadian dollars from its seed, Series A, Series B and other financing rounds that will be used to fund clinical trials and its mergers and acquisitions strategy, Drysdale says, adding that psychedelic companies need to have a strong science team, intellectual property and balance sheet.

The company has a provisional patent application for an oral film delivery mechanism covering all psychedelic molecules – this mechanism is expected to have a similar bio-efficacy to oral capsules but at a reduced dosage and cost. Cybin also has a patent application for a delivery technology covering various chemically synthesized psychedelic molecules. Drysdale says the company has a total of 10 patent filings and continues to expand its discovery pipeline.

Companies to Watch

Mindset Pharma (MSET) is a Canadian Securities Exchange-listed drug discovery company that focuses on psychedelic-inspired compounds aimed at treating neuropsychiatric disorders and has started to gain the investing public's attention since its recent IPO.

The company has synthesized more than 50 compounds with positive preclinical data, leading it to file multiple patents around its novel chemical structures and processes.

"We believe that Mindset is undervalued based on a comparative analysis of other publicly traded drug discovery psychedelic companies and feel that the recent investment by the Ontario Brain Institute is a vote of confidence in the management team and a further validation of the company's recent progress," says Aaron Raub, senior equity analyst at Ambria Capital. "Investors are still at an early stage of discovering Mindset, and we feel it is an opportune time for growth-focused investors to take a deeper dive."

Vancouver-based Numinus Wellness (NUMI) is the first public company in Canada to receive a license to produce and extract psilocybin from mushrooms. It also has a dealer's license from Health Canada to import, export, possess, test and distribute MDMA, psilocybin, psilocin, DMT and mescaline. The company researches and develops proprietary, standardized extraction methods, which involves testing methods and product formulations for research and development partnerships.

Numinus is an undervalued company since management has made key strategic steps that investors should take note of in 2021 as it continues building out its ecosystem of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies, Raub says.

"Investors responded quite bullishly after the company's recent announcement of a ground-breaking collaboration with the highly respected nonprofit research and educational organization MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies)," he says.

This clinical trial, if approved, would aim to deliver MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Additional treatment options for PTSD are becoming more imperative by the day in a pandemic-stricken society," he says. "Institutional investors are taking note of all the recent progress as evidenced by its $17 million capital raise in December 2020 that provides the company with working capital and ability to look for (growth) acquisitions."

Copyright 2021 U.S. News & World Report

#LEGALIZEDRUGS

Oregon Is First State to Decriminalize All Drugs, Will Offer Treatment Instead of Prison Sentences

Oregon became the first state in the country to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of all drugs.

© Provided by People Andrew Selsky/AP/Shutterstock

On Monday, the state's Ballot Measure 110 went into effect, which proponents believe will help people who are experiencing difficulties with addiction.

People carrying small amounts of drugs — like heroin, LSD, methamphetamine and oxycodone — will now only face a $100 fine or, following a health assessment, addiction counseling, according to the Associated Press. If a health assessment is accepted, the fine will be dropped, USA Today reported.

This is a dramatic shift from being charged with a felony and given a potential prison sentence, as was the policy in the past. Under the new initiative, possessing larger amounts of illegal drugs could result in a misdemeanor charge, according to CNN.

"For me, I was part of that cycle of incarceration; jail, jail, jail and then prison," Janie Gullickson, the executive director of the Mental Health & Addiction Association of Oregon, told NBC affiliate KGW8.

RELATED: House Passes Bill to Federally Decriminalize Marijuana in Historic Vote

"It wasn't jail or prison that changed my life or got me into recovery," she continued. "It was the treatment that was provided for me, which wasn't offered to me until I was in prison. If that was out in the community and that was the standard response, I think we would see a lot more people accessing that treatment, not having to go the criminal justice pathway."

"Today, the first domino of our cruel and inhumane war on drugs has fallen, setting off what we expect to be a cascade of other efforts centering health overcriminalization," said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the AP reported.

RELATED: Cory Booker Jokes Rosario Dawson Was 'More Excited' to Vote for Marijuana Than Senate Reelection

There have been those who have criticized the measure, suggesting Ballot Measure 110 could lead to hard drug use being accepted, the outlet said.

While Oregon is the only state to make such a change to its drug policy as of now, the United States has been making progress when it comes to decriminalizing drugs.

In December, U.S. House of Representatives members voted to pass a measure that would decriminalize marijuana use at the federal level. The vote marked the first time in the country's history that a chamber of Congress has voted on standalone marijuana decriminalization.

The bill passed down party lines, 228-164. Six Democrats opposed the measure, with only five Republicans voting in favor.

CONTRACTING OUT = UNION BUSTING

110 WestJet employees in Manitoba permanently laid off as airline switches to contractor

© Walther Bernal/CBC WestJet kiosks at James Armstrong Richardson airport in Winnipeg, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. Around 110 WestJet employees working in customer service and ground handling services will lose their jobs as the company shifts those jobs to…

An anticipated wave of layoffs from Canadian air carrier WestJet has hit workers in Manitoba as the company starts contracting out all customer service and ground handling duties in the province.

In June, WestJet announced it was laying off 3,333 workers across the country due to the loss of business caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said it would consolidate its call centre in Alberta, and contract out its operations in all but four of its 38 domestic airports, leaving just Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto.

A company called Airport Terminal Services has been contracted to provide services in all other airports in Canada. The layoffs, which are permanent, will take effect in the coming days.

A spokesperson for Unifor, the union representing the roughly 110 laid-off workers in Winnipeg and Brandon, called the move "a slap in the face."

Of the people the union spoke to, the lowest-seniority person had 16 years of experience and was making $23 an hour, with benefits. That same employee was being offered $13 an hour with essentially no benefits to do the same job as a contract worker, said Chris MacDonald, assistant to the national president of Unifor.

"Yes, it's difficult for all airlines in the country right now, but … the crisis will end, COVID will end, and things will pick up again in sometime in the future," said MacDonald.

"And WestJet will have outsourced basically all of their labour to third party companies that rely on minimum-wage workers."

The Calgary-based company had 14,000 staff before pandemic border closures and travel restrictions grounded two-thirds of its fleet, WestJet said in a June announcement.

Operations had been reduced by 90 per cent, year-over-year. Despite instituting a hiring freeze, cutting executive, vice-president and director salaries and pausing more than 75 per cent of its capital projects, CEO Ed Sims said the company would have to make "painful decisions" to ensure its viability.

MacDonald accused the company of using the pandemic as a way to shed itself of its obligations to its direct employees, many of whom had recently unionized.

"The bottom line is that this is the last major airline in the country that was sitting non-union. And in the last number of years, the employees have realized that they need a union," he said.

"What they've done is they've taken it as an opportunity to contract out the work forever. And that's not a COVID problem. That's a decision of the business."

A spokesperson for WestJet said no other layoffs are planned for operations in Manitoba at this time.

Anonymous donor gives £11m to London’s UCL 

to fund study of ancient Mesopotamia

Additional funding will support the teaching and research of the region’s heritage, history and languages

Jamie Prentis
Feb 3, 2021

An Iraqi woman walks on towards the Great Ziggurat temple, a massive Sumerian stepped mudbrick construction dedicated to the moon god Nanna. AFP

An anonymous philanthropist has given more than £11million ($15m) to University College London to support the teaching and research of the heritage, history and languages of ancient Mesopotamia.

The funding will build on the UCL-led Nahrein Network, which seeks to end the systematic exclusion of researching and remembering Middle Eastern history in Iraq and the wider region, and to tackle the impact of major population growth – both within the context of instability, poverty and unemployment among young people.

READ MORE

British sculptor launches collection of Mosul artefacts that replicate those destroyed by ISIS

Iraq’s cultural heritage negatively impacted by sectarian politics

The donation will fund Nahrein’s work for the next decade. UCL’s president and provost Dr Michael Spence said it marked “a seminal moment in the decolonisation of knowledge production in Iraq and other regions in the Global South”.

The Nahrein Network has until now been funded by the UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Global Challenges Research Fund.

UCL’s head of history Prof Eleanor Robson said ancient Mesopotamia had only really been the subject of academic interest since the 19th century, with most studies coming from a Western perspective.


“This outstandingly generous donation will help transcend barriers associated with a fragile, post-conflict state and ensure Iraqis can reclaim their ancient heritage as local history – with all the social, cultural, economic and educational benefits that can bring,” she said.

“Since 2014, the destruction of heritage sites throughout Syria and Iraq has received widespread publicity, with talk of a ‘race against time’ to preserve what remains.

Experts said ancient Mesopotamia had only really been the subject of academic interest since the 19th century. Corbis via Getty Images

“International projects have invested millions in the documentation, digitisation, and conservation of threatened and damaged buildings and archaeological sites across the Middle East. However, only a few of these projects have focused on the interests and impact on the ground for local people in their communities. It is the longer term impact on them that is the priority for the Nahrein Network,” Prof Robson added.

The additional resources are expected to strengthen work between UCL and Iraqi universities.

“This new funding will strengthen the work of Iraqi researchers and heritage experts to address the impact of decades of conflict, war and neglect. It will provide an important resource for Iraqi researchers, universities and civil society,” said Dr Mehiyar Katham, who will soon become the deputy head of the Nahrein Network.

Circa 700 BC, soldiers of the Assyrian army besieging a city, using a battering ram, on a wall-carving, Mesopotamia. Getty Images

Dr Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin of Sulaimani Polytechnic University in Iraq said he planned “to carry out innovative interdisciplinary research and capacity building in digital cultural heritage and digital architecture in Iraq”.

“These cutting-edge and promising research areas are barely heard of, undertaken, or even understood in the country,” he added.


Updated: February 3, 2021 

4-year-old discovers impressive dinosaur footprint on Wales beach

A 4-year-old girl walking on a beach with her family in Wales has discovered the best-preserved dinosaur track from the area.

 

© Provided by Live Science A "grallator" track made by a three-toed Triassic dinosaur was found by a 4-year-old girl on a beach in Wales.

The track is from a beach known for footprints from crocodilians, extinct ancestors of modern crocodiles. The dinosaur that made the print probably stood 30 inches (75 centimeters) tall and 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long. Its 4-inch (10 cm) track looks similar to that of the dinosaur Coelophysis, though that particular species lived in North America, not what is now Europe.

Lily Wilder, a preschooler on a stroll with her father at Bendricks Bay, discovered the track.

Related: Photos: Dinosaur tracks reveal Australia's 'Jurassic Park'

"It was Lily and Richard (her father) who discovered the footprint," Lily's mother Sally Wilder said in a statement. "Lily saw it as they were walking along, and said 'Daddy look.' When Richard came home and showed me the photograph, I thought it looked amazing. Richard thought it was too good to be true. I was put in touch with experts who took it from there."

The print was on a loose rock and has now been removed to National Museum Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru in Welsh) with permission from Natural Resources Wales, the government-sponsored body that regulates conservation and environmental issues.

"This fossilized dinosaur footprint from 220 million years ago is one of the best-preserved examples from anywhere in the U.K. and will really aid palaeontologists to get a better idea about how these early dinosaurs walked," Cindy Howells, the paleontology curator at the museum, said in the statement.

The fossil is so detailed that the claws and pads of the feet are visible. The print is a type known as a grallator, meaning a bipedal theropod dinosaur with three toes created it. The dinosaur lived at the beginning of the Triassic period, when the region was a desert dotted with occasional saline lakes. Dinosaurs had evolved only about 10 million years before this mysterious three-toed creature walked this landscape, so its print is a tantalizing clue into early dinosaur history, according to National Museum Wales.

"During the COVID pandemic, scientists from Amgueddfa Cymru have been highlighting the importance of nature on people's doorstep, and this is a perfect example of this," Howells said. "Obviously, we don't all have dinosaur footprints on our doorstep, but there is a wealth of nature local to you if you take the time to really look close enough."

Originally published on Live Science.

AstraZeneca COVID vaccine's complex EU supply chain

The firm has blamed production woes in the EU for not delivering as many doses of its COVID vaccine as it had promised. These are some of the companies involved in the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the EU.


AstraZeneca was able to iron out production glitches at its UK factories earlier than in Europe

British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca drew a sharp rebuke from the European Union after the company said late last month it would cut EU supplies of its COVID-19 vaccine in the first quarter.

EU leaders lashed out at the company for not honoring its contractual obligations, with some accusing it of diverting vaccines produced in the bloc to other countries. AstraZeneca, which has developed the vaccine in cooperation with the University of Oxford, has denied the charges, blaming the supply cut on production issues.

The spat comes at a time the EU's vaccination drive is faltering and the bloc is taking much flak for trailing the United States and the United Kingdom in getting shots into the arms of its citizens. EU members, including Germany and France, are facing supply shortages, which has forced authorities in some regions to delay or suspend vaccinations. The EU has responded by introducing export controls on coronavirus vaccines to monitor doses leaving its shores.

AstraZeneca has agreed to supply to the EU only around half of the 80 million doses it had committed to deliver during the first quarter.

Watch video01:37 EU, AstraZeneca in bitter vaccine dispute

 

 

Why did AstraZeneca cut vaccine supplies?

The production of AstraZeneca's vaccine broadly involves two steps: one is producing the actual vaccine or drug substance, and the other is putting the vaccine into vials. Those two steps can take up to 60 days each.

AstraZeneca has said while it's facing no issues with the second step, it's struggling to produce high quantities of the vaccine at an EU production plant.

"Essentially, we have cell cultures, big batches, 1,000-liter or 2,000-liter batches. We have cell cultures inside those batches, and we inject them with the virus, the vaccine if you will. Those cells produce the vaccine — it's biotechnology protection," AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told Italian newspaper La Repubblica last week. "Now, some of those batches have a very high yield and others have low yield. Particularly in Europe, we had one site with large capacity that experienced yield issues.

"The yield varies from one to three, by the factor of three. The best site we have produces three times more vaccine out of a batch than the lowest producing site," he added

Soriot also said the company faced similar glitches in other countries, including in the UK, but was able to sort them out because it had more time given that London had signed its contract three months before the EU.

Watch video01:44 Germany's coronavirus vaccine rollout falters

AstraZeneca's European supply chain

AstraZeneca has partnered with several contract manufacturers across the EU to scale up the production of its COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine, or the drug substance, is currently being produced at two facilities in the Netherlands and Belgium. It's the company's Belgian partner, Novasep, which has struggled with low yields.

The vaccine is then filled into vials and packaged in Dessau in eastern Germany by IDT Biologika and by Catalent in Anagni, Italy. Spanish pharmaceutical group Insud Pharma will also undertake vial filling and packaging services for the vaccine in Spain's Castilla-La Mancha region.

Russian pharma company R-Pharm's German unit has also signed up to produce the vaccine at its site in Illertissen in southern Germany. China's Wuxi Biologics could potentially use a former Bayer factory in Wuppertal, Germany, to manufacture the vaccine.

AstraZeneca plans to deliver up to 3 billion doses across the globe by the end of this year. The EU has made a €336 million ($404 million) down payment to secure up to 400 million doses of the vaccine, which was approved by the EU's drugs regulator last week.
How are other vaccine makers faring?

Pfizer and BioNtech are also struggling to stick to their delivery commitments due to production and supply chain problems. But the EU has said that unlike AstraZeneca, the companies are distributing the impact of the disruption fairly among buyers.

Several European governments confirmed last month that Pfizer-BioNtech would temporarily cut shipments of its vaccine due to "modifications" at its Puurs plant in Belgium.

On Monday, the companies promised to deliver up to 75 million more doses to the EU in the second quarter. The companies said they would increase production with a new facility set to open in the German city of Marburg in February. The facility will have the capacity to produce 750 million vaccine doses each year.

Russia's Sputnik V COVID vaccine highly effective, new study shows

The previously contentious vaccine has shown promising results in a phase III trial. Its efficacy also looks to be high for the coronavirus risk group of people of 60 and over.



Preliminary results show the Sputnik V vaccine to be almost 92 % efficient

The Russian vaccine Gam-COVID-Vac, also known as Sputnik V, is 91.6 % effective against symptomatic COVID-19, a phase III trial has shown. The preliminary results of this crucial final round of testing were published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday.

The findings are based on data from nearly 20,000 people who participated in the study in 25 hospitals and clinics in Moscow from September through November 2020.

STUDY: Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective

Participants received an initial shot of either the vaccine or a placebo and then a booster shot 21 days later. Of the 14,964 people in the vaccine group, only 16 had developed symptomatic cases of COVID-19 after receiving the second shot of the vaccine. This compares to 62 infected people in the 4,902-strong placebo group. PCR tests for the coronavirus were conducted at screening, on the day participants received the booster shot and if they reported symptoms of a respiratory infection.

Researchers at Russia's Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, where Sputnik V was developed, say they are happy with the results.

"Our interim analysis of the randomized, controlled, phase III trial of Gam-COVID-Vac in Russia has shown high efficacy, immunogenicity and a good tolerability profile in participants aged 18 years or older," says Gamaleya's Dr. Inna V Dolzhikova, co-lead author of the study published in The Lancet. 

The Sputnik V vaccine is already being used on a large scale in Russia

The researchers found no serious negative consequences of vaccination. Reported side effects included flu-like symptoms and pain at the injection site.

Encouraging result for previously contentious vaccine

Sputnik V was the first coronavirus vaccine to be released worldwide. Russia's move to start using it on a mass scale last year, before all the trials were completed and results analyzed, has been criticized by the international community. Another point of contention: The Gamaleya research center did not just develop the vaccine but was also in charge of authorizing its use in Russia. In the EU or the US, authorization is handled not by the companies who develop the serum, but by separate entities like the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Russia rolls out Sputnik vaccine against COVID-19

The release of the phase III results is likely to increase confidence in the Russian vaccine.

"The development of the Sputnik V vaccine has been criticized for unseemly haste, corner-cutting and an absence of transparency. But the outcome reported here is clear and the scientific principle of vaccination is demonstrated," Professor Ian Jones, University of Reading, and Professor Polly Roy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who were not involved in the study, wrote in a comment about the new findings.

Good results with the elderly as well

The most recent Sputnik V trial included 2,144 participants over 60 years of age, and the vaccine efficacy in this group was 91.8 %. A British coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca had been criticized for not testing a sufficient number of people from this risk group.

Watch video01:37 EU and AstraZeneca in bitter dispute over COVID vaccine

The Russian COVID-19 vaccine includes two adenovirus (a common cold virus) vectors that have been modified to carry the gene for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which makes Sputnik V similar to the AstraZeneca vaccine in the way it works.

The study's authors note that because COVID-19 cases were only detected when participants reported symptoms themselves, the efficacy analysis includes only symptomatic cases of COVID-19. Further research is needed to understand how efficient the vaccine is when it comes to asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and their transmission.

UAE, US and Israeli think tanks advise Biden on Iran policy

Experts from three countries urge new administration to listen 

to regional players on Tehran

President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, January 28, 2021. AP Photo

Think tanks from the UAE, the US and Israel issued a Middle East policy guide for US President Joe Biden on Monday, in the latest sign of growing co-operation after last year’s normalisation pact.

Experts from the Atlantic Council in Washington, the Emirates Policy Centre in Abu Dhabi and the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv released a nine-point plan called, “How President Biden can Tackle the Middle East’s Biggest Problems”.

The three-page document, dealing with problems including Covid-19 and restraining Iran’s nuclear programme, comes after the Abraham Accord that normalised UAE-Israel ties last year and fostered greater engagement between the two countries.

The authors of the report – the Atlantic Council’s Kirsten Fontenrose, Emirates Policy Centre founder and director Ebtesam Al Ketbi and Institute for National Security Studies director Udi Dekel – said it was the first such collaboration.

They wrote about a “new regional landscape” since the Accord was signed at the White House in September and of co-operation between Israeli and Emirati think tanks, which was not previously possible.

“Through joint reports, conferences and online seminars, the partners intend to reinforce regional stability and promote mutually beneficial ties between Israel and the Arab world,” they wrote.

The policy advice would help Mr Biden to “score some early successes and avoid familiar minefields” in a region beset by wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya, and decades-old enmity between the Palestinians and Israelis, they wrote.

On Iran, the analysts advised Mr Biden to “consult closely” with America’s regional allies before re-entering the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major world powers, from which former US president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

Washington should consult with its Gulf allies, Israel and others to address ballistic missiles, cyber warfare and other concerns that were left out of the original deal.

The Biden administration should strengthen co-operation between Israel and Arab states, including by emulating Israeli-UAE partnerships on vaccines against the coronavirus pandemic, the authors wrote.

On Palestinian-Israeli tension, the analysts urged Mr Biden to “create a pathway for diplomatic engagement” between the two sides and revive a peace process that was upended by Mr Trump’s pro-Israel deal making

“The alignment of many Arab, Israeli and American visions represents a new architecture in the Middle East,” the experts wrote.

“It signals a tectonic shift that creates new diplomatic options and geopolitical 

UAE, US and Israeli think tanks advise Biden on Iran policy | The National (thenationalnews.com)