Dear Readers,

Finally, your thirteenth issue of LNA has arrived! I hope you will forbear the unforeseen delay in its publication, and I think you will enjoy this compendium of thought-provoking current events. 

As for the website, there is a new paper in the science section of "Prose." Unfortunately, you will have to wait a little longer for the photos of a certain interesting spider that I referred to in the last issue. 

Thank you for your patience and have a merry Thanksgiving!

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 Abram Leyzorek.

Abram Leyzorek

10/31/2018

Current Events

1. NBC News: According to the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) WWF Living Planet 2018 report, the world’s vertebrate population has decreased on average by sixty percent in the period form 1970-2014.                                                                       Date: October 30, 2018.                                                                                                  From: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-s-vertebrate-population-dropped-average-60-percent-1970-wwf-n926061.                                                    Read more: https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-10/LPR2018_Full%20Report.pdf.
2. The Astrophysical Journal: Massachusetts Institute of Technology  graduate James Clark published a discussion in the Astrophysical Journal on November 5, 2018, about how it would be possible with modern technology to detect a one megawatt laser beam fired from a forty meter aperture at distances of up to 20,000 light years, almost all of the way from earth to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Date: November 5, 2018. From: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae380/pdf. Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352309315300146?via%3Dihub.
3. BBC: According to the National Audit Office, an independent monitor of the British government, the British army is lacking 8,200 men and the Ministry of Defense is expected to remedy this by lifting a restriction on joining the British army placed on citizens of Common Wealth nations other than the UK, such as India, Sri Lanka, Australia, etc., which stipulates that they must have lived in UK for at least five years; the Ministry of Defense hopes to recruit an additional 1,350 people per year.    Date: November 5, 2018.                                                                                                From: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46092838.                                                          Read more: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ensuring-sufficient-skilled-military-personnel.pdf.
4. Military Times: After the United States on November 5, 2018, reinstated sanctions on Iran that had been lifted by the now defunct Iran Nuclear Deal signed in 2015, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Iran faces a “war situation,” saying the U.S. is a “bullying enemy” that Iran must resist and overcome.                                Date: November 5, 2018.                                                                                              From: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/11/05/war-situation-arises-as-us-sanctions-resume-iran-president-says/?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.                        Read more: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/13/iran-was-closer-to-a-nuclear-bomb-than-intelligence-agencies-thought/.
5. Next Big Future: In association with the Zhuhai Municipal Government, the China Classification Society, and the Wuhan University or Technology, 225 square nautical miles of ocean will be designated in China for the sole purpose of testing and developing autonomous vessels, including war ships, and will be called the Wanshan Marine Test Site; construction began in February 2018.                                         Date: October 30, 2018.                                                                                              From: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/china-establishing-225-square-mile-robotic-ship-test-area.html.                                                                                            Read more: http://www.china.org.cn/china/2018-02/12/content_50494364.htm.
6. Coin Telegraph: On October 1, 2018, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the sale of an oil-backed cryptocurrency called Petro that will be available to the public through six cryptocurrency exchanges on October 1, 2018, Maduro claims; there have been minor setbacks however such as the official coin wallet being deleted by Google Play.                                                                                                    Date: October 2, 2018.                                                                                                    From: https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuelas-controversial-petro-sale-starting-november-maduro-claims.                                                                                              Read more: http://www.minci.gob.ve/10-presidente-maduro-ahora-los-venezolanos-podran-adquirir-petros-para-que-ahorren/.
7. CBS News: According to a study on the sleep traits of 409,000 women in the UK the results of which were presented on November 6, 2018, at the annual conference of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) in Glasgow, Scotland,, women with sleep traits associated with going to bed early and rising early had a forty percent lower risk of developing breast cancer than women with the opposite traits.                Date: November 6, 2018.                                                                                            From: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/early-birds-may-have-lower-breast-cancer-risk-study-finds/.                                                                                                              Read more: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/11/morning-people-have-lower-breast-cancer-risk-what-you-need-to-know/.
8. Phys.org: On November 6, 2018, China unveiled a fifty-five foot long model of its “Heavenly Palace” space station that it plans to assemble in 2022 at the biennial Airshow China in Zhuhai, a southern coastal city in China; it will weigh sixty tons and will be open to “all countries” for biological and microgravity research purposes and will be the only functioning space station after 2024 when the International Space Station will retire and will be continuously manned by three astronauts for its projected ten year life span.                                                                                      Date: November 6, 2018.                                                                                        From: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-china-unveils-heavenly-palace-space.html. Read more: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/first-glimpses-of-chinas-new-space-station-heavenly-palace-unveiled-at-expo-5517821.html.
9. BBC: A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that globally more dams are being removed every year than installed even though they account for about 70% of renewable energy production and that dams displaced millions of people, disrupted freshwater ecology, and contributed to climate change by accelerating decomposition of biomass in flooded regions; construction of dams peaked in the 1960s and, according to the study authors, governments were misled by rosy pictures of rural electrification and cheap energy and later ignored that the dams cost more than expected and the fact that more than ninety percent of hydroelectric power is used in industry rather than homes.                                        Date: November 5, 2018.                                                                                              From: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46098118.                          Read more: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/02/1809426115.
10. Gizmodo: A new study published on November 14, 2018, in Science Advances revealed the presence of a nineteen-mile wide asteroid impact crater beneath the Greenland ice sheed that was created by a kilometer wide asteroid sometime between three million and twelve thousand years ago; it ranks among the twenty-five largest impact craters in the world.                                                                                          Date: November 14, 2018.                                                                                          From: https://gizmodo.com/a-massive-impact-crater-has-been-detected-beneath-green-1830437095.                                                                                                          Read more: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaar8173.
11. Fox News: According to the head of the Keldysh Research Center in Russia, Vladimir Koshlakov, the research center is developing a nuclear rocket propulsion engine that could propel spacecraft to Mars in seven to eight months with enough energy for a return trip “in the near future”; Koshlakov commented that Russia’s reusable rockets will soon make SpaceX’s obsolete as their rockets rely on “old” technology.                                                                                                                      Date: November 14, 2018.                                                                                              From: https://www.foxnews.com/science/russia-reveals-nuclear-spaceship-that-will-fly-to-mars-in-very-near-future.                                                                                    Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/14/russia-shows-off-reusable-nuclear-rocket-engine-to-power-missions-to-mars-8135817/.
12. CNBC: A study published this week in the Astronomical Journal analyzed the changing patterns of light reflected from the first interstellar object recorded by humans, discovered by a Hawaiian telescope in October of 2017 and named Oumuamua, and estimated that the object, now receding from our solar system, was about 400 feet long and forty feet wide, but its thickness could not be determined and it lacks the signature gas tail of a comet and is longer in proportion to its width than any other natural object that humans have observed in space, so the possibility of it being a solar sail from an alien civilization seems plausible if highly improbable.        Date: November 17, 2018.                                                                                            From: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/17/oumuamua-why-humans-should-be-open-minded-about-life-in-outer-space.html.                                                                        Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181115093324.htm.
13. Science: Published October 23, 2018, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B a study by anthropologist Lia Betti of the University of Roehampton in London examined the birth canals of 348 women from around the world and found that they varied widely in size and shape, debunking a long held hypothesis called the obstetric dilemma which posited that since birth canals need to large enough to allow for the heads of babies to path through but not be so large as to impair walking, one should expect birth canals to be uniform around the world.                                                    Date: October 23, 2018.                                                                                            From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/birth-canals-are-different-all-over-world-countering-long-held-evolutionary-theory.                                                          Read more: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1889/20181807.
14. Science: Researchers reported on November 13 in the journal Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences that cabbage tree emperor moths (Bunaea Alcinoe) have miniscule, velevety scales on their wings which dampen sound signals of the same frequency that bats use for echolocation of insects at night by converting the sound, vibration of the air, into vibration of the scales, making them almost invisible to bats’ echolocation.                                                                                                  Date: November 13, 2018.                                                                                              From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/moths-use-stealth-wings-dampen-bat-sonar.                                                                                                                        Read more: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/06/1810025115.