-
Airlines are burning thousands of gallons of fuel flying empty ‚ghost‘ planes so they can keep their flight slots during the coronavirus outbreak (Business Insider)
Global commercial airlines revenue per year: 754 billion U.S. dollars
Airlines are running empty ‚ghost‘ flights during the coronavirus due to European rules forcing operators to run their allocated flights or lose their slots. The rules are leading some airlines to waste thousands of gallons of jet fuel flying empty planes in and out of Europe. Demand for flights is collapsing worldwide with airline industry groups warning that the coronavirus crisis could wipe up to $113 billion off the value of the industry.
-
Moderna’s Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Set to Begin This Month (Bloomberg)
Moderna's Stock Price Human studies of Moderna Inc.’s experimental coronavirus vaccine are set to begin this month, positioning it to be first among a host of shots that companies are developing to fight the contagion. The Moderna product is moving very rapidly and will enter human trials “within a couple of weeks,” said Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group overseeing development of shots against deadly infections. The estimated start of a trial of Moderna’s vaccine is March 19, according to a U.S. government website.
Moderna Inc. (Wikipedia)
From Investor Presentation and R&D Presentation Moderna, Inc. is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that is focused on drug discovery and drug development based on messenger RNA (mRNA). The company creates synthetic mRNA that can be injected into patients to help them create their own therapies. In October 2013, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Moderna a grant worth up to $24.6 million to research and develop its mRNA drug technology to fight infectious diseases and biological weapons.
Darpa Cranks Up Antibody Research to Stall Coronavirus (Wired)
Antibodies are proteins that the immune system creates to remove viruses and other foreign objects from the body. Vaccines work by stimulating the body’s own immune system to produce antibodies against an invading virus. Currently, there is no vaccine that can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19, although drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Cambridge-based Moderna are working on developing them
DARPA Races To Create a "Firebreak" Treatment for the Coronavirus (Spectrum IEEE)
When DARPA launched its Pandemic Preparedness Platform (P3) program two years ago, the pandemic was theoretical. It seemed like a prudent idea to develop a quick response to emerging infectious diseases. Researchers working under the program sought ways to confer instant (but short-term) protection from a dangerous virus or bacteria. Today, as the novel coronavirus causes a skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases around the world, the researchers are racing to apply their experimental techniques to a true pandemic playing out in real time.
Moderna (MRNA:US) Shareholders
Institutional investors purchased a net $16.2 million shares of MRNA during the quarter ended June 2019. This may signal that the smart money is gaining interest in this company as the 37.48% of shares outstanding that institutional investors hold is actually below the Biotechnology industry average.
Moderna CEO: Stéphane Bancel (videos) @sbancel
Stéphane Bancel has served as Moderna's Chief Executive Officer since October 2011 and as a member of Moderna’s board of directors since March 2011. Before joining the Company, Mr. Bancel served for five years as Chief Executive Officer of the French diagnostics company bioMérieux SA.
-
Amazon is secretly working on a cure for the common cold (cnbc)
Amazon is working on a cure for the common cold in a years-long, top secret effort called "Project Gesundheit," according to three people familiar with the effort... The team is hoping to develop a vaccine, but is exploring a variety of approaches to the problem. Internally, the effort is sometimes referred to as the "vaccine project....".
Amazon isn't the only organization throwing resources into a cure for the cold. Researchers at Stanford and the University of California are working on a new approach that involves temporarily disabling a single protein inside our cells. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub also chipped into the effort. The researchers behind that group said, in a statement, that they were close to a cure.
Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world (geekwire)
Bill Gates has been working on global health for 20 years, and today he told the nation’s premier scientific gathering that advances in A.I and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead. “We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet."
Millions more are being spent to find new ways fighting sickle-cell disease and HIV in humans. Gates said techniques now in development could leapfrog beyond the current state of the art for immunological treatments, which require the costly extraction of cells for genetic engineering, followed by the re-infusion of those modified cells in hopes that they’ll take hold.
-
Talk by Dr. Michael Fiddy - DARPA Defense Sciences Office (DSO)
Program Manager of the RadioBio Program: RadioBio aims to establish whether functional signaling via electromagnetic waves between biological cells exists and, if it does, to determine what mechanisms are involved and what information is being transferred.
-
Scientists monitor brains replaying memories in real time - Our brains use distinct firing patterns to store and replay memories (2020)
In a study of epilepsy patients, researchers monitored the electrical activity of thousands of individual brain cells, called neurons, as patients took memory tests. They found that the firing patterns of the cells that occurred when patients learned a word pair were replayed fractions of a second before they successfully remembered the pair.
-
Improved CRISPR gene drive solves problems of old tech (Cornell University, March 2020)
Gene drives use genetic engineering to create a desired mutation in a few individuals that then spreads via mating throughout a population in fewer than 10 generations. Now, a Cornell study, "A Toxin-Antidote CRISPR Gene Drive System for Regional Population Modification," published Feb. 27 in the journal Nature Communications, describes a new type of gene drive with the potential to delay resistance.
-
"We have tested SARS-CoV-2 isolated from a patient and found that camostat mesilate blocks entry of the virus into lung cells," says Markus Hoffmann, the lead author of the study. Camostat mesilate is a drug approved in Japan for use in pancreatic inflammation. "Our results suggest that camostat mesilate might also protect against COVID-19," says Markus Hoffmann. "This should be investigated in clinical trials."
-
Lenovo, Intel, BGI Genomics team up on viral genome analysis
Technology and life science healthcare experts from Intel and Lenovo will work together to support BGI researchers with big data analytical technologies and computing resources, so as to further advance the capabilities of its sequencing tools, and more effectively analyze the genomic characteristics of the novel coronavirus.
-
BGI Group - The Biggest Genomics Company in the World?
BGI is headquartered in Shenzhen, China and has more than 5,000 employees located in 47 labs, 30% outside of China. BGI Group is a Chinese genome sequencing company, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. BGI Group announced in 2020 that it will make genome sequencing cheaper, breaking the $100 barrier for the first time. The Shenzhen company says the low cost will be possible with an "extreme" DNA sequencing system that is capable of decoding the genomes of 100,000 people a year.
China National Genebank (site)
This is a nonprofit created in 2011 with funding from BGI and the Chinese government. Their mission is to capture and catalog human, plant, and animal species and they claim to have 80% of the finished large genome projects in the world. Capacity for 150m genomes a year.
GeneBank Vision Video - Stranger then any sci-fi movie
A tour to China's national gene bank (1h youtube video)
BGI Founders
Wang Jian (Chinese: 汪建; born 13 April 1954)
Wang Jian is Chairman and co-founder of the BGI Group (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute). He graduated in 1979 from Hunan Medical College and in 1986 graduated with a Master's in Integrated Medicines from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. From 1988 to 1994, he was a research fellow at the University of Texas, the University of Iowa and the University of Washington, working on cell proliferation and differentiation. After returning to China in 1994 to set up Jubilee Biotechnology, this provided much of the initial capital used to set up the Beijing Genomics Institute with Yang Huanming, Liu Siqi and Yu Jun in 1999 in order to engage in research contributing to the Human Genome Project. After this work he was involved in the sequencing of the rice genome, first Asian human reference genome and numerous other large-scale genomics projects. In 2003 he was involved in the efforts to sequence and contain the SARS coronavirus, meeting with Hu Jintao who praised BGI's contribution. In 2007 the Beijing Genomics Institute become just BGI when it was relocated to Shenzhen as "the first citizen-managed, non-profit research institution in China". As the largest shareholder in BGI's holding company, in 2019 his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be US$1.2 billion. In January 2020 he travelled to Wuhan to set up a situation room tackling the COVID-19 disease outbreak, helping coordinate the development of diagnostic tests and a 2000-sq-meter emergency detection laboratory built in 5 days. Devoted to fitness and believing health and longevity to be the first priority of BGI, he has climbed and skied on some of the highest mountains in the world, including summiting Mount Everest.
Yang Huanming (Chinese: 杨焕明; born 6 October 1952)
Yang Huanming is a Chinese biologist and businessman. one of China's leading genetics researchers. He is Chairman and co-founder of the Beijing Genomics Institute, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected as member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a foreign academician of Indian National Science Academy in 2009, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and foreign associate of the US National Academy of Science in 2014.
Yang Huanming: Sequencing Technology in Biomedicine
-
This Crappy, Virus-Infected Laptop Just Sold for $1.3 Million - It's loaded with six of the worst viruses of all time, which caused $95 billion in damage
Titled "The Persistence of Chaos," online artist Guo O Dong went to great lengths to create the project. Commissioned with over $10,000 by a cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct, Guo's computer is infected with infamous viruses like WannaCry, which paralyzed hospitals in England by leaving MRI scanners and blood-storage refrigerators inoperable, and ILOVEYOU, which ended up wrecking international havoc and caused over $15 billion worth in damage.
-
Putin signs Arctic master plan - The strategic document paves way for a massive industrialization of the country's far north.
Putin in deep snow. Photo: Kremlin.ru
"The document covers the period until year 2035. It was approved by government and the national Security Council in late 2019. The new strategic plan pinpoints the country’s key national priorities in the Arctic. It strengthens national sovereignty and territorial integrity, promotes peace, stability and mutually beneficial partnerships, and highlights high life standards for the regional population."
-
#Music: Vexations - by Erik Satie (1893)
In the mid-twentieth century, Satie’s music mesmerized John Cage, who saw it as a challenge not merely to extant harmony but to the very idea of musical form. Cage took a special liking to a short, gnomic, harmonically directionless 1893 piece called “Vexations,” at the beginning of which Satie wrote, “To play this motif eight hundred forty times in a row, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, through serious immobilities.” In 1963, Cage took that instruction at face value, organizing an epic performance in which a rotating team of pianists repeated “Vexations” for nearly nineteen hours. Because “Vexations” belongs to Satie’s Rosicrucian period, the Guggenheim will stage its own daylong marathon, in September. Having attended a “Vexations” event some years back, I can advise prospective listeners that they may experience hallucinations of the Sphinx before the performance is done. (via)
-
Study Finds More Younger American Adults are Being Diagnosed With Alzheimer's (ibx.com)
The 5 years between 2013 and 2017 saw a 200% increase in the number of commercially-insured Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or early-onset dementia between the ages of 30 to 64. "While the underlying cause is not clear, advances in technology are certainly allowing for earlier and more definitive diagnosis," says the Blue Cross.
#Comment: Keep on pumping airwaves (WiFi, 5G, etc.) and stomachs (Fastfood, etc.) with more and more toxic junk, it's clearly working wonders for profits of wallstreet & billionaire.
-
Scientists Finally Reveal The Electronic Structure of Benzene -- in 126 Dimensions
Nearly 200y after the molecule was discovered by Michael Faraday, researchers have finally revealed the complex electronic structure of benzene. This not only settles a debate that has been raging since the 1930s, this step has important implications for the future development of opto-electronic materials, many of which are built on benzenes.
-
Malaysia 1MDB fugitive Jho Low spotted in Wuhan: Police (alt)
A fugitive Malaysian financier wanted over a massive graft scandal has been spotted in the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, police said, although it was unclear if he had left before Chinese authorities imposed a lockdown. Low Taek Jho - known as Jho Low - is accused of playing a major role in plundering billions of dollars from sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
-
In locked down Wuhan, teachers use an app called DingTalk to set homework. Kids realised if it got enough one-star reviews it would be removed from App Store. Thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating fell from 4.9 to 1.4 overnight. Legends. (via)
-
Righteous, the world should thank China (xinhuanet) (google translate)
"If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it will also announce strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the US. Then the United States will be caught in the ocean of new corona viruses. "
-
The Chinese characters for crisis 危機 mean “danger” and “opportunity,”
-
Loomio is decision-making software designed to assist groups with the collaborative decision-making process. It is a free software web application, where users can initiate discussions and put up proposals. As the discussions progress to initiating a proposal, the group receives feedback through an updatable pie chart. (wikipedia)
-
Abstract: Urban planning is facing multi-layered challenges to manage the transformation towards a more sustainable and inclusive society. The recently evolved concept of an “urban commons” responds to the crucial need to re-situate residents as key actors. Urban food commons summarize all initiatives that are food-related (e.g., cultivation, harvest, and distribution), aiming at a visualization and utilization of value chains and the commons-based linkage between them.
We explored first insights of food commons in Berlin based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Urban food commons strengthen identification, participation, self-organization, and social resilience, are steered by bottom-up processes, and can be a powerful tool for a transformation towards urban sustainability. However, a viable political integration of existing initiatives lacks due to structural implementation problems. Respondents recommend a pooling of all initiatives in a strong network and a mediation interface to coordinate between food commons and city administration and politics. A combined approach of commons and edible cities will be helpful for the development of future prove food systems.
Sharing food and risk in Berlin’s urban food commons (2018)
Abstract: Public fridges are open-access community-stewarded spaces where food can be freely and anonymously shared. As such, they are fertile ground for understanding the obstacles and opportunities for governing food as a commons. This paper examines the governance strategies that have developed within and around Foodsharing.de, a grassroots food-rescue network in Berlin, to manage food as a commons. Analyzing the commoning of food in Foodsharing.de provides a novel entry point into the multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder governance processes that shape our broader food system. In this paper, I further develop the concept of urban food commons to specifically analyze the governance of food and risk. In particular, I draw on qualitative research to analyze a conflict between Foodsharing.de and the Berlin Food Safety Authority over the potential health and safety risks of public fridges. Building on this, I show how different governance practices, informed by different risk ontologies and understandings of the common good/hazard of food, come into tension through the everyday practices of sharing food. This paper departs from previous research that has focused on how the benefits of food commons are shared and regulated at various scales, to also explore how their risks are managed, or could be managed, within an urban food commons framework.
