Erdogan’s Big Gamble on the Hagia Sophia

Turkey’s president, desperate to boost his popularity at home, further damages his country’s international standing.

By Soner Cagaptay, July 11, 2020 ANALYSIS THE GLOBALIST

Credit: Brookings Institution (www.flickr.com)

Takeaways

The decision on the Hagia Sophia is unlikely to give Erdogan more than a temporary popularity boost. But it will surely undermine Turkey’s international brand.
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Maintaining Hagia Sophia as a museum has been potent evidence of Turkey’s openness, including a willingness to embrace its Christian past.
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As the nation’s most-visited building by foreign tourists, the Hagia Sophia is Turkey’s strongest global symbol.
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Converting Hagia Sophia back to an Islamic edifice will complete Erdogan’s trilogy of massive, legacy-defining mosques in his hometown of Istanbul.
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On July 9, Turkey’s Court of Cassation decided to void a 1934 cabinet decision designating Hagia Sophia as a museum.

Erdogan, the lobbyist
The high court’s decision followed an intense campaign by the office of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to convert the nearly 1,500-year-old Istanbul landmark back into a mosque.

A 2010 constitutional amendment allowed Erdogan to appoint a majority of the court’s current judges, so the decision was not a surprise.

Among other reasons, Erdogan apparently wants to move forward with the conversion in order to reverse the ongoing erosion of his popular base.
Hurting Turkey’s international brand

Yet, the decision on the Hagia Sophia is unlikely to give Erdogan more than a temporary boost in popularity. What it will surely do is undermine Turkey’s international brand as an open, Muslim-majority society at peace with its Christian heritage.

Byzantine emperor Justinian I built Hagia Sophia as a Christian cathedral in 537. In 1453, Ottoman sultan Mehmet II converted it into a mosque shortly after taking the city from the Byzantines.

Always fighting Ataturk

In 1934, following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk converted the building into a museum.

As the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk believed that opening the building to all people would underline his secularist revolution and help push Islam out of government and public spaces.
Un-mosquing and re-mosquing

Yet just as Ataturk “un-mosqued” Hagia Sophia nearly a hundred years ago, Erdogan seemingly wants to convert it back.

His goal is to bolster his religious revolution — one that has steadily flooded Turkey’s government and public spaces with his conservative brand of Islam.

Making such a move in Istanbul is particularly important to Erdogan given the city’s deep symbolism in his life and career.

Born there in 1954, he emerged on the national political scene after becoming the city’s mayor in 1994, using the position as a springboard to his ongoing run as the most powerful elected leader in Turkey’s history.
Building mosques, while tearing Turkey apart

For years now, Erdogan has been patronizing major mosque construction in Istanbul as a way of leaving his indelible political and religious imprint there.

In March 2019, he oversaw the inauguration of Camlica Mosque, informally known as “Erdogan Mosque,” a massive structure that was erected on a tall hill in order to permanently alter the city’s dramatic skyline.

Another major Erdogan-backed mosque is also nearing completion, this one poignantly placed on Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, which has historically lacked a mosque.


Converting Hagia Sophia back to an Islamic edifice will complete Erdogan’s trilogy of massive, legacy-defining mosques in his hometown of Istanbul.
But will this boost his popularity?

Erdogan’s mosque push has more nakedly political drivers as well. A nativist, populist leader, he no doubt aims to use the controversy generated by the conversion process to support the narrative of victimization that he often peddles to his base.

In this case, his message would be: “How dare these secularists deny us pious Muslims the ‘liberty’ to pray at Hagia Sophia?”

This strategy is unlikely to work, however. Since 2002, Erdogan has won more than a dozen nationwide elections primarily on a platform of strong economic growth.
No way to counter the recession pain

Yet, once a recession hit in 2018, Erdogan’s popularity began to slip. His hand-picked candidates lost mayoral elections for Istanbul and other key cities in 2019.

The Turkish economy is now suffering another recession due to the coronavirus pandemic. No wonder that polls show that Erdogan’s popularity is slipping further.

Thus, even if the Hagia Sophia conversion increases Erdogan’s approval rating by a few percentage points, the boost is unlikely to last. Nothing short of strong economic growth in Turkey will bring back the wider popularity he once enjoyed.
Implications abroad

If implemented in full, the building’s conversion would cause significant, potentially irreversible harm to Turkey’s international brand.

Maintaining Hagia Sophia as a museum has long served as potent evidence of Turkey’s openness. It vividly underscored its willingness to embrace its Christian past, Christian citizens, and Christian-majority neighboring countries.

As the nation’s most-visited building by foreign tourists, Hagia Sophia in many ways is Turkey’s global brand.
Chances to change his mind?

For officials in Washington and other allied governments considering how best to sway Erdogan from his damaging course, such conversations are likely best conducted in private given the issue’s domestic sensitivities.

But if the Trump administration does decide to comment publicly, its statement should highlight Turkey’s long, proud history of religious tolerance — and encourage Ankara to shy away from further steps that undermine this tradition.
Conclusion

Turkey should also be urged to maintain Hagia Sophia’s multicultural heritage and allow public access to its religious iconography, taking into account that such access was unhindered during most of the Ottoman era.

More on this topic
Erdogan and the Hagia Sophia: Will He – Or Won’t He?
“Army of Islam”: Erdogan’s Plot Against Israel
Albania Must Choose Between the EU and Turkey

About Soner Cagaptay
Soner Cagaptay is director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

TRUMPISM GOES GLOBAL

French bus driver dies after being attacked by passengers ‘who refused to wear face masks’

Philippe Monguillot, 59, was left brain dead by alleged assault in southwestern town of Bayonne
Chiara Giordano JULY 10, 2020

Wife of French bus driver Philippe Monguillot, Veronique Monguillot holds a portrait of her husband during a march in Bayonne, southwestern France, 8 July 2020. ( EPA )

A French bus driver has died after being attacked by passengers during an alleged row over masks.

Philippe Monguillot, 59, died in hospital on Friday, five days after he was left brain dead by the assault in Bayonne, in southwest France.

His daughter, Marie, said his family and doctors had made the decision to “let him go”, Agence France-Presse reported

Mr Monguillot was attacked after he reportedly asked three passengers to wear face coverings – mandatory on public transport in France during the coronavirus pandemic – and to see their tickets.

Two men in their 20s have been charged with attempted murder.

Two other men have been charged with not assisting a person in danger, while a fifth man faces a charge of attempting to hide a suspect.

Thousands of people dressed in white to took part in a march honouring Mr Monguillot in Bayonne on Wednesday.

The city’s mayor Jean-Rene Etchegaray, condemned the “barbaric” attack.

He tweeted: “Philippe Monguillot has left us. He succumbs to barbaric aggression in the exercise of his profession.

“A faithful servant of the public service, he leaves the image of a generous man. Support for colleagues in grief. Our affection for his grieving wife and family.”

French prime minister Jean Castex said Mr Monguillot’s death following the “cowardly assault” while he was trying to do his job “touches us in the heart”.

Thousands of people participate in a march as a tribute to French bus driver Philippe Monguillot in Bayonne, southwestern France, 8 July 2020. (Caroline Blumberg/EPA)
He tweeted: “The Republic recognises in him an exemplary citizen and will not forget him. Justice will punish the perpetrators of this abject crime.”

Interior minister Gerard Darmanin sent his condolences to Mr Monguillot’s family, saying those involved in the incident must be punished.

He tweeted: “I extend my sincere condolences to the family, relatives and colleagues of Philippe Monguillot, bus driver who was violently attacked last Sunday in Bayonne.

“This heinous and cowardly act must not go unpunished.”

He added: “I will go tomorrow to #Bayonne to take stock of safety in the city with the heads of state services and meet the drivers and unions of public transport.”

The European Transport Workers’ Federation said it was “shocked and saddened to learn of the senseless and heinous assault”.

The union called for greater protection for workers in the industry, saying in a statement: “For us, it is essential that management quickly implement measures to ensure the safety of drivers.

“Companies must value lives over profits.”

It added on Twitter: “We express our support and solidarity with Philippe Monguillot’s family, friends and colleagues.

“We condemn this barbaric and senseless act, and once again, we demand the swift implementation measures to protect workers from such attacks!”

These 7 details from the damning Sharpiegate report show it was a dark omen of Trump’s destructive potential

Published  July 10, 2020 By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet - Commentary


While it was dismissed by some as an overhyped media obsession, the presidential scandal that has come to be known as “Sharpiegate” was, in fact, an early warning sign of the truly catastrophic potential of Donald Trump.

The story arose out of Hurricane Dorian, which began its deliberate march up toward the East Coast of the United States in late August and early September of 2019. It ravaged the Bahamas, and officials feared the damage it could inflict stateside. But then came a Trump tweet on Sept. 1, and later comments to reporters, in which he warned that Alabama was in the storm’s path. He said it was among the states “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

This wasn’t true, and his false claim set off a series of troubling events. Most infamously, he later showed a weather forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a Sharpie to falsely extend the storm’s path into Alabama — a truly absurd and ridiculous spectacle that earned the president widespread derision. But his tweet also led to the NOAA’s National Weather Service office in Birmingham to tweet out contradictory information, telling readers: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.” That tweet sparked fury within the administration, and the Commerce Department later rebuked the office in a contentious statement.

Because of Trump’s particular personal style, the episode had an element of farce that led some to dismiss its importance. Others — including me — argued that having reliable communication about severe weather events is actually a vital government function, and Trump’s actions showed in disturbing fashion how he can undermine this role. And a new report from the Commerce Department inspector general, examining the lead-up to the statement, affirmed this view and strengthened the case that the administration’s actions were deeply objectionable. In light of the administration’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Hurricane Dorian episode reads as an ominous preview of the catastrophic habits of the president and the people he surrounds himself with.

Here are seven key details from the report:

1. Mick Mulvaney was at the center of it all.
The president’s then-chief of staff sparked a process that led to a statement rebuking the Birmingham office for contradicting the president, according to an email included in the report. We can probably assume Mulvaney was carrying out Trump’s orders, but even without this assumption, this fact shows that the highest levels of the administration were involved in actions that ended up undermining scientific integrity in favor of what was perceived to be good public relations.

This habit continued into the coronavirus crisis to disastrous effect. Trump has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic because he clearly believes acknowledging the scale of the crisis will hurt the economy and thus his re-election chances.

2. The inspector general concluded the statement rebuking the Birmingham office undermined public safety.

The report explains:

[The] very issuance of the Statement had public safety implications. An immediate, but briefly lived, consequence was that leaders at some NWS offices lost or had diminished connections with their emergency management contacts after having to turn off their mobile phones due to the number of calls about the Statement. However, the broader, longer-term consequence is that NOAA’s rebuke of the NWS Birmingham office could have a chilling effect on NWS forecasters’ future public safety messages, as well as undercut public trust in NWS forecasts. [emphasis added]

These long-term threats to NWS are important, but thankfully, there’s been no indication yet that Trump’s conduct toward the agency has led to tangible harm. But in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s doubtlessly true that Trump had consistently thwarted the public health messaging of his own administration and even intentionally undermined the scientific advice of his own experts. The pandemic is now resurgent after he rushed to reopen against the experts’ advice, and many people are sick and dying as a result.

3. Evidence undermined the White House’s apparent fears of the “deep state.”

The report found:

Mr. Mulvaney’s request appears to have been based on the perception that NWS Birmingham “intentionally contradicted” President Trump, who tweeted on September 1, in reference to Hurricane Dorian, that “[i]n addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” However, evidence demonstrates that NWS Birmingham was responding to questions from the public, and we found no evidence that NWS Birmingham was aware that President Trump had tweeted that Alabama would most likely be hit harder than anticipated by Hurricane Dorian.

So it seems the White House thought the NWS Birmingham office was trying to undermine the president, and it wanted to knock the office down a peg. This shows the fundamentally paranoid and self-obsessed nature of Trump’s presidency, and this disturbing trait has clearly impacted the president’s handling of the coronavirus. He has even suggested people wear masks, which experts believe are one of the best ways to prevent spread of the virus, to “signal disapproval of him.” This childish way of thinking has almost certainly encouraged his followers to eschew masks as a way of showing support for him.

4. The relatively minor even had an impact on employee morale

Because of the dust-up caused by the Birmingham office’s tweet, the subsequent statement, and then the public criticism of the statement, employees of the agency were understandably upset:

At the conclusion of our fieldwork, NOAA employees said that they did not think that NOAA will be permanently damaged by the issuance of the Statement. Although NOAA’s credibility and employees’ morale took a serious hit, NOAA employees expressed their readiness to move forward.

Despite employees’ readiness to move forward, we pursued this work because the Department’s and NOAA’s actions, in the words of one senior NOAA official, “hit at the core” of NOAA. The Statement undercut the NWS’s forecasts and potentially undercut public trust in NOAA’s and the NWS’s science and the apolitical nature of that science.

This level of political involvement in scientific and public safety matters is disheartening for staff. At least in the NOAA case, the episode was short-lived. But it’s hard to imagine the ongoing health crisis, and Trump’s disastrous and partisan leadership of the response, isn’t severely compromising morale for public health officials in government. Many may decide to pack up and leave as a result, which could cause lasting damage to vital institutions. Their ability to warn the public about the dangers has certainly been chilled because of the president’s actions.

5. The controversy undermined the good work of NOAA.

The report also noted that because of all the attention that the statement controversy attracted, the agency was unable to draw attention to its genuine success:

The attention generated by the Statement cost NOAA and NWS the opportunity to highlight what Dr. Jacobs suggested should have been an important success story that week: that NOAA’s weather forecasting model correctly predicted the path of Hurricane Dorian and proved more accurate than the European model. As stated in an email that Dr. Jacobs sent on September 6, 2019, preliminary statistics showed a “[v]ery good forecast for a tricky storm that stalled.” (See appendix I.) In the end, this apparent success story of the important science-based accomplishment was overshadowed by actions the Department set in motion in response to an external demand.

Failing to get the public to understand when the government is working right is a significant opportunity cost, but under Trump, we’re paying it every day.

6. Internal concerns about the political agenda were overridden.

Much this fallout was preventable. People within NOAA warned against releasing the statement:

[Even] before the Statement was publicly issued, the internal reactions were negative. When Dr. Jacobs contacted key people at NOAA, including NOAA’s then Chief of Staff and senior career employees, to notify them of the forthcoming Statement, the immediate reactions included shock, disappointment, and attempts to talk Dr. Jacobs out of letting the Statement go forward, particularly with the line rebuking the NWS Birmingham office.

As the coronavirus has devastated the United States, this pattern has happened again and again. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for example, has repeatedly and even publicly warned against Trump’s actions, only to have his warnings ignored for no good reason.

7. Political considerations trumped everything else.

Fundamentally, the report makes clear that the leadership in the administration wasn’t concerned with doing what was best for the agency or for the public understanding of science. They were doing what they thought was best for Trump:

Mr. Walsh assembled the team of NOAA and Departmental officials to work on the task for Secretary Ross and the White House. Of the team he assembled, the most involved participants were Mr. Walsh, Dr. Jacobs, and Mr. Dewhirst. While Dr. Jacobs had the relevant substantive, scientific knowledge, senior officials on NOAA’s political team suggested that they should have been involved to advise him on how to navigate this situation. To our knowledge, Mr. Walsh and Mr. Dewhirst do not have formal training or work experience in meteorology or emergency communications. Nonetheless, they both said that they concluded that the NWS Birmingham tweet needed to be corrected. Mr. Dewhirst, who was described as someone who “tends to not be afraid to just blow things up,” took a leading role in drafting the Statement and, according to Ms. Roberts and one NOAA Communications employee, overruled an objection to the line that rebuked NWS Birmingham. [emphais added]

But the report also noted that this kind of conduct isn’t even good for Trump:

Ultimately, NOAA issued a Statement that, from the perspective of one senior NOAA official, “hurt the Department and it hurt NOAA, it hurt the White House, it hurt the public, it hurt the science community.” And, specifically with respect to NWS, the line in the Statement that rebuked NWS Birmingham undercut NWS forecasters and created the possibility that forecasters would second-guess or delay their public safety tweets or warnings—an issue with life-and-death consequences, given the public safety role of NWS.

This, too, is a key aspect of the coronavirus response. Trump’s narrow focus on his re-election always makes him aim for the short-term win or the message that will succeed for the next news cycle. But his re-election chances would actually be much better if he took a longer view and decided that grappling with the science and figuring out how to crush the virus was most important.

As Sharpiegate showed, though, Trump is simply repeating his own self-destructive habits, and the cost is falling on all of us.

Mourning in America: But after the Trump era's darkness, a rebirth is still possible
At last, the American people have awakened to the dangers of this president. But the worst may still lie ahead


CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SALON JULY 10, 2020 

Since Election Day 2016, America has been in a state of mourning.

Donald Trump's Independence Day speeches offered more of the almost never-ending funeral ceremonies for America's democracy, dignity and decency. Instead of trumpet-like exhortations to American greatness and goodness on the country's birthday, Trump chose to deliver horribly off-key funereal dirges.
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Trump's speeches were celebrations of white racism and neo-fascism, declarations that those Americans who dare to oppose him are de facto enemies of the state to be purged from the body politic.

Some of America's most respected historians have certified Donald Trump to be one of the worst presidents of all time.

Trump can do no better because he is inexorably compelled and attracted to the worst parts of America's past and present. In that way Donald Trump, his followers, enablers, voters, supporters and other allies are the human embodiment of almost everything wrong with American society.

Writing for the Washington Post, David Nakamura described Trump's Fourth of July weekend speeches, comparing them to his infamous "American Carnage" inaugural address:

Nearly 3½ years later, in the president's telling, the carnage is still underway but this time the enemy is closer to home — other Americans whose racial identity and cultural beliefs are toppling the nation's heritage and founding ideals….

As he has so often during his tenure, the president made clear that he will do little to try to heal or unify the country ahead of the November presidential election but rather aims to drive a deeper wedge into the country's fractures.

At Mount Rushmore, under the granite gaze of four U.S. presidents, Trump railed against "angry mobs" pursuing "far-left fascism" and a "left-wing cultural revolution" that has manifested in the assault on statues and monuments celebrating Confederate leaders and other U.S. historical figures, including some former presidents, amid the mass racial justice protests of recent weeks.

A day later, on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump's rhetoric was, if anything, even harsher. "We are now in the process of defeating the radical left — the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters," he told his assembled guests on what is supposed to be a day of national celebration. As Nakamura observed:

In making the case that a radical and violent ideology underpins much of the social justice movement that propelled the nationwide demonstrations, Trump has dropped virtually all pretense that he supports millions of peaceful protesters who have called for broad reforms to address what they see as systemic racism and a culture of brutality in police departments.

Instead, he warned of a "growing danger" to the values of the nation's founders — a "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children."

Trump even described those Americans who oppose him as being akin to Nazis or terrorists. Almost explicit in Trump's Independence Day speeches are threats of violence and destruction. He does not believe in the core tenets of democracy and normal politics, such as compromise and consensus-seeking within the constraints of an agreed-upon set of rules.

While political debates in America have often been intense and sometimes quite violent — see the Civil War — the nation's political leaders for the most part still shared a fundamental belief in the system and the need to preserve it for future generations. Donald Trump and his allies have no such principled commitments.

As with other authoritarians and demagogues, Donald Trump's threats must be taken seriously. Trump is not engaging in harmless hyperbole or mere attention-seeking and distracting behavior.

In addition to Trump's repeated public use of stochastic violence and his outright threats to have Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats jailed for treason — or worse — there is the president's ominous private behavior to consider as well.

As recounted by former national security advisor John Bolton in his new book, Donald Trump wants journalists to be killed. Trump also supports Chinese President Xi Jinping's use of concentration camps where Uighur Muslims have been tortured and killed.

To make matters worse, America's state of mourning is also a literal season of death with the coronavirus pandemic. Because he is only capable of destruction, Trump has made decisions about the pandemic that have led to the deaths of at least 133,000 Americans and counting.

In another example of Trump and his cabal's barbarism and disdain toward the American people, the administration's new "plan" for "confronting" the coronavirus pandemic is to habituate and condition the public into accepting hundreds of thousands of deaths as somehow being a "new normal," which might also include the needless deaths of school children from the coronavirus pandemic.

At the New Yorker, Robin Wright summarizes the pathetic condition of America in the Age of Trump:

The sorry state of America's political and physical health ripples across the globe. The United States, long the bedrock of the Western alliance, is less inspirational today — and perhaps will be even less so tomorrow…. This Fourth of July holiday is one of the most humbling in our history. Even at the height of world wars or the Great Depression, America inspired. But, today, the United States is destroying the moral authority it once had. There will still be fireworks. And the Statue of Liberty still towers over New York Harbor. But it is harder today to convince others that Americans embrace — or practice — the ideals that Lady Liberty represents.

New public opinion polls show that this feeling of dread and despair and embarrassment is widespread. American exceptionalism and greatness are in doubt. Americans' sense of patriotism is at a two-decade low. A new poll from Politico and Morning Consult shows that 75 percent of American voters believe the country is on the wrong track — the worst such response since Donald Trump won the White House in 2016.
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Collectively these polls show how the American people want a return to normalcy and decency. Trump cannot soothe such pain: his political brand is cruelty, chaos, and destructive disruption.

America's mourning in the Age of Trump is following the steps outlined by the "stages of grief": Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

With the George Floyd protests and people's uprising — and what appears to be a large shift in public opinion against Donald Trump — the American people seem to have finally arrived at the stage of accepting that the country is imperiled by the president and his movement.

Too much time may have already been wasted, because hope peddlers and other naïve voices in the American commentariat kept telling the American people that Trump would "pivot" and become "presidential," that special counsel Robert Mueller "would save the country," that "the institutions were strong" and that Trump's evil was being "exaggerated" by his critics, or that Trump's voters were "good people," the American people en masse are now finally moving to action. They are doing this through mobilizing, organizing, engaging in direct corporeal politics and — we must hope — showing up in massive numbers to vote Trump out of office in November.
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Of course, matters are not that simple.

While the Democrats and other good Americans are moving from acceptance to action in their stages of grief for America, Donald Trump and his supporters are being made to confront that their movement, at least in its current form, may be dying.

Trump's true believers are now in the denial and anger stages of grief. How will they react after Election Day if Trump is conclusively defeated and then forced out of office?

Trump's followers are willing to kill and die for him. We have seen an increase in hate crimes, mass shootings and other right-wing terrorism and violence. Blood has already been spilt in the (literal) name of Donald Trump. On Election Day and the weeks and months after there will likely be much more violence by Trump's supporters against their "enemies."
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Jonathan Lockwood, an operative for right-wing extremist Republicans in Oregon, recently issued an ominous warning to the American people and the world. In an interview with the Independent he explains:

"I think we should fear a violent uprising… All it takes is for Trump to say one line or post one tweet," he said, adding that such an uprising could consist of occupying state capitols or even taking hostages to prevent state legislatures from certifying the election results.

"I think you could see takeovers of every [state] capitol, since the president seems to enjoy watching that from DC, and the country can descend into a chaos that we've never seen. People are gravely underestimating how pervasive these conspiracies and the delegitimizing of Democrats governing truly are."

Election Day 2020 is an existential moment when the life or death of America's multiracial democracy — and the nation's pre-eminent place in the world – will be decided.

Will the American people choose death and destruction with Donald Trump and all that he represents? Or will the American people instead embrace life, and saving the country's democracy, with Joe Biden?

This election is a literal struggle between creation and destruction, a moment when the American people will either rise to the occasion or fall further into shame, defeat and ignominy.


CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
 is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Bacteriophages Could Be a Potential Game Changer in the Trajectory of COVID-19

By Marcin W. Wojewodzic
-July 10, 2020

Source: Design Cells/Getty Images

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused the death of at least 270,000 people as of the 8th of May 2020. This work stresses the potential role of bacteriophages to decrease the mortality rate of patients infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus. The indirect cause of mortality in COVID-19 is miscommunication between the innate and adaptive immune systems, resulting in a failure to produce effective antibodies against the virus on time. Although further research is urgently needed, secondary bacterial infections in the respiratory system could potentially contribute to the high mortality rate observed among the elderly due to COVID-19. If bacterial growth, together with delayed production of antibodies, is a significant contributing factor to COVID-19’s mortality rate, then the additional time needed for the human body’s adaptive immune system to produce specific antibodies could be gained by reducing the bacterial growth rate in the respiratory system of a patient. Independently of that, the administration of synthetic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 viruses could potentially decrease the viral load. The decrease of bacterial growth and the covalent binding of synthetic antibodies to viruses should further diminish the production of inflammatory fluids in the lungs of patients (the indirect cause of death). Although the first goal could potentially be achieved by antibiotics, I argue that other methods may be more effective or could be used together with antibiotics to decrease the growth rate of bacteria, and that respective clinical trials should be launched.

Both goals can be achieved by bacteriophages. The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of natural bacteriophages that prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failure and should be harmless to a patient. Independently of that, synthetically changed bacteriophages could be used to quickly manufacture specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This can be done via a Nobel Prize awarded technique called “phage display.” If it works, the patient is given extra time to produce their own specific antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stop the damage caused by an excessive immunological reaction.
The Virus That Caused the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has caused the death of more than 270,000 people, as reported by 8th May 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The crisis we observe is the joint effect of globalization and the properties of the new virus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease, COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome COronaVirus 2” describing one of the most dangerous symptoms in COVID-19. Although there have been past warnings of the threat that respiratory targeting viruses pose,1 the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread at an unprecedented rate and it is devastating our health and economy globally. We urgently need multiple approaches to tackle this crisis.

This short communication attempts to highlight the potential for the use of natural bacteriophages to decrease the mortality rate among patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. COVID-19 patients can develop SARS, leading to atypical pneumonia2 that is mediated by cytokine storms.3
Possible Significance of Bacteria in Symptoms for COVID-19

The most probable entrance road of the SARS-CoV-2 to humans is the respiratory system, where the virus can disrupt its equilibrium.


The indirect cause of death in COVID-19 patients could be miscommunication between the innate and adaptive immunological systems.4 The adaptive immune response takes much longer than the innate immune response to begin effectively attacking a new pathogen. This means there is a period when only the innate immune system is fighting the infection and, in this period, the innate immune system’s response can become too aggressive when faced with a high virus load, causing it to damage other systems. The growth of the virus causes the innate immune system to secrete inflammatory material (fluid and inflammatory cells) into the lungs. As a result, the lungs become filled with fluid reducing the body’s ability to exchange gases.4

The debris of dying and virally infected human respiratory cells can become a substrate for bacteria growth, a side effect of the virus infection. This growth of bacteria then causes the innate immune system to secrete additional inflammatory material in nearby alveoli. Bacterial infections seem to provoke a further reaction of the innate immune system, and they may interact with virus infections.5 This process accelerates as the virus continues to attack lung cells, and it thus creates more cell debris substrate for the bacteria to feed on. This can result in the innate immune system adding too much inflammatory fluid to the lungs, inhibiting gas exchange and resulting in an urgent need for ventilation, and it can cause sepsis and death.

The delay (or failure) of the production of antibodies specific to the virus could explain why SARS-CoV-2 is so dangerous for the elderly. A recent detailed review on immunity in COVID-19 summarizes state-of-the-art knowledge of the host’s immunological response to the virus, and it points out clear differences in disease progression between younger and older patients.4

Immunosenescence (impairment of immune functions) can delay the production of antibodies and is usually expected in elderly patients (Figure 1B),6,7 which might be a part of the cause for the high age-dependent mortality observed in COVID-19 patients (Figures 1A, B). Although data for COVID-19 are still scarce, there is evidence that having previously contracted influenza predisposes the host to acquiring pneumococcal colonization8,9 and therefore there is a known mechanism for viral infections to cause bacterial colonization in the human respiratory system. Further, the co-occurrence of viruses and bacteria is well documented for other viruses.10Figure 1. Theoretical time courses of the SARS-CoV-2 virus growth (red curves), bacterial growth (purple curves), and host antibody production (blue curves) for four scenarios. (A) A young healthy individual who has no problems developing antibodies to the virus infection. (B) An old individual who experiences delayed antibody production, resulting in bacterial growth as well as increased virus growth. (C) An old individual for whom a bacteriophage cocktail against bacterial growth was introduced as a part of standard therapy. Increase of bacteriophages is marked (green curve) with the time of treatment (green arrow). The relationship between bacteriophages and bacteria can be described by the Lotkka-Voltera population model. The viral load does not decrease until the body’s natural antiviral antibodies are produced but more time is bought for this to happen. (D) An old individual for whom synthetic antibodies were introduced (brown curve), creating an immediate reduction in the viral load and once again buying time for the natural antibodies to be produced. SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Although ecologists call this process a “succession,” medical doctors use the term “secondary infections.” For instance Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), Aerococcus viridans, Haemophilius influenza, and Moraxella catarrhalis are bacteria typically found in influenza patients, as well as other respiratory commensals, which occasionally turn into pathogens causing infection.11

A recent review suggests that bacterial infections, including Acinetobacter baumanii and Klebsiella pneumoniae, have been documented in COVID-19 patients, especially in the intensive care unit setting.2 Non-survivors were more likely to have sepsis and secondary infection, although detailed bacteriology results were not reported. Secondary infections were also positively correlated with steroid administration.2

At least part of the high mortality rate attributed to COVID-19 could be due to bacterial infection of the respiratory system,12,13 although we still do not have an accurate estimate for the numbers. There might also be problems in producing reliable estimates for these numbers due to the overwhelming number of patients seen in clinics and the criteria for which patients are admitted to bacteriology tests, and at what point in the process. A recent report from Wuhan shows that at least 50% of patients dying developed secondary infections.12 The median time given for these secondary infections to develop is 17 days, although the range in time is quite large. It is plausible that bacterial infections begin to colonize before acute respiratory distress syndrome is developed.

In viral scenarios such as influenza, bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa are known to spread rapidly.14,15 In addition, the rapid and enormous response of the first-line, innate immunity system causes general inflammation that can change pulmonary structures (causing fibrosis), further reducing oxygen uptake and causing permanent damage to the respiratory tissue. This reaction can lead to the innate immunity system itself being the actual cause of death; however, the extent to which this reaction is caused by the body’s response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus or to which it is caused by its response to infection by bacteria (such as P. aeruginosa) is not yet known and I postulate may differ over the course of the infection.

The interplay between the time taken for the human body to develop antiviral antibodies and the role of bacteria in the death of older individuals is also not yet well known for COVID-19.
Integrative Approach Proposal

If bacterial growth, together with the delayed production of antibodies, is a significant contributing factor to COVID-19’s mortality rate, then the additional time needed for the human body’s adaptive immunity system to produce antibodies could be gained by reducing the bacterial growth rate in the respiratory system of the patient. If the growth of bacteria in lungs can be stopped, then the rate of liquid increase within the lungs should also decrease. However, as the growth of the virus is exponential, it might be necessary to decrease the viral load at the same time as the bacterial load to slow down the immunological response.
Natural Bacteriophages’ Potential—A Direct Weapon Against Bacteria

Bacteriophages are viruses that selectively attack specific species of bacteria and are otherwise harmless to animal cells, including humans. They were discovered 100 years ago by Frederick W. Twort and Félix d’Hérelle16 and are distributed throughout Earth’s ecosystems17 and over a broad bacterial host range, including bacteria naturally found in humans.18

It has been shown that the attack of bacteriophages is specific, meaning that one species of bacteriophage targets only a single species of bacteria (or even a specific strain of one species).19 This specificity also points toward the “Red Queen” co-evolutionary process between these two players.20,21 The scenario of the attack is as follows: (1) The bacteriophage attaches itself to a susceptible bacterium, exclusively infects the host bacterial cell and (2) hijacks the bacterium’s biochemical machinery to produce multiple copies of itself. (3) The bacterium then undergoes destruction (lysis) and new copies of the bacteriophage are released and infect, exclusively, other bacteria of the same species in the neighboring areas.

Despite this known interplay between bacteriophages and bacteria, research into bacteriophages and their potential medical applications was largely abandoned for many years due to “The Antibiotics Revolution.” Antibiotics were adopted as the main way of treating bacterial infections due primarily to the fact that they are general purpose, as opposed to bacteriophages that specifically target a single species of bacteria. Other advantages include the fact that antibiotics are usually fast acting, efficient, and relatively cheap to manufacture. However, there are several drawbacks as well to the use of antibiotics. One of these is that, unlike bacteriophages, antibiotics can destroy beneficial bacteria in addition to harmful ones.22 More importantly, the overuse of antibiotics can cause bacteria to evolve resistances to them, resulting in antibiotic-immune “superbugs.”23,24

In the current COVID-19 pandemic, around 70% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients worldwide receive antibiotics as part of their treatment.25 This raises the danger of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria even higher and creates an even greater need for the development of alternative strategies to fight bacterial infections. Unlike antibiotics, bacteriophage treatments would be far less susceptible to the development of resistances, as the bacteriophage itself can also adapt to overcome any resistance that the bacteria develop.26

It has also been suggested that the presence of bacteriophages can have positive effects on human health and patient recovery, suggesting that bacteriophages are to some extent responsible for homeostasis of the microbiota.27 For instance, a group investigating alternative treatments for Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can infect the bowel and cause diarrhea, has identified a large set of bacteriophages that are effective at killing this pathogen.28 This method is now being transformed into a therapeutic treatment. We can find more examples of how bacteriophages are being used for human or animal models, in addition to different bioengineering methods using bacteriophages that are currently being developed.29–31
Bacteriophages Used for Accelerated Therapeutic Antibody Production Against the Virus

Despite the fact that bacteriophages’ potential to fight bacterial infections has only recently been rediscovered, they were successfully used as tools at the molecular level, leading to Nobel Prize awards.32

Using a technique called phage display, bacteriophages have the potential to quickly produce recombinant antibodies.33 This technique of producing antibodies was developed for MERS-CoV and successfully applied.34 In phage display, techniques blocking ACE2 interaction could be engineered from the serum of immune patients. The Yin-Yang biopanning method highlights the possibility of utilizing crude antigens for the isolation of monoclonal antibodies by phage display. Before this, artificial antibody production was primarily done by using animals; however, this is both slower and less cost effective than using bacteriophage display techniques.35 Another benefit of this method is that monoclonal antibodies produced by bacteriophage display techniques can be humanized.36

The use of antibody therapy for the control of viral diseases has already been reviewed and some therapies have been approved for human testing.37 As an example, the company ProteoGenix launched accelerated therapeutic antibody discovery by screening a naive antibody human library (LiAb-SFMAX™, scFv, Fab, IgG) or an immune human antibody library (obtained from the plasma of COVID-19 survivors) by using the phage display technique (https://bit.ly/2LlOsVQ). This demonstrates that accelerated therapeutic antibody discovery is highly feasible.

Therefore, there are two main ways that bacteriophages could be used to decrease the mortality rate of the COVID-19 pandemic. They can be used to decrease the population of bacteria in a patient’s respiratory system and/or bacteriophage display techniques can be used to efficiently manufacture synthetic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (Fig. 1D).

I propose a series of clinical trials for the use of cocktails of bacteriophages (that target the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory problems) in treating COVID-19 patients and/or the use of phage display techniques to create synthetic antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2 in the early stages of infection.
Further Considerations for Bacteriophage Therapy—Bacteriophages as Killers

The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of bacteriophages that prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failures (Figure 1C). This can occur in a self-regulatory manner, similar to ecological prey–predator regulation. The exponential growth of the bacteriophage population (limited primarily by the population of the bacteria it preys on) should allow for a fast clearance, especially in cases where the bacterial population has already grown significantly. The relationship can be described by Lotka-Volterra or Kill-the-Winner population model.38–40

In fact, we can already find evidence in literature that pneumonia could be cured by nebulized bacteriophages.41 Prophylactically administered bacteriophages reduced lung bacterial burdens and improved survival of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus infected animals in the context of ventilator-associated pneumonia. If needed, a selection of bacteriophages and optimal target bacteria could be quickly identified by a group of experts as the species of bacteria that commonly cause respiratory problems are well known and a bacteriophage that preys on a specific species can be quickly identified by screening methods.42 If needed, quantitative microbiome sequencing could potentially be used.43

There are assumptions that need to be met during the clinical trials for the approach to work. (1) The cohort has to be chosen to have a high probability of developing bacterial infections. (2) It should be ensured to have the correct choice of bacteriophages that both target the optimal bacteria candidates and are most effective at reducing that bacteria’s population growth. (3) The bacteriophages should not interfere with the patient’s innate or adaptive immune system. (4) The patient does not have antibodies toward bacteriophages used, nor develops any antibodies toward bacteriophages to clear off the bacteriophage earlier than to SARS-CoV-2. We know from bacteriophage therapy in the pneumonia system that the rapid lysis of bacteria by bacteriophages in vivo does not increase the innate inflammatory response compared with antibiotic treatment.44 This is a promising finding and there seemed to be positive effects on the patient’s immune system.45 (5) Another obstacle could be a risk of a species of bacteria developing resistance to the bacteriophage, according to the co-evolutionary process mentioned. However, this would be much less serious than the antibiotic resistance problem as it would only reduce the effectiveness of that one bacteriophage and there is the possibility of the bacteriophage also adapting to overcome any resistance to it. (6) Finally, bacteriophages are so specific to one species of bacteria, and there is very little chance of the bacteriophage damaging any beneficial bacteria, but this should still be verified in clinical trials. It has to be noted that the point here is to decrease bacterial growth in critical time and therefore allow the patient more time to recover from the COVID-19 infection.
Decreasing the Population Growth Rate of Bacteria

The response to antibiotics may be slower or smaller than expected. This may be due to both antibiotic-resistant strains and slow diffusion rate of the antibiotics in that area due to bacterial biofilm formation.46 Also, in some cases, the penetration of antibiotics into target tissues is also dependent on the tissue type that was shown for lungs in tuberculosis scenarios.47 It has been shown that the sites of mycobacterial infection in the lungs of patients have complex structures and poor vascularization, which obstructs drug distribution to these hard-to-reach and hard-to-treat disease sites, further leading to suboptimal drug concentrations. Because of this, there is the potential for the use of bacteriophages (entering patients’ respiratory systems in a different way and acting differently to antibiotics) to decrease the mortality rate of patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Intensive use of antibiotics targeting COVID-19 in clinics can further lead to bacterial resistance spreading in the hospitals. Using bacteriophages could take pressure off this problem. This could also shed light on the use of bacteriophages to decrease this problem in post–COVID-19 scenarios.
Decrease the Viral Load by Using Synthetic Antiviral Antibodies

There are also assumptions that need to be met during the clinical trials for the second approach to work. (1) The cohort has to be chosen to have a bad prognosis (age >80) and high viral load; (2) ensuring the correct choice of antibody that targets the virus epitope and nothing else in the human body; (3) the antibody should not cause failure of the immune system (anaphylactic shock); (4) the dose and frequency should be mathematically modeled; and (5) the delivery system should be efficient.
Gaps in Knowledge

Before choosing the candidate bacteriophages, careful literature studies will need to be done to check for potential known interactions. For example, it has been shown that some bacteria can produce a biofilm when exposed to their relevant bacteriophages,48 which could be an obstacle for the development of these methods as a treatment for COVID-19 patients. Although most bacteriophages kill their bacterial hosts, others can live inside the microbes without killing them.49 Also, lessons from recent studies need to be carefully followed. For instance, complex immune dysregulation in COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory failure has been observed.50

During the writing of this communication, the first immunological reviews were published, in which the authors identified major gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed by the scientific community.4 It is unknown how this may complicate any treatment and further investigation is needed.
High Gain Approach

However, if a treatment using bacteriophages therapy can be developed it is likely to prove practical as they can be produced both quickly and cheaply. Production of antibodies from the phage display techniques will have some costs of production but, owing to recent progress, the development should be simple. Bacteriophages can also be stored and transported easily. I believe that bacteriophages have the potential to be a practical tool in mitigating the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, especially in patients with secondary bacterial infection and high viral load. I believe that it is unlikely to have any significant side effects, and that it has the potential to save a great number of lives. The beauty of nature is that although it can kill us, it can also come to our rescue.
Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges Antal Martinecz, Fei-Chih Liu, Urszula Berge, Leon Berge, and Carl Morten M Laane for constructive discussions around human health and basic immunology. Special thanks are due to Jan Lavender and Jodie Burnett-Wren.

For this article in its entirety and its references click here.


Marcin W. Wojewodzic is a systems biologist at the Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research, Etiology Group.

PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to fundamental bacteriophage research and its applications in medicine, agriculture, aquaculture, veterinary applications, animal production, food safety, and food production. The above article was first published on June 23, 2020. The views expressed here are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, or their affiliates. No endorsement of any entity or technology is implied.

https://www.genengnews.com/insights/bacteriophages-could-be-a-potential-game-changer-in-the-trajectory-of-covid-19/

UK SWEATSHOP 

Boohoo dropped by investor over ‘inadequate’ response to unsafe factory and low pay allegati

One of Boohoo’s biggest shareholders has said the company failed to adequately address allegations of poor working conditions in its supply chain after concerns surfaced amid Leicester’s coronavirus outbreak

Katie Grant @kt_grant July 10, 2020 

Boohoo has been dropped by one its biggest investors over allegations of unsafe working conditions and illegally low pay.

Asset management firm Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) sold most of its stock in the company in the wake of an investigation that found workers producing clothes for Boohoo at a Leicester factory were being paid as little as £3.50 an hour.

It brings an end to a tumultuous week for the retailer during which Next and Asos both dropped Boohoo-branded goods from their online stores in an effort to distance themselves from the label following the claims published in The Sunday Timese


Shares plummet

Boohoo, which also owns fellow fast-fashion brands Nasty Gal and PrettyLittleThing, has denied putting workers at risk but promised to “thoroughly investigate” the claims.

Shares in Boohoo Group began to recover on Thursday after plummeting nearly 40 per cent, wiping more than £1.5bn off the retailer’s value. This rebound followed assurances from the company that it would launch an independent review of its UK supply chain.

The fashion brand Boohoo has lost one of its biggest investors (Photo: Craig Barritt/Getty Images)

But Boohoo’s response failed to win over investor SLA, which has dumped almost all its stock.

“Having spoken to Boohoo’s management team a number of times this week in light of recent concerning allegations, we view their response as inadequate in scope, timeliness and gravity,” spokeswoman Lesley Duncan told the Financial Times.

Boohoo ‘shocked’

Boohoo said in a statement earlier this week: “As a board, we are shocked and appalled by the recent allegations that have been made and we are committed to doing everything in our power to rebuild the reputation of the textile manufacturing industry in Leicester.

“We want to ensure that the actions of a few do not continue to undermine the excellent work of many suppliers in the area, who succeed in providing good jobs and good working conditions.”

BOOHOO APTLY NAMED 

Leicester’s Dickensian fast fashion factories are a blight on our nation

My sources tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
July 6, 2020 7:38 pm

Boohoo clothes are so cheap that you can wear them once and then choose another outfit

Families keep secrets and cover them with lies. Communities, businesses and nations do the same. People don’t talk because of loyalty, self-interest, patriotism or fear. New revelations about appallingly treated workers in garment factories in Leicester are not new. Satanic factories are all over this land.

Turn over rabid industrial capitalism and you find monstrously greedy bosses. The spotlight is on Leicester because the city was forced to lock down again.

As rates of Covid-19 rose, politicians and the press began to look into possible causes. Stories began breaking. The biggest one involved suppliers for Boohoo, the online fashion company. A factory, which displayed the sign Jaswal Fashions, was allegedly operating last week during the localised coronavirus lockdown without additional hygiene measures in place, according to an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times.

Boohoo was co-founded by the billionaire Mahmud Kamani, whose sons control vast empires now. It would be good to know their personal reactions. Boohoo is investigating its suppliers.


Read More
Companies forcing Leicester workers back to factories must face fines, say TUC

Two years ago, Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times warned that “part of Leicester’s garment industry has become detached from UK employment law”, and was “a country within a country”. The journalist claimed that local government, the retail sector and central government knew about this.

Boohoo clothes are cheap and popular

She quotes Anders Kristiansen, who was CEO of fashion chain New Look until 2017. “When I came to the UK and I discovered what was going on in Leicester, it was mind-blowing,” he said. “This is happening in front of your eyes and nobody’s doing anything?! How can society accept it? Not even society – how can government accept it? I’ve not spoken about it for a long time because it frustrated me so much.”

My Asian acquaintances in the Midlands tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops. Mahesh (not his real name) used to manage a clothes unit belonging to another Asian manufacturer. He left because his conscience couldn’t take it any more.

Read More
UK’s demand for fast fashion hits workers’ welfare as Manchester garment workers ‘paid £4 an hour’

“Poor people are the lowest caste of all. For my boss they were nothing. In the temple they treat him like a god.”So are Asian business leaders especially wicked? No. Amazon staff have made serious complaints about their treatment, and in 2016 MPs accused Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley of not treating his workers like humans.

Having said that, I do feel more agitated and inexplicably responsible when the allegations relate to businesses run by Asians. I feel as though they betray our history. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, some Asian people opened small shops or restaurants but most were working class. They joined unions and mobilised against unfair employers. Some of those who eventually made good turned into bad entrepreneurs. No one called them out. And they still won’t. More blood, sweat and tears will be shed.

Consumers will still buy; the rich will get richer and their communities will guard their ugliest secrets and lies. What a book Charles Dickens could write about this cruel circus.

If the Solar System's 'Planet Nine' is actually a small black hole, here's how we could detect it... wait, what?

There may be a small black hole on the edge of our Solar System? 2020, please stop

The suggestion that the Solar System's hypothesized Planet Nine is actually a small black hole could be supported by searching for outbursts of energy using the Vera Rubin Observatory, scientists say.

The observatory, previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), has been under construction in Chile since 2015, and is expected to begin observing the heavens this year. It will be home to a giant telescope that employs a “three-mirror, three-lens optical assembly” to focus light from the night’s sky onto the “world’s largest CCD camera.”

Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj, chairman of the Department of Astronomy and an undergraduate student, respectively, at Harvard University believe the new telescope will be able to determine whether or not Planet Nine, a hypothetical object, may be a black hole or not within a year of the instrument becoming operational.

Planet Nine, if it exists, has remained elusive since it was predicted by a pair of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in 2015. Fruitless searching for the strange body has led some scientists to believe it’s not visible at all because it may, in fact, be a black hole.

Loeb and Siraj have come up with a method to detect Planet Nine if, of course, it really is a black hole estimated to mass something in the order of five to ten Earth-sized planets. Their approach is described in a paper expected to appear in The Astrophysical Journal – a pre-print version is here. The abstract summarizes the method thus:


Planet Nine has been proposed to potentially be a black hole in the outer solar system. We investigate the accretion flares that would result from impacts of small Oort cloud objects, and find that the upcoming LSST observing program will be able to either rule out or confirm Planet Nine as a black hole within a year.

What that means is, their technique involves spotting luminous flares erupting at the outer edge of our Solar System. These bursts will be produced whenever the black hole, if it exists, gobbles up any comets and other stuff that flies too close to the proposed swirling disk of gas and dust.

"In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole," said Siraj. "Once they melt, the small bodies are subject to tidal disruption by the black hole, followed by accretion from the tidally disrupted body onto the black hole."

In other words, matter flying towards Planet Nine will get pulled apart and swallowed, if it is a black hole. The interaction produces electromagnetic energy that signals the potential presence of this invisible void.

"Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment," said Loeb.

The new telescope has a wide-field view that can search for these random flashes of light in outer space. "LSST has a wide field of view, covering the entire sky again and again, and searching for transient flares," said Loeb. "Other telescopes are good at pointing at a known target but we do not know exactly where to look for Planet Nine. We only know the broad region in which it may reside," Siraj added.

Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction

Neural network trained to spot emigrated suns in our Milky Way uncovers mysterious Nyx collective

Wed 8 Jul 2020 

Deep-learning software has singled out a group of 250 stars in the Milky Way that appear to have been born outside our galaxy. That's according to a research paper published this week in Nature Astronomy.

The oddballs, known collectively as Nyx, were described as a “vast stellar stream in the vicinity of the Sun,” by Lina Necib, first author of the paper [pre-print] and a postdoctoral scholar in theoretical physics at Caltech.

However, unlike our own star, these suns don’t look like they really belong in the Milky Way.

The Nyx collective moves through the galaxy in a manner unlike nearby stars, and some stars in the group have a similar chemical composition that suggests the Milky Way inherited these stars when it merged with a dwarf galaxy in its past.

The Caltech team discovered Nyx by running stars observed by ESA's Gaia spacecraft through a neural network. Specifically, they used a model that had been trained to predict whether a given star has an intergalactic origin from its kinematics. The network was taught using synthetic data derived from simulations run by the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. Thus when the neutral net was shown real stars, it could attempt to predict, from their movements, whether they came from beyond the Milky Way.

The team were mindful they had to ensure their resulting AI system was grounded in reality, and reflected how the Milky Way actually worked, rather than predicting what would happen in a simulator. This was accomplished by incorporating real stars into the training process using transfer learning.

We worry that machines trained on them may learn the simulation and not real physics

“At the LHC, we have incredible simulations, but we worry that machines trained on them may learn the simulation and not real physics," said Bryan Ostdiek, co-author of the paper, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, and previously worked on the Large Hadron Collider. "In a similar way, the FIRE galaxies provide a wonderful environment to train our models, but they are not the Milky Way. We had to learn not only what could help us identify the interesting stars in simulation, but also how to get this to generalize to our real galaxy."

They assigned the stars in the training data labels to indicate whether they were born in their galaxy, or accreted there as a result of a galaxy merger. After they trained their neural net, the academics fed it real data taken from the Gaia spacecraft to see if those observed suns were foreign to the Milky Way or not.

“We asked the neural network, ‘based on what you've learned, can you label if the stars were accreted or not?’” said Necib.

For each given star, the neural network generates a number between zero and one to indicate the likelihood it was formed inside the virtual model of the Milky Way or outside of it, respectively. To test their predictive model's accuracy, they checked if it was able to identify a separate group of stars known come from a separate galaxy merger some six to ten billion years ago. The foreign stars from that mash-up form what the scientists called a “Gaia sausage.”

Indeed, their model highlighted the Gaia sausage of stars – and a previously unknown group.

Your first instinct is that you have a bug

"Your first instinct is that you have a bug," Necib said. "And you're like, 'Oh no!' So, I didn't tell any of my collaborators for three weeks. Then I started realizing it's not a bug, it's actually real and it's new." She named the group Nyx.

“Nyx exists, there is no question about it,” she told The Register. “We can still debate its interpretation, as we are still gathering data to confirm the origin of these stars, but the machine-learning algorithm helped us identify these as interesting stars.

"We later studied their kinematics and indeed they are different from those of the [Milky Way's] disk; they have highly eccentric orbits, and lag behind the disk by about 90 kilometres per second, which is highly unusual for disk stars, even after collisions.”

Here's a headline we'll run this century, mark our words: Alien invaders' AI found on Mars searching for signs of life

READ MORE

The astrophysicists were hesitant to say these stars were definitely formed outside of our galaxy, and are the result of a dwarf galaxy merger, though they believe there is enough evidence to speculate that’s the case.

It’s possible, but unlikely, the model is incorrect, Ostdiek told The Register: “For any given star within Nyx, it is possible that the network is wrong about it. However, there are hundreds of stars which seem to be moving together and are all selected by the network. The network itself only identifies individual stars, not whole streams. The stars that it finds interesting are there, and are moving together.”

Necib said that to confirm whether the Milky Way did collide with a mystery dwarf galaxy in its past, they would have to study other sources of data: “We further need high-resolution spectroscopy to evaluate the chemical abundances of the Nyx stars. We expect these abundances to be different for disk stars compared to dwarf galaxies.” ®

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/ai_galaxy_gobble/

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

All eyes were instead on SpaceX and its newer programming techniques

Wed 8 Jul 2020 

Katyanna Quach 

At a press conference on Tuesday, NASA confirmed why Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spaceship failed to hook up with the International Space Station last year. The answer: as expected, buggy code.

Crucially, NASA admitted it did not supervise Boeing closely enough during the craft's software development stage because the agency trusted the aerospace corp's seemingly "more traditional" engineering methods, and thought it had a good grasp on Boeing's processes. NASA thus focused its attention instead on assessing rival SpaceX's newer programming techniques.

Back in December, Boeing was tasked with sending a Starliner packed with cargo to Earth's orbiting science lab. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Boeing to demonstrate it was on track with the spacecraft, which it hopes will safely ferry humans into the heavens in the not-too-distant future. However, the flight was plagued with software glitches, and the Starliner ultimately failed to dock with the station.

Boeing round the twist ... the CST-100 Starliner after it returned to Earth, where it remains grounded. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Ground control was able to bring Boeing’s calamity cargo ship back to Earth, and NASA launched a thorough investigation to figure out what went wrong. As a result of that probe, NASA and Boeing boffins have come up with a list of 80 recommendations to fix Starliner's glaring problems, Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said in a conference call with reporters.

A full report detailing these changes will not be publicly released, however, as it contains Boeing's proprietary information that could allegedly provide its competitors an unfair advantage. That's amusing given Boeing is far behind rival SpaceX, and its tech doesn't even work properly. Boeing and SpaceX were both contracted to run deliveries to the space station, and while Elon Musk's upstart has put two astronauts in orbit, Boeing is stuck in the doldrums. A redacted report has not been published yet, either.

Lueders admitted NASA was not as closely involved with the Starliner's software development stage as it could have been, leading to the deployment of poor code. This was partly because the agency thought it already had a solid handle on Boeing's development processes.

“Perhaps we didn’t have as many people embedded in that process as we should have,” she said. Instead, NASA focused on areas it deemed “higher risk,” particularly those involving the safety of the crew.

“The strategy was because we’re buying a service, NASA did not have a requirement to have a systems engineering management plan," she said. "If we had understood what that structure was, we would have been better able to plug into the decision-making process. In particular, how they were integrating software and hardware pieces together. We thought we understood it, but over time we realized it had changed."

Two out of three parachutes... is just as planned for Boeing's Starliner this time around

READ MORE

You might think the Starliner mishap dented Boeing’s standing, yet NASA isn’t giving up on the aerospace company. Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the American agency expected to launch a new and improved Starliner in the “latter part of the year.”

He couldn’t speculate on the launch date, and said NASA and Boeing eggheads are still making the necessary changes to Boeing’s flight software. “Once we see how that shapes out, we’ll talk about when to go fly,” Stich said.

Boeing’s approach to writing and testing software in its Starliner was described as being “more traditional” than SpaceX’s programming techniques for its crewed Dragon pod. For that reason, NASA staff monitored SpaceX's coders more closely than Boeing's. “When one provider has a newer approach than the other, it's natural for human beings to focus more on that one,” Stich said.

SpaceX successfully sent astronauts off to the space station in its Dragon capsule atop its own Falcon 9 rocket in May. Stich said NASA’s working relationship with both companies was still very solid despite Boeing’s blunders.

“From my perspective, every early space company goes through these anomalies and you learn from it," he said. "These kinds of things disappear. Every time they work to become better... I can’t envision a future where SpaceX is the only provider. We need Boeing and SpaceX to be both be there for us." ®

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/nasa_boeing_starliner/