Dear Readers,

I hope you enjoy this issue of LNA. If you do, please subscribe to LNA and pass it on to your friends. The subscription form can be found near the bottom of the home page as well as on the "LNA" page of my website. You can also find an archive of all issues on this page. If you have any questions or want to learn more about any of these stories, don't hesitate to comment in the current events forum. 

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• A new page on the website for my essay on Bell's Theorem.
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Sincerely,

Abram Leyzorek

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions, sentiments, and/or intentions presented in the report below do not have any relation to the opinions, sentiments, and/or intentions of the author, Abram Leyzorek.

Abram Leyzorek

1/23/2019

Current Events

• Syrian Arab News Agency: On January 23, 2019, “authorities” discovered RPGs, Western-made sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles, and over two million rounds for rifles and machine guns in the countryside of Damascus, Syria, abandoned by terrorists driven from the area by the Syrian Arab Army.
  • Date: January 23, 2019.
  • From: https://www.sana.sy/en/?p=156368&utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.
  • Read more: https://en.mehrnews.com/news/139358/US-made-weapons-found-in-Quneitra-Damascus-countryside.

• Science: Scientists working at a biotechnology company in Reykjavik, Iceland, called deCODE published a report in the journal Science on January 24, 2019, that was comprised of genetic data from 155,250 Icelandic people; the researchers created an in-depth map of the human genome, pinpointing the relative location of the genes therein with unprecedented precision, along with other findings: humans and other animals store the genetic information that they pass to their children in what are called germ cells that split to form egg cells and sperm cells which each contain half of the parent’s DNA, but before they split, each chromosome inside them exchanges a piece of its DNA with its partner chromosome in a process termed ‘crossover’, and the research team found that genetic mutations were up to fifty times more likely to occur near the crossover sites than over the entire chromosome; additionally, the study found that there is a 1.39 and a 0.38 increase in the number of mutations a child’s genes will have for every year older that the father or mother, respectively, are when the child is birthed, and it identified several genes possibly responsible for the above described crossover phenomenon.
  • Date: January 24, 2019.
  • From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/gene-swapping-human-sperm-and-eggs-can-increase-genetic-mutations-children.
  • Read more: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6425/eaau1043.

• BBC: Ken-Ichiro Kamei, a microengineer at Kyoto University, has been developing 3-D printable glass chips, reminiscent of microscope slides but with a clear silicone coating, containing pneumatic pumps to circulate liquid around the chip to various chambers where biological tissues can be inserted to mimic the bodily systems of animals; Kamei has already developed and successfully tested a chip for mice, something he hopes will reduce the demand for animal test subjects, and plans to make chips for many more animals, including humans.
• Date: January 25, 2019.
• From: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190122-how-bodies-on-a-chip-can-transform-animal-welfare.
• Read more: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-scientists-body-on-a-chip-drugs.html.

• Science: In a study first published November 5, 2018, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, a mechanism for the asymmetries between the Northern and Southern aurorae discovered in 2009 was revealed: the aurorae are caused by charged particles emanating from the sun, otherwise known as solar wind, and until 2009, when detailed pictures of both aurorae at the same time were taken, it was thought the aurorae should be identical considering that the solar wind blows across symmetrical lines in the Earth’s magnetic field, but in the new study it was found that the solar wind asymmetrically skews a “windsock-like” portion of the magnetic field called the magnetotail, causing the variations in the aurorae.
• Date: January 25, 2018.
• From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/northern-and-southern-lights-are-different-here-s-why.
• Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JA025869.

• BBC: After U.S. negotiators spent six days conversing with the Taliban in Qatar during the week of January 20-January 27, 2019, they came out with a draft of a framework for a peace deal with the Taliban, but analysts say it could be years before that framework is filled out and becomes an agreement.
  • Date: January 28, 2019.
  • From: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47028177
  • Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/asia/taliban-peace-deal-afghanistan.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage.

• RT: An antibiotic resistant gene called New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1 (blaNDM-1), first discovered in an Indian patient in Sweden in 2008 and later discovered in water on the streets of New Delhi, India, in 2010, has been found almost 8,000 miles from New Delhi in the soil of Svalbard, Norway, along with 131 other genes for antibiotic resistance.
• Date: January 28, 2019.
• From: https://www.rt.com/news/449961-antibiotic-resistant-superbug-discovered-arctic/.
• Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34633137/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/killer-superbug-solution-discovered-norway/#.XGWuLKJKjIU.

• Fox News: According to a January 28, 2019, report by the Jerusalem Post, Israeli company Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi) claims to be working on an all-encompassing treatment for cancer they call MuTaTo, which they claim will be complete within a year’s time; the company says it is like an antibiotic for cancer with several peptides targeting each cancer cell.
• Date: January 29, 2018.
• From: https://www.foxnews.com/health/cure-for-cancer-israeli-scientists-claim-to-be-on-brink-of-development.
• Read more: https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/A-cure-for-cancer-Israeli-scientists-say-they-think-they-found-one-578939.

• Bioplastics News: Turkish woman Duygu Yilmaz has founded a startup company called Biolive which creates a biodegradable, bio-based plastic with cellulosic fibers derived from olive pits, a waste product of the olive industry; producing two pounds of Biolive’s product generates thirteen pounds less carbon dioxide than producing two pounds of petroleum-based plastic.
• Date: February 3, 2019.
• From: https://bioplasticsnews.com/2019/02/03/bioplastics-made-from-olive-pits/.
• Read more: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5689718_Olive_stone_an_attractive_source_of_bioactive_and_valuable_compounds.

• Science: An experiment published February 6, 2018, in the journal Science Advances by Scarllet R. Howard et. al. demonstrated honey bees’ ability to perform the following arithmetic task after sufficient reward-punishment conditioning: in response to a visual stimulus of 2-5 yellow squares grouped together on a panel or 1-4 blue squares of the same arrangement, choose out of two subsequent stimuli, each on separate panels and consisting of a certain number of squares of the same color as the initial stimulus, the panel containing one less square than the initial stimulus, in the case of the yellow squares, or the panel containing an additional square, in the case of the blue squares.
• Date: February 6, 2019.
• From: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961.
• Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5407312/.
• Science: ScienceInsider has discovered that in Summer of 2018 a U.S. Government review panel silently approved the proposed experiments of two laboratories, involving the modification of the deadly bird flu virus H5N1 so that it is transmittable to mammals via respiratory droplets, after a four year moratorium on such gain of function (GOF) experiments by the U.S. Government; the controversy began in 2011 when Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the University of Tokyo and Ron Fouchier at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the heads of the two laboratories recently allowed to continue their controversial GOF experiments, enabled H5N1 to transmit to ferrets which sparked so much outrage that the laboratories voluntarily shut down for two years, only to resume again in 2013 under new government oversight regulations, but after several mishaps at federal bio-containment facilities and more studies on GOF, the recently-lifted four year moratorium was instated; Kawaoka’s laboratory received funding on January 10, 2019, from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Bethesda, Maryland, based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and will resume experiments as soon as March 7, 2019, while Fouchier expects he will not receive funding until sometime after his laboratory undergoes federal inspection in March 2019.
  • Date: February 8, 2019.
  • From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/exclusive-controversial-experiments-make-bird-flu-more-risky-poised-resume.
  • Read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/11/scientists-brace-media-storm-around-controversial-flu-studies.
• Science: Due to warming climates in certain areas, such as Peru, potato farming is becoming more difficult as weather patterns change and pests move to higher elevations, arousing the concern of the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, and an intergovernmental organization based in Bonn, Germany, the Crop Trust, because potatoes are the third most-grown crop in the world, serving 1.3 billion people; these organizations and others seek to genetically engineer new potato varieties better-adapted to the changing conditions because traditional breeding methods would take too long, but genetic engineering requires diverse genetic material, so in 2011 the Crop Trust launched a fifty million dollar project to collect wild varieties of twenty-nine different crops, including the 107 wild potato varieties, an area of research that had been stagnant since the 1990s when nations around the world began abiding by the Convention on Biological Diversity, which made obtaining plant collecting permits and trading plant samples between nations more difficult.
• Date: February 8, 2019.
• From: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/574.
• Read more: https://cipotato.org/.

• Science: During his talk at the annual conference of the Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar, India, in January 2019, chemist and vice-chancellor of Andhra University in Visakhapatnam G. Nageshwar Rao cited a particular section of the Indian Mahabharata epic about a woman who birthed one hundred children as evidence that ancient Hindu civilization developed reproductive technologies far surpassing those of today.
  • Date: February 13, 2019.
  • From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/hindu-nationalists-claim-ancient-indians-had-airplanes-stem-cell-technology-and.
  • Read more: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Sanskrit_in_Classics_at_Brown/Mahabharata/MBh2Description.html.

• Fox News: Captain Zoe Kotnik of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) was relieved of her position as leader of the Air Combat Command F-16 Viper demonstration team just two weeks after she was appointed as the first female to ever take this position on January 19, 2019; commander of the 20th Fighter Wing Col. Derek O’Malley, who removed Kotnik, stated that he “lost confidence” in her capability to lead the team, and Kotnik has deleted her previously very active social media profiles and has not responded to calls from Fox News.
  • Date: February 13, 2019.
  • From: https://www.foxnews.com/us/who-is-capt-zoe-kotnik-first-female-viper-demo-team-commander-who-was-ousted-after-2-weeks.
  • Read more: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/02/12/first-female-viper-demo-team-pilot-relieved-after-two-weeks/.
• NPR: On February 14, 2019, William Barr was confirmed as attorney general of the United States by a 54-45 senate vote; Barr first served as attorney general under former President George H. W. Bush.
• Date: February 14, 2019.
• From: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/694751343/senate-confirms-william-barr-as-next-attorney-general.
• Read more: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4774130/william-barr-red-flag-gun-control-laws.