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"If the world seems to be getting bigger and funnier all the time, your intelligence is steadily increasing. If the world seems to be getting smaller and nastier all the time, your stupidity is steadily increasing." - Robert Anton Wilson: The Illuminati Papers
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Quotes from the Book "The Forest Passage" by Ernst Jünger (1951)
"Of course, no one is easier to terrorize than the person who believes that everything is over when his fleeting phenomenon is extinguished." - Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage
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Microbes in Space Mutated And Developed a Remarkable Ability
A box full of viruses and bacteria has completed its return trip to the International Space Station, and the changes these 'bugs' experienced in their travels could help us Earthlings tackle drug-resistant infections.
A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and US biotech company Rhodium Scientific Inc. pitted Escherichia coli bacteria against its viral arch-nemesis, the T7 bacteriophage. This pair has been locked in an evolutionary 'arms race' for as long as we've been looking, but never in microgravity – until they were sent to the ISS in 2020.
Scientists aboard the space station incubated different combinations of bacteria and phages for 25 days, while the research team led by biochemist Vatsan Raman carried out the same experiments in Madison, down here on Earth.
"Space fundamentally changes how phages and bacteria interact: infection is slowed, and both organisms evolve along a different trajectory than they do on Earth," the researchers explain.
In the weightlessness of space, bacteria acquired mutations in genes involved in the microbe's stress response and nutrient management. Their surface proteins also changed. After a slow start, the phages mutated in response, so they could continue binding to their victims.
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The team found that certain space-specific phage mutations were especially effective at killing Earth-bound bacteria responsible for urinary tract infections (UTIs). More than 90 percent of the bacteria responsible for UTIs are antibiotic-resistant, making phage treatments a promising alternative.
"By studying those space-driven adaptations, we identified new biological insights that allowed us to engineer phages with far superior activity against drug-resistant pathogens back on Earth," the researchers say.
The research was published in PLOS Biology.
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A Globally-Scaled, Ideologically-Driven, Techno-Spiritual Bureaucracy
- arguably one of the most potent forms of organization in the 21st century. -
The Central European Net (CEN)
This image displays a historical geodetic map titled the "Central European Net," specifically illustrating the network Before the Second Adjustment of the Loop Closures. This map represents the framework for the first unified triangulation of the European continent, a project that laid the foundation for modern mapping in the region.
The Central European Net (CEN)
- Historical Context: The project originated in April 1945, after the U.S. Third Army captured the German Army's geodetic section and its extensive archives near the end of World War II.
- Purpose: The Allies, specifically the U.S. Army Mapping Service, realized the value of this data to create a single, unified geodetic reference system for Europe. Previously, the continent was fragmented into numerous independent national datums, which caused significant mapping errors, particularly for artillery targeting during the war.
- Methodology: The captured German scientists, led by Professor Erwin Gigas, were put to work under U.S. supervision in Bamberg to perform a least-squares adjustment of the triangulation data using methods like the Bowie Junction method.
- Outcome: The completed Central European First-Order Triangulation Adjustment (CEN) was finished in June 1947 and served as the anchor for expanding the network across all of Europe, eventually leading to the creation of the European Datum 1950 (ED50).
More on similar historical geodetic maps and related historical accounts of the "HOUGHTEAM" mission to capture this critical German data here: The Untold Story of the Secret Mission to Seize Nazi Map Data
