SPACE/COSMOS

China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Beijing, which has poured huge resources into its space programme to catch up with the United States and Russia, is aiming to put humans on the Moon by 2030

 - Copyright AFP KARIM JAAFAR

Ludovic EHRET and Luna LIN

China is expected to push forward in its quest to build the first lunar base on Friday, launching an in-space experiment to test whether the station’s bricks could be made from the Moon’s own soil.

Brick samples will blast off aboard a cargo rocket heading for China’s Tiangong space station, part of Beijing’s mission to put humans on the Moon by 2030 and build a permanent base there by 2035.

It is a daunting task: any structure has to withstand huge amounts of cosmic radiation, extreme temperature variations and moonquakes, and getting building materials there in the first place is a costly procedure.

Constructing the base out of the Moon itself could be a solution to those problems, scientists from a university in central Wuhan province hope.

They have created a series of prototype bricks made of various compositions of materials found on earth, such as basalt, which mimic the properties of lunar soil.

Slivers of those test bricks will be subjected to a series of stringent tests once they reach the Tiangong space station.

“It’s mainly exposure,” said Zhou Cheng, a professor at Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

“To put it simply, we put (the material) in space and let it sit there… to see whether its durability, its performance will degrade under the extreme environment.”

The temperature on the Moon can vary drastically between 180 and -190 degrees Celsius (356 to -310 degrees Fahrenheit).

Its lack of an atmosphere means it is subjected to large quantities of cosmic radiation as well as micrometeorites, while moonquakes can weaken any structure on its surface.

The exposure experiment will last three years, with samples sent back for testing every year.



– ‘Good chance of success’ –



Zhou’s team developed their prototype bricks after analysing soil brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, the world’s first mission in four decades to collect Moon samples.

The resulting black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks, he said, and interlock together without a binding agent.

The team has also worked on the “Lunar Spider”, a 3D printing robot to build structures in space, some of which are conical in shape.

“In the future, our plan is definitely to use resources on-site, that is, make bricks directly from the lunar soil, and then do various construction scenarios, so we won’t be bringing the materials from Earth,” said Zhou.

It’s “an obvious thing to try” because using materials already on the Moon would be much cheaper, said Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in Britain.

“The experiments have a good chance of success, and the results will pave the way to building moonbases,” he told AFP.

– Lego bricks –

Beijing is far from alone in looking to build the first lunar base.

China’s planned outpost on the Moon, known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint project with Russia.

A dozen countries — including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal — are partners in the initiative, as well as around 40 foreign organisations, according to Chinese state media.

The United States is aiming to put humans back on the Moon in 2026 and subsequently set up a station there, though its Artemis programme has already seen various delays.

As part of the US preparations, researchers at the University of Central Florida are testing potential building bricks of their own, made using 3D printers.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, has carried out studies on how to assemble bricks based on the structure of Lego.

Opinion

The U.S. could soon face a threat ‘more powerful’ than nuclear weapons

Researchers around the globe are tinkering with viruses far deadlier than covid-19.


Monkeypox mutation, a variant of smallpox. (Getty Images/iStock)

By Ashish K. Jha, Matt Pottinger and Matthew McKnight

THE CONVERSATION
November 11, 2024

President Richard M. Nixon’s bold 1969 decision to renounce biological weapons and spearhead a treaty to ban them helped contain the threat of a man-made pandemic for half a century.

But our inheritance from Nixon is now fading. And in this age of synthetic biology, unless we act quickly to deter our adversaries from making and using bioweapons, we could face disaster in the near future.



The nightmare of a biological holocaust is far from fanciful. A recent Post investigation showcased Russia’s reopening and expansion of a military and laboratory complex outside Moscow that was used during the Cold War to weaponize viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and other diseases. In China, senior military officers have been writing for years about the potential benefits of offensive biological warfare. One prominent colonel termed it a “more powerful and more civilized” method of mass killing than nuclear weapons. An authoritative People’s Liberation Army textbook discusses the potential for “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”





At the same time, breakthroughs in gene-editing technology and artificial intelligence have made the manipulation and production of deadly viruses and bacteria easier than ever, for state and non-state actors alike. The 2019 outbreak of covid-19 in Wuhan, China, which might have involved an accidental leak of an artificially enhanced coronavirus, offers a sense of the stakes: Some 27 million people have died as a direct or indirect result of that virus. And researchers around the globe — civilian and military — are tinkering with viruses far deadlier than that one.
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The question is: How do we achieve bioweapons deterrence?



Treaties and conventions alone cannot solve this problem. Nor are nuclear deterrence models quite up to the task. The prospect of mutually assured destruction is unlikely to inhibit death-obsessed terrorists who have a better shot at acquiring bioweapons than nuclear weapons. Dictatorships might be tempted to unleash a bioweapon if they are confident the nations they target would struggle to pinpoint the source of the attack — and if the attackers believe they can do more damage to their enemies than to their own population. They might, for example, covertly vaccinate their people before launching an attack. Or they might succeed in developing pathogens capable of disproportionately affecting specific ethnic groups, as envisioned by Chinese generals.





The Cold War nonetheless offers useful lessons for democracies that have chosen to forgo bioweapons. Foremost is the importance of superior intelligence gathering and analysis. For deterrence to work, Washington and its allies must have a robust, pervasive system for tracking and, where possible, eliminating highly dangerous research around the world. This surveillance system must also harness cutting-edge technologies to quickly detect newly emergent pathogens, gauge their threat level and reliably pinpoint their source — whether natural or engineered.

Our current antiquated warning system depends heavily on foreign governments alerting U.S. health officials after cases of an unusual illness have begun to appear in clinics and hospitals. By then, it is sometimes too late to head off an epidemic, even where governments are competent, conscientious and transparent. Where governments are malign, callous and opaque, the results can be far worse. China, for example, deliberately concealed from other governments and the World Health Organization that covid-19 was highly transmissible, even by asymptomatic patients. Beijing also blocked all serious efforts to investigate the origin of the novel coronavirus.

This is why biological surveillance, detection and attribution must become a core national security function, and not merely a public health activity, of the United States and friendly nations. Congress, working in consultation with the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, should immediately establish and fund a new intelligence discipline: biological intelligence, or BIOINT, to mobilize allied governments and private companies to detect and assess high-risk scientific research and incipient biological threats.

The history of the U.S. nuclear forensics program provides a rough template. Fearing Nazi Germany’s potential to develop an atomic weapon, scientists affiliated with the Manhattan Project arranged in 1943 for the United States to scoop up German air and water samples to test whether that country was operating a nuclear reactor. A Cold War successor program equipped U.S. aircraft to sniff out radioactive particles over the Pacific Ocean, providing Washington with hard evidence that the Soviets had tested their first atomic bomb in 1949.

Nuclear intelligence, or NUCINT (a term that eventually gave way to a broader discipline called “measurement and signature intelligence,” or MASINT), was further refined to forensically discern the origin of nuclear materials used in bombs. The United States and its allies compiled databases of radiochemical and environmental signatures unique to individual uranium mines and processing facilities. The idea was to deter the covert sale of nuclear weapons by demonstrating that Washington could credibly trace the origin of a weapon even after detonation.

Similar experimental projects are underway today in the realm of biology. The United States has funded pilot programs to conduct environmental sampling and genetic testing of air and wastewater from laboratories, ships, military bases, embassies and key transportation hubs such as airports in several countries. (Full disclosure: Matthew McKnight, a writer on this op-ed, works at Ginkgo Bioworks, which has U.S. government contracts to conduct some of this work.) When combined with anonymized data from hospitals and pharmacies, a biological mosaic begins to emerge, providing analysts with a baseline of “normalcy” against which new biothreats can be quickly detected.

Techniques of molecular forensics mean a newly detected pathogen can also be sequenced and analyzed to determine whether it occurred naturally or through the machinations of scientists. As data libraries grow and AI models improve, analysts will become far less likely to be stumped by the origins of a new disease such as covid-19.

The main impediment to expanding and improving nascent U.S. BIOINT efforts isn’t technology but resolve. Congress recently watered down the Biden administration’s latest budget request for pandemic prevention. The “biosurveillance” network prescribed by the Pentagon’s 2023 Biodefense Posture Review also remains underfunded.

To be sure, effective BIOINT won’t by itself deter our adversaries. The United States must also show that it has the will to impose steep costs on those that pursue, much less employ, bioweapons. We must also learn how to respond to pandemics with vastly greater speed and dexterity than during the coronavirus pandemic. We must improve on the success of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that delivered coronavirus vaccines in record time, and replicate that model to mass-produce rapid tests, protective equipment and therapeutics quickly enough to mitigate the death and disruption that could be caused by a biological attack.

Yet these elements of deterrence won’t work unless they are underpinned first by world-class BIOINT. By proactively investing in robust biosurveillance, attribution capabilities and rapid countermeasure development, Washington and its allies can safeguard the promise of the life sciences revolution and ensure that biotechnology remains a force for good, not a new frontier of global catastrophe.

Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, was a White House covid-19 response coordinator in the Biden administration. Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, is chief executive of the geopolitical research firm Garnaut Global. Matthew McKnight is the head of biosecurity at Ginkgo Bioworks and a Belfer Center fellow at Harvard Kennedy School.

Political Zombies: Devouring the Chinese Peop

Sunday 3 November 2024, by Lok Mui Lok

From January to June 2024, more than one million food and beverage-related businesses closed.

• In May, among the 70 large and medium-sized cities of China, the sales prices of new residential properties rose in only two cities, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Prices declined in the remaining 68 cities.

• In early July, a report published by The Beijing News about the tanker trucks transporting both cooking oil and industrial oil triggered public panic about food safety.

• As of mid-July, there had been 20 floods since the start of the year.

• A worker showed his payroll stub on social media: after working six days a week, 11 hours a day: he was paid 3723 yuan (about US$521) a month. Despite his long work hours he is unable to provide his family a decent life.

• In August, a story about a 33-year-old female graduate of a prestigious university who starved to death in a rented apartment sparked public empathy.

These stories and many others reveal a low birth rate, a high youth unemployment rate, an unsustainable social security system, the withdrawal of foreign investment, local fiscal deficits, etc.

These stories and many others reveal a low birth rate, a high youth unemployment rate, an unsustainable social security system, the withdrawal of foreign investment, local fiscal deficits, etc.

The Chinese Communist Party’s Third Plenary Session, which had been significantly delayed, either turned a blind eye to all these crises or simply downplayed them in its documents. This has undoubtedly caused great disappointment to those who held expectations for this conference. Note that after the release of the conference resolution on July 21, the CSI 300 index of China’s stock market fell three days in a row, with a cumulative drop of more than 3%.

The CCP has not only ignored the people’s hardship, but in proposing to expand the sources of local governments’ tax revenues, are intensifying its efforts to extract more from the population. According to some experts, the document produced by the Third Plenary Session may mean that the new taxes include a consumption tax and a “data asset tax” based on the digital economy.

During the first half of the 2024, even before the Plenary, water, electricity and gas rates skyrocketed. In Shanghai, after 10 years of raising water prices, there was a 50% increase while in Guangzhou a water price “reform” program imposed nearly a 34% increase. Xianyang, Wuhu, Nanchong, Ganzhou and Qujing saw price increases ranging from 10% to 50%.

Gas prices increased in Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Zhenjiang and 125 other cities. Chongqing residents complained that gas meters “ran faster,” which served to double their gas fees. Electricity prices rose as high as 30% in Guangdong, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangsu and other provinces.

Although the downturn in the real estate market has hampered the introduction of property taxes, over the last year a mandatory housing inspection fee has been implemented in rural areas. And on August 2, the Ministry of Housing and Construction announced that it would speed up the promotion of several housing regulations, including inspection and insurance fees as well as a housing maintenance fund.

All these proposed measures are very unpopular as people see them as nothing but extortion.

The concept of “new quality productive forces,” as recently emphasized by Xi Jinping, can hardly improve the livelihood of the general public. In fact it will aggravate unemployment.

For example, the hasty introduction of unmanned AI driving in the cab industry has sparked discontent among drivers when it was introduced in Wuhan. The company, Baidu, has announced that it will expand this service to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 more cities by 2030.

This massive displacement of workers pursues the self-interest of the ruling party and its business cronies; it reminds people of the (late 1950s) “Great Leap Forward.” Will the result of today’s adventurist move be the same as the bitter consequences of that fiasco?

Zombies Eat People, People Eat Grass

Does the CCP really fail to realize the serious crisis that is developing? Do they believe that even if the economy collapses and social unrest grows, the regime will not be jeopardized? Can the Chinese people live for three years by only eating grass, as some high-ranking party officials predict?

If you come into contact with party members in daily life, you will find that they are not fools (at least not all of them). When they talk with close friends, they lament the difficult situation just as we do.

Therefore, I think we can describe the world’s largest party with its 90 million members as losing its ability to criticize, change and renew itself. More and more they are becoming like the zombies you see in movies.

Although there are many kinds of zombie films with different settings, moviegoers can still agree on one commonality of zombies: their original human consciousness, desires and goals in life have been lost, replaced with one obsession — biting people!

If we see the CCP as an organism, its past desires included overthrowing the Kuomintang’s rule and becoming a beacon of revolution in the world. Later its goal was to reintegrate into the capitalist world, fight against the wave of democratization, make a fortune together with others in the bureaucratic clique, and build a strong military power to struggle for world hegemony.

But today these goals seem to be losing their importance. Frequent purges of the military’s top brass will undoubtedly jeopardize the troop’s fighting strength. The repeated suppression of private enterprises only jeopardizes the white gloves of many party bosses, but also harms the country’s overall economy.

What good are these operations to the party? To discover the answer, we need to know what is left in the eyes of the CCP after its infection with the “zombie virus.”

In September of last year, the government-run magazine Half-monthly Talkings published an article on the wastefulness of the promotion campaign on “party building:”

“In a village next to the highway off-ramp in Central China, our reporters saw a huge party building slogan billboard, about 33 meters long and 10 meters high. We asked a local cadre and were told that this billboard was completed in the second half of 2021 and its total cost was more than 440,000 yuan. The person in charge of the enterprise that undertook this project said that there are several other projects that cost millions of yuan in total this year, some of which are being negotiated and some are in the process of designing.

“In a place in North China, our reporters saw a set of 12 huge red Chinese characters in a plaza, with the words ‘to approach party members if you have difficulties and to approach party branches if you need service.’ Mr. Huang, who is the boss of the company that undertook the project, said: ‘Each character is 6 meters long and 6 meters high, and the production and installation costed 311,800 yuan in total.’”

Later it was reported:
“A city in Central China is building a party educational theme park in an integrated urban and rural demonstration zone, covering an area of about 19,000 square meters, with an estimated cost of 15 million yuan. Another party theme park in a place in Southwest China has cost over 70 million yuan.”

And still later this example was cited:

“Since 2020, a province in Central China had begun to build ‘party building complexes’ in villages and urban communities with considerable investment. Our reporters found the relevant information of 10 party building promotion projects in this province, of which two were completed in 2020, two in 2021, and five in 2022. Some of the larger-scale projects’ investments reached 6 million to 8 million yuan; the largest investment was more than 13 million yuan.”

Of course bureaucrats get big fat kickbacks from building these facilities; but even if corruption were reduced or eliminated entirely, it still costs money to build these nearly useless things. At a time when local budgets are tight, why on earth does the party do this?

The Zombie Cultist

In fact, if we take a closer look at these facilities (see the billboard on the previous page), we will find that there is a commonality — the highlighting of Xi Jinping’s speeches, pictures, slogans, writings and so on. The so-called party building campaign is actually a campaign to strengthen the personal cult of Xi.

In June this year, another party-run newspaper, Economic Information Daily, reported the rise of the party building app proxy services:

“Our reporters talked to a Taobao store named ‘micro-power “supervision pass” registration’ and was told that the majority of their customers are grassroots party cadres, who mainly buy the data of registration, CTR, forwarding, etc. ‘The price of data of one registration is 1.8 yuan, the price of 1,000 clicks is 15 yuan, and the price of keeping an account active is 1.4 yuan per month.’ Our reporters were told that this Taobao store has received over 200,000 orders for this kind of service, including a single order of about 5,000 yuan for buying 4,000 active accounts by a township government.

“In addition to providing ‘tailored data forgery’ for various types of digital government service promotion tasks, these Taobao stores can also provide ‘ghostwriting service’ on party educational apps. ‘Some grassroots cadres look for us to complete online studying tasks, and we charge 30 yuan for 40 hours’ online time. Some government departments require their employees to gain a certain number of points on “Xue Xi Qiang Guo” app, and we can also do it on behalf of the clients for 45 yuan a month.’ Another Taobao store stated that, apart from a small number of more strict assessments, they can handle most of the local government’s appraisals on public servants.”

“Xue Xi Qiang Guo” (literally means “Learning about Strong Country”) is the party’s national educational app. The name is a double entendre because it can mean “studying to make the nation strong” and “learning from Xi to make the nation strong.” Apart from this boot-licking double entendre, every time you open its homepage there will be carefully retouched large photographs of the big boss (as shown on this page). The fact that all public servants and party cadres throughout the country have to spend time on it every day will definitely affect the operation of the state machinery.

With so many military troopers, cops and secret police more or less spending half an hour on it daily, how will it improve catching dissidents and “traitors” which is their job? It is obvious that the priority is to see every cell of the CCP is bathed daily in the newest spirit of the great leader.

The Zombie Bites

The conclusion I draw from the above two examples is that the focus of the “zombified” CCP is to “keep the supremacy of Xi.” But unlike in movies where the zombies bite everyone, the party will bite anyone Xi points to, and it will bite as hard as it is told to do so by Xi. Many other observers have come to similar conclusions. Bloomberg, for example, recently published an article, “Xi Jinping Has Made Himself China’s Chief Economist.” It reports that the past practice of senior party officials was to take advice from experts, whereas nowadays bureaucrats only need listen to Xi’s lectures. As Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School, remarked in a recent podcast interview about the guiding idea behind the Third Plenary Session’s resolution, it is to “carry out reforms in the style of Xi.”

Yet it seems that the CCP’s zombification is not yet complete. I draw this conclusion from the criticisms found in the party-run media’s stories I’ve just quoted.

Let’s remember that Mao Zedong, the most successful party boss in pursuing a personal cult and autocracy in the CCP’s history, could not maintain his political legacy intact. Within weeks after Mao’s death, party leaders carried out a coup d’état in order to suppress his cronies.

This is similar to how movies use a shotgun to blow the zombies’ brains out. Perhaps the only way that could save Xi from such a fate is by having his scientists break through nature’s upper limit for human life.

Of course, there is also a view that the “zombification” of the CCP is not a bad thing. It would supposedly fetter the party, thus reducing its threat to the outside world and eventually causing it to collapse from inside.

But this idea is too passive. It’s just like locking yourself in your house and eating canned food in order to survive the apocalypse in zombie movies. Most importantly, according to the usual movie formula, the majority who adopt this strategy don’t live to see the credits roll.

Poker Games, Wars of Words

The recent “poker incident” is an example of passive resistance by low-ranking officials. In early August, Beijing Youth Daily — the official newspaper of Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League — published three articles in a row criticizing a poker game called “Guan Dan.” It writes:

“…The wind of ‘Guan Dan’ has swept across the country, blowing into all levels and corners. It is a manifestation of the society’s loss of motivation and entrepreneurial spirit — a wind of evasion and decadence.…

“The so-called ‘lying flat’ is a lifestyle of not seeking progress, instead of striving oneself in the face of challenges, it tells people to act like a ‘salted fish’ without a dream. This unhealthy trend has been very harmful, and with the ‘Guan Dan’ fad in the past two years, some people just prefer to lay down in a more comfortable position.”

It is very understandable that officials are addicted to playing cards. In order to maintain his throne, Xi only appoints his cronies. Officials beyond his circle have no hope of promotion. For the average bureaucrat, by working too hard they may end up making more mistakes. Thus there is a greater chance of being sacrificed in an anti-corruption drama.

Yet reading the writings of Xi is definitely not a good choice of entertainment. Therefore, if poker is banned, bureaucrats will probably choose to play video games, table tennis or sit in meditation. Just as with the symptoms of a zombie virus, the bureaucracy is becoming more dysfunctional.

Interestingly, after the criticism from Beijing Youth Daily was published, a number of local media, including the party committee’s official newspaper from Jiangsu Province, have attempted to refute the criticism. They accused the Beijing Youth Daily with fabricating accusations.

Does this war of words reflect the discord among party officials from different regions, the dissatisfaction of grassroots cadres, or both? As an outside observer, I think it is too early to draw a conclusion.

However, it reveals that the great leader’s China Dream is making bureaucrats increasingly disgusted. If lying down is not allowed, if playing cards is banned, then what is left but biting people or being bitten?

The nation was exhausted by the mess of a Great Leader’s senseless campaigns once before, in the latter stage of the Cultural Revolution. Eventually the whole nation began to passively resist Chairman Mao’s “Permanent Revolution,” which meant continuing to create Mao as a deity.

The party-arranged “political studies” and assemblies of purges and denunciation are nothing but “seriously going through the motions.” And we know what happened in the aftermath of Mao’s death.

Against the Current

Attached documents

• political-zombies-devouring-the-chinese-people_a8728.pdf (PDF - 924.9 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8728]

China

• How dangerous is Chinese Nationalism?
• When China becomes supreme leader in Africa
• Charting a new course for Hong Kong’s struggle
• The beginning of the end of China’s rise?
• Systemic Poverty is a Huge Hindrance to China’s Economy

• Lok Mui Lok

  Lok Mui Lok has collaborated with labor organizations and continues to be based in China.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

What do scientists think of Boris Johnson’s claims Covid was ‘made in a lab’?

Laura Brick and Jen Mills

METRO UK

Published Sep 29, 2024

Exactly what led to the Covid-19 pandemic is still a big source of debate

 (Picture: Getty)

Boris Johnson has revealed that he now believes that the Covid pandemic was the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory.

This is a break from his position as Prime Minister, when he said that more than seven million people died worldwide because the virus ‘jumped species’.

Animal-to-human transmission in a Wuhan wildlife market remains the theory backed by many scientists, including in a landmark study earlier this month when researchers tested genetic samples of animals that were sold there early in the pandemic and found traces of the Covid virus in some species.

But in bombshell remarks in his new memoir Unleashed, Mr Johnson claimed: ‘The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects.

‘It now oks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab.

‘Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like the witches in Macbeth – eye of bat and toe of frog – and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating all over the world.’

The former Prime Minister has become the first world leader since Donald Trump to make the claim that the pandemic was the result of a leak from a lab (Picture: AFP)

Mr Johnson is the most high profile world leader since Donald Trump to publicly reject the notion that the virus was transmitted to humans from infected animals.

However a major international study published earlier this month backs the theory that the virus started in a wet market in Wuhan, rather than the market merely amplifying the spread as a super-spreader event.

Researchers tested genetic samples of animals that were sold in Wuhan market stalls and found traces of the Covid virus in some species from early 2020.

They argue that this is the first time scientists have pinpointed the animals that may have been responsible for transmission to humans.

‘This adds another layer to the accumulating evidence that all points to the same scenario: that infected animals were introduced into the market in mid-to late November 2019, which sparked the pandemic,’ said author of the study Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research.

Former PM Mr Johnson had previously linked the pandemic to what he called the ‘demented’ belief in parts of Asia that ‘if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent’ – although he had gradually become more sceptical as information emerged about the experiments being conducted by Wuhan scientists.

Anaesthesiologist Caroline Borkett-Jones leads a team in turning a COVID-19 patient at the Royal Free Hospital on June 8, 2020 in London, United Kingdom. (Picture: Lynsey Addario/Getty Images)

The director of America’s FBI has said that Covid-19 most likely’ originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab.

In 2023 Christopher Wray told Fox News: ‘The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident.’

A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) investigation in 2021 called the lab leak theory ‘extremely unlikely.’

However, the WHO investigation was highly criticised and its director-general has since called for a new inquiry, saying: ‘All hypotheses remain open and require further study.’

In April 2020, at the start of the first UK-wide lockdown, The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet to reveal fears that the virus had leaked from a laboratory in China

A member of Cobra, the Government’s secret emergency committee, told the newspaper that Ministers were studying intelligence about an accident at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology, where scientists were carrying out high-risk experiments to manipulate coronaviruses – sampled from bats in caves nearly 1,000 miles away – to make them more transmissible.

The FBI has claimed it was ‘most likely’ that the virus was the result of a lab leak (Picture: Getty Images)

The official line remained that the virus had been passed on at an animal market in Wuhan, despite DNA analysis of Covid-19 tracing it to bats found only in distant caves.

The authors of this month’s latest study into the origins of the virus suggested that the raccoon dog, a fox-like animal common in East Asia, could have been a major carrier of the virus.

Other animals such as masked palm civets, hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines were also found to be carrying Covid-19 at the wet market before the disease was widespread in humans.

This is not a definitive list as many of the key animal species were cleared out from the market before the Chinese health team arrived, said Florence Débarre of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who led the study.

Writing on Twitter, she said that ‘a lab leak is a possibility that deserves consideration and has. No one will tell you differently.’

But she said ‘current versions of the lab leak are conspiracy theories’, for instance the claim that the authors of her study ‘believe in a leak in private but have conspired to hide the truth since 2020 under Fauci’s pressure’.

This claim ‘IS an insane conspiracy theory. I hope this helps,’ she said.

Oxford Vaccine Group: 30 years battling ‘deadly six’ diseases with major art installation


By Dr. Tim Sandle
September 27, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL


The installation consists of six, three-dimensional sculptures woven in English willow. By Angela Palmer (with permission)

To promote scientific education, a major art installation featuring dramatically upscaled bacteria, viruses and a parasite will be unveiled on 26 September at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.

The aim is to celebrate 30 years of vaccine development at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) tackling some of the world’s most deadly diseases.

The event is called The Deadly Six: Oxford’s Battle with the Microbial World and it has been designed by acclaimed Scottish artist Angela Palmer. The event will be opened by leading scientists like Prof. Sir Andrew Pollard and Prof. Teresa Lambe OBE together with the creative artist, Angela Palmer.

Read more: Promoting clean energy through art

The Oxford Vaccine Group which was established in 1994, and set out to provide scientific research into the development and implementation of vaccines, in particular diseases for which there were at the time no effective vaccines.

The installation consists of six, three-dimensional sculptures woven in English willow, representing different diseases for which OVG has developed a vaccine: pneumonia, meningitis, typhoid, COVID, malaria and Ebola. Five of these will be suspended in the central room of the Museum, within the How Evolution Works gallery, with the sixth – a 2.4m long representation of Ebola weighing 75kg – lying at floor level.

“For 30 years, OVG has been working at the forefront of vaccine research in the fight against these diseases and many others, saving millions of lives, and helping people of all ages live longer, happier and healthier lives,” Professor Pollard explains “and it is really exciting to see Angela bring this to life in her artwork.”

Palmer, whose sculptures are in museums worldwide, previously created a glass sculpture of the original Wuhan coronavirus particle sphere at 8 million times its size, which was unveiled at the Museum of Natural History and is now on display in London’s Science Museum.

“I had originally planned to use the same technique” explains Palmer, “However apart from the coronavirus, none of these have been modelled in 3D.”

“I was battling to find an alternative concept” she continues, “and came across a collection of strange, three-dimensional shapes woven in straw while on holiday. One particularly reminded me of the meningitis bacteria form, and it struck that I could explore creating the entire installation in willow.”

“Willow was immediately appealing to me” Palmer adds “It is a native British tree and is imbued with medical associations dating back some 3,500 years.”

Palmer then tracked down two of the foremost weavers in the UK, Jenny Crisp and Issy Wilkes to collaborate on the project. Supported by a further renowned willow weaver in Mel Bastier, the sculptures were then created, formed from the artist’s drawings and files of scientific illustrations, testing the potential capabilities of willow to its limits.

Sound will also feature within the installation, with a speaker inserted into the sculpture representing the malaria parasite. This plays the sinister but familiar high-pitched ‘whine’ of one of the most lethal mosquitoes in the world (the sound of Anopheles Funestus will be played on a loop, pausing 10 seconds every minute to symbolise the fact that today a child under the age of 5 dies of malaria every 60 seconds).

The installation has been partly funded by the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) division and will be open to members of the public from 26 September 2024 to 5 January 2025.

FAKE NEWS MISINFORMATION

China denies U.S. claim that its newest nuclear submarine sank at pier

China denies U.S. claim its newest nuclear submarine sank at Chinese pier


Sept. 27 (UPI) -- The newest nuclear-powered submarine in China's fleet sank in spring while docked at a pier but Chinese government officials have taken steps to cover it up, according to U.S. officials.

The sinking allegedly took place near the Chinese city of Wuhan around late May or early June. The attack submarine was the first of a new Zhou-class line of sea vessels.
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According to an unnamed senior Biden administration official cited in multiple media reports, "it's not surprising" that China's navy "would try to conceal the fact that their new first-in-class nuclear-powered attack submarine sank pier-side," he told multiple news outlets.

It has not clear if nuclear material was on the submarine when it allegedly went down.

On Friday at a news conference in Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said he was not familiar with the topic and did not provide any information when asked about it, the BBC reported.

"We are not familiar with the situation you mentioned and currently have no information to provide," a separate spokesperson from China's embassy in Washington told CNN.

China currently has the biggest navy in the world by number of ships.

The communist nation has had long-standing maritime territorial disputes with other neighboring countries, such as Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

According to the Congressional Research Service, China is on track to have by next year 65 submarines and about 80 in the next decade by 2035 due to growth the Chinese submarine construction sector.

Meanwhile, the nuclear-powered U.S. Navy reportedly has 53 "fast attack" submarines, 14 ballistic-missile submarines and four guided-missile submarines.

The apparent sinking was first noticed by an expert in the field who examines satellite imagery of China's shipyards.

Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submariner and an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, said the sinking was a "setback" that would cause "pretty significant embarrassment" for China's People's Liberation Army navy, but added that the safety risk was probably "pretty low."

"I've never seen a bunch of cranes clustered around (one spot)," Shugart told CNN. "If you go back and look at historical imagery, you can see one crane, but not a bunch clustered there," said Shugart.

Shugart says what took place "raises deeper questions" about the PLA's "internal accountability and oversight" of China's defense industry which contends "has long been plagued by corruption."

"I do not see it significantly altering the really impressive upward trajectory of the PLA navy's capability," he stated.

 

Paying attention to errors can improve fused remote monitoring of lakes, researchers say

Journal of Remote Sensing

Lakes can tip the scales from healthy to potential environmental hazard quickly when they become eutrophic. In this state, an abundance of nutrients accelerates algae growth, which then crowd the water’s surface and block light from reaching organisms below. Without light, they can’t make oxygen and life in the water begins to die off. Luckily, researchers can monitor inland lakes for eutrophication with remote sensing technologies; however, those technologies could be adjusted to make more accurate assessments, according to researchers based in China.

The team published their evaluation of the technologies, as well as recommended paths for improvement, on Sept 3 in the Journal of Remote Sensing.

Current technologies comprise remote sensing instruments that capture features of the planet’s surface, called spatial resolution, and can capture the same features multiple times, referred to as temporal resolution. The more detailed the imaging is, and the more frequently it is repeated, the higher the resolutions. But there are compromises between the resolutions — the higher the spatial resolution, the lower the temporal resolution tends to be, and vice versa.  

“The tradeoffs between the spatial and temporal resolutions for the remote sensing instruments limit their capacity to monitor the eutrophic states of inland lakes,” said co-corresponding author Linwei Yu, associate professor at China University of Geosciences. “Spatiotemporal fusion (STF) provides a cost-effective way to generate remote sensing data with both high spatial and temporal resolutions by blending multi-sensor information, and it has been widely used for the fine-scale monitoring of Earth surface dynamics.”

However, the researchers said, the issue is that the processing and modeling errors of the fused monitoring may influence the quality of the images — particularly when capturing reflective surfaces, like lakes, that have a relatively low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This ratio refers to the difference in relevant information and other details.  

“This study preliminarily presents a comprehensive evaluation to understand the potential and limitations of applying STF techniques for monitoring chlorophyll-a (Chla) concentration in inland eutrophic lakes,” said co-corresponding author Huanfeng Shen, professor at Wuhan University, explaining that Chla is an indicator of the state of eutrophication. “The findings will help to provide guidelines to design STF framework for monitoring aquatic environment of inland waters with remote sensing data.”

The researchers found that STF methods effectively capture the highly dynamic status of eutrophic inland lakes, but that those assessing the imaging should pay “special attention” to sources of error.

“Among the influential factors, the atmospheric correction and geometric errors have large impacts on the fusion results,” Yu said. “We recommend a working pipeline so that the fusion images can be integrated with real observations to produce temporally dense Chla datasets.”

The working pipeline, detailed in their study, provides a comprehensive understanding of the potential and uncertainties involved in using STF methods for aquatic applications, according to the researchers.

“With this understanding, it is feasible to estimate temporally dense Chla concentration in inland eutrophic lakes by blending multi-sensor observations,” Shen said. “In future studies, the goal is to integrate data from sensors of different resolutions and generate Chla datasets with both high spatial and temporal resolutions of the lakes over a large scale.”

Other co-authors include Lei Zhang and Rui Peng, School of Geography and Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences; Chao Zheng, School of Resources and Environmental Science, Wuhan University; and Hongtao Duan, Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Northwest University’s College of Urban and Environmental Sciences.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China supported this work.

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Journal

Journal of Remote Sensing

DOI

10.34133/remotesensing.0209 

Article Title

Understanding the Potential, Uncertainties, and Limitations of Spatiotemporal Fusion for Monitoring Chlorophyll a Concentration in Inland Eutrophic Lakes