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From the US territory Guam, sightings came in of a fireball falling from the sky. The strategic location of Guam and the U.S. military stationed there has drawn attention for years. Guam thrust into the limelight during heightened tensions with North Korea. In August 2017, North Korea launched missiles that flew over Japan and into the northern Pacific Ocean in an apparent attempt to threaten the US territory of Guam. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not follow up on his threats, but a fireball came crashing down from a different source.

Local officials quickly released an announcement indicating the Chinese Long March Launch as a likely source of the fireball. Indeed, an Indonesia satellite launched on a Chinese rocket came crashing back to Earth. The satellite failed to reach orbit. The failure of the new communications satellite for Indonesia to reach orbit marked the second failure for china’s space agency in less than a month, state media reported April 9.

It is unlike the Chinese Long March 3, workhorse of the Chinese launch industry, series rocket to fall. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the rocket lifted off at 7:46 p.m local time from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the Sichuan province. The rocket traveled according to plan during the first and second stages. The Rocket third stage experienced abnormal conditions.

Collaboration will always accelerate society faster than competition ever will:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/2020…coali.aspx

“Biotest, BPL, LFB, and Octapharma have joined an alliance formed by CSL Behring (ASX: CSL/USOTC: CSLLY) and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE: TAK) to develop a potential plasma-derived therapy for treating COVID-19. The alliance will begin immediately with the investigational development of one, unbranded anti-SARS-CoV-2 polyclonal hyperimmune immunoglobulin medicine with the potential to treat individuals with serious complications from COVID-19.”


Six companies will work together to develop a plasma-derived antibody product to fight SARS-CoV-2.

🏺 The child Krakatoa has just erupted few hours ago.

“This is Anak Krakatoa as the locals call it. Son of Krakatoa. Highly explosive magma. Seems it will now start to rebuild itself. The big eruption had destroyed most of the previous cone. It collapsed as the magma chamber emptied creating a tsunami. The real violent explosion was when seawater then entered into the empty magma chamber turning into steam and expanding thousandfolds” Andy Sanders, one of our members, Thank you Andy.

Fyodor R.

RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — A Reno company has been awarded more than $550 million to help make ventilators during the coronavirus outbreak.

In a statement released on Friday, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said Hamilton Medical would receive a five-month, $551 million contract as part of a national effort to stockpile 100,000 ventilators over the next 100 days.

Amodei states the money is coming in the form of a firm-fixed-price contract that began on March 31.

On Friday, an interplanetary spacecraft will slingshot around Earth in the super early morning hours. The spacecraft, a joint European and Japanese creation, will use our planet’s gravity to brake its speed and change its course through the Solar System, putting itself on track to reach Mercury in the next five years.

The probe whipping by our planet is called BepiColombo, which is actually two spacecraft wrapped into one package. One spacecraft, designed and operated by the European Space Agency, is equipped with 11 instruments to study Mercury from the planet’s orbit. The second comes from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and it’s designed to study Mercury while spinning in orbit. Once they reach Mercury, the two spacecraft will break apart and revolve around the planet on their own, studying the world’s exterior and its inner core.

Before all that can happen, BepiColombo needs to make it to Mercury. Launched in October 2018, BepiColombo’s route to the planet is set to last a total of seven years, and a lot of that time is spent slowing down. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, spacecraft that travel toward the planet are constantly being tugged by our Solar System’s star, causing them to speed up. BepiColombo has to repeatedly put on the brakes to make sure it doesn’t go barreling into the Sun.

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As authorities enforce social distancing in the battle against coronavirus, don’t be surprised if you hear reminders coming from the sky.

Police departments in Florida and New Jersey have drones with pre-recorded warnings that will be deployed if crowds are not following COVID-19 guidelines.

Worth having a look, who knows.


Cytokines and chemokines are thought to play an important role in immunity and immunopathology during virus infections [3]. Patients with severe COVID-19 have higher serum levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1 and IL-6) and chemokines (IL-8) compared to individuals with mild disease or healthy controls, similar to patients with SARS or MERS. The change of laboratory parameters, including elevated serum cytokine, chemokine levels, and increased NLR in infected patients are correlated with the severity of the disease and adverse outcome, suggesting a possible role for hyper-inflammatory responses in COVID-19 pathogenesis. Importantly, previous studies showed that viroporin E, a component of SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), forms Ca2C-permeable ion channels and activates the NLRP3 inflammasome. In addition, another viroporin 3a was found to induce NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The mechanisms are unclear.

Colchicine, an old drug used in auto-inflammatory disorders (i.e., Familiar Mediterranean Fever and Bechet disease) and in gout, counteracts the assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome, thereby reducing the release of IL-1b and an array of other interleukins, including IL-6, that are formed in response to danger signals. Recently, colchicine has been successfully used in two cases of life-threatening post-transplant capillary leak syndrome. These patients had required mechanically ventilation for weeks and hemodialysis, before receiving colchicine, which abruptly restored normal respiratory function and diuresis over 48 hrs [4].

Study Design

The Milky Way in the sky of Ali Prefecture, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, Sept.27, 2018. (Xinhua/Purbu Zhaxi)

The star, named LAMOST J040643.69+542347.8, has an estimated rotational velocity of 540 km per second, which is about 100 km per second faster than that of the previous record holder, HD 191423.

BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) — A Chinese astronomer has discovered the fastest rotating star in the Milky Way galaxy based on data from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) located in Xinglong, in northern China’s Hebei Province.