DEAD SOULS TOURISM 

Archaeologists discover vast tunnel beneath Egyptian temple

Greg Cannella - Yesterday - CBS News

Archaeologists have discovered a massive ancient rock tunnel beneath an Egyptian temple, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced last week.

A group led by Dr. Kathleen Martinez, who heads the Egyptian-Dominican mission of the University of Santo Domingo, uncovered the tunnel. She has made several previous discoveries in her search for the tomb of Queen Cleopatra.

Archeologists described the tunnel a "geometric miracle," according to a news release from the ministry. It stretches over 4,300 feet and is carved in a rock 42 feet below the ground in the area of the Temple of Tapozeris Magna, which is located west of the city of Alexandria, the ministry said.


Archaeologists have found a tunnel beneath a temple west of Alexandria, Egypt. November 2022. / Credit: Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

The name of the temple, Tapozeris Magna, is dedicated to Osiris — the God of death. AND RESSURECTION BEING A FERTILITY DIETY


The tunnel's architectural design appears to resemble that of Greece's Jubilinos Tunnel, but longer, the ministry said. Martinez said a part of the tunnel was found to be submerged under the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, according to the ministry.

A network of tunnels stretching from King Marriott Lake to the Mediterranean were also discovered, as well as 16 burial sites inside rock-carved tombs commonly used in the Greek and Roman centuries, the ministry disclosed.


Archaeologists have found a tunnel beneath a temple west of Alexandria, Egypt. November 2022. / Credit: Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
During previous excavations at the site, researchers also found important artifacts inside the temple, including coins bearing the images and names of both Queen Cleopatra and Alexander the Great. They said a number of beheaded statues, and statues of the goddess Isis, were also found.


Alabaster head found during excavations beneath the Tapuziris Magna Temple near Alexandria, Egypt. / Credit: Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities 

China Then, India Now

Rich Karlgaard, Forbes Staff - Yesterday 

Investor reaction to China’s 20th Party Congress in October was swift and ugly. The Monday after the event concluded, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 6.4%, the worst one-day drop since the 2008 financial crisis. Goldman Sachs’ index of Chinese ADRs sank 15%. China’s yuan reached its lowest point versus the U.S. dollar in 14 years.


Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group Forbes Asia© Provided by Forbes

Markets can process any kind of news: good, bad and neutral. What markets hate is surprise. Certainly, the reach of President Xi Jinping’s power ambitions were no surprise. His becoming president for life was expected. Rather, the shock (to global investors anyway) was Xi’s warm embrace of 1949, the year Mao Zedong prevailed in the Chinese civil war (1946-49) and created the Marxist-Leninist People’s Republic of China. It is stunning that Xi, leader of the world’s second largest economy, sees greater glory in the frequent mass starvation years between 1949-76. It’s as if Deng Xiaoping’s post-Mao miracle of reforms, and booms in innovation and prosperity, were bad for China.

Related video: What Will Fuel India's Economic Boom & Decoding The 'New India' Picture: Chetan Ahya Exclusive   Duration 14:24   View on Watch


While China copes with its self-inflicted errors, let’s turn to India. Gautam Adani, who tops the list of India’s richest, sees a bright future for the country. The chairman of Ahmedabad-based Adani Group, which has interests in ports, airports, green energy, cement and more, spoke at September’s Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore.

Below are highlights of Adani’s speech. (His comments are edited for brevity.)

Globalization is at an inflexion point. It will look very different from what we had come to accept in a largely unipolar world.
We are now witnessing a new set of geopolitical couplings as we transition into a multipolar world. What I see ahead are the new principles of global engagement based on greater self-reliance, lowered supply chain risks and stronger nationalism. Some have called this “the rising tide of deglobalization.”
Global turbulence has accelerated opportunities for India. It has made India one of the few relatively bright spots from a political, geostrategic and market perspective.
What many see as India’s imperfections reflects a thriving and a noisy democracy. Only the free can afford to make noise—to have their imperfections visible. To over-manage this would be to destroy India’s unique ability to express its diversity.
India has just become the world’s fifth largest economy. We are on the path to be the world’s third largest economy by 2030. India’s real growth is just starting.
Between now and 2050, India will become a country with 100% literacy levels. India will also be poverty-free, well before 2050. We will be a country with a median age of just 38 years even in 2050, with the largest consuming middle class the world will ever see.
India will attract the highest levels of foreign direct investment given the sheer scale of consumption of 1.6 billion people. (Last year, India recorded its highest annual FDI inflow of $85 billion. Inflow this year is expected to cross $100 billion—thereby setting another record.) We will be the country that will go from a $3 trillion economy to a $30 trillion economy, a country with a stock market capitalization of $45 trillion, and a country that will be supremely confident of its position in the world.
It took India almost 58 years post-independence to reach the $1 trillion GDP mark. It then took 12 years to achieve $2 trillion—and thereafter, only five years to achieve $3 trillion. This rate will further accelerate as the digital revolution kicks in and transforms every type of activity at a national scale.
In 2021, India added a unicorn every nine days, and it executed the largest number of real-time financial transactions globally—a staggering 48 billion. This was three times greater than China and six times greater than the U.S., Canada, France and Germany combined.

Hedge China. Embrace India.

Carbon dioxide emissions rising globally, but drop in China


SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — The world’s burning of coal, oil and natural gas this year is putting 1% more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air than last year, bad news for the fight against climate change but with an odd twist, according to scientists who track emissions.


Carbon dioxide emissions rising globally, but drop in China© Provided by The Canadian Press

China’s carbon pollution was down 0.9% this year compared to 2021, while emissions in the United States were 1.5% higher, said a study by scientists at Global Carbon Project released early Friday at international climate talks in Egypt. Both are opposite long-term trends. American emissions had been steadily dropping while Chinese emissions had been rising — until this year.

In both cases, it is a reaction to the pandemic and perhaps a bit of the energy crisis created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, study lead author Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter told The Associated Press. He said those two factors make this year’s data chaotic and hard to draw trends from. China’s lockdown in 2022 to try to control renewed COVID-19 is a major factor in that country’s drop, he said.

Much of the jump was in transportation — cars and air travel — with people’s limits on travel during the pandemic wearing off, Friedlingstein said.

While global carbon pollution is still increasing, it isn’t increasing at as fast a rate as 10 or 15 years ago. But overall scientists said this is bad news because it is pushing Earth closer to hitting and then passing the globally adopted threshold of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

“It means we better get ready to blow past the target and enter a world that humans have never experienced,’’ said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research team.

Friedlingstein’s team — along with other scientific reports — figure Earth can only put 380 billion metric tons (419 U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide into the air before Earth reaches the 1.5-degree mark. That’s about 9 to 10 years worth of emissions, meaning the globe will likely hit that point around 2031 or 2032.

“The time for 1.5 is running out,” Friedlingstein said.

“This is bad news,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb, who wasn’t part of the research team. “It’s hard to see any silver lining in rising emissions, when we must cut emissions in half by 2030 to keep global warming to an absolute minimum.”

In 2022, the world is on track to put 36.6 billion metric tons (40.3 billion U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide in the air from energy and cement use, the study calculated. That’s the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza in carbon dioxide spewed every 75 minutes.

In addition to the United States seeing emissions go up, India had a 6% increase in 2022, while Europe had a 0.8% drop. The rest of the world averaged a 1.7% carbon pollution jump.

Pollution from coal jumped 1% from last year, for oil it went up 2% and for natural gas it went down 0.2%, the report said. About 40% of the carbon dioxide comes from burning coal, 33% from oil and 22% from natural gas, Friedlingstein said.

The team calculates emissions levels through the early fall using data provided by top carbon-emitting countries, including the U.S., China, India and Europe, and then makes projections for the rest of year.

While there are limitations to projections, Oppenheimer said: “This is the A-team on CO2 emissions and the carbon cycle. They know what they’re doing.”

Carbon emissions from fossil fuels plunged 5.3% in 2020 but rebounded 5.6% last year, spurred by China, and now have completely erased the pandemic drop and are back on a slowly rising trend, Friedlingstein said.

The team also looks at overall emissions, including the effects of land use. When land use is factored in, emissions are flat, not rising slightly, he said.

—-

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

Guilbeault optimistic about targets even as Canada's emissions rebound post-pandemic

OTTAWA — Canada's carbon dioxide emissions crept back up in 2021 after falling sharply during the first year of COVID-19, and experts believe they will go up even further this year as the return to normal has accelerated.

The European Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research shows Canada's carbon dioxide emissions grew three per cent in 2021 after falling nearly 10 per cent in 2020.

That is on track with the worldwide trend reported at the United Nations climate talks in Egypt today by the Global Carbon Project. Its annual carbon budget says emissions in 2021 returned to 2019 levels, and they are expected to grow one per cent this year compared to 2019.

It said that by the end of this year, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be 51 per cent higher than in pre-industrial times, and the budget for climate success is getting ever smaller.

Still, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said he is feeling more optimistic than ever that Canada and the rest of the world may be able to live up to the Paris climate agreement.

That target is to keep global warming to as close to 1.5 C as possible. Above 1.5 C, the effects of climate change grow exponentially, and after 2 C, some of the change could be irreversible.

"We've made tremendous progress," Guilbeault said from Egypt, where he is attending the COP27 climate conference.

"If you would have asked me that question seven or eight years ago, the projections were that we were heading into a world where warming would be anywhere between four to six degrees Celsius. After Paris, the assessment was that we were heading into a world where temperature increases would be in the order of 2.8 degrees Celsius."

Guilbeault said in the last few weeks, other reports have shown that if all the countries that have promised to cut emissions live up to their promises, the increase may be limited to between 1.7 C and 2.4 C.

That shift downward from up to 6 C to as low as 1.7 C happened over "just about a decade," he said. "Now, that's still too much, but we've made tremendous progress. But there's a lot more that needs to be done."

When it comes to emissions-cutting, Canada is lagging behind its peers. The Global Carbon Project says the biggest hope for containing global warming is that 24 countries saw significant economic growth between 2012 and 2021 and still cut their emissions.

Canada is not among them. It is the only G7 country not on the list, with emissions holding steady between 2012 and 2021.

The European data show Canada's carbon emissions rose the slowest of any G7 country in 2021, but also shows Canada has done the worst job of any G7 country in lowering carbon dioxide emissions since 2005. That year is the starting point for the targets under the Paris climate accord.

In the 16 years since then, Canada's carbon dioxide emissions have fallen three per cent. Japan cut carbon dioxide 16 per cent since 2005, the United States cut it 20 per cent, Germany 21 per cent, France 26 per cent, Italy 36 per cent and the United Kingdom 40 per cent.

And the data show Canada is the only G7 country whose methane and nitrous oxide emissions rose between 2005 and 2021. Its methane emissions are up 2.7 per cent, while nitrous oxide increased 18 per cent.

Canada promised that by 2030, total emissions will be down 40 to 45 per cent.

The country's struggle to cut emissions more than it has came in large part because oil production has grown exponentially, with emissions growth in that sector and from transportation offsetting improvements in electricity and manufacturing.

Canadian environment groups on the ground in Egypt this week were hoping Guilbeault would unveil the cap on oil and gas emissions he promised at last year's climate talks in Glasgow.

But the government does not plan to release the details of the cap until sometime next year.

Aly Hyder Ali, program manager for oil and gas at Environmental Defence, said Canada is risking its reputation as a climate leader if it doesn't put more on the table to show its promises are more than just talk.

"We just need to see those commitments and promises turn into action with legitimate pathways and plans in place," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2022.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

A CROCK O SHIT

Nord Stream methane leak will NOT increase global warming, study says

Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline - TODAY

Methane gas that leaked from a damaged Nord Stream pipeline in September will not increase global warming, a new study claims.

The leaks will have a 'negligible' effect on warming, despite releasing 220,000 tons of methane into the air, academics say.

This is relatively 'tiny' and too small to affect humans compared with emissions from sources such as the coal and gas industries, they add.

The cause of the pipeline damage is unknown, although there are suspicions from Western leaders that it was caused deliberately by Russia.

AND RUSSIA SAYS IT WAS THE USA/NATO

A few days after the leaks, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the leaks were no accident and that she 'cannot rule out' sabotage.


According to Swedish and Danish authorities, there were four leaks from the two Nord Stream pipes (two in the Swedish economic zone, two in the Danish economic zone)© Provided by Daily Mail


This photo from the Danish Defence Command shows the gas leak at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, as seen off the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm, south of Dueodde© Provided by Daily Mail


Security walks in front of the landfall facility of the Baltic Sea gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 in Lubmin, Germany, September 19, 2022© Provided by Daily Mail

What was the Nord Stream gas leak?

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 are two pipelines linking Russia and Germany, owned by Russia.

A sudden loss of pressure in the pipelines was noted by operators of Nord Stream 2 overnight on Monday, September 26.

This was followed by a statement from the Danish Energy Authority outlining that a leak likely occurred in a pipe.

It was later confirmed on Tuesday by Sweden's Maritime Administration that two fissures had been detected on Nord Stream 1 in Swedish and Danish waters.

A third leak was later reported on the Nord Steam 2 pipeline, that has yet to begin commercial operations, in the same area northeast of the Danish island of Bornholm.

According to Swedish and Danish authorities, there were four leaks from the two Nord Stream pipes - two in the Swedish economic zone, and two in the Danish economic zone.

The new study was led by experts at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

'We derived a negligible increase in global surface air temperature,' they say in their new paper, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

'Although the resultant warming from this methane leak incident was minor, future carbon release from additional Earth system feedbacks, such as thawing permafrost, and its impact on the methane mitigation pathways of the Paris Agreement, warrants investigation.'

On September 26, Nord Stream 1 and 2, two subsea pipelines for transferring natural gas from Russia to Germany, were both 'deliberately' ruptured, the experts say.

According to Swedish and Danish authorities, there were four leaks from the two Nord Stream pipes – two in the Swedish economic zone, and two in the Danish economic zone.

Massive quantities of gases, primarily methane, escaped into the ocean and were then released into the atmosphere.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, meaning it exacerbates global warming and climate change effects if it is released into the atmosphere.

It is also highly flammable, so when in contact with the air it raises the risk of explosion, and directly reduces air quality.

Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2), but has a much stronger greenhouse effect.

The visible leaks from the four spill points gradually lessened and stopped around October 2, the team say.



The pipelines show signs of sabotage and multiple 'detonations', Swedish authorities have said. Pictured, pipes at the landfall facilities of Nord Stream 2 in Lubmin, Germany© Provided by Daily Mail


This map shows the pair of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. It comprises the Nord Stream 1 pipeline running from Vyborg in northwest Russia, near Finland, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline running from Ust-Luga in northwest Russia near Estonia. Red stars in the image depict the locations of the leaks© Provided by Daily Mail

Methane from Nord Stream is detected from space

Methane leaking from a 'sabotaged' pipeline in Northern Europe has been captured by satellites.

Imagery from satellite company GHGSat shows the stream of methane over the Baltic Sea off of Sweden.

The methane leaked from a rupture point on Nord Stream 2 - one of two pipelines linking Russia to Germany thought to be deliberately damaged.

Related video: WION Climate Tracker | Study: CO2 emissions to hit an all-time high

Duration 2:17 View on Watch

For their study, the researchers estimated the climate impact of the leaked methane using the energy-conservation framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6), released in 2021.

These assessment reports provide scientific evidence for policymakers to use in decisions about how to tackle climate change.

The researchers collected estimates of the total amount of leaked methane available in the world's media after the incident, including those from AFP, Associated Press and an article in Nature.

They found that the earliest estimates of total emissions (one to two days after the leaks) reached up to 500,000 tons, while the latest (one month after the incident) put the estimate at no more than 250,000 tons.

Another study by a research team from Nanjing University gave 'a more accurate estimate' of no more than 220,000 tonnes by drawing upon multiple observations, including those from high-resolution satellites.

At 220,000, this would still make it the largest methane emission in a single event in human history – more than twice that of the Aliso Canyon accident in 2015, which released around 100,000 tons of methane from an underground storage facility in California's Santa Susana Mountains.

However, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics team argue that the Nord Stream emissions are 'still trivial' compared with other emissions sources.

For example, according to IPCC AR6, annual emissions of methane from the oil and gas sectors amounted to as much as 70 million tons between 2008 and 2017.

So if 250,000 tons is taken as reasonable estimate of the methane leaked by Nord Stream, this is only equivalent to 1.3 days of emissions from the oil and gas sectors, the researchers point out.



The Aliso Canyon accident in 2015 released around 100,000 tons of methane from an underground storage facility in California's Santa Susana Mountains. Pictured is the SS-25 well, where the 2015 gas leak occurred© Provided by Daily Mail


The Nord Stream pipeline leak is relatively 'tiny' and too small to affect humans compared with emissions from sources such as the coal and gas industries. Pictured, an oil rig for drilling an oil well© Provided by Daily Mail

Methane: a powerful greenhouse gas

Methane is a colourless, odourless flammable gas, and the main constituent of natural gas.

Methane is a greenhouse gas, and the second biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide.

Both gases trap heat in the atmosphere, similar to the glass roof of a greenhouse.

During the day, the sun shines through the atmosphere and Earth's surface warms up in the sunlight.

At night, the Earth's surface cools, releasing heat back into the air, but some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Too much of these gases can cause Earth's atmosphere to trap more and more heat, causing the planet to warm up.

Methane has more than 80 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

However this does decrease over time, as it breaks down over the course of about a decade.

It is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas and oil, as well as from livestock and decaying organic waste at landfill sites.

The team also point out that methane in the atmosphere is gradually removed by reacting with certain unstable 'radicals', such as hydroxyl radical, resulting in an approximate 10-year lifetime.

This is short-lived compared to CO2, which is said to hang around in Earth's atmosphere for hundreds of years.

Researchers then further estimated the possible warming potentially caused by the Nord Stream methane leaks in the 'near term', defined as the next 20 years.

They used 'global warming potential' (GWP) – a measure of how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to the emissions of 1 ton of CO2.

They found that the quantity of heat accumulated per unit mass of methane in the next 20 years after its emission into the atmosphere is 82.5 times that of CO2.

Armed with this information, they were able to calculate that the climatic impact of the leaked methane is equivalent to that of 20.6 million tons of CO2.

But this would raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration by only 0.0026 parts per million (ppm) and in turn cause a 'tiny' increase in warming that cannot be perceived in ecosystems or by humans, said study author Dr Xiaolong Chen.

The team conclude that human-cased or 'anthropogenic' methane emissions – from the likes of coal mining, agricultural activities and more – need to be reduced to hit the targets of the Paris Agreement.

Adopted in 2016, the Paris Agreement aims to hold an increase in global average temperature to below 2°C (3.6°F) and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).

'If we are going to achieve the warming target of below 1.5°C or 2°C set out in the Paris Agreement, damage to infrastructure such as this should be avoided so that we can better control and reduce methane emissions,' said Dr Chen.



In this picture provided by Swedish Coast Guard, the gas leak in the Baltic Sea from Nord Stream photographed from the Coast Guard's aircraft on Wednesday, September 27, 2022© Provided by Daily Mail

Estimates published last month by Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) put the estimates of methane emitted from the Nord Stream leaks somewhere between 56,000 and 155,000 metric tonnes.

But the Norwegian team also said this was 'negligible' and only about 0.01 to 0.03 per cent of the methane emitted globally every year.

'Reducing methane emissions needs to be a global priority this decade if we are to have any chance at keeping warming below 1.5°C by 2030,' said Rona Thompson at NILU.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has already said that the Nord Stream leak 'pales in comparison' with the 80 million metric tonnes emitted each year by the oil and gas industry. Read more

ROFLMAO 

Iran accuses Western countries of «training» protesters in «making weapons and Molotov cocktails»

CIA

Molotov cocktail - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Molotov_cocktail

A Molotov cocktail is a hand thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse ...

‎Molotov bread basket · ‎Frangible Grenade M1 · ‎Frangibility · ‎Improvised weapon

Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amirabdolahian has accused Western countries of promoting violence during the latest protests in the country and said that several states have reportedly offered "training" for the "manufacture of weapons and Molotov cocktails".

Iran's Foreign Minister Hosein Amirabdolahian - -/Kremlin/dpa

Amirabdolahian told UN Secretary General António Guterres that "in violation of the UN Charter, a few Western countries have acted to incite violence and offer training in the manufacture of weapons and Molotov cocktails" to protesters.

He has also said that these unspecified countries "exploited peaceful demands in Iran, which has resulted in the death of policemen and the creation of insecurity in Iran, to the point of paving the way for an Islamic State terrorist act."

Amirabdolahian thus linked incidents in protests over the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly wearing the veil incorrectly, to the October attack by the jihadist group on a mausoleum in Shiraz.

In this line, he criticized that some countries "try to convene a meeting of the Human Rights Council on Iran" and stressed that this meeting should take place to address the acts of countries that "incite violence and terrorism".

"Iran is a true defender of Human Rights and has shown great restraint during the recent unrest", he said, amidst the denunciations of NGOs for the death of more than 300 people due to the repression of the demonstrations by Iranian security forces.

The Iranian judiciary recently indicated that more than 1,000 people have been charged so far for their involvement in "unrest" during the protests and vowed to respond "firmly" to the incidents, a day after more than 220 Iranian parliamentarians called on the courts to issue death sentences against protesters and compared them to members of the Islamic State.

CIA

PREVIEW

1:32

How do Molotov Cocktails Work?

YouTube · Concerning Reality

CIA

The history of the Molotov cocktail, an iconic weapon of ...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com › history › article

Mar 10, 2022 — For nearly a century, the device—called also a petrol bomb or a gasoline bomb—has been the most accessible weapon for underdogs fighting against ...

‘The dark matter is just sitting there’: What’s standing in the way of AI for life sciences

Charlotte Schubert -

Life scientists have a data problem: information is fragmented, siloed and incomplete. And that gets in the way of taking full advantage of using artificial intelligence technology.


Life sciences panelists at Madrona Venture Group’s Intelligent Application Summit. From left: Cyrus Biotechnology CEO Lucas Nivon, Microsoft researcher Jonathan Carlson, Deepcell CEO Maddison Masaeli, and moderator Chris Picardo, a Madrona venture partner.

 (GeekWire Photo / Charlotte Schubert)© Provided by Geekwire

A panel of researchers discussed challenges to adopting AI tools in life sciences at the Intelligent Application Summit hosted by Madrona Venture Group in Seattle last week.

Artificial intelligence is transforming how tech companies do everything from selling products to routing packages. New AI “foundation” models like GPT-3 and DALL-E that can generate new sentences or images were built using massive training sets pulled from the internet.

But in the life sciences, “the standardization of the data is very challenging,” said panelist Maddison Masaeli, CEO of Deepcell, a startup that visually analyzes and categorizes single cells.

Cell biology information is plagued by differences in sample collection, storage and processing, said Masaeli, hindering comparisons across datasets. “From the point of sample collection until you have the image, there are tens of steps that cause variability in the data,” she said.

Not all life sciences data are messy. Protein structures, for instance, are represented in standardized ways in standardized databases. That enabled the training of DeepMind’s AlphaFold and the University of Washington’s RoseTTAFold, AI tools that recently cracked open the longstanding problem of predicting protein folding. More recently, the UW released ProteinMPPN, an AI-powered protein design tool.

But even for proteins, a lot of information is behind a wall. Lucas Nivon, CEO of Seattle protein design startup Cyrus Biotechnology, said that Cyrus approached big pharma companies about sharing their databases on the structure of antibodies, the basis of many treatments. Tens of thousands of such structures are siloed at various companies.

Related video: What If You Were Made of Dark Matter?

The companies were all interested in pooling data, and discussed mechanisms for sharing proprietary structures, said Nivon. “And then nobody wanted to be the first the lead investor, so to say,” said Nivon.

Cyrus joined with Amazon Web Services and other partners this summer to create an open-source protein design nonprofit, OpenFold, that is now talking with potential partners about sharing such antibody structure data.

“There is that dark matter that is just sitting there on the side. It’s literally just there,” said Nivon. “And everybody admits it.”


Protein rings hallucinated by ProteinMPPN, artificial intelligence-powered software from the UW’s Institute for Protein Design. (IPD Image)© Provided by Geekwire

The issues of reliability and bias that plague AI modeling in tech applications also affect the life sciences, but in different ways, said the panelists.

When AI churns out a nonsense paragraph, users can see that right away. But if it’s spitting out the wrong diagnosis or the wrong protein structure, it’s harder to assess, said Jonathan Carlson, who leads life sciences research and incubation at Microsoft Health Futures, part of the tech giant’s research division.

“Many of the problems we see in life sciences are not unique, but they’re very acute,” added Carlson.

Testing products made through AI and then feeding the data back into the model sounds tidy in principle, but in the life sciences the process can take a long time. Cyrus is testing some of its engineered proteins with collaborators who are generating new transgenic mice, a process that can take well over a year. But Nivon’s team also leverages high throughput in vitro and cellular screening systems.

Efforts to optimize screening systems will enable faster honing of AI models, said Nivon. He points to Capsida Biotherapeutics, which iteratively engineers and screens designs for gene therapy using animal models, harvesting tissue to assess which are effectively getting to the right place in the body.

Researchers would like to better connect biological data to clinical outcomes, but there’s a lot standing in the way, including the need to protect privacy, said Masaeli. “There is no one power of Google that includes all the health data or biological data of the world,” she said.

Carlson envisions a future when more life sciences data are de-identified and funneled into standardized, interconnected formats. Ultimately, data from clinical trials and animal experiments could feed back efficiently into a network to help develop new hypothesis and hone questions for basic research.

How to get there is a major question for the field, said Carlson: “How do we enable collaboration while still respecting not only intellectual property but privacy? What does it actually mean to be able to build large foundation models when we can’t even get the data open?”

END FEMICIDE 

END WITCH HUNTING

Hundreds accused after woman is burned alive ‘for being a witch’ in Indian village

Shweta Sharma - Yesterday 

A search is underway to identify attackers that burnt an oppressed caste woman alive on suspicion of witchcraft in India’s eastern state of Bihar.


gettyimages-130303780-612x612.jpg© AFP via Getty Images

Rita Devi, 45, was attacked by a mob of more than 200 people who broke into her house and beat her up before pouring petrol on her to set her ablaze on Saturday night.

At least 14 people, including nine women, have been arrested and 65 others have so far been named in the complaint for allegedly setting the woman on fire after she was branded a witch, superintendent of police Ashok Prasad told The Independent.

Around 200 unknown people who were involved in the incident have been accused in the complaint, known as a First Information Report, he added.

Supt Prasad said tensions had been boiling in the village from around the last one month after a child in the woman’s neighbourhood died due to an illness.

Devi was being blamed for the death after some people called her a witch, he added.

On Saturday, a huge gathering of hundreds of people was called in the village and a so-called shaman was summoned from neighbouring Jharkhand state.

“The crowd turned violent when the ojha (shaman) was not able to give them definite answers and they went to Devi’s house and attacked her. The mob broke into the house from the windows and set her on fire,” Supt Prasad said.

“We are looking into video clips to identify the culprits and more arrests will be made soon.”

The incident has also raised questions over police response as the family alleged that they had alerted the local police station a month prior to the incident.

“We are looking into the allegations. The police could have acted promptly after the local police station was alerted of the threats,” he agreed.

Supt Prasad said they were investigating to see whether there were any lapses or laxity in police response and action would be taken accordingly.

Attacks, mostly on women or widows, on suspicion of witchcraft are sometimes reported from remote regions of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Assam, despite an act which bans witch hunts. Nine people were handed death penalty in 2018 for murdering three members of a family who were accused of being witches.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau estimates around 2,100 such murders took place nationally between 2001 and 2012. In 2020 alone, 15 women were murdered on allegations of witchcraft.

Supt Prasad said the incidents related to witchcraft are not common and are rarely reported from remote areas where people still believe in superstitions and are vulnerable to believing it due to lack of knowledge and education.

“I have asked my team to sensitise people on the issue and make them aware,” he added.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WITCH 

• Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from  Ancient Times 
• to the Present

• 
  

This “magisterial account” explores the fear of witchcraft across the globe from the ancient world to the notorious witch trials of early modern Europe (The Guardian, UK).

The witch came to prominence—and often a painful death—in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In The Witch, historian Ronald Hutton sets the European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft.

Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and the Americas, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations. His fresh anthropological and ethnographical approach focuses on cultural inheritance and change while considering shamanism, folk religion, the range of witch trials, and how the fear of witchcraft might be eradicated.

“[A] panoptic, penetrating book.”—Malcolm Gaskill, London Review of Books

Mila Kunis Joins Over 200 Celebrities Calling on Amazon to Remove Antisemitic Film Touted by Kyrie Irving

Michaela Zee - Yesterday 

Mila Kunis Joins Over 200 Celebrities Calling on Amazon to Remove Antisemitic Film Touted by Kyrie Irving© Getty


Mila Kunis, Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik are among more than 200 celebrities and entertainment executives who have signed an open letter calling on Amazon and Barnes & Noble to remove the antisemitic documentary and book, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” from their respective platforms.

The letter was released by Creative Community for Peace, a non-profit entertainment industry organization. Additional signers of the statement include Sherry Lansing, former CEO of Paramount Pictures; Haim Saban, chairman and CEO of Saban Capital Group; Orly Marley, president of Tuff Gong Worldwide; Rick Rosen, Endeavor co-founder; Disturbed frontman David Draiman; Nina Tassler, co-founder of PatMa Productions; songwriter Diane Warren; comedian Iliza Shlesinger; Ben Silverman, chairman and co-chief executive officer of Propagate Content; and actors Tracy-Ann Oberman and Emmanuelle Chriqui.

The letter reads, “After more than a week of private messages and public calls to take the fallacious book and movie ‘Hebrews to Negroes’ from your sites, you have so far refused to act.”

“Hebrews to Negroes” was recently promoted by Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving on Twitter, boosting the title to a bestseller on Amazon. According to a statement from Creative Community for Peace, “both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have refused to remove the title and continue to profit from its bigotry.” After a temporary suspension, $500,000 donation to the Anti-Defamation League and having his Nike shoe line dropped, Irving apologized last week for promoting the film.

“At a time in America where there are more per capita hate crimes against Jews than any other minority, overwhelmingly more religious-based hate crimes against the Jewish people than any other religion, and more hate crimes against the Jewish people in New York than any other minority, where a majority of American Jews live, it is unacceptable to allow this type of hate to foment on your platforms,” the letter continues.

“Respected platforms and companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have a choice,” said Ari Ingel, director of Creative Community for Peace. “They can either continue to profit off of hatred and antisemitism, while turning a blind eye to the fears of the Jewish community, or they can choose to be an ally, and stand on the right side of history. While free speech is vital, corporations don’t need to help facilitate the spread of dangerous conspiracy theories that threaten the Jewish community. We implore them to take the prudent, responsible steps needed to remove this content.”

Amazon continues to sell other controversial texts, including copies of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” However, a note in the description reads, “Proceeds donated to Jewish Charities & Organizations.”

IDF to charge 2 commanders in death of elderly Palestinian

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF - Yesterday 

The IDF will file charges against two commanders involved in the death of Palestinian-American Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit announced on Thursday.


IDF thwarting a a massive Hamas terrorist network in the West Bank, 

November 22, 2021.© (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON

In January, As'ad, 79, was detained along with a number of other Palestinians at a checkpoint near the village of Jiljilya, north of Ramallah, while the IDF was searching for weapons.

Related video: Clashes across East Jerusalem amid increasing unrest

Duration 3:32   View on Watch

After the operation, As'ad was found lifeless where he had been detained. An investigation was opened by the Defense Ministry to clarify the circumstances of the incident and testimony was collected from the people involved.

The investigation found anomalies in the conduct of the commander of the force inspecting the Palestinians and in the conduct of the commander of the force guarding the detainees, although no causal relationship could be found between the abnormalities and the death.

The military prosecutor's office informed the lawyers of the two commanders that it is considering filing charges against them, subject to a hearing, for the anomalies in their conduct.

Palestinians join huge Fatah rally in Gaza Strip amid rift
Via AP news wire - Yesterday 

APTOPIX Palestinians Arafat© Copyright 2022, The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Turning a huge park in Gaza City into a sea of yellow flags, tens of thousands of Palestinians on Thursday commemorated the anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — a rare public show of support for the Fatah faction in the heartland of its Islamist rival Hamas.

The rally passed without incident, though Gaza's militant Hamas rulers have in the past blocked and violently dispersed demonstrations in solidarity with President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party. The Palestinian parties have been bitterly divided between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip for 15 years.

Crowds marched to Gaza City's Katiba park, waving the yellow flags of Fatah, which Arafat founded in the 1960s. They also raised photos of Abbas, Arafat’s successor.

Arafat died in 2004 at a hospital in France after two years of an Israeli siege on his West Bank headquarters. Palestinians accuse Israel of poisoning him but have offered no proof, adding to the mystery surrounding the death.

For Fatah, the ability to mobilize the masses serves as a referendum on its popularity in Hamas-run Gaza. In 2007, Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces and seized the territory after a bloody week of street fighting.

   FALSE FLAG 

Related video: Hamas colluding with Israel secretly? Two people held in Gaza after rockets target Jewish State  Duration 2:44  View on Watch

The reputation of Hamas, which administers Gaza under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade and the threat of repeated destructive conflicts with Israel, has suffered among Palestinians in recent years. The group has hiked taxes on residents but struggled to provide even basic services. Four wars with Israel and the 15-year blockade have devastated Gaza’s economy.

In a recorded message played at the rally, Abbas called for Palestinian unity to ease the blockade. Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from stockpiling arms. Critics view it as a form of collective punishment, confining the territory’s 2 million people to what Palestinians often refer to as the world’s largest open-air prison.

“We feel the suffering of our people under the oppressive siege,” Abbas said. “This pain and agony will not end unless the division, which took our cause backward, ends.”

Hamas does not easily grant permits for such Fatah demonstrations in its territory. In 2007, a few months after taking over Gaza, Hamas attacked Arafat’s anniversary rally and killed six Palestinians. In 2014, authorities prevented Fatah from holding another gathering.

But at the height of Egyptian efforts to reconcile the Palestinian factions and end the enduring political and geographical schism in 2017, Hamas allowed Fatah to hold an Arafat celebration.

Last month, officials from Hamas and Fatah held a new round of reconciliation talks in Algeria and signed an outline for an agreement that would pave the way for elections. But few are optimistic the factions can overcome their differences, as they have failed to implement past deals.

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