Robots Are Creating The Super Batteries Of The Future

By Irina Slav - Dec 31, 2020

Artificial intelligence and robots are a hot topic of discussion, especially in the context of automation and job loss for humans. But they are also helping humans with a lot of jobs, including battery research.

The development of bigger and better batteries has somewhat suddenly become a top priority for energy researchers as the world moved in a renewable energy direction. Solar and wind—the most abundantly publicized forms of renewable energy—require storage facilities to become truly competitive with the fossil fuels they are replacing.

Then there are electric vehicles, which many consider the spearhead of the energy revolution as a sizeable chunk of global oil demand is actually demand for transportation fuels. The mass adoption of EVs could remove millions in barrels from daily oil demand and reduce global emissions substantially.

No wonder then that labs all over the world are working on batteries: bigger batteries, more efficient batteries, and last but not least, cheaper batteries. Cost is still an issue for both EV batteries—and EV prices as a consequence—and for battery storage for solar and wind farms. And now, researchers are using artificial intelligence to help them with the task.

Scientists from the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a division of the Department of Energy, are using computational screening and robots to develop a new generation of batteries that may some day replace the dominant lithium-ion technology, Jeff McMahon wrote in an article for Forbes recently.

JCESR researcher's focus is on energy storage for the grid and, more specifically, an organic flow battery that, according to JCESR Director George Crabtree, could be more efficient and cheaper than lithium-ion batteries because it would be made from chemical elements that are available in abundance and are therefore cheap. They only had to pick the right elements, which is where artificial intelligence and robots came in.

"There are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of candidates out there," Crabtree said earlier this month, as quoted by McMahon, at an industry event. "We just haven't found the right one yet."

So the team used computational screening to select the best candidates for their battery by simulating hundreds of thousands of combinations of elements until they found the best molecule to use in their battery. Then they used artificial intelligence to help tick off requirements regarding properties such as solubility, stability, and multi-electron transfer, McMahon writes. Finally, to synthesize the molecules to use in the flow battery, the researchers enlisted the help of robots.

"You could then have automatic synthesis. So the laboratory, using a robot, would make the material—automatic characterization, run it through lots of machines, send that information back to the artificial-intelligence brain here to score the material," Crabtree explains. "Did it actually work? If it failed I wonder why it failed; let's try something else. So it actively learns from every cycle of this synthesis route. And this is what's coming to the fore."

European researchers are also working on organic flow batteries, aiming to produce one that will store energy at a cost of less than $0.12 (0.10 euro) per kWh per cycle, PV Magazine wrote recently. The purpose of the 40-month project is to provide a battery that is both cheap and environmentally sustainable while still providing longer duration than currently available batteries and more energy density.

Such a set of requirements may seem mutually exclusive at this point, but the research highlights the drawbacks of existing batteries and how they are interfering with governments' ambitious energy transition agenda. Cost and duration are the two big problems that need to be solved to make large-scale storage a reality and renewables the dominant form of energy generation.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

WHEN THE SOLUTION IS WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM

Fracking Could Save Colombia From Economic Crisis

By Matthew Smith - Dec 30, 2020, OILPRICE.COM

Colombia country is facing its worst economic catastrophe of modern times because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The IMF believes that the strife-torn Latin American country’s economy will shrink by over 8% during 2020 with some analysts predicting that the contraction could be even worse predicting a 10% drop in gross domestic product. The threat of an extensive economic crisis and stalled recovery is heightened by low proven oil and natural gas reserves, a sustained oil price slump, weak investment inflows, and softer hydrocarbon production. For almost a decade, hydraulic fracturing has been positioned as a means of resolving many of the issues confronting Colombia’s hydrocarbon sector and petroleum-dependent economy. There are signs after nearly 10 years, fracking could become a reality for Colombia’s economically crucial oil industry. The controversial technique could resolve many of the risks faced by the industry and head-off Colombia’s emerging economic crisis. Data from the government statistics agency DANE (Spanish) points to a sharp economic contraction. After modest pre-pandemic first quarter 2020 GDP growth of 1.2% year over year, economic activity declined considerably with second-quarter GDP plunging almost 16% followed by a 9% third-quarter decline. According to DANE, Colombia’s GDP (Spanish) contracted by 8% year over year for the nine months ending 30 September 2020, indicating that the economic contraction may be worse than predicted by the IMF. This substantial unprecedented contraction caused unemployment to soar, peaking at 21.4% in May 2020 before falling to 14.7% for October. There are fears of worse ahead for a country that a decade earlier had emerged as one of Latin America’s economic success stories.

On a troubling note, soft first quarter 2020 GDP data and double-digit unemployment rate of 13% for January 2020 indicates Colombia’s economy was slowing before the global pandemic arrived. That can be blamed on the sustained oil price slump that commenced in August 2014. Despite having some of the lowest oil reserves, totaling just over 2 billion barrels, of any major oil-producing nation in Latin America, Colombia’s economy is highly dependent on petroleum. Prior to late-2014 crude oil was responsible for 57% of all exports by value, 4% of GDP and earning around a fifth of government revenue. Once the current oil price slump commenced Colombia’s economy came under significant pressure with the peso weakening, government revenue falling and growth declining to levels not seen since the 2009 Great Recession.

Sharply weaker oil prices are weighing on Colombia’s economy, investment inflows and oil as well as natural gas production. While the Andean country’s hydrocarbon sector has reactivated after one of the world’s lengthiest COVID-19 lockdowns, production is weak. By October 2020, Colombia was pumping an average of 751,374 barrels of crude oil daily which was 15% lower than a year earlier and well below the 2031 record high of 1,008,178 barrels daily. Natural gas production has also declined, falling almost 2% year over year to 1,091 million cubic feet daily. The Andean country’s average crude oil output for the first 10 months of 2020 reached 785,527 barrels daily while natural gas was 177,415 barrels of oil equivalent daily. This is well below the annual average of 885,863 barrels of oil and 184,675 barrels-equivalent of natural gas daily pumped during 2019, which was the highest level of production since 2015.

Source: Colombia Ministry of Mines and Energy and U.S. EIA.

The economic threat posed by Colombia’s low oil and natural gas reserves is immense. Latin America’s third-largest oil producer only has proven reserves (Spanish) of just over 2 billion barrels of oil and 3.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with a production life of 6 years and 8 years, respectively. There have been no major onshore conventional hydrocarbon finds in Colombia since 2009. The economy’s dependence on petroleum is highlighted by the Andean country’s GDP expanding by an impressive 5.1% for 2013 when oil production hit a record high of just over 1 million barrels daily. During that year, the international oil price benchmark Brent averaged $108.56 a barrel or more than double its current market price. By 2017 when Brent averaged $54.25 per barrel and oil output had softened to an average 853,578 barrels daily, GDP grew by an unremarkable 1.4% or less than a third of the rate experienced four years earlier.



Source: DANE, Colombia Ministry of Mines and Energy and U.S. EIA.

Sharply weaker oil prices coupled with diminishing oil output led to sharp budget cuts, higher deficits and growing sovereign debt. The economic crisis emerging in Colombia is underscored by a sharp decline in government revenue for the first half of 2020 which plunged almost 2% compared to the same period a year earlier. Combined with increased spending and crumbling taxation revenue this saw the budget deficit blowout to 8% of GDP. Stimulus spending, aimed at mitigating the impact of the pandemic on the economy, is being funded by debt. Central Bank data shows total central government debt at the end of 2019 was around $137 billion or 55% of annual GDP. That is expected to balloon out by at least 10% during 2020 as Bogota struggles to increase income and fund stimulus spending aimed at restarting the economy. As Colombia’s sovereign debt load increases it will weigh on attempts to return the economy to growth, reduce unemployment, and bolster government revenues.

Attracting oil industry investment is an important means bolstering oil and natural gas production, growing hydrocarbon reserves, lifting government revenue, and strengthening economic growth. It is believed that fracking offers the most potential for achieving those goals and bolstering Colombia’s energy security. Since taking office in August 2018 President Duque has been a vocal proponent of the controversial hydrocarbon extraction technique, seeing it as a silver bullet for Colombia’s economy. The commercial development of fracking has the potential to be a game-changer for the Andean country’s oil industry because national oil company Ecopetrol estimates that Colombia possess up to 12 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil and 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources. It is believed that fracking will triple or even quadruple Colombia’s proven oil and natural gas reserves.

There is, however, substantial domestic opposition to fracking. Despite oil industry regulator, the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH – Spanish initials), completing shale block auctions as far back as 2012, hydraulic fracturing has yet to become commercially operational in Colombia. In 2018, as the central government and the ANH moved ahead with plans to, yet again, promote unconventional oil exploration and production, Colombia’s highest administrative tribunal placed a moratorium on the technique which it upheld in September 2019. The court determined, however, that the ruling did not prevent investigative projects and in September 2020 it rejected (Spanish) a bid to ban fracking pilots in Colombia.

In November 2020, Ecopetrol secured the rights to a fracking pilot in the Middle Magdalena Valley through an auction of three unconventional land packages by the ANH. There is still considerable uncertainty surrounding the pilot because Colombia’s environmental regulator has yet to approve the project. There is no guarantee it will be approved when it is considered that in July 2019 the environmental regulator suspended the licensing of Ecopetrol’s APE Guane A fracking operation in the Middle Magdalena Valley. Ecopetrol was the only energy company to participate in the ANH auction, underscoring how the uncertainty surrounding the future of fracking in Colombia is deterring investment in unconventional hydrocarbon assets by foreign energy companies. This points to the ANH’s next auction of three fracking pilot contracts also foundering. That makes Ecopetrol the key driver of the development of Colombia’s unconventional oil potential. The state-controlled integrated energy major plans to invest almost $77 million in the Middle Magdalena Valley unconventional oil and natural gas Kale project.



Source: Ecopetrol.

Ecopetrol believes the Middle Magdalena Valley has 4 billion to 7.4 billion recoverable barrels of oil equivalent. Ecopetrol has earmarked $600 million in its 2021 budget for unconventional plays, although most of that will be directed to its operations in the Permian where it has partnered with Occidental Petroleum.

While commercial fracking will be a game changer for Colombia’s oil and natural gas sector the controversial hydrocarbon extraction technique is surrounded by considerable controversy, opposition and uncertainty. When that is coupled with a lack of social license, legal moratoriums, and serious security issues it is clear why foreign energy companies are reticent to invest in unconventional oil and natural gas projects. It is thus unlikely that fracking will be the urgently needed silver bullet for Colombia’s troubled economy, or that Bogota will benefit from the tremendous additional hydrocarbon production and revenues that fracking has the potential to generate.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
Merger Mania Is Transforming Canada’s Oil Scene

By Felicity Bradstock - Dec 31, 2020

Canada’s oil landscape looks encouraging for 2021 as Whitecap Resources Inc. acquires two oil and gas companies in addition to mergers between other energy companies, with anticipated growth through the coming year as demand for energy steadily increases. In November, Whitecap Resources announced a plan to acquire rival company TORC Oil & Gas through an all-stock transaction of $704.12m equivalent. The deal is expected to go through by 25 February 2021, providing an encouraging outlook for the first quarter of next year.

This merger would mean an estimated 100,000 bpd equivalent in production making it one of Canada’s major players. The expected value of the combined company is around $3.13 billion.

Since demand for energy has steadily increased since the slump in early 2020, so has Whitecap’s share price, going from C$2.29 ($1.80) in early July to C$4.96 ($3.89) in December, with a market cap of C$2.025 billion ($1.58bn) on the Toronto stock exchange.

Whitecap CEO Grant Fagerheim stated of the acquisition, “We are combining two strong Canadian energy producers to form a leading large-cap, light oil company geared towards generating sustainable long-term returns for shareholders while prioritising responsible Canadian energy development’”.

The TORC acquisition comes just months after Whitecap announced its plan to buy NAL Resources for nearly $119 million in August. Manulife, an insurance and financial company, will have a 12.5 percent stake in the combined company as Whitecap issues it with 58.3 million shares. The move to acquire both companies drives forward Whitecap’s aim to increase its Alberta and Saskatchewan assets and operations.

Smaller energy companies across Canada have been showing interest in mergers throughout 2020 as a means to bolster their portfolios, in response to the volatile oil market this year.

In October, Cenovus Energy and Husky Energy agreed to an all-stock transaction, valued at $2.9 billion, to undergo a merger. The move will make the combined company the third-largest oil and natural gas producer as well as the second-largest refiner and upgrader in the country, at a total value of $17.97 billion and a production level of 750,000 bpd equivalent. The company is expected to operate out of Calgary, Alberta.

Additionally, Obsidian Energy proposed a combination transaction to Bonterra Energy Corp. in August, with a plan to issue up to 72.3 million shares, giving Bonterra a 48 percent stake in the combined company. Bonterra is yet to agree to the proposal, but this could all change as the deal will be on the table until 4th January 2021.

In July, top independent U.S. oil producer ConocoPhillips announced it would buy Canadian land from Kelt Exploration Ltd at $375 million. Kelt’s 140,000 acres in British Columbia is directly next to ConocoPhillip’s Montney lands, providing greater oil production potential at an estimated 1 billion bpd equivalent.

ConocoPhillips previously sold much of its Canadian assets to Cenovus Energy in 2017, in the move to withdraw foreign producers from Canada. However, given the dire situation – battling pandemic restrictions and the significant decrease in the price of oil, small companies are turning to external actors for a bailout.

Mergers between small Canadian oil and gas companies with bigger Canadian and U.S. players through the trade of stocks has helped them to battle the 2020 decrease in energy demand. Going into 2021, these newly combined companies are expected to play a big role in Canada’s oil sector.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

FELICITY BRADSTOCK is a freelance writer specialising in Energy and Finance. She has a Master’s in International Development from the University of Birmingham, UK.

Monthly Review | What Is Monopoly Capital?

POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

How Gold, Silver And Platinum Are Used In The Battle Against

COVID-19

By MINING.com - Jan 02, 2021,

As covid-19 spread across the globe last spring, investors rushed to precious metals as a financial safe haven. Gold rose to over $2,000 by early August, up more than 30% from the start of the year. Silver surged more than 50% over the same period, reflecting the common correlation among precious metals during times of financial uncertainty or volatility. Providing financial protection is not the only role that precious metals are playing in the fight against covid-19. The metals also have broad applications in the medical field, well beyond the dental uses most people associate with them.

Combatting covid-19: gold, silver and platinum

Researchers have developed drugs and tests that use silver to detect and protect against the virus. Serological assays, a type of blood test, employ silver and gold nanoparticles to quickly determine if antigens exist in a patient’s bloodstream. These are critical in determining if the person is infectious and to ensure that donated plasma used to treat ill patients is safe.

Figure 1. Covid-19 serology tests (antibody tests)



Beyond silver’s diagnostic and therapeutic uses in the fight against covid-19, there are also trace amounts of silver in the fabric of some masks. While not anti-viral, silver does protect against other bacteria and eliminates odors, which helps when wearing the masks for extended periods of time.

Silver has been used for thousands of years to prevent microbial infections and was the most important antimicrobial agent in use before the introduction of antibiotics.

The fight against covid-19 highlights a trend: growing demand for precious metals in healthcare. This has particular relevance now, but also into the near future as the population continues to age. National health spending in the U.S. is expected to rise to 19.4% of GDP (gross domestic product) by 2027, or $6 trillion a year, representing a generational shift in spending. Precious metals, because of their unique physical attributes, are expected to play a role in this shift.Related: Russia Looks To Become Leader In Hydrogen Tech


The fight against cancer: gold and platinum Treatments for certain cancers employ gold and platinum. This role has the potential to grow, accelerated by recent breakthroughs.

Since its natural properties slow cells — both healthy and cancerous ones — from dividing, platinum (Pt) has long been used in chemotherapy treatments, including in drugs known as cisplatin and carboplatin. A downside to these platinum-based drugs is their non-specificity, which creates some of the adverse side-effects in chemotherapy, like hair loss.

Figure 2. Chemical structures of cisplatin and transplatin



Gold nanoparticles have become a focus of a new type of more targeted treatment. Researchers are testing therapies that use gold-silica nanoshells to target cancer cells, preventing the diseased areas from spreading. Similar to the platinum treatments, it essentially suffocates the diseased cells, but the gold nanoparticles are more effective in attacking the unwanted cells. This treatment has shown particular promise in prostate cancers, a disease that impacts about 11% of men.

Additional therapeutic uses

Gold nanoparticles (tiny spheres made of gold atoms with a diameter of only a few billionths of a meter) have also shown potential in the testing and treating of HIV/AIDS. In a study, researchers were able to detect the HIV virus, even in situations where the virus had little development. This brings hope of earlier detection. In an early study of monkeys with an HIV-like virus, gold nanoparticles reduced the number of infected cells. Though still very early days for this research, it provides some promising potential.

Gold has anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce joint inflammation and pain, and gold preparations were among the original treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Gold is also used in rapid tests for malaria, allowing doctors to test the disease within 20 minutes. This has value, particularly in parts of the world where there they lack access to labs.

Platinum and palladium have similar biological properties. While platinum is typically selected for many uses, palladium can stand in platinum’s stead for biological purposes.

Since precious metals are inert, they react with other chemicals in few naturally occurring environments. They are also electrically conductive, opening applications where the body or organs are stimulated directly. And they are strong, so they do not break easily. This has encouraged the broad use of platinum in catheters. Electrophysiology catheters, for example, use electrodes to measure cardiac muscle activity. The platinum electrodes make the device possible.

Figure 3. Gold nanoparticles support new drug development and drug delivery systems



A place in medical technology

Germs do not spread on a silver surface, due to its anti-microbial properties. This makes it an ideal component of many of the devices and tools one sees in a hospital. In fact, silver is much more useful in medical devices than in medicines because of its toxicity – too much silver in the body can cause Argyria, a blue or grey hue in the skin. But in the medical technology field, it has a place because of this germ-protective property. Staphylococcus aureus, a dangerous and highly infectious bacterium, spreads quickly in hospitals. To limit the spread, hospitals often use equipment lined with silver, from surgical tools to stethoscopes to even the furniture. Silver is also often incorporated in breathing tubes and catheters to protect against infections.

Platinum is also broadly used in medical devices, including stents and pacemakers, in addition to catheters. Platinum reduces the likelihood that the body will reject the devices. It also appears in X-rays, allowing healthcare workers to track the progress of the operation.

Platinum plays a critical role in neuromodulation devices, which help treat Parkinson’s patients’ neurological conditions by sending electric signals to the central nervous system. In these “brain pacemakers,” there is platinum in the electrodes and within some of the device’s components.

Figure 4. Platinum (Pt) is a critical components in implantable cardioverter defibrillator



Source: Johnson Matthey



The broader value of precious metals

The healthcare sector represents approximately 3-5% of the overall precious metals market. However, as our society ages and the need for healthcare applications increases, the use and demand for precious metals in medicine will continue to expand. This often overlooked contribution of precious metals to fighting disease speaks to the broader value of these metals and their critical multi-varied roles.

By Mining.com

Americans should prepare for ‘a revolt against the unprecedented inequality’

Last Updated: Jan. 2, 2021

First Published: Dec. 30, 2020 

By Shawn Langlois

GETTY IMAGES


“When the top 10%’s bubble pops in 2021, the loss of illusions/delusions of security and wealth will be shattering to all those who believed artifice and illusory ‘wealth’ were real.“

That’s Charles Hugh Smith, previously hailed by CNBC as one of the best alternative financial bloggers on the internet, offering up his unsettling outlook for the coming year.

“Those in America’s top 10% who have reaped virtually all the gains in income and wealth of the past 20 years live in a bubble that they view as unbreakable: no matter what problems arise, their personal income and wealth is secured by the government, central bank, etc,” he said.

In other words, those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid are confident any financial pain will quickly be soothed by the Federal Reserve and its willingness to keep printing money.

“Any spot of bother in the gravy trains that fund the top 10% — local and state government, universities, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Department of Defense, Wall Street, hedge funds, venture capital, etc. — will be doused with trillions of dollars borrowed or printed into existence by the Treasury or Fed,” he wrote on his Of Two Minds blog. “No matter what spot of bother arises, the solution — more trillions — is just a few keystrokes away.”

While that has, indeed, been mostly true for years now, Smith pointed to the folly in that thinking.

“We cannot print wealth, or borrow it into existence,” he continued. “All we can print/borrow is artifice, phantom representations of illusory ‘wealth’ that will vanish into thin air, in a reverse of how the ‘money’ was created — out of thin air.” This will lead to assets of the elite getting “crushed” without the backstop of liquidity. Stocks, he warned, “will go bidless as phantom wealth dissipates.”

Ultimately, Smith envisions a shake-up of the status quo in which the drying up of the Fed money flow is only one factor in a larger unwind.

“On top of this myopic belief that their success is all the result of their own endeavors rather than a tide of financialization, the top 10% are equally blind to the toxic consequences of the wealth/income inequality that has so richly benefited the few at the expense of the many,” he wrote. “But tides do not run in one direction forever, and a revolt against the unprecedented inequality that heavily favors the top 10% is not ‘impossible,’ it’s a certainty.”

Soon, he said, the bottom 90% will demand fairer distribution of wealth and a system that functions for the greater good, instead of “parasites” and “leeches” further lining their pockets.

“Not only will their lifeboats prove unstable, every level of government will come after whatever is left as taxes will soar on virtually every form of income and wealth,” Smith went on to explain in his blog post. “The comfortable are about to experience some of the discomfort that is everyday life for the bottom 60% and an increasing percentage of the next 30% who still aspire to fantasies of middle-class security.”


As it stands now, such a reckoning in the stock market will have to wait, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.65% was up triple-digits on Wednesday in its penultimate trading session of 2020. The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.14% and S&P 500 SPX, +0.64% were also higher.

Oliver Stone Says Vaccinated With Sputnik V, 

Slams the West For 'Ignoring' Russian Vaccine

© AP Photo / Joel C Ryan

by Daria Bedenko

Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is the first anti-coronavirus vaccine registered in the world. According to the latest survey, the vaccine demonstrates 100 percent efficacy in grave cases of COVID-19 and 91.4% general efficacy after the third stage of clinical trials.

American film director Oliver Stone on Monday voiced his support for the Russian-made coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, revealing that he has been vaccinated with the first shot of the two-part vaccine.

He added that he does not understand why Sputnik V is being ignored by the Western countries.
"I got vaccinated a few days ago. I don't know how effective Russian vaccine is yet, but I heard a lot of positive things about it", Stone told Russia's state TV. "I have to get a second shot... [] I think your vaccine is useful. I don't understand why they ignore it in the West, the media is just silent about all the information".

Stone is currently shooting a new film in Russia's Sverdlovsk oblast. Winner of the Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe awards, the director is famous for many works including "Platoon" and "Midnight Express", as well as multiple documentaries.

The American film director in particular has created a series dedicated to three American presidents - John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, released a film and a book named "The Untold History of the United States" and interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin - a move that prompted criticism towards Stone regarding what some suggest could be interpreted as "advocacy projects towards Putin".

Sputnik V is the first coronavirus vaccine registered in the world, with the third stage of clinical trials confirming its efficacy against COVID-19 at a level of 91.4 percent. The vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute and the RDIF was registered on 11 August. At least 50 countries have since ordered 1.2 billion doses of Sputnik V.

BUT ITS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR EFFICACY HAS NOT BEEN PUBLISHED IN ANY WESTERN MEDICAL PEER JOURNALS SO WE ARE WAITING

Russia gives over 800,000 people its COVID-19 vaccine
BY CELINE CASTRONUOVO - 01/02/21 

© Getty

Russia’s health minister on Saturday announced that more than 800,000 citizens have received the country’s coronavirus vaccine, with more than 1.5 million doses distributed. 

Reuters reported that the TASS news agency quoted Mikhail Murashko as saying that from Jan. 1, people who received the Sputnik V vaccine will receive an electronic verification certificate, with the health ministry maintaining a database of all those vaccinated. 

Russia has the world’s fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases, with nearly 3.2 million people infected and more than 57,000 fatalities due to the virus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

However, Russian officials on Monday said that the country’s death toll is three times higher than initially reported, meaning the actual number of COVID-19 fatalities could be more than 186,000 people. 

According to Reuters, Sputnik V’s two doses use different components and must be administered 21 days apart. 

The Russian vaccine, which began its rollout in early December, was found by developers to have a 91 percent efficacy rate at preventing COVID-19 after two doses. 

However, the inoculation has received skepticism from some health experts, as the Kremlin announced the vaccine’s registration before all clinical trials were completed. 

Despite this, the Russian vaccine has already been distributed to other countries. 

On Tuesday, Argentina and Belarus began their rollouts of the Sputnik V vaccine, with around 300,000 Argentinians expected to be vaccinated. The Latin American country anticipates receiving 20 million doses within the next two months.

Venezuela also signed a contract this week to acquire enough doses of the Sputnik V vaccine to inoculate 10 million people, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said, according to Reuters. The country began administering doses in October as part of a clinical trial.

Russian state media reported last week that President Vladimir Putin was slated to receive the vaccine, despite previously suggesting that there was no reason for him to be vaccinated. 

Putin previously said that one of his daughters took part in a clinical trial for the Sputnik V vaccine in August.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

Trump vetoes bipartisan driftnet fishing bill

BY ZACK BUDRYK - 01/01/21 

President Trump on Friday vetoed a bill that would gradually eliminate the use of large-scale driftnet fishing in federal waters off the coast of California.

“By forcing the West Coast drift gillnet fishery to use alternative gear that has not been proven to be an economically viable substitute for gillnets, the Congress is effectively terminating the fishery,” the president said in a statement. “As a result, an estimated 30 fishing vessels, all of which are operated by family-owned small businesses, will no longer be able to bring their bounty to shore.”

The measure passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support last month. It was authored in the Senate by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and by Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) in the House. The measure passed the House 283-105 and cleared the Senate by voice vote.

“The recreational fishing and boating community has long advocated for transitioning away from large-mesh drift gillnets which needlessly kill non-target species including sportfish,” Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, said in a statement at the time. “Today marks a significant victory for marine conservation, and we are grateful for the bipartisan effort to get the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act across the finish line.”

Proponents of the measure will have to wait until the new Congress because there is no time left in this session to overturn Trump's veto. Feinstein has indicated she will press again for the legislation during the incoming Biden adminstration. 

The veto comes the same day that Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, the first such override of his presidency. The Republican Senate voted 81-13 to override the veto Friday, days after the House voted to override it 322-87.

The president had demanded the massive annual defense policy bill include a repeal of Section 230, the regulation that shields tech companies from civil liability, as well as the removal of a requirement that the Pentagon remove Confederate names from military installations.

This article was updated Jan. 2 

UH OH 

New strain of Covid-19 tripled infections despite 

UK lockdown, report says

Issued on: 02/01/2021 -

Ambulances are parked outside NHS Nightingale Hospital at the ExCel centre in the East End of London as a contagious new strain of Covid-19 surges, January 1, 2021. 

© Reuters - Simon Dawson

Text by: Tom WHEELDON

The new, more contagious strain of Covid-19 that first emerged in the southeast of England was already spreading rapidly even during the nation’s second lockdown in November, according to a report published Thursday by scientists at Imperial College London.

A report by scientists at Imperial College London released on December 31 estimated that the new coronavirus strain tripled its number of infections in England during the November lockdown while the number of new cases caused by the previous variant decreased by a third.

The new strain registered a higher reproduction (R) rate – which determines how contagious a disease is based on the number of people infected by each infected person – of 0.7 versus 0.4 for the previous strain, even with the “high levels of social distancing” during the pre-Christmas lockdown.

An R rate must be less than 1 for the number of new cases to start falling. The British government’s latest estimate of the R rate for the UK as a whole, published on December 23, was between 1.1 and 1.3.

The emergence of the new Covid-19 strain prompted more than 50 countries to impose travel restrictions on the UK in late December, many of which were subsequently lifted. France reported its first case of the new variant on its soil on December 25.

“There is a huge difference in how easily the variant virus spreads,” Axel Gandy, a statistician at Imperial College London and a co-author of the report, told the BBC. “This is the most serious change in the virus since the epidemic began,” he said.

The Imperial College research also found the new strain was initially spreading most rapidly among people under 20 years of age but it then started spreading to other age groups.

“The early data was collected during the time of the November lockdown where schools were open and the activities of the adult population were more restricted,” Gandy said. “We are seeing now that the new virus has increased infectiousness across all age groups,” he continued.

The government reimposed lockdown measures on areas covering 78 percent of the English population on Wednesday while regional authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also brought back confinement measures.

Intensive care units in London and the surrounding southeast region exceeded their capacity on December 29, with occupancy reaching 114 and 113 percent respectively, according to NHS data leaked to specialist publication the Health Services Journal. In response, the government activated one of its Nightingale Hospitals – designed to deal exclusively with Covid-19 patients, thereby taking the pressure off overburdened hospitals – in London on December 31.

The Imperial College report suggested that keeping schools closed after the Christmas holidays will help contain the virus’s spread: “A particular concern is whether it will be possible to maintain control over transmission while allowing schools to reopen in January.” The government has extended the Christmas holidays until January 11, when secondary schools in England are scheduled to resume classroom attendance. Pupils will return to English primary schools on January 4, except in the most severe virus hotspots including London.

It is “inevitable” that schools will have to stay closed to stop the new Covid-19 variant running out of control, Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and a senior lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, told the Financial Times.

On Saturday, the UK recorded a further 57,725 cases of Covid-19, the fifth day running that it has topped 50,000, and another 445 deaths. Overall, the UK has seen more than 2.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, while its death toll stands at more than 74,000, the second-highest in Europe after that of Italy and the sixth highest in the world.

The government will have to accelerate the rollout of vaccines if it wishes to contain the new Covid-19 strain, its scientific advisory committee suggested on December 22, warning that “current rates of vaccination are unlikely to significantly change the epidemiology” of the virus.

The UK was the first Western country to approve both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs for emergency use. Authorities have so far distributed one million vaccines, Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote in a tweet. More than 940,000 people have had the first jab, the BBC reported.

Study Confirms New U.K. Coronavirus Variant Is Substantially More Transmissible

Victoria Forster Contributor
Healthcare FORBES
Cancer research scientist and childhood cancer survivor.


A new variant of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus recently discovered in the U.K. is significantly more transmissible, according to new research published yesterday.

The work led by scientists at Imperial College London has been published as a pre-print, meaning it has not yet been reviewed by external experts to assess the validity of the methods and findings.

The research combined genetic sequencing data and epidemiological findings to conclude that the SARS-CoV2 B.1.1.7 variant was likely to increase the R number of between 0.4 and 0.7 compared to other variants. This means that a person with Covid-19 caused by the B.1.1.7 variant is likely to pass it on to more people than if they have another variant of the virus.

“These analyses, which have informed UK government planning in recent weeks, show that the new variant of concern, B.1.1.7, has substantially higher transmissibility than previous SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating in the U.K.,” said Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the scientists from Imperial College London involved in the study. “This will make control more difficult and further accentuates the urgency of rolling out vaccination as quickly as possible,” Ferguson added.

ABOUT 
Victoria Forster 

I am a postdoctoral research scientist focusing on childhood cancers and new, targeted cancer therapies. As a survivor of childhood leukemia myself, I am a determined advocate for research into better, less-toxic cancer treatments and how to reduce the long-term side effects of current drugs. I am an award-winning science communicator and have written for The Times, The Guardian and various cancer-focused outlets. I am also a 2017 TED Fellow, having done my TED talk on cancer survivorship and I regularly do public talks on topics ranging from ‘Why haven’t we cured cancer yet?’ to ‘Cannabis and cancer; hype or hope?’. I am passionate about using social media to communicate science and frequently share pictures and stories from my own laboratory work in real-time on my Twitter account @vickyyyf, alongside commentary about important research breakthroughs. You can find out more about me and how to get in contact via my website drvickyforster.com. All of my articles reflect my personal views and not those of my employer.

 

IMPERIALISM BY ANY OTHER NAME

NATO Depicts Western Sahara as Part of Morocco on New Map
© AFP 2020 / Jean-Christophe Verhaegen

AFRICA
17:32 GMT 02.01.2021Get short URL
by Tim Korso

The territory of Western Sahara is currently disputed between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Neither of the sides enjoys broad support for their claims, but Morocco recently secured the backing of the US – the biggest contributor to NATO.

A map recently published by NATO in relation to its project the Defence Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP) unexpectedly showed Morocco's border as extending into the territory of Western Sahara in accordance with Rabat's territorial claims. The land, disputed by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and its governing nationalist movement, the Polisario Front, was shown as a part of the North African state in an article published on NATO's website on 14 December.

© PHOTO : NATO
A screengrab of an article devoted to the Defence Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP) from the NATO's website

While the alliance has not made any official statements in regards to its stance on the Western Sahara territorial dispute, the article in question was released shortly after one of NATO's key members, the US, recognised Morocco's claims. Washington did so in exchange for Rabat establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, thus becoming the sixth Arab state to do so.

Previous maps on the NATO website showing north-western Africa depicted Morocco within the UN-recognised borders, with Western Sahara separated from it by a line, stressing its undetermined international status, even though Morocco de-facto exercises control over 80% of the land. An interactive map on the official NATO webpage also draws a dashed line separating Western Sahara and Morocco’s UN-recognised borders.

© PHOTO : BENJAMIN NETANYAHU/TWITTER
Map Delineating Morocco from Western Sahara Seen in Netanyahu Clip Reportedly Triggers Fury in Rabat

The territorial dispute over Western Sahara has existed ever since Spain decolonised the land, with Morocco and the Polisario Front subsequently engaging in a dispute over it. The Polisario Front proclaimed the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) with a government in exile located in Algeria. SADR controls a sliver of territory in Western Sahara's east and a small patch of land giving it access to the Atlantic Ocean. Several dozen states have officially recognised the claims of either Rabat or Sahrawi. The remaining countries, as well as the UN, urge the sides to the conflict to work out a peaceful and mutual solution to the dispute, and refuse to take sides in it.