Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 7977

China is getting ready to build a new space station. On 5 May, the Chinese Long March 5B rocket – the same rocket that is planned to lift parts of a new space station into orbit and eventually carry astronauts to space – launched for the first time from Hainan Island.

For this test flight, the rocket carried with it an unnamed crew capsule. No astronauts were aboard this trip, but according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation it will be able to carry six people at a time, twice as many as the Shenzhou spacecraft that has been used for all the country’s other crewed missions.

After it reached orbit, Long March 5B dropped off the crew spacecraft, which will undergo a few tests in space before plunging back to Earth in the next few days. This re-entry will test the spacecraft’s heat shields, parachutes and airbags. The crew capsule is designed to be reusable and to carry astronauts to the new space station, or to the moon and beyond.

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Renewable sources including solar, wind and hydropower generated more electricity than coal-based plants every single day in April, a new report says.

Analysis shared by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEFA), based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), said the finding marks a major “milestone” in an energy transition that is now underway.

The move away from coal for electricity generation in the U.S. accelerated in 2020 due to lower gas prices, warmer weather and a “significant amount” of new renewable capacity being connected to the grid late last year, the report suggested.

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Statistics is a useful tool for understanding the patterns in the world around us. But our intuition often lets us down when it comes to interpreting those patterns. In this series we look at some of the common mistakes we make and how to avoid them when thinking about statistics, probability and risk.

You don’t have to wait long to see a headline proclaiming that some food or behavior is associated with either an increased or a decreased health risk, or often both. How can it be that seemingly rigorous scientific studies can produce opposite conclusions?

Nowadays, researchers can access a wealth of software packages that can readily analyze data and output the results of complex statistical tests. While these are powerful resources, they also open the door to people without a full statistical understanding to misunderstand some of the subtleties within a dataset and to draw wildly incorrect conclusions.

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Algae isn’t just found in your garden pond or local river. Sometimes it explodes into vast “blooms” far out to sea, that can be the size of a small country. Such algal blooms can match even a rainforest at taking carbon out of the air. And then, in just a week or two, they are gone – sometimes consumed by viruses.

Given the scale of blooms and their vital role in both marine ecology and climate regulation we must know more about these viruses. Research conducted with our Weizmann Institute colleague Yoav Lehahn and others and published in the journal Current Biology, is the first attempt to quantify the affect of viruses on large scale algal blooms.

Algae in this context refers to tiny sea organisms known as phytoplankton which exist right at the bottom of the marine food web, providing the ultimate source of all organic matter in the sea. They do this by consuming carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, “fixing” this carbon into organic matter (themselves) in the same way trees take carbon out of the air.

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Aytu BioScience announced on April 20, four days before the Trump remarks, that it has signed an exclusive licensing deal with Cedars Sanai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The center has developed and is testing a UV-A “Healight” designed to be inserted via a catheter inside the trachea to kill pathogens, including the coronavirus.

Ultraviolet, or UV, light is commonly used by physicians to treat skin iseases. Cedars-Sanai says UV-A phototherapy potentially could be employed in internal organs.

President Trump has been mocked relentlessly for suggesting that ultraviolet light could be brought “inside the body” to kill the coronavirus, but there is ongoing research to do just that.

For example, the pharmaceutical firm Aytu BioScience announced on April 20, four days before the Trump remarks, that it has signed an exclusive licensing deal with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The center has developed and is testing a UV-A “Healight” designed to be inserted via a catheter inside the trachea to kill pathogens, including the coronavirus.

Continue reading “Firm tests UV light treatment that Trump was mocked for mentioning” | >

Fyodor Rouge, this is the church I was telling you about.

The Bradenton-based organization falsely claims that the treatment is effective for a number of conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, brain disease, cancer, HIV and AIDS, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

This content is being provided for free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. Sign up for our daily or breaking newsletters to stay informed. If local news is important to you, consider becoming a digital subscriber to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

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As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic and historically low oil prices, the missile launch may signal a new willingness to take risks by Iran.

It said the satellite — dubbed the Nour — was deployed from the Qassed two-stage launcher from the Markazi desert, a vast expanse in Iran’s central plateau.

The satellite “orbited the Earth at 425km [264 miles]”, said the website. “This action will be a great success and a new development in the field of space for Islamic Iran.”

The IRGC called it the first military satellite ever launched by Tehran. It used a Ghased, or “Messenger”, satellite carrier to put the device into space, a previously unheard-of system.

Continue reading “Iran launches its first military satellite” | >