YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Nevada County Names Justice Building After Trump

By Jeffrey Rodack | Friday, 11 February 2022 

Lyon County, Nevada, has officially renamed its justice building the Donald J. Trump Justice Complex.

The complex in Yerington, Nevada, houses the sheriff's office, jail, and Third Judicial District Court, according to the county's website.

The Board of Commissioners had approved a proclamation in August 2021 to rename the facility.

According to The Associated Press the commissioners originally had planned to rename a road in Dayton, Nevada, after the former president. However, they decided against the plan after realizing some residences and businesses would have been forced to change their addresses.

Some suggestions for the street's name were "President Donald Trump Way," "President Trump Way," or "45 Way" until "Pres. Trump Way" was agreed upon.

About 50 people attended the dedication of the building on Saturday.

Figure skater makes history by reaching finals at Winter Olympics

He's the first Mexican skater to reach the finals despite never having trained on professional rinks

 

Donovan Carrillo flew into the final round of the Olympics men's individual figure skating competition on Tuesday. He's the first Mexican to do so. 

LOS JUEGOS OLÍMPICOS TWITTER

Published on Tuesday, February 8, 2022

A Mexican figure skater has made history by reaching the finals at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, becoming the first Mexican skater ever to reach the last round at the international competition of the world’s best athletes.

Donovan Carrillo, 22, will join 23 other skaters in the free skate program on Thursday — Wednesday night in North America — despite having spent his life training in Mexico without an ice rink suitable for high-performance athletes.

Medals in the individual figure skating competition are determined by combining the scores achieved in the short program and the free skate program.


Carrillo finished in 19th place in the short program on Tuesday with a personal record score of 79.69 and thus qualified for the free skate program, also known as the long program. It is something none of his compatriots had ever before achieved.

It has been far from plain sailing for the Guadalajara native, who grew up training on ice rinks in shopping malls. At age 12, he moved with his coach to León, Guanajuato, but was still without a professional rink to practice on

.

Carrillo performed in an outfit provided free by Guadalajara designer Edgar Lozano, who used more than 17,000 crystals to make it. 

LOS JUEGOS OLÍMPICOS TWITTER

His family sought sponsors but were rejected. In the end he was supported by friends and relatives, enabling him to travel to Europe to compete.

“Kisses to my family and to all Mexico, dreams really do come true,” he said after the routine.

“One of my first emotions when I finished the short program is that I didn’t want it to end. It was a very special moment, and I was enjoying to the fullest what I love most in life, which is skating … I’m very motivated to give my best in the long program,” Carrillo added.


The figure skater promoted Mexican culture in his performance: the rock ballad Black Magic Woman by Mexican American Carlos Santana, an artist whose music his father played to him as a child, accompanied his acrobatic routine. In the past, he has performed to the music of national treasure Juan Gabriel.

His eye-catching gold and black costume, composed of more than 17,000 crystals, was also of Mexican origin. It was designed by Édgar Lozano, also from Guadalajara, who crafted costumes for Miss Universe 2020, Andrea Meza.

Only three Mexicans have competed in figure skating at the Olympic Games: Ricardo Olavarrieta in 1988 and 1992, Diana Evans in 1988 and Mayda Navarro in 1992.

Donovan Carrillo’s short program performance, skating to the music of Santana.

With reports from El País and Cultura Colectiva

 

Once confined to classical music, figure skaters now turn to an eclectic mix of genres 


By —Sally Ho, Associated Press

Arts Feb 11, 2022 12:37 PM EST

BEIJING (AP) — First there was the explosive hip-hop beat drop, then a bold rap verse proclaiming, “The greatest of all time!”

It couldn’t have described Nathan Chen any better.

On the barren sheet of ice, matching the fierceness of that energy at the Beijing Olympics, was the typically reserved U.S. figure skater, wrapping up a near-perfect, gold-winning free skate to cap his historic run at the Winter Games.

As he flaunted through the last minute of his Thursday program at Capital Indoor Stadium with such joy and personality, it was clear the 22-year-old American’s diverse musical selections — in this case, a remixed, Elton John-heavy “Rocketman” medley of classic rock, pop, hip-hop and rap — marked a new, edgier dawn for winning performances.

“I’ve historically skated to pretty slower pace, more classical pieces, and so bringing in this faster pace (was) very exciting,” said Chen, a classically trained pianist who’s been spending his free time in Beijing strumming his Stratocaster. “It was like, something that totally just made sense, and it was just so much fun to skate to and practice.”

Traditional figure skating music is often classical or instrumental — Boléro, Swan Lake, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 — or expansive movie scores from films like “Gladiator,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Moulin Rouge.”

But the Beijing Olympics has witnessed the rise of more current, mainstream and offbeat music that first took hold four years ago in Pyeongchang, the first Winter Games in which lyrics were allowed. The eclectic mix of genres seen so far have produced a new tone in the most stylish of performances, which are being heavily rewarded by the judges.

Adam Rippon, a member of the American bronze medal team at the 2018 Olympics, called Chen’s performance a watershed moment for the sport and predicts that his soundtrack will inspire a new and different generation of athletes.

“It’s edgy, it’s fun, it’s young,” said Rippon, who helps to coach figure skater Mariah Bell, one of Chen’s closest friends on the American team. “When that hip-hop beat drops, he’s gotten through all the technical elements and he can just show off his personality and that changes your view of what you think skating is.”

Chen’s not the only skater taking a progressive approach to musical selection.

Elsewhere on the U.S. team, ice dancers Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue’s rhythm program features Janet Jackson’s socially-conscious “Rhythm Nation.” Madison Chock and Evan Bates’ free dance is set to French duo Daft Punk’s electronic beats and is meant to illustrate an avant-garde intergalactic love story.

“It was always music that I remember, and of course, my parents played it in our house and I grew up hearing it on the radio, but I think our love for Janet Jackson came because we fell in love with dancing to this music,” Hubbell said. “It took us by surprise. It wasn’t necessarily a style we thought we would really vibe with.”

Both dance duos won their events in the team competition this past week with career-best scores, helping the Americans to a silver medal that could eventually turn to gold depending on the outcome of a Russian doping case.

“Picking a genre that’s nontraditional – you know, we skated to electronic music at the Olympic Games in ice dance. I don’t think that, in my memory, it’s been done before, and we’re proud to be a team that is willing to take risks,” said Bates, who along with the rest of the dancers will begin individual competition Saturday.

French skater Adam Siao Him Fa and Czech ice dancers Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler also tapped into the trend.

For his short program, Fa used a “Star Wars” medley also infused with hip hop, and for his free skate he sampled Daft Punk’s famous “Harder, Faster, Stronger” refrain made iconic by rapper Kanye West.

The Czech duo’s rhythm dance used Madonna songs that also featured the rappers M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

“We wanted to bring something iconic. Like, when people hear it, everyone will start to dance,” Taschler said. “We love this music. It’s super dance music and we are trying to share this feeling with the audience and judges.”

It will be hard to top Chen’s spectacular display to music by Elton John on Thursday.

It started with an understated, haunting snippet of “Yellow Brick Road” backed by more traditional instrumentals. Then, his 4-minute coronation veered to the classic rock and pop hit “Rocket Man,” then finally turned to an electrifying “Bennie and the Jets” remix by the singer Pink and rapper Logic, who declared “Momma, I made it/True story, I have upgraded.”

For Chen, that meant upgraded all the way to the gold medal.

“This program, no matter what, is always fun for me to skate,” he said, “And I loved it.”

It certainly produced better memories than four years ago in Pyeongchang, when his short program to music from British poet and lyricist Benjamin Clementine fell flat. Not even an incredible free skate two days later to an orchestral piece by Igor Stravinsky could salvage a medal for Chen.

He has come a long way in the past four years, putting in untold hours to perfect his craft. And it came through on the ice in Beijing, where the rap lyrics “I been runnin’ and gunnin’/Been fightin’ for something in due time” were never truer.

“When you watch a sport,” Rippon said after marveling at Chen’s performance, “you want to see a little bit of yourself in there. And when you open it to be different kinds of music … it’s going to make people feel more involved, more included. It makes it a lot more accessible to everybody.”

DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

US commission says ‘hugs not bullets’ policy not enough to combat drug trafficking

But for 'real progress,' the U.S. must also decrease its demand for the drugs
 

A National Guard agent with bags of fentanyl confiscated in Mexico. 

GUARDIA NACIONAL

Published on Friday, February 11, 2022

The federal government’s non-confrontational security strategy that purports to address the root causes of violence through the delivery of social programs is insufficient to combat synthetic drug trafficking, according to a United States government commission.

In a new report, the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking said that Mexico is the principal source of illicit fentanyl and similar substances that are smuggled into the United States.

“In Mexico, cartels manufacture these poisons in clandestine laboratories with ingredients – precursor chemicals – sourced largely from [China],” the report said.

“Because illicit fentanyl is so powerful and such a small amount goes such a long way, traffickers conceal hard-to-detect quantities in packages, in vehicles, and on persons and smuggle the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. It is difficult to interdict given that just a small physical amount of this potent drug is enough to satisfy U.S. demand, making it highly profitable for traffickers and dealers,” it said.

The commission said the Mexican government, “in part out of self-preservation and in part because the trafficking problem transcends current law enforcement capacity,” recently adopted a “hugs, not bullets” approach to managing the transnational criminal groups.

A small volume of fentanyl goes a long way. The smaller quantities make smuggling easier and more profitable.

 COMMISSION ON COMBATING SYNTHETIC OPIOID TRAFFICKING, FINAL REPORT

“However, such approaches have not been able to address trafficking issues, and further efforts will be needed,” the report said.

“… In Mexico, two cartels dominate the drug trade,” the commission said, referring to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel.

“Their financial prowess and extensive use of weapons, bribery, threats, and murders of politicians and members of the public– very few of which are ever solved – significantly impedes the state’s capacity to control them.”

The commission said that President López Obrador, “who began his presidency publicly committed to a policy of ‘hugs, not bullets’ for the cartels despite the continued rise of violence,” must do more in the months and years ahead to more directly address the threat that cartels pose to the health and safety of people in both Mexico and the United States.

As things stand, “the flow of precursors from China to Mexico remains almost unabated,” the report said, referring mainly to shipments of chemicals that arrive by sea at the country’s Pacific coast ports.

The commission – made up of representatives from nine U.S. government bodies, including the Senate, House of Representatives, DEA and Department of State – described the trafficking of synthetic drugs into the United States as not only a public health emergency but also “a national emergency that threatens both the national security and economic well-being of the country.”

It noted that more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12 months leading up to May 2021 – “more than twice the number of U.S. traffic fatalities or gun-violence deaths during that period.”

Some two-thirds of the deaths – “about 170 fatalities each day, primarily among those ages 18 to 45” – involved synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, which can be “up to 50 times more potent than heroin,” the report said.

The commission said that joint U.S. and Mexican efforts – the two countries recently reached a new security agreement that entails greater cooperation to combat drug trafficking – could disrupt the flow of synthetic opioids across U.S. borders, “but real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs.”

“… Supply and demand are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, to reduce illegal supply, the United States must also reduce demand,” the report said.

“… The magnitude of this fast-moving problem and the unique challenges it presents will require a new and different national response across all levels of government and policy domains. Without a major shift in U.S. policy, more American sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends will perish.”

Mexico News Daily

Elon Musk says 36-storey Starship could see 1st launch in March

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Musk provided his first major Starship update in more than

2 years

The Associated Press · Posted: Feb 11, 2022

Starship and the Super Heavy booster is seen stacked for the first time in Boca Chica, Tex. on August 6, 2021. (SpaceX)

SpaceX's Elon Musk said Thursday that the first orbital flight of his towering Starship — the world's most powerful rocket ever built — could come in another month or two.

While he anticipates failures, he's confident Starship will reach orbit by the end of this year.

Musk provided his first major Starship update in more than two years while standing alongside the 119-metre rocket at SpaceX's Texas spaceport. He urged the nighttime crowd, "Let's make this real!"

"This is really some wild stuff here," he said. "In fact, hard to believe it's real."

NASA plans to use the fully reusable Starship to land astronauts on the moon as early as 2025. Musk, meanwhile, hopes to deploy a fleet of Starships to create a city on Mars, hauling equipment and people there.

For now, the initial flights would carry Musk's internet satellites, called Starlinks, into orbit.

"There will probably be a few bumps in the road, but we want to iron those out with satellite missions and test missions" before putting people on board, he said.

SpaceX's Super Heavy first-stage booster has yet to blast off. But the futuristic, bullet-shaped, steel Starship — perched on top and serving as the upper stage — successfully launched and landed on its own last May, following a series of spectacular explosions. The rocketship soared more than 10 kilometres.

SpaceX is awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before proceeding with Starship's next phase: going into orbit. Musk said he expects the go-ahead in March and that the rocket should be ready to fly by then as well. That would put the launch in the next couple of months, he added.

If the FAA demands more information about potential environmental impacts or lawsuits emerge, Musk said Starship launches could move to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But that would delay the first orbital launch by more than half a year, he noted.

The full-size Starships are massive — taller than NASA's past and present moon rockets, with approximately double the liftoff thrust.

SpaceX's Elon Musk provides an update on Starship, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, near Brownsville, Texas. Musk said that the first orbital flight of Starship — the world's most powerful rocket ever built — could come in another month or two. While he anticipates failures, he's confident Starship will reach orbit by the end of this year. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald via The Associated Press)

Besides Florida's Cape Canaveral and the southern tip of Texas near Boca Chica, Starships could ultimately launch from floating ocean platforms anywhere in the world, Musk said. He envisions Starships launching three times a day — "rapid reusability" — with refilling stations in space for the longer destinations like Mars. The first refilling test could happen by the end of next year, he said.

• SpaceX wins $2.9B contract for NASA moon lander

• Rocket launches could be affecting our ozone layer, say experts

Musk estimates a Starship launch could wind up costing less than $10 million — maybe even just a few million dollars with a high flight rate, which would bring down prices. He called it "crazy low" and "ridiculously good" by current space standards.

Starship already has one private customer: a Japanese entrepreneur who has bought a flight around the moon and plans to take a dozen artists with him. Musk hinted there are others interested in buying trips, saying future announcements would be forthcoming.

Until now, SpaceX has relied on its much smaller Falcon rockets to launch satellites, as well as astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA. Its first private flight, purchased by a billionaire, was last September. Another is coming up at the end of March, this one to the space station with three businessmen who are paying $55 million US apiece.

Are mosquito-killing natural pesticides unintentionally harming frogs?

The Conversation
February 10, 2022

Mosquito eggs float on the surface of a pond. The insecticide Bti is used to kill mosquito larvae, but it could also harm frogs. (Shutterstock)

The question of how pesticides affect public health and the environment has generated a lot of attention in Québec. Pesticides are widely used and often end up in our natural environment.

Pesticides are useful for killing weeds (herbicides), fungi (fungicides), insect pests in agriculture and fleas in pets (insecticides). They are also used to reduce the numbers of biting insects in urban and rural environments.

We have recently studied the indirect health effects on frogs of a biopesticide that has been in use for several decades, mainly to reduce the number of bothersome mosquitoes.

Bacterial proteins are naturally occurring insecticides

Bti is one of a number of pesticides used worldwide to reduce the populations of biting insects that breed in wetlands. This biological insecticide is composed of natural toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis.

These toxins, synthesized in the form of crystals, belong to the Cry family of proteins, and target the larvae of biting insects such as mosquitos and blackflies. After the larvae ingests the crystals, they dissolve in the digestive tract and are transformed into toxic proteins that destroy the walls of the intestine, killing the larvae.

In principle, Cry toxins should not affect the intestinal walls of vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish) because the digestive conditions of these species do not favour the transformation of the crystals into destructive proteins. According to Health Canada Bti is not a high risk to other animals and humans.

However, the use of Bti remains controversial.

Toxic effects or no effects of Bti formulations?

Bti is often applied directly to small bodies of water, such as marshes, to specifically target aquatic mosquito and blackfly larvae. It could potentially impact other aquatic animal species, such as frog tadpoles, which are known to be sensitive to pollutants.

Some studies have shown that Bti formulations can be directly toxic to frogs, while others have revealed no effects.

For example, two Argentinian studies reported that a commercial formulation of Bti, called Introban, was toxic to tadpoles of the Creole frog. However, our work showed that a Bti formulation called VectoBac did not cause mortality in wood frog and American toad tadpoles.


Valerie Langlois and her team are studying the effects of some commercial Bti formulations on frogs.
(Valerie Langlois), Author provided

These contrasting results could be attributed to the different Bti formulations used in one country or another, the product’s potency, the species used or the environmental conditions during the experiments. Each commercial Bti product also contains additives that are known only to their manufacturers and whose effects on tadpoles are not known.

Our team has written about these differences in an article published in the scientific journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

Metamorphosis and intestinal microbiota

The results of our study, published recently in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, revealed that VectoBac may affect frog metamorphosis — the transition from tadpole to young frog.

In wood frogs and American toads, two types of VectoBac altered the time it took a tadpole to metamorphose, either delaying metamorphosis by nearly five days or advancing it by one day, depending on the treatment. Studies on frog ecology have established that early metamorphosis reduces a frog’s chance of survival, which could ultimately reduce population sizes.

In addition to metamorphosis, both types of VectoBac we studied altered the composition of the gut bacterial community of exposed young toads. Indeed, with the application rates recommended by the manufacturer, there was an increase in the relative abundance of certain families of gut bacteria. The impact of these changes remains unknown.

A 2017 study by Jason Rohr of the University of Pittsburgh showed that disruption of the microbiota of amphibians decreases resistance to parasites later in life. Our team will focus on determining whether Bti-induced changes in microbiota impact the physiology of frogs in the long-term.
The precautionary principle

Should the precautionary principle, which states that “a substance should be considered potentially harmful to human health and the environment until proven otherwise,” be applied to amphibian habitats?

Our results indicate that the impact of commercial Bti products on amphibian health is variable among the species we studied, but our understanding remains limited. Bti formulations contain ingredients other than just natural toxins and we do not yet know if these have any effects on tadpoles.

As a result, we recommend that the application of Bti products in amphibian-rich ecosystems be targeted and minimized, taking into account sensitive periods during a frog’s life cycle, including reproduction and development of eggs into young frogs.

These precautions should be applied until research is conducted to assess whether the observed changes in metamorphosis and gut microbiota have adverse effects on amphibian populations.

Valérie S. Langlois, Professor/Professeure titulaire, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS);

Juan Manuel Gutierrez-Villagomez, Postdoctoral research fellow, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS);

Madelaine Empey, PhD Student, Biology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa, 

 Vance L Trudeau, Professor, Department of Biology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

QUACK

Luc Montagnier, French Nobel laureate who co-discovered HIV, dies at 89

Agence France-Presse
February 10, 2022

Luc Montagnier died on Tuesday in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris, its mayor told reporters. © Stephane de Sakutin, AFP

French researcher Luc Montagnier, who has died at 89, shared the Nobel medicine prize for his vital early discoveries on AIDS, but was later dismissed by the scientific community for his increasingly outlandish theories, notably on Covid-19.

Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi shared the Nobel in 2008 for their work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in isolating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Their achievement sped the way to HIV tests and antiretroviral drugs that keep the deadly pathogen at bay.

Bitter rivalry

AIDS – acquired immune deficiency syndrome – first came to public notice in 1981, when US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young gay men in California and New York.

Montagnier had a bitter rivalry with US scientist Robert Gallo in his ground-breaking work in identifying HIV at the virology department he created in Paris in 1972.

Both are co-credited with discovering that HIV causes AIDS, and their rival claims led for several years to a legal and even diplomatic dispute between France and the United States.

Montagnier’s work started in January 1983, when tissue samples arrived at the Pasteur Institute from a patient with a disease that mysteriously wrecked the immune system.

He later recalled the “sense of isolation” as the team battled to make this vital connection.

“The results we had were very good but they were not accepted by the rest of the scientific community for at least another year, until Robert Gallo confirmed our results in the US,” he said.

The Nobel jury made no mention of Gallo in its citation.

In 1986 Montagnier shared the Lasker Award – the US equivalent of the Nobel – with Gallo and Myron Essex.

In 2011, to mark 30 years since the appearance of AIDS, Montagnier warned of the spiraling costs of treating the 33 million then stricken with HIV.

“Treatment cuts transmission, that’s clear, but it doesn’t eradicate it, and we can’t treat all the millions of people,” he told AFP.

Controversial ideas

Montagnier was born on August 8, 1932 at Chabris in the Indre region of central France.

After heading Pasteur’s AIDS department from 1991 to 1997, and then teaching at Queens College in New York, Montagnier gradually drifted to the scientific fringes, stirring controversy after controversy.

He repeatedly suggested that autism is caused by infection and set up much-criticized experiments to prove it, claiming antibiotics could cure the condition.

He stunned many of his peers when he talked of the purported ability of water to retain a memory of substances.

And he believed that anyone with a good immune system could fight off HIV with the right diet.

Montagnier supported theories that DNA left an electromagnetic trace in water that could be used to diagnose AIDS and Lyme’s Disease, and championed the therapeutic qualities of fermented papaya for Parkinson’s Disease.

‘Slow scientific shipwreck’

He repeatedly took up positions against vaccines, earning a stinging reprimand in 2017 from 106 members of the Academies of Sciences and Medicines.

The French daily Le Figaro described his journey from leading researcher to crank as a “slow scientific shipwreck”.

During the Covid pandemic he stood out again, stating that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was laboratory-made and that vaccines were responsible for the appearance of variants.

These theories, rejected by virologists and epidemiologists, made him even more into a pariah among his peers, but a hero to French anti-vaxxers.

LIKE ITS ENTHUSIAST'S ITS A TEENAGER

Bitcoin Is 13 Years Old, and Still Looking for Its Creator

By Rob Lenihan
2022/2/11 
© The Street

It's been 13 years since Satoshi Nakamoto asked the world to give his e-cash system bitcoin a try.

On February 11, 2009, someone going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto announced that he had developed an e-cash system called bitcoin and asked the world to "give it a try."

And the world did.

Crypto Proof Instead of Trust

Barack Obama was president back then. Friday the 13th was the number one movie at the box office and Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" was at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

And a social media site called Facebook was rapidly gaining in popularity, while pushing out the likes of MySpace.

Nakamoto said in his announcement that bitcoin was "completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust."

"With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless," Nakamoto said.

Bitcoin took a little while to catch on, but, on May 17, 2010 a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz made the first documented purchase of a good with bitcoin when he bought two Domino's pizzas for 10,000 BTC.

Things have changed a great deal since that time. Bitcoin has worked its way into society's consciousness as prices have soared, plummeted and climbed back up again, with January being a particularly rocky month.

More than 15,000 business worldwide accept bitcoin as payment and several U.S. mayors, including New York's Eric Adams, have gotten their paychecks in bitcoin.

El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. However, at least 9 countries have banned cryptocurrencies.

And now 10,000 BTC is worth about $442 million.

But through it all, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery.
Boom-and-Bust Cycles

There has been no shortage of suspects, with some even suggesting that Tesla (TSLA) - Get Tesla Inc Report CEO Elon Musk is crypto mystery man. Sahil Gupta, a former intern at Musk's SpaceX, named him in a blog post.

The electric vehicle maker has a significant investment in bitcoin, but Musk denied the allegation.

Musk has agreed with the common theory that cryptocurrency expert Nick Szabo, saying in an interview that Szabo "is probably, more than anyone else, responsible for the evolution of those ideas." Szabo has denied being Nakamoto.

What does the future hold for bitcoin?

It's certainly not the only cryptocurrency around. Last year, Bitcoin’s use at merchants that use BitPay dropped to about 65% of processed payments, down from 92% in 2020, Bloomberg reported.

This week JPMorgan analysts put fair value for the world’s biggest digital currency at $38,000, below the recent level of $43,628.

The year 2022 "is likely to be a more challenging and more mean-reverting year for digital assets,” the analysts wrote in a commentary.

“The biggest challenge for bitcoin going forward is its volatility and the boom-and-bust cycles that hinder further institutional adoption.”

But stock research and market forecasts company FSInsight, operated by Fundstrat Global Advisors, predicted bitcoin would touch $200,000 in the second half, despite its turbulent start to 2022

"Bitcoin became increasingly correlated with equities toward the end of the fourth quarter of last year and fell when faced with the prospect of central bank tightening," FSInsight's Head of Digital Asset Strategy Sean Farrell wrote.

WAIT, WHAT?
Artificial fish grown from human cardiac cells swims just like a heart beats

The first fully autonomous biohybrid fish from human stem-cell derived cardiac muscle cells. (Photo credit to Michael Rosnach, Keel Yong Lee, Sung-Jin Park, Kevin Kit Parker)

by Chris Melore

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Scientists from Harvard University have created a fish that’s all heart — literally. Using stem cells, researchers have grown their own artificial fish which can actually swim around their tank by mimicking the beating of a human heart!

A team from Emory University and Harvard collaborated on the development of these autonomous biohybrid fish in order to learn more about creating artificial heart pumps. Their hope is this is the first step in building replacement organs for children (and possibly adults) with heart disease.

“Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child,” says Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in a university release.

“Most of the work in building heart tissue or hearts, including some work we have done, is focused on replicating the anatomical features or replicating the simple beating of the heart in the engineered tissues. But here, we are drawing design inspiration from the biophysics of the heart, which is harder to do,” Parker continues.

“Now, rather than using heart imaging as a blueprint, we are identifying the key biophysical principles that make the heart work, using them as design criteria, and replicating them in a system, a living, swimming fish, where it is much easier to see if we are successful.”

This isn’t the first time Parker’s team has built their own animals out of cardiac muscle cells. In 2012, the lab team created a jellyfish-like biohybrid using rat cells. Four years later, they developed an artificial stingray which could also swim using the same process.

An artificial stingray also from rat heart muscle cells.

 (Credit: Disease Biophysics Group/Harvard SEAS)

A fish that acts just like a human heart

In the new study, the team used human stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes for the first time to create an autonomous biohybrid device. These cells are responsible for generating contractions within a healthy heart — creating your heartbeat.

Unlike their previous artificial animals, the new fish has two layers of heart muscle cells on each side of its fin. Just like the muscles in a human heart, when one side contracts, the other side stretches out. In the mechanical zebrafish, this back-and-forth process actually propels the fish through the water for more than 100 days.

“By leveraging cardiac mechano-electrical signaling between two layers of muscle, we recreated the cycle where each contraction results automatically as a response to the stretching on the opposite side,” explains Keel Yong Lee, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS. “The results highlight the role of feedback mechanisms in muscular pumps such as the heart.”

Along with the layers of muscle cells, the team also created an autonomous pacing node which basically acts like a pacemaker for the artificial fish. It controls the frequency and rhythm of the contractions taking place in the heart muscles. Together, the pacemaker and two layers of cells generate a continuous, spontaneous, and orderly set of movements in the animal’s tail — much like what goes on in an actual heart.

“Because of the two internal pacing mechanisms, our fish can live longer, move faster and swim more efficiently than previous work,” says co-first study author Sung-Jin Park, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS. “This new research provides a model to investigate mechano-electrical signaling as a therapeutic target of heart rhythm management and for understanding pathophysiology in sinoatrial node dysfunctions and cardiac arrhythmia.”

Schematics of autonomously swimming biohybrid fish.
(Photo credit to Michael Rosnach, Keel Yong Lee, Sung-Jin Park, Kevin Kit Parker)

Artificial fish get better with age

Unlike a normal fish aging in the sea, the biohybrid fish actually gets stronger as it grows older. As the cardiomyocyte cells continued to mature, the study found that muscle contraction amplitude, maximum swimming speed, and muscle coordination all improved over the course of a month of swimming.

Later on, the artificial fish actually matched the swimming speed of a real-life zebrafish from the wild. The team is already looking to create even more complex creatures using this method.

“I could build a model heart out of Play-Doh, it doesn’t mean I can build a heart,” Parker says.

“You can grow some random tumor cells in a dish until they curdle into a throbbing lump and call it a cardiac organoid. Neither of those efforts is going to, by design, recapitulate the physics of a system that beats over a billion times during your lifetime while simultaneously rebuilding its cells on the fly. That is the challenge. That is where we go to work.”

The study is published in the journal Science.

Grieg Seafood installs semi-closed containment fish farms in Esperanza Inlet, BC


Esperanza Inlet, BC - Grieg Seafood BC Ltd. is introducing a new semi-closed containment system to all three of its fish farms in Esperanza Inlet, off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

The new CO2L Flow system allows fish farmers to raise and lower farm enclosures, allowing farmed fish to benefit from the natural ecosystem, while protecting wild salmon, Grieg Seafood said in a release.

As ocean-based farmers, Rocky Boschman, Grieg Seafood BC Ltd. managing director, said one of the most commonly raised concerns is the transfer of sea lice between wild and farmed populations.

The semi-closed system has “drastically” reduced the number of sea lice in farmed populations, he said.

Indeed, open-pen fish farms are criticized by some scientists who claim they transfer dangerous amounts of sea lice to wild populations, contributing to the collapse of B.C.’s wild stocks. As wild juvenile salmon migrate past fish farms, many fear they’re especially vulnerable to the parasites that wreak havoc on their immune systems, increasing their risk of disease.

During the periods of wild salmon migration, or when there are harmful algae in the region, Dean Trethewey, Grieg Seafood’s director of saltwater production, regulatory and fish health, said barriers within the closed-containment systems can be lowered to prevent lateral interaction between wild and farmed salmon populations.

This “significantly reduces the transmission of sea lice between the populations,” he said.

Three cycles of fish have been raised in the new system since Grieg launched the first trial in 2019 at its farms off the Sunshine Coast.

“During the trial while the barriers were deployed, we did not have to treat for sea lice within the semi-closed system, while our other farms in the area were treated twice for sea lice during this same period,” said Trethewey.

Fish raised in the trial system also saw an increase of growth by around 40 per cent, a 19 per cent survival increase.

Grieg Seafood BC is part of the Norwegian multinational Grieg Group and operates 22 fish farms within the province. As one of the largest salmon farming companies in B.C., Grieg is aiming to harvest 22,000 metric tonnes of fish in 2022.

Salmon farming companies are required to report lice counts higher than three motile lice per fish during the wild juvenile salmon outmigration, which runs annually from March 1 to June 30, Trethewey said.

“As a company, our goal is to keep lice well below this threshold, and once we start to see counts rise [above] 1.5 motile lice per fish, our treatment planning process is triggered,” he added.

While these semi-closed systems prevent sea lice from travelling into the farms, Grieg Seafood said it doesn’t stop the movement of pathogens.

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation Councillor Terry Dorward said the new system doesn’t go far enough.

“The technology is there to go closed,” said Dorward. “Industry just needs to smarten up and move in that direction. For too long, there has been an increase in pathogens and a decline in wild salmon.”

In recent years, B.C. salmon numbers have hit record lows. Only two wild Chinook salmon returned to the upper Kennedy watershed in 2021, meaning the population has seen a 98 per cent decrease, reported Jessica Hutchinson, Central Westcoast Forest Society executive director and ecologist.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently called for new Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray to continue to work with B.C. and Indigenous communities on a plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming by 2025.

For Dorward, 2025 isn’t soon enough.

“We're [seeing] such decline in wild salmon stocks … we need to act now if we're ever going to have healthy fisheries on the west coast,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of faith in the federal government.”

Numerous studies suggest the global demand for blue foods will nearly double by 2050, which will be primarily met through increased aquaculture.

“As a company, we will continue to look for ways in which we can innovate and continue to improve our operations,” said Boschman, adding the company is looking for solutions that will recover solid waste produced by the farms.

“There is no denying that this new system represents a transition towards what in-ocean farms can one day become,” he said.

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Melissa Renwick, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Ha-Shilth-Sa