LayV: New virus found in humans in China - study

By TZVI JOFFRE - 



A new virus known as Langya henipavirus (LayV) has been found in 35 patients in China, a new correspondence from Chinese and Singaporean scientists published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed on Thursday.


© (photo credit: Electron Microscopy Unit AAHL, CSIRO)

Hendra virus

The virus is a henipavirus and is a relative of the Hendra and Nipah viruses, which are already known to infect humans and cause fatal disease. The virus is most closely related to the Mojiang henipavirus.

26 of the patients were infected only with LayV and suffered from fever, fatigue, coughing, anorexia, muscle aches and pain, nausea, headache and vomiting, as well as thrombocytopenia (low blood platelet count), leukopenia (low white blood cell count) and impaired liver and kidney function.

No deaths have been reported due to the virus, although its relatives the Hendra and Nipah viruses have an estimated mortality rate of between about 40-70%.

The scientists also found the virus in goats and dogs and in shrews in the wild, with the correspondence suggesting that the shrew may be a natural reservoir of LayV.


Health care worker takes swab samples from Israelis at a covid-19 drive through testing complex in Modi'in, February 1, 2022. (credit: YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90)

The scientists stressed that while they are still unable to confirm that the symptoms were caused by LayV infection, a number of factors indicated that the virus was the cause of the symptoms.

For one, in 26 out of the 35 patients, LayV was the only potential pathogen detected. Additionally, patients with pneumonia had higher viral loads than those without pneumonia.
Unclear if the virus can pass from human to human

The scientists added that they were unable to find evidence for human-to-human transmission of the virus, although such transmission has been reported for the Nipah virus and the sample size collected by the scientists was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission. There was no close contact or common exposure history among the patients.

After the correspondence was published, Tawain's Centers for Disease Control announced that it was monitoring the development of LayV and would establish a standardized procedure for domestic laboratories to conduct genome sequencing and strengthen surveillance.

Solving the Hawking Paradox: What Happens When Black Holes Die?

Robert Lea -POPMECH

In what is arguably his most significant contribution to science, Stephen Hawking suggested that black holes can leak a form of radiation that causes them to gradually ebb away, and eventually end their lives in a massive explosive event.

This radiation, later called “Hawking radiation,” inadvertently causes a problem at the intersection of general relativity and quantum physics— the former being the best description we have of gravity and the universe on cosmically massive scales, while the latter is the most robust model of the physics that governs the very small.

The two theories have been confirmed repeatedly since their distinct inceptions at the start of the 20th century. Yet, they remain frustratingly incompatible.

This incompatibility, which mainly arises from the lack of a theory of “quantum gravity,” was compounded in the mid-1970s when Hawking took the principles of quantum physics and applied them to the edge of black holes. A paradox was born that physicists have been working for 50 years to solve.

We may finally be on the verge of a solution thanks to review published in the journal Europhysics Letters last month. In it, University of Sussex physics researchers Xavier Calmet and Stephen D. H. Hsu detail the problem of the Hawking paradox and potential solutions to this cosmological problem.
What’s the Problem With Hawking Radiation?

In a 1974 letter entitled Black hole explosions? published in the journal Nature, a young Hawking proposed that quantum effects, usually ignored in black hole physics, could become significant in the deterioration of mass of a black hole over a period of approximately 10¹⁷ (10 followed by 16 zeroes) seconds.

Black holes are created when massive stars reach the end of their lives and the fuel they use for nuclear fusion is exhausted. The cessation of nuclear fusion ends the outward pressure that supports a star against the inward force of its own gravity.

This results in a core collapse that creates a point in which spacetime is infinitely curved — a central singularity that physics currently can’t explain. At the outer edge of this extreme curvature is the “event horizon” of the black hole, or the point at which not even light is fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the black hole.

“Hawking investigated quantum effects close to the horizon of black holes realizing that pairs of particles would be spontaneously generated here,” Calmet tells Popular Mechanics. “Looking at a specific pair of particles, he could show that one of the two when produced at the event horizon would fall into the black hole never to be seen again. The other would escape and be in principle visible to an outside observer. This is the famous Hawking radiation.”

When these so-called virtual particles arise, they do so with equal and opposite charges to avoid violating the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Like a bank, the vacuum of space has an overdraft facility, but this debt is usually quickly paid back by the particles annihilating each other.

If one particle escapes as Hawking radiation and avoids annihilation, the energy debt that remains has to be paid by the mass of the black hole. This causes it to gradually evaporate as more particles pop into existence and more Hawking radiation is emitted, sapping more mass.

“Hawking radiation is thermal, and thermal radiation is pretty much featureless. This means that it cannot carry information about the object that emitted it,” Calmet says. “This would be a serious issue for black holes.”

He points out that Hawking’s calculation implies that the information about what went into the black hole would be destroyed as the black hole evaporates.

“If true, this would be an issue for physics as one of the key properties of quantum mechanics called ‘unitarity’ implies that it is always possible to watch a movie backward. In other words, from the observation of the radiation emitted by a black hole, quantum mechanics tells us that we should be able to reconstruct all the history of the black hole, what went into it,” Calmet says. “If Hawking is right, we would need to accept that one of the well-established theories of physics is wrong. Either we need to modify quantum mechanics or maybe Einstein’s theory of general relativity.”

Fortunately, just this year, the physicists suggested an idea that could do away with the Hawking paradox by using existing mechanisms.
Black Holes May Have Hair After All



Despite being a powerful and mysterious spacetime phenomenon, black holes are fairly easy to describe. This is because they can only have three properties that we are sure of: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Theoretical physicist John Wheeler summed this up with the phrase “black holes have no hair.”

Calmet and Hsu suggest that information carried by swallowed matter may be encoded in the gravitational field of a black hole. By calculating corrections to gravity on a quantum level, they showed the potential of the star is sensitive to its internal conditions. This means black holes possess, for lack of a better term, “quantum hair” grown by its progenitor star’s composition.

“When this star collapses to a black hole, the correction remains and black holes thus have a quantum hair,” Calmet explains. “In other words, black holes have some quantum memory of their progenitor star.”

The duo followed this by suggesting that Hawking radiation isn’t entirely thermal in nature. Instead, they believe it has informational quantum hair encoded into it.

“The very small departures from thermality are enough to explain how the information that is in the black hole remains accessible to an outside observer,” Calmet argues. “This is enough to preserve unitarity and thus, there is no paradox.”

The beauty of Calmet and Hsu’s theory is it requires no adjustments to quantum mechanics or general relativity, or extra mechanisms not already proposed by physics.

“In the end, all the ingredients to solve the problem have been around for quite a while, in a sense Hawking could have solved it himself if he had looked for a simple explanation,” Calmet says. “It is striking to me that solving the information paradox could be done without positing new physics despite what most people have believed for almost five decades.”

Other ideas to solve Hawking’s paradox aren’t nearly as conservative. Indeed, some could change our fundamental concept of the universe–or should that be “universes?”
Black Holes and Baby Universes

The concept of the “multiverse” is the idea that multiple universes exist in addition to our own, but are separated and unable to interact. One new iteration of this idea suggests that the singularity at the heart of a black hole — the infinitely curved point at which all laws of physics break down — is actually a separate and distinct infant universe.

“In my theory, every black hole is actually a wormhole or an ‘Einstein-Rosen bridge’ to a new universe on the other side of the black hole’s event horizon,” Nikodem Poplawski, a physics lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of New Haven, tells Popular Mechanics.

This would mean each universe, like our own, could host billions of black holes, each containing its own baby universe. Poplawski says that this proposition resolves Hawking’s paradox naturally.

“The information does not disappear but goes to the baby universe on the other side of the black hole’s event horizon,” Poplawski continues. “The matter and information that falls into a black hole and emerges from a white hole [the opposite of a black hole which allows exit but not entry] in the baby universe.”

While the theory doesn’t explicitly account for Hawking radiation, much like Einstein’s original theory of general relativity, it doesn’t disallow it. With regard to the eventual evaporation of the black hole, Poplawski says this event would just permanently seal off the infant universe from its parent.

Many other ideas have been put forward to solve Hawking’s paradox, including information remaining in the black hole’s interior and emerging at the end of black hole evaporation. While none have quite wrapped the problem up in a neat bow, Calmet says some of the finest minds in physics are hard at work on the issue.

Hawking was a titan in his field, and his most significant work showed that not even cosmic titans like black holes can last forever. Hawking’s successors are working to ensure this impermanence applies to the paradox that bears his name.

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Second Rare 'One-In-30-Million' Lobster Rescued From Red Lobster

Catherine Ferris -

For the second time in a matter of weeks, a rare orange lobster was rescued from a Red Lobster location. This time from a restaurant in Meridian, Mississippi.

A rare orange lobster was rescued from a Red Lobster restaurant location, making it the third orange lobster that the aquarium organization saved in about a year. Above, a stock image of a lobster haul and demonstration.

"With the statistic 'one-in-30 million' starting to raise eyebrows, Ripley's Aquariums is setting out to study these animals and better understand this anomaly," a press release by Ripley's Aquarium said.

Rare Orange Lobsters

The team from Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies saved the orange lobster, which has been dubbed "Biscuit."

In mid-July, an orange lobster, later named Cheddar, was discovered at a Red Lobster location in Florida. Employees called Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach and the organization took Cheddar in.

Like Cheddar, Biscuit was named after Red Lobster's popular menu item, the Cheddar Bay Biscuit.

A team from Ripley's Aquarium of Canada previously rescued an orange lobster, now named Pinchy, from a grocery store, per the release.

What Makes a Lobster's Color?

Ripley's Aquarium said in its press release that the color of a lobster may be affected by its diet and genetics.

While most lobsters are known to appear with a brownish color, the University of Maine's Lobster Institute reported that some lobsters can be different colors, like yellow or white.

With the exception of white lobsters, a lobster of any color will turn bright red when they are cooked.

A lobster's diet typically includes crabs, clams, starfish and occasionally other lobsters.

The press release issued by the aquarium said that Biscuit came from the same fishing area as Cheddar, which may further the theory that "unusual coloration" is contingent on a lobster's diet.

Jared Durrett, the director of husbandry at Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, said they plan to study the reason behind the uptick in the rare color.

"Orange lobsters are uncommon but perhaps not as rare as we first thought," Durrett said. "Lobsters obtain their color through the pigments they ingest in their diet. If these orange lobsters are being harvested from the same region, perhaps their localized diet contains a pigment that, when paired with the lobster's genetics, creates the orange coloration we are seeing."

Nicole Bott, the senior director of communications at Red Lobster, said fishermen that work in the area where Cheddar and Biscuit were harvested have found other orange lobsters this time of year.

"This seems to indicate the coloring is coming from a different food source," she said.
What If I See A Rare Lobster?

Bott told Newsweek in an email that if an employee at a Red Lobster location believes they have a rare colored lobster, they send photos and notify her.

"We then work together along with our supply chain team to determine if the lobster is, in fact rare," she said. "If it is, we work on a rescue plan, which could include an aquarium or a release to the wild."

The release said that Biscuit will be exhibited later this year as she continues to get acclimated to her new home.

Newsweek reached out to Ripley's Aquarium for further comment.

A viral video showed a fisherman from Maine catching an orange lobster before releasing it back into the ocean.

Another rare lobster with "cotton candy" coloring was caught off the coast in Maine. Those who caught the lobster looked into local organizations and aquariums to see if one would adopt it.

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Ground-penetrating radar search begins at former Blue Quills residential school in Alberta

A ground-penetrating radar search for unmarked graves began Tuesday at the site of a former residential school in central Alberta.


© Provided by cbc.ca

In 1971 the school was planned to be shuttered by the federal government but the community fought back to transform it into an Indigenous learning institution.

It is now the home of University nuhelot'įne thaiyots'į nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills, an Indigenous education centre operated by seven First Nations.

"We've heard from many survivors over the years about burials happening and children dying," said president Sherri Chisan in an interview Tuesday.

"And there's a sense of urgency because a lot of the people who were here as children are aging, and with all of the attention that has come in the last year, people want to know."

The search is using funding from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada with further support coming from university resources.

Roman Catholic missionaries established the school at Lac La Biche, Alta. in 1891. The buildings were moved to the Saddle Lake First nation in 1898 and were renamed Blue Quills.

The school was relocated in 1931 to a spot near St. Paul, Alta., approximately 150 kilometres northeast of Edmonton.

In 1971, the school was planned to be shuttered by the federal government but the community fought back to transform it into the first residence and school controlled by First Nations people in Canada.

"Our ancestors, our parents, and our grandparents said, 'No, we'll take over the school, we'll run it and it will be a place where our people can recover and restore what was taken from them in residential school,'" Chisan said.

The search is being led by Dr. Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archeology at the University of Alberta. It is scheduled to take five days but analysis of the results is not expected until mid-winter.

Another group has formed to organize a search of the previous site in the Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

Community wellness

The well-being of the community is front-of-mind for both during and after the search.

"We have a fire that will be maintained throughout the search," said Chisan.

"And right now there's a bunch of elders sitting around that fire sharing stories, talking to each other helping one another healing."

Chisan said she's grateful for the elders who have led ceremony, singers who have sung songs of healing and the survivors and families that have come out in support.

Traditional cultural and mental health supports will be on site throughout the search and healing gatherings are planned to be held regularly.

"We are doing ceremony daily on site, and we will be working with our community to hear their ideas and hear their stories," said Terri Cardinal, the project's co-ordinator and a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

People will also be on hand to listen to survivor stories, she added.

The area being investigated in this phase is the south lawn of the main building. Cardinal said this is only the first of future projects as the site totals hundreds of acres.

"We know this is going to take many years."

Men's higher risk of most cancers may be due to biological, not lifestyle, differences

The rates of most types of cancer are higher in men than women, and a new study suggests the cause may be underlying biological differences. 

File photo by John Angelillo/UPI 

Aug. 8 (UPI) -- It's been unclear why men face a higher risk of cancer than women at most shared anatomical sites. But a new study suggests the cause may be underlying biological differences, not lifestyle behaviors such as smoking, alcohol use and diet.

In fact, men have an increased risk of most cancers even after adjusting for a wide range of risk behaviors and carcinogenic exposures, according to research led by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The study's findings were published Monday in Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society.

"Our results show that there are differences in cancer incidence that are not explained by environmental exposures alone. This suggests that there are intrinsic biological differences between men and women that affect susceptibility to cancer," Sarah S. Jackson, the study's corresponding author, said in a news release.

Understanding the reasons for sex differences in cancer risk could provide important information to improve prevention and treatment, added Jackson, research fellow in the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.

In the study, the researchers quantified the extent to which behaviors such as smoking and alcohol use; anthropometrics, including body mass index and height; lifestyle factors, such as physical activity, diet and medications, along with medical history collectively explain the male predominance of risk at 21 shared cancer sites.

Their analysis included 171,274 male and122,826 female participants, ranging in age from 50 to 71 years old, in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study that ran from 1995 to 2011.

RELATED Chronic heartburn doubles risk for certain cancers, study finds

Of 26,693 cancers found -- 17,951 in men and 8,742 in women, the incidence was significantly lower in men than in women only for thyroid and gallbladder cancers, the researchers said. Risks were 1.3 to 10.8 times higher in men than women at other anatomic sites.

The greatest increased risks in men were seen for esophageal cancer, at a 10.8 times higher risk; larynx, at 3.5 times higher risk; gastric cardia, at 3.5 times higher risk, and bladder cancer, at 3.3-times higher risk, according to the research paper.

Differences in risk behaviors and carcinogenic exposures between the sexes only accounted for a modest proportion of the male predominance of most cancers, ranging from 11% for esophageal cancer to 50% for lung cancer, the researchers said

In an accompanying editorial, public health researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said the best strategy is to include sex as a biological variable along the whole cancer continuum, from risk prediction and prevention to screening and treatment.

They pointed out limitations of the study, including not taking into account death from causes other than cancer in elderly populations, not accounting for some important cardiovascular risk factors for which men are known at higher risk, and collecting data mostly on the White population.

Jingqin Luo, a co-author of the editorial, told UPI in an email that non-genetic risk factors explained less than half of men's higher cancer rates. And, she said, sex disparities in cancer incidence are due to the interplay of many risk factors: "genetic, epigenetic, non-genetic lifestyle and social determinants of health."

Further research is needed to better understand this interplay of risk factors, she said.

In the meantime, two lifestyle factors -- smoking and drinking -- are found to contribute to nearly all of the 21 cancer types, said Luo, associate professor of surgery in the Washington University School of Medicine's Division of Public Health Sciences.

"Thus, behaviors still make a difference in cancer risk," she said. "The modifiable nature of behavior/lifestyle factors makes them ideal means for cancer prevention and intervention."

Gabapentin's link to fatal drug overdoses draws concern
By Judy Packer-Tursman

Dr. Michael Kilkenny tracks gabapentin as part of his years-long effort to reduce drug overdose deaths in hard-hit Cabell County, W.Va. 

Photo courtesy of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Gabapentin, a widely prescribed drug for pain, has caused such concern about its link to fatal opioid overdoses that two major federal agencies have warned patients, doctors and healthcare facilities about the potential for abuse.

In December 2019, the Food and Drug Administration required new label warnings about the risk of serious breathing difficulties that could lead to death in people using gabapentin's class of drugs in combination with opioid pain medicines.

And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned May 13 that nearly 90% of drug overdose deaths in which gabapentin was detected also involved an opioid: "particularly and increasingly" illicit fentanyl.

Then, on June 28, the CDC, in a popular medical journal, cited mounting concern over postmortem toxicology test data that detected gabapentin in almost 1 in 10 U.S. overdose deaths between 2019 and 2020.

Though it was originally approved in 1993 as an anti-convulsant medication and also OK'd by the FDA to treat a painful complication of shingles, gabapentin's liberal prescribing has turned into a growing epidemiological threat.

In 2019, the latest year for which data are available, 69 million prescriptions were dispensed in the Unites States, making it the seventh most commonly prescribed medication nationally, according a paper published in CDC's May 13 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Grim reminder

For Dr. Michael Kilkenny, the top public health official in Cabell County, W.Va., the figures provided a grim reminder of the overdose deaths tied to gabapentin he has seen.

The economically depressed county, nestled in the state's northwest corner, received international news coverage in August 2016, when 26 area residents experienced nonfatal drug overdoses within a four-hour period.

"Virtually every person in our community knows someone who has died of an overdose," and the problem includes people "from all walks of life," Kilkenny told UPI in a phone interview.

RELATED FDA: Gabapentin, opioid combination may cause breathing problems

"We love all of our people in Huntington, whether they're completely well, whether they have heart disease or substance use disorder," he said.

Kilkenny has worked on the problem for years, tracking gabapentin's presence in postmortem toxicology reports on multi-drug overdose fatalities. He said he knows gabapentin is making a bad situation worse.

Gabapentin was involved in 10 of 134 overdose deaths in Cabell County in 2016; six of 202 such deaths in 2017; four of 151 in 2018; and three of 113 in 2019, he said.

Kilkenny said the county reduced drug overdose deaths by 40% from 2017 to 2019. But the numbers crept back up when the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

"Any time we see something that makes [the drug overdose situation] worse, we have to take action on that -- and gabapentin has met that threshold," Kilkenny said.

He and other medical experts said gabapentin often is used with illicit synthetic opioids -- including fentanyl, which the CDC says is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

More intense high

Gabapentin is so attractive to drug users because it "potentiates" the opioid, making the high more intense or more frequent. But the combination may cause dangerous sedation and respiratory depression, or slowed, ineffective breathing, and lead to death, principal author Christine Mattson wrote in the May 13 CDC article.

If a person with an acutely painful condition, who is alert, breathing well and able to describe their condition enters the emergency department at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center in Columbus -- about 100 miles north of Huntington, W.Va. -- they might receive a low dose of gabapentin.

This will be done once -- usually a combination of 300 milligrams of gabapentin along with non-opioids, said Dr. Emily Kauffman, Wexner's director of emergency addiction services.

"But we don't prescribe gabapentin 'to go,'" she said. "Most of this gabapentin, I think, is being prescribed in the outpatient clinics" by pain specialists.

While the need for pain relief is understandable, Kauffman said clinicians must keep a close watch, especially because the opioid-gabapentin combination may be deadlier in older adults and people with chronic medical conditions, such as kidney disease or sleep apnea.

"Gabapentin is a great medicine. However, it must be used cautiously," Kauffman said.

Originally approved as Neurontin, gabapentin now is marketed under some 300 names around the world. Photo by Yib Choon/Flickr

Can help addicts

Though concerns about the drug's use are growing Dr. O. Trent Hall, assistant professor and addiction medicine physician in Ohio State's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, told UPI that gabapentin is useful in certain situations as a part of an addiction treatment program.

"It is helpful in reducing restlessness during alcohol and opioid withdrawal," he said in an email. "There is mixed, low-quality evidence it may be helpful for some people trying to stop cocaine."

Gabapentin also is offered off-label in combination with naltrexone or acamprosate "to help people in early recovery from alcohol use disorder who have anxiety as a trigger for drinking," Hall said.

Drugs that are dispensed off-label are not FDA-approved for the condition being treated, but have shown effectiveness in combatting that condition.

Since its FDA approval in 1993, gabapentin has evolved into a medication prescribed for off-label uses the vast majority of the time, medical and pharmacy experts said.

The American Pharmacists Association's journal, which disseminates information for pharmacy professionals to improve medication use, reported last October that gabapentin had landed on Schedule V controlled substance lists in seven states and been placed in another dozen states' prescription drug monitoring programs.

Schedule V drugs have the least potential for abuse among controlled substances and are used generally for antidiarrheal, antitussive and analgesic purposes, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Public Citizen involved

Because of what it views as gabapentin abuse, Washington-based Public Citizen filed a petition in February with the FDA and DEA, seeking additional safeguards that include better tracking of its use and limitations for use.

The non-profit group wants to accomplish this by having the drug listed as a Schedule V drug nationally because "substantial evidence of widespread abuse" exists, largely as the result of "extraordinary levels of off-label prescribing," the petition says.

On Thursday, the FDA responded, saying it "has not yet resolved the issues" raised in the petition.

"FDA has been unable to reach a decision ... due to the need to address other agency priorities," wrote Carol Bennett, deputy director of the Office of Regulatory Policy in the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and research. She basically said stay tuned.

Out West, Dr. David Spencer, professor of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, told UPI that as an epilepsy specialist, he prescribes gabapentin occasionally for treating seizures, but sometimes must prescribe relatively high doses because it is not that potent otherwise.

He said he sees gabapentin prescribed much more often for other indications, primarily for treating neuropathic pain or at times for its anti-anxiety effects.

"There is a general perception that gabapentin is a relatively benign drug, because it is generally well-tolerated, has been in use for a long time and has few known drug-drug interactions," Spencer said in an e-mail.

However, he said, "The emerging information about the association with opioid-related deaths runs counter to this perception, and it may not be intuitive to many clinicians to consider that there may be important safety issues with its use."

Read More

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UK meteorologists, water firms issue warnings as extreme heatwave looms

The shell of a dead American Crayfish lies on the dried riverbed of the Infant River Thames

 in Ashton Keynes.

The UK's meteorological agency on Tuesday issued an "amber" warning for extreme heat while the country's biggest water provider said restrictions loom, as Britain braces for another punishing heatwave later this week.

The warning by the Met Office, covering much of southern England and parts of eastern Wales from Thursday through Sunday, predicts possible impacts to health, transport and infrastructure from the heat.

Temperatures are set to soar to the mid-30s Celsius for several days, it noted.

The sweltering conditions come just weeks after the last heatwave pushed the mercury over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in Britain.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather events.

"Thanks to persistent high pressure over the UK, temperatures will be rising day-on-day through this week and an extreme heat warning has been issued," Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Dan Rudman said in a statement.

Months of exceptionally dry weather across England are taking their toll, with Thames Water—which supplies London and its surroundings—the latest water provider to warn of imminent restrictions.

The firm said it is planning to issue a so-called hosepipe ban in the coming weeks "given the long-term forecast" of hot and dry weather for the southeast.

Several other UK water suppliers have already announced similar moves ahead of this week's heatwave, but Thames Water's 15 million customers would make it the most impactful so far.

The Met Office has confirmed it was the driest July in England since 1935, and little or no rain is forecast for most of the parched areas in the short term.

"Water companies are already managing the unprecedented effects of the driest winter and spring since the 1970s," said Peter Jenkins, of Water UK, which represents the industry.

"With more hot, dry weather forecast, it's crucial we be even more mindful of our water use to minimise spikes in demand and ensure there's enough to go around."

The parched conditions have seen wildfires break out near houses, including on the outskirts of London, a relatively rare occurrence in Britain.

In neighbouring France, a "historic" drought currently exacerbated by a third extreme heatwave this summer has seen a spate of wildfires nationwide as well as water restrictions ordered in nearly all its 96 mainland departments.

More than 47,000 hectares have already burnt in France this year, including a record amount in July alone, according to the European Union's satellite monitoring service EFFIS.

On Tuesday, more than 3,000 people in southern France's Aveyron region, including holidaymakers, were evacuated as a fire swept through at least 700 hectares of vegetation without causing any injuries.France and parts of England see driest July on record

© 2022 AFP

Backward Shockwaves From Deep Space Are Puzzling Scientists

Caroline Delbert - Yesterday 


A faraway galaxy cluster boasts an unusual backward shockwave phenomenon.
Galaxy clusters contain up to thousands of galaxies and tons of plasma in motion.
The backward shockwave may be from overlapping collisions among subclusters.

Scientists from the University of Western Australia and Italy’s Università di Bologna have been studying an extremely faraway galaxy cluster, Abell 3266, where they’ve identified three phenomena that are unheard of elsewhere—at least so far. And all three emit radio waves that have allowed us to observe them across a distance so far it almost defies units of measure altogether.

Abell 3266 is a galaxy cluster that’s 809 million light years away from Earth in an area known as the Horologium-Reticulum Supercluster. (As you zoom out further and further into space, you see that we, in the Milky Way, are part of a supercluster as well. Some supercluster-like structures we believe to exist are so large they potentially unmake our existing theory of the universe itself!)

In a piece for the Conversation, a website that publishes content from academics, the scientists explain that the term “galaxy cluster” is a little bit misleading. Yes, a cluster may contain “hundreds, or even thousands” of galaxies, they say, but the overwhelming majority of mass in these clusters is dark matter, with “hot plasma ‘soup’” making up the rest. The Milky Way is made up of an estimated 85 percent dark matter, for example. Galaxies, themselves, make up a measly “few percent.”

On Earth, we primarily understand plasma as the makeup of stars, including our sun. But plasma physics is a huge field, since plasma itself is just another state of matter. The more we can examine it in different contexts, the more we can understand—knowledge that may also eventually help people on Earth who work on projects like nuclear fusion energy.

Abell 3266 is “a particularly dynamic” cluster, named for prolific astronomer and public scientist George O. Abell, who surveyed both the northern and southern skies for galaxy clusters during his lifetime. (Abell 3266 is in the southern sky.) While observing the cluster with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescopes, the researchers observed three different unusual phenomena: radio relics, radio haloes, and fossil radio sources.

All three of these phenomena are created by energy slamming into abundant plasma. With radio relics, this reaction sends out shockwaves like the sonic booms we experience on Earth. They themselves aren’t unusual in galaxy clusters, but the one these researchers found is backward. The brightness in this area of the cluster suggests that a shockwave should travel from north to south, but instead it goes from south to north. The researchers dubbed this a “wrong-way” radio relic.


© Risely et. alRadio-on-optical overlay of the ‘wrong-way’ relic to the SE of Abell 3266.

The researchers say other scientists have begun to observe other backward radio relics in similar work, showing that this is an uncommon, but not nonexistent, phenomenon. And they theorize that the wrong-way radio relics result from not just energy striking plasma, but multiple subclusters striking each other simultaneously. Think about biting down on a crunchy potato chip versus biting down on a crunchy potato chip that was folded over during manufacturing.

In their paper, published August 1 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers present all three radio anomalies with the follow-up note that they all require a lot more study; this paper is kind of an announcement, rather than a conclusion.“[F]urther work is required to fully unpack the history of Abell 3266 and its constituent radio galaxies, and the answers to a number of questions remain elusive,” they conclude.

Astrophysicists observe one of the most powerful short gamma-ray bursts ever


An artist's rendering shows the collision between a neutron star and another star (seen as a disk at the lower left), which caused an explosion resulting in the short-duration gamma-ray burst, GRB 211106A (white jet, middle). 

Aug. 5 (UPI) -- The collision of two distant neutron stars released one of the most powerful short gamma-ray bursts ever recorded, scientists say.

The collision marked the first time scientists have recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion to be caused by the merger of a neutron star with another star. It was observed on Nov. 6, 2021.

The observation was made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile. ALMA is an international observatory operated by the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

"Afterglows for short bursts are very difficult to come by, so it was spectacular to catch this event shining so brightly," ALMA principal investigator Wen-fai Fong said in a statement.

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"After many years observing these bursts, this surprising discovery opens up a new area of study, as it motivates us to observe many more of these with ALMA and other telescope arrays in the future."

Research into the collision will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Photo courtesy Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Observatory


A short-duration gamma-ray burst usually lasts only a few tenths of a second and researchers look for an afterglow when it fades. Only a half dozen short-duration bursts have been detected at radio wavelengths and only in millimeters.

Gramma-ray bursts, though, are incredibly powerful. They are capable of emitting more energy in a matter of seconds than the sun will emit during its entire lifetime. There are three types -- short, long and ultra-long.

Gamma-ray bursts, in fact, are considered to be one of the most catastrophic space threats to the Earth, although scientists agree that the likelihood of the Earth being affected by a gamma-ray burst is extremely low. The destructive energy from gamma-ray bursts can travel for thousands of light years.

"Millimeter wavelengths can tell us about the density of the environment around the GRB," Northwestern scientist Genevieve Schroeder, a co-author of the research, said in a statement. "And, when combined with the X-rays, they can tell us about the true energy of the explosion.

"Because emission at millimeter wavelengths can be detected for a longer time than in X-rays, the millimeter emission also can be used to determine the width of the GRB jet."

Harry Rakowski: Monkeypox is more worrying thanks to a crumbling health-care system

Dr. Harry Rakowski - Friday -POSTMEDIA


The World Health Organization on July 23 declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. How dangerous is it and what do we need to do to understand its spread and how best to contain it?


© Provided by National PostFILE PHOTO: Test tubes labelled

The U.S. Center for Disease Control website informs us that the monkeypox virus is part of the family of variola viruses which also cause smallpox, the latter being a much more serious disease. Monkeypox got its name in 1958 when an outbreak of pox like disease occurred in Africa in research monkeys. The disease appears to be misnamed since it is likely spread by rodents rather than monkeys; however the name stuck.

Monkeypox began appearing in Africa in about 1990 as smallpox vaccines were phased out when the condition was almost eradicated. Vaccination was also curtailed then over concern about side effects of the older vaccine then available. It is hoped that those who received smallpox vaccination when young have retained some cross immunity to monkeypox, but this is not yet clear.

While monkeypox was endemic to Africa at a low level of disease, it was initially reported in Europe in mid-May with outbreaks in at least three countries linked to large events with gay men having sex with multiple partners, according to global a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The CDC website on July 28 reported 21,000 cases in 76 countries, most who had never before seen a case. Cases are now rising globally by about 1,000 per day and this is likely an underestimate of true disease burden due to underreporting. About 99 per cent of cases are occurring in men who typically acknowledge having sex with other men. In Canada the first case was reported July 1 and reached 745 cases by July 28.

Monkeypox is spread by close physical contact with an infected person through sexual activity, mucous membrane transfer or contact with infected fabrics such as clothes or bedsheets. It is also possibly spread by droplets but this is not as certain. It needs to be understood that is not only a sexually transmitted disease. It can infect all individuals at any age by skin contact with infected people or items to which the virus transferred. It is not clear how long the virus remains viable on fabrics or surfaces.

After exposure, about 1-2 weeks later, the infected person may develop fever with flu like symptoms including headache, muscle aches and swollen lymph nodes. Typically a pox like rash develops a few days after the onset of fever, characterized by pus filled bumps (pustules) that can look like pimples or blisters.

While the disease is mainly highly uncomfortable with few deaths, risks are higher for young children, pregnant women and older people. Most concerning is that it represents a growing public health crisis during a time of already constrained health care resources.

Two vaccines approved by the FDA can be used to prevent monkeypox infection. The older ACAM vaccine, of which there is large supply, was developed for smallpox. Unfortunately while readily available, it has significant side effects, with about a 1/1000 chance of a serious side effect. As such, it is is unsuitable for people with HIV, common among the men infected with monkeypox in the global study, and is not suggested for those with other immune diseases, eczema, or heart disease.

Related video: Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO, as 2022 case count his 16k (Global News)  Duration 2:07 View on Watch

The newer JYNNEOS (Imvanex in Europe) vaccine was developed over concerns that certain countries might weaponize smallpox and that a future antidote treatment might be necessary. Only small numbers of supplies were stored in both the U.S. and Canadian strategic vaccine stockpiles. There is only one producer of this vaccine, Danish company Bavarian Nordic. There is some controversy that the Europeans approved the ramped up production as the crisis evolved, while the American FDA lagged many months behind and only recently gave production approval for the plant producing the vaccine, thus delaying availability.

The company reports that the U.S. is receiving two million new doses this year, with an additional five million going to other countries.

Canada has signed a $56 million contract with Bavarian Nordic with deliveries starting in 2023. While this is the preferred and safer vaccine there may be short supply until next year. Canada has delivered shots to about 5,000 high risk people to date. No disclosure has been made yet as to how much vaccine will be available for the remainder of the year and whether if supplies are inadequate, the older ACAM vaccine may need to be used.

While ideally two vaccine doses given 28 days apart are recommended, a strategy being considered is to give more people only the first shot, since this may provide protection for more than one year.

Priority for vaccination is men with multiple male sexual partners and those people exposed to an infected person. If cases explode we will have a critical vaccine shortage until next year.

Public health measures remain very important. Venues that plan events with high levels of sexual activity have to date declined to cancel them and this should be rethought. People need to take personal responsibility for their actions. Those people exposed need to isolate and be tested for disease confirmation if a rash breaks out. Fortunately few people have required hospitalization, however most infected to date are healthy men and this may change as older people contract the disease.

We need to take the risk of monkeypox seriously and not stigmatize communities where it is most prevalent. Those at highest risk need to get vaccinated and avoid sexual contact with multiple partners. There are lessons to be learned about the spread of HIV which was initially thought to be a disease of gay men and then spread widely beyond this population.

Monkeypox is not HIV infection and won’t have its consequences. It is self limiting, and once infected, antibodies produced will likely prevent re-infection.

It is not nearly as great a risk as COVID-19 with an ever mutating virus that escapes the constraint of vaccination and has infected over 1 billion people.

It is however, yet another serious worldwide health concern that can further disrupt lives, the ability to work and further stress our crumbling health-care system. We have done too little too late to greatly dampen spread. We now need to urgently vaccinate as many at risk individuals as possible, act responsibly to avoid exposure, increase our testing capacity and pray that the disease burden will be manageable for our already overwhelmed health-care system.

Dr. Harry Rakowski is an academic Toronto cardiologist and commentator.

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Cuba disconnects one of its largest power plants, aggravating the country’s energy supply problem


The Cuban government announced Monday afternoon that it has been forced to disconnect one of its largest power plants, a thermoelectric plant with the capacity to produce up to 200 megawatts (MW), due to a fire in a fuel storage tank in the city of Matanzas.


Fire at supertanker in the port city of Matanzas, Cuba - PRESIDENCIA DE CUBA

The Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas thermoelectric power plant, which is located barely five kilometers from the fire at the supertanker port of Matanzas, has suffered a water shortage, reason why the Ministry of Energy and Mines has proceeded to shut it down.

"The Antonio Guiteras Thermoelectric Plant in Matanzas has gone out of service due to water deficit. In this condition, it was necessary to increase the affectation to megawatts (MW) in Havana, and the reestablishment of this load will depend on the availability conditions of the National Electric System," the company Unión Eléctrica has announced in its Twitter account.

With the disconnection of this power plant, Cuba further aggravates the energy crisis that the Caribbean island is facing. Of the country's total generation capacity of 3,000 megawatts (MW), only 1,824 are currently in operation, so an energy deficit of 1,176 megawatts is expected.

Cuba has been experiencing failures in its electricity supply for weeks, a situation that has worsened with the fire at the supertanker port of Matanzas, since the Cuban Executive is being forced to allocate many of its resources to extinguish the fire.

Last week a sporadic demonstration was held in Santiago de Cuba, one of the largest cities on the island, in protest against the continuous blackouts and the difficult economic situation facing the city.

Devastating fire may force Cuba to resort to floating oil storage

By Marianna Parraga - Yesterday 

© Reuters/ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI

(Reuters) - An inferno at Cuba's largest oil storage facility has killed at least one firefighter, injured many more, and threatens to further swell the fuel import bill for the impoverished island nation that relies on foreign oil for everything from transportation to its power grid.


© Reuters/ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI

Cuban officials may need to scramble to set up expensive floating storage capacity to handle imports aimed at easing an acute fuel scarcity, sources and experts said on Monday.

Cuba relies on the 2.4-million-barrel Matanzas terminal, about 60 miles (130 km) from Havana, for most crude and heavy fuel imports and storage.

Matanzas is Cuba's only terminal with the ability to receive large tankers rated for 100,000 tonnes of deadweight. It also serves as a hub for domestic oil output to be blended for supplying the country's power plants, and for distributing imported fuel and crude to local refineries.

A large fire spreading since Friday is expected to boost shipping and import costs. Cuba was already struggling to afford fuel purchases, and global tanker freight rates have skyrocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Cuba now may have to seek long-term tanker charters for its storage needs or smaller vessels to carry imports. This logistical problem would be on top of recovery costs for the largest oil industry accident in Cuba decades.

In the first half of the year, Cuba imported 57,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude and fuel from its main ally, Venezuela, Refinitiv Eikon data showed. The imports arrive onboard shrinking fleets of old tankers owned by Cuba or Venezuela.

The Cuban government has been ramping up purchases from others, including Russia, to ease shortages that have led to long lines of drivers at stations and to power rationing. President Miguel Diaz Canel has complained about almost unaffordable fuel prices this year.

The Liberia-flagged tanker NS Laguna is scheduled to arrive in Matanzas next week carrying some 700,000 barrels of Russian oil, according to Eikon. The vessel follows a delivery of Russian fuel oil to the country in July.

If Matanzas' containment walls can stop the fire from spreading to port berths, the receiving portion of the facility could still be used for discharging imports and transferring the oil to smaller tankers for floating storage, experts said.

Once the fire is extinguished, Matanzas' berths could be used to make an "u" to fill other vessels, which does not represent a difficult technical challenge.

A switch to floating storage might lead Cuba, a heavily sanctioned country, to ask the U.S. government for relief from rules limiting the flow of vessels touching the island's ports, the experts said.

"The most likely scenario now is that authorities will let burn the product remaining in the tanks while keeping the area as cold as possible by using water," said Lino Carrillo, a Canada-based expert and former executive at Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA.

Following a fire of the proportions seen in Cuba, recovery typically takes time and millions of dollars in repairs, according to analysts.

"Affected tanks will be useless after the fire and everything else connecting them within the containment walls," Carrillo added.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio)

Firefighters, helicopters battle to contain Cuba fuel depot blaze


Flames rise from a massive fire at a fuel depot sparked by a lightning strike in Matanzas, Cuba, on August 8, 2022. (AFP)


AFP  Published: 09 August ,2022

Helicopters and firefighters battled Tuesday to gain access to four tanks at a fuel depot in an industrial area west of the Cuban capital Havana that has been ablaze for days, hoping to deploy special foam to control the flames.

The fire, which started on Friday, has left one firefighter dead and 14 more missing.

From dawn, AFP reporters saw four military helicopters flying over the depot in Matanzas, an industrial city around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Havana, dropping sea water in a bid to extinguish the blaze.

Four out of the eight tanks on site have already fallen victim to the flames, deputy fire chief Alexander Avalos Jorge said, and authorities are now trying to protect the other four.

“The firefighting teams continue to clear a path to the flames so the teams charged with applying the foam can get to the place,” said Matanzas governor Mario Sabines on Twitter.

Sabines added that the smoke from the fire had left visibility at a minimum and drones were being used to provide greater precision to operations.

Firefighters and specialists in fuel fires from Mexico and Venezuela have arrived in Cuba to help their local counterparts.

The fire broke out on Friday in the city of 140,000 people after lightning struck one of the tanks at the depot, which is of strategic importance for the island nation.

Each of the eight tanks can hold up to 50 million liters of fuel – three have collapsed while a fourth has been engulfed by flames.

Some 125 people injured by the blaze were taken to hospital with 22 remaining in care. Some 5,000 people have been evacuated from around the disaster zone, authorities reported.

Two firefighters previously reported as missing have been located among those receiving hospital treatment.

Watch: Major fire spreads at Cuba fuel storage facility hit by lightning, dozens hurt

Third fuel tank collapses as helicopters battle Cuban blaze

Mon, August 8, 2022 


Helicopters scrambled to contain a days-old blaze that felled a third tank at a fuel depot in Cuba on Monday as the search continued for 16 missing firefighters.

According an official update, the confirmed toll from the fire was one 60-year-old fireman dead, with 24 people hospitalized -- five of them in a critical condition.

More than 100 others were injured, most suffering burn wounds, and some 5,000 people have been evacuated from around the disaster zone, authorities reported.

The fire on the outskirts of Matanzas, a city of 140,000 people 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Havana, broke out late Friday after lightning struck one of eight tanks at the depot.

On Monday, the governor of the western Matanzas province said the blaze had spread to a third tank, which collapsed like two others before it did over the weekend.

"The third tank also collapsed, after the second spilled its fuel" as it caved in on Sunday, governor Mario Sabines told state TV.

He said the blaze area was "very big" and the containment effort "very complex."

Aircraft, firefighters and other specialists and equipment arrived in Cuba from Mexico and Venezuela on Sunday after the island nation asked for help from "friendly countries."

Sabines said the teams were preparing an operation to douse the flames with foam, "but this could take a while."
- Efforts 'intensifying' -

"Work is intensifying to combat the fire," the Cuban presidency said on Twitter, adding Monday would be a "decisive day" for the effort.

Family members of the missing firefighters met President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Sunday at a hotel in Matanzas, where they were given access to doctors and psychologists.

"My son was doing his duty, he stepped forward," said the distraught mother of one 19-year-old fireman who was at the depot when the second fuel tank caught fire.

Health officials said they were monitoring the air quality, and advised at-risk people to wear masks in smoke-affected areas, and to avoid being out in the rain.

After the first tank caught fire late Friday, the blaze spread to a second tank by the early hours of Saturday.

The first two tanks collapsed overnight Sunday, causing three more reported injuries and spilling their oil.

According to the Cupet state oil company, the first tank had contained about 26,000 cubic meters of crude, about half its capacity.

The second contained 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil. It was not immediately clear how full the third tank -- also with a capacity of 52,000 cubic meters -- was.

Firefighters had been battling to prevent the third tank from catching fire, dousing it with water to keep it cool, but ultimately to no avail.

The depot, built in the 1980s and modernized several times, supplies the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the largest in the communist nation.

The plant features five docks to receive ships of up to 180,000 tonnes, according to the Granma official newspaper.

The disaster comes at a time the island -- with an outdated energy network and persistent fuel shortages -- has faced mounting difficulties in meeting energy demands.

Since May, authorities have imposed energy blackouts of up to 12 hours a day in some regions -- sparking protests around the nation of 11 million people.