TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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There was a long article about Cominic Dummings in The Times yesterday put together by three of their political journalists after interviews with many people who were present in the various meetings that he attended. The opinions divide starkly into those who say Dummings played an important role and those that say he was was hardly involved, sitting in a corner with his own thoughts. Who to believe?
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The Times also had this story yesterday but the paper had more information about the person who runs the offending web site and the paper regards it as a much more serious threat than the BBC article implies. The site is probably harvesting Western science and at the same time acting as a conduit for getting confidential information.

`Police warn students to avoid science website' LINK
`Police have warned students in the UK against using a website that they say lets users "illegally access" millions of scientific research papers. The City of London police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit says using the Sci-Hub website could "pose a threat" to students' personal data. The police are concerned that users of the "Russia-based website" could have information taken and misused online. The Sci-Hub website says it "removes all barriers" to science. It offers open access to more than 85 million scientific papers and claims that copyright laws should be abolished and that such material should be "knowledge to all". It describes itself as "the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers".

`...Max Bruce, the City of London police's cyber protection officer, has urged universities to block the website on their networks because of the "threat posed by Sci-Hub to both the university and its students". "If you're tricked into revealing your log-in credentials, whether it's through the use of fake emails or malware, we know that Sci-Hub will then use those details to compromise your university's computer network in order to steal research papers," he said..'.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Cummings... Who to believe... Quite Peter. Only thing we can be certain of is he has no concept of ophthalmology!
That web site. What a fiendishly clever idea!
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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This has been going on for some years now. I've been aware of climate change melting the permafrost but this is new to me. Although it's Siberia there are oil drilling sites in the region as well as towns...
`Massive Craters in Siberia Are Exploding Into Existence. What's Causing Them?' LINK

Coincidentally, I hear that landslides from cliff faces in the UK are happening in less expected places. Many modern shopping centres have been built in old quarries, often with the buildings close up against the cliff face. The faces are strengthened with wire mesh but wasn't enough to stop a cliff face coming down at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent recently. We're not safe anywhere now! :smile:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Funny thing that, I speculate in another topic on ground movement.
The paragraph that grabbed me was this:
“The Yamal Peninsula is one of the largest, if not the largest, natural gas fields on the planet,” Fiske says. “That would be very helpful, but that's proprietary information. The information is out there.”
You'd think that in Russia, of all places, the powers would be in place to make such information available to science.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I'm glad to see this but the deep sea miners are fighting back by claiming the auto manufacturers have no choice but to accept the deep sea minerals. Neither side is willing to recognise that we need to cut down on our use of such minerals by better recycling and re-use of metals and - whisper this - making fewer cars...
`Companies back moratorium on deep sea mining' LINK
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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What a depressing link Peter. Everyone agrees it is a 'bad thing' but we go ahead anyway. We've buggered up the land, now we expand the same processes in the sea.
We aren't fit to run a planet!
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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See THIS BBC report about some excitement about a possible hitherto unknown force of nature. I'll leave it to Peter to fill you in! :biggrin2:
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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Gee, thanks! It's times like this when I claim to be a biologist, not a physicist. As physicists have accounted for only 95% of stuff in the universe I'll wait and see what they come up with next. In the meantime they can try and identify and catalogue what's in my garage.

I did enjoy the headline in The Times...

Image
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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And there was me thinking you knew everything Peter. Another idol with feet of clay..... :biggrin2:
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I secretly think that the physicists have no better understanding of the universe than you and I do. They're just better at making up stories! :smile:
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Wikipedia: The vaquita (Phocoena sinus) is a species of porpoise endemic to the northern end of the Gulf of California in Baja California, Mexico. Averaging 150 cm (4.9 ft) (females) or 140 cm (4.6 ft) (males) in length, it is the smallest of all living cetaceans.
`'Cocaine of the sea' threatens critically endangered vaquita' LINK
The vaquita is suffering collateral damage from the hunt for totoaba fish whose swim bladder is prized by the Chinese....
According to the Earth League International NGO, 10-year-old dried swim bladders can sell for $85,000 (£60,000) a kilo in China. The fishermen of San Felipe make only a tiny fraction but in a poor community, business has boomed for the "cocaine of the sea"....Impunity and the absence of law enforcement may account for the dozens of totoaba launches leaving from San Felipe's beach and heading into the Refuge. "Not a single authority stops them," says Ramón Franco Díaz. "If you dared approach them, they'd give you a bullet. Organised crime has stolen the Sea of Cortéz."... "Before you needed to watch the wind and the sea," says one former totoaba fisherman. "Now you see a lot of crazy people out there with guns."
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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This sort of thing makes me angry. Leave our creatures alone. One can only hope that Karma will repay these horrible examples of human beings. :sad:
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Spread some fake research that the swim bladders also cause infertility, erectile dysfunction and herpes.... That ought to do it.
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May be we should get the anti-vax people to teach GCHQ how to spread social media stories about all these really fake claims?
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I don't think they need any lessons Peter. They've done there share in their day!
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`Move to net zero 'inevitably means more mining'' LINK

What saddens me about his debate is that it often seems to assume that the only options are more mining of rare metals (which suits the giant mining companies, including ocean floor mining) or a frantic attempt to develop recycling of the metals while mining continues. It's time we were researching ways to do what's needed in our technology-based world using materials that are much more common and ways to to the job with much lower amounts of those materials....

Note the lovely picture of a specimen of skutterudite which is mined for its cobalt content. For every atom of cobalt in the mineral there are three of arsenic. I wonder what happens to all that arsenic? How well are the miners protected from arsenic? This is the side of rare metal mining that the companies don't like to talk about. In past decades while the public worried about nuclear energy waste they haven't noticed the massive amounts of toxic materials accumulating from rare metal mining (or even common metal mining).
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Exploitation of resources Peter. All that matters is the profit.
I listened to Jim Al-Khalili this morning talking to a man called Fitton who was a joy to listen to. What grabbed me was him pointing out that the human race is a tropical species and wherever we are in the world we have to make sure that at skin level we are basking in 28C, if not we die because our bodies can only provide 600 watts of heating. I've never thought of it like that before but it's dead simple when you think about it.
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Stanley wrote: 25 May 2021, 11:27 I listened to Jim Al-Khalili this morning talking to a man called Fitton who was a joy to listen to.
I'll second that! It was Mike Tipton, Professor of Extreme Physiology at the University of Portsmouth. Everyone should listen to that half hour programme. Here's are the details and link...

Mike Tipton on how our bodies respond to extreme conditions (The Life Scientific) LINK
As the craze for cold water swimming continues, Jim Al Khalili talks to triathlete and Professor of Extreme Physiology, Mike Tipton. Is it as good for our mental and physical health as many enthusiasts claim? And do the benefits go beyond a rush of adrenaline causing feel good endorphins to be released in our brains? Mike studies why people drown. He wants to understand the precise physiological changes that occur when we expose ourselves to extreme environments and to use that information to help save lives. (Shivering and sweating will only get you so far when it comes to temperature control). Most deaths at sea are caused by the initial cold water shock response, not hypothermia. People gasp for air and swallow lethal quantities of water. So is it a case of kill or cure for cold water swimmers? What does the scientific evidence say about the idea that repeated cold water immersion can boost our immunity and have an anti-inflammatory effect? Mike tells Jim how he came to specialise in this area of science and why he believes we should all be challenging our bodies more.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I knew I had Fitton wrong, yes, that was the man.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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See THIS for a cunning wheeze that looks as though it can reduce hospitalisation due to Dengue Fever by almost 80%. It looks like good news, I hope it is and the reduction continues.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I always knew exercise was bad for you! See THIS BBC account of research results announced by a team from the University of Sheffield.
Regular and strenuous exercise increases the risk of motor neurone disease in people who are genetically vulnerable, say the scientists. Studies in Italian footballers have suggested rates up to six times higher than normal. Athletes including Rob Burrow (rugby league), Stephen Darby (football) and Doddie Weir (rugby union) have all spoken openly about the disease.
I knew that very high level training affected the menstrual cycle in women and made all athletes more vulnerable to infections but this goes beyond that. Add in brain injuries from heading the ball and collisions in rugby and my aversion to games and sport has probably served me well.
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The claim of being on the threshold of the goal is probably a bit over-hyped but at least it's a step forward rather than backward...
`US lab stands on threshold of key nuclear fusion goal' LINK
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I saw an early version of this experiment at UCAL when I was there in 1980. One of the lasers alone was as big as a bus. I think they may have scaled the size down now but increased the efficiency.
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See THIS BBC news item about the Ig Nobel awards. Interesting that one winner, hanging Rhinos upside down actually has a good aim and outcome.
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Re: TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

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I'm considering writing to those scientists and suggesting they include Boris Johnson in their studies. :extrawink:
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