A natural ocean soundscape is fundamental to healthy marine life but is being drowned out by an increasingly loud cacophony of noise from human activities, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the issue.

The damage caused by noise is as harmful as overfishing, pollution and the climate crisis, the scientists said, but is being dangerously overlooked. The good news, they said, is that noise can be stopped instantly and does not have lingering effects, as the other problems do.

Marine animals can hear over much greater distances than they can see or smell, making sound crucial to many aspects of life. From whales to shellfish, sealife uses sound to catch prey, navigate, defend territory and attract mates, as well as find homes and warn of attack. Noise pollution increases the risk of death and in extreme cases, such as explosions, kills directly.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning are also making the oceans more acidic, meaning the water carries sound further, leading to an even noisier ocean, the researchers said. But the movement of marine mammals and sharks into previously noisy areas when the Covid-19 pandemic slashed ocean traffic showed that marine life could recover rapidly from noise pollution, they said.

Read it all.

Cacophony of human noise is hurting all marine life, scientists warn https://t.co/oL51aGYZHh

— The Guardian (@guardian) February 4, 2021

Australia itself has long been a climate laggard and a major coal exporter, but as China and other big customers plan to cut their emissions, taking their business with them, that may be changing. Dozens of the world’s biggest economies have adopted targets for net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. And 189 countries have joined the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C. In a race to curb climate change, countries are rushing to cut fossil fuels, boost clean energy — and transform their economies in the process.

But as the energy system changes, so will energy politics. For most of the past century, geopolitical power was intimately connected to fossil fuels. The fear of an oil embargo or a gas shortage was enough to forge alliances or start wars, and access to oil deposits conferred great wealth. In the world of clean energy, a new set of winners and losers will emerge. Some see it as a clean energy “space race”. Countries or regions that master clean technology, export green energy or import less fossil fuel stand to gain from the new system, while those that rely on exporting fossil fuels — such as the Middle East or Russia — could see their power decline.

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the former president of Iceland and chair of the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, says that the clean energy transition will birth a new type of politics. The shift is happening “faster, and in a more comprehensive way, than anyone expected”, he says. “As fossil fuels gradually go out of the energy system . . . the old geopolitical model of power centres that dominate relations between states also goes out the window. Gradually the power of those states that were big players in the world of the ­fossil-fuel economies, or big corporates like the oil companies, will fritter away.”

Read it all (emphasis mine).

As dozens of global economies move from using oil and gas to clean, renewable energy, a geopolitical shift is under way too. Read an in-depth report by @lesliehook and @hjesanderson https://t.co/6tD5B2i3tK

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) February 4, 2021

In particular, the Prime Minister is being urged to ensure that long-term and interim targets for cutting plastic pollution are included in the government’s flagship Environment Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament.

Bishop Mark said: “We know that global warming, rising sea levels, and plastic pollution are all issues affecting our world; we hear about these things through the news all of the time. By putting targets in place, written in law, together we can really begin to achieve something and change the way we’re treating our planet. As Christians, we understand that life is a gift from God and to see his creation under threat should be a cause for sadness.”

Read it all.

The video of the confirmation of the election of Bishop Mark Tanner is now available to view. The footage of the service has been edited to include a signer, for those who are hard of hearing. https://t.co/SdtLv27sZu pic.twitter.com/Mf6XH7R0mN

— Diocese of Chester (@ChesterDiocese) July 22, 2020

In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.

She considered conceiving through a fertility clinic, but the cost was prohibitive for her. Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, one of a growing number of online sperm markets that match candidate donors directly with potential recipients. Ms. van Ewijk was drawn to one profile in particular, that of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a Dutch musician in his 30s.

Mr. Meijer was handsome, with blue eyes and a mane of curly blond hair. Ms. van Ewijk liked how genuine he appeared. “I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed gentle and kind and well-behaved,” she said. “He liked music, and he talked about his thoughts on life. He didn’t come on strong in any sense. He seemed like the boy next door.”

About a month later, after some back-and-forth, she and Mr. Meijer arranged to meet at Central Station, a busy railway hub in The Hague. He provided her with his sperm, and in return she paid him 165 euros, about $200, and covered his travel costs. Months later she gave birth to a daughter — her first child and, Mr. Meijer told her, his eighth….

Read it all.

Confronted by one mother. the donor admitted that he had produced at least 175 children and conceded that there might be more https://t.co/vMKEquoOen

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) February 2, 2021

Percy Julian was one of the great scientists of the 20th century. In a chemistry career spanning four decades, he made many valuable discoveries, for which he was awarded dozens of patents, 18 honorary degrees, and membership to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences—only the second African American bestowed such an honor.

Yet Julian’s achievements as a trailblazer for Black chemists, while less well-known, are no less remarkable. Growing up when racial discrimination factored into every aspect of life for Blacks in America, from riding a bus to getting a job, Julian persevered to realize his dreams. And when he finally “arrived” as a successful chemist and businessman, he did not lose sight of the challenges that fellow Blacks still faced. He became a mentor to scores of young black chemists and, later in life, an inspiration for thousands as a civil-rights leader and speaker.

As the late Vernon Jarrett, one of the nation’s leading commentators on race relations, put it, “This man is Exhibit A of determination and never giving up. I think he’s a role model not only for blacks but for all races.”

Read it all.

Percy Julian… a brilliant scientist and civil rights trailblazer.
https://t.co/hWD2KnLrUo

— Brad Rieger (@BradRieger) January 31, 2021

When hackers exploited a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform’s contents last week, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata revealing exactly how many of the site’s users had taken part in the invasion of the US Capitol building just days before. But the videos uploaded to Parler also contain an equally sensitive bounty of data sitting in plain sight: thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now one website has done the work of cataloging and publishing every one of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site’s creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people’s deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

“Everybody who is participating in this violence, what really amounts to an insurrection, should be held accountable,” says the site’s creator, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. “It’s entirely possible that a lot of people who were on this website now will face real-life consequences for their actions.”

Read it all.

New site features pictures of the faces of thousands of insurrectionists who attacked the capital, scrubbed from video. Site creator: "Everybody who is participating in this violence, what really amounts to an insurrection, should be held accountable." https://t.co/47toeUIIvS

— Michael S. Derby (@michaelsderby) January 21, 2021

AS California’s economy skyrocketed during the 20th century, its land headed in the opposite direction. A booming agricultural industry in the state’s San Joaquin Valley, combined with punishing droughts, led to the over-extraction of water from aquifers. Like huge, empty water bottles, the aquifers crumpled, a phenomenon geologists call subsidence. By 1970, the land had sunk as much as 28 feet in the valley, with less-than-ideal consequences for the humans and infrastructure above the aquifers.

The San Joaquin Valley was geologically primed for collapse, but its plight is not unique. All over the world—from the Netherlands to Indonesia to Mexico City—geology is conspiring with climate change to sink the ground under humanity’s feet. More punishing droughts mean the increased draining of aquifers, and rising seas make sinking land all the more vulnerable to flooding. According to a recent study published in the journal Science, in the next two decades, 1.6 billion people could be affected by subsidence, with potential loses in the trillions of dollars.

“Subsidence has been neglected in a lot of ways because it is slow moving. You don’t recognize it until you start seeing damage,” says Michelle Sneed, a land subsidence specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey and coauthor on the paper. “The land sinking itself is not a problem. But if you’re on the coast, it’s a big problem. If you have infrastructure that crosses long areas, it’s a big problem. If you have deep wells, they’re collapsing because of subsidence. That’s a problem.”

Read it all.

The over exploitation of groundwater is not only very obviously unsustainable, it’s causing the land under some of the worlds biggest to sink lower and lower as the empty aquifers collapse. This is becoming a very big problem. https://t.co/wX23as1IQ7 via @wired

— Ben Goldsmith (@BenGoldsmith) January 20, 2021

Politicians are increasingly hiring private companies to spread disinformation online, according to researchers who found campaigns run by third-party contractors targeting 48 different countries over the past year.

The Oxford Internet Institute said the “disinformation-for-hire” market is booming, with advertising, marketing and public relations companies offering to manipulate online opinion for political parties and governments.

The OII said private contractors help to identify which groups to target with messages, and then “prompt the trending of certain political messages” either through fake accounts or with armies of bots, or automated accounts.

Researchers said they had found evidence of at least $60m of spending on such campaigns since 2009, although the real total may be far higher.

Read it all.

Researchers said they had found evidence of at least $60m of spending on disinformation campaigns since 2009, although the real total may be far higher https://t.co/NrzxWG0Yt3

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) January 13, 2021

In those parishes that have actively sought new ventures and parishioners, the Church of England is prospering. In Rural Ainsty, a country parish in North Yorkshire, the Reverend Richard Battersby says, ‘We have a thriving Sunday morning worship – as many and more as before lockdown. I pray with more parishioners in the morning and evening than ever before.’

Where, previously, he took separate services in four villages, they now worship together online, with Zoom services unifying the different churches. ‘They’d never worshipped together before,’ says Battersby. ‘Faith has been made more intense by the pandemic. People on their laptops can actually contribute to the service. Someone from the Congo recently contributed.’

He’s had to deal, too, with coronavirus funerals. ‘We’ve had to come up with ways that families could mourn in the right way. After the first lockdown, we could have a service for those interring ashes, who couldn’t attend a proper funeral during lockdown.’

In Battersby’s parish, the congregation’s contributions have even gone up. He talks about the Church being ‘shocked into new ways of being’ by the pandemic. ‘Churches that explored an online presence have done pretty well and have seen exponential growth,’ he says. ‘Churches that were struggling before have seen an accelerated demise. The willingness of the church leader to adopt new technology from a theological or sacramental point is crucial.’

Read it all.

Can the Church of England survive Covid?

‘We’re deemed non-essential, but that isn’t the case: we’ve served 160,000 meals during the pandemic, compared to 5,000 in the equivalent period before,’ https://t.co/X3pr9t8VCj

— Tim Dieppe (@TDieppe) January 9, 2021

Britain has one of the most aggressive surveillance regimens, analyzing up to 10 percent of samples that test positive for the virus. But few countries have such robust systems in place. The United States sequences less than 1 percent of its positive samples. And others cannot hope to afford the equipment or build such networks in time for this pandemic.

In Brazil, labs that had redirected their attention from Zika to the coronavirus had discovered a worrisome mutation there as early as this spring. But little is known about the variants circulating in the country, or how quickly they are spreading.

“We just don’t know because no one is either sequencing or sharing the data,” said Dr. Nuno Faria at Imperial College and Oxford University who coordinates genomic sequencing projects with colleagues in Brazil. “Genomic surveillance is expensive.”

As the virus continues to mutate, other significant variants will almost certainly emerge. And those that make the virus hardier, or more contagious, will be more likely to spread, Dr. Read said.

“The faster we can get the vaccines out, the faster we can get on top of these variants,” he said. “There’s no room for complacency here.”

Read it all.

As the coronavirus mutates to become more contagious, scientists around the globe are pressing for a faster vaccine rollout and funding for genetic surveillance. https://t.co/6ScCBUH52C

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 9, 2021

A coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to be effective against a key mutation in the more infectious variants of the virus discovered in the U.K. and South Africa, according to a study conducted by the U.S. pharmaceutical giant.

It comes as countries scramble to contain the variants that are significantly more transmissible, with public health experts anxious about the potential impact on inoculation efforts.

The research, published Thursday on preprint server bioRxiv and not yet peer-reviewed, suggested the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine worked to neutralize the so-called N501Y mutation.

The N501Y mutation has been reported in the more infectious variants. It is altering an amino acid within six key residues in the receptor-binding domain — a key part of the spike protein that the virus uses to gain entry into cells within the body.

Read it all.

🏥 A new study shows Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid vaccine appears to neutralize a key mutation of two highly contagious variants found in the U.K. & South Africa.

🗣️ “These findings are good news."

👇 Here's the full story:https://t.co/qvANvM2Mk0

— Sam Meredith (@smeredith19) January 8, 2021

The Charleston Harbor tidal gauge logged more records in 2020.

It recorded 68 tidal floods — the second-most ever at the station.

The highest year, when water levels reached 7 feet or higher 89 times, was in 2019.

The database of flood events maintained by the National Weather Service dates to 1953.

2020 also brought the highest ever amount of “major” tidal floods, when water levels rise to 8 feet, causing significant disruption in the region. That happened seven times last year, which is an even more remarkable milestone considering the region was not directly affected by a hurricane.

While 2020′s records are just one data point, it’s another sign that tidal flooding in the city driven by man-made climate change is worsening. The pace of flooding is speeding up, according to institutions such as the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which has plotted an exponential trend of higher seas for Charleston.

Read it all.

While 2020′s records are just one data point, it’s another sign that tidal flooding in the city driven by manmade climate change is worsening. https://t.co/Ts25zkXN7V

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 5, 2021

I got vaccinated because I believe in the science that created it, while acknowledging the limitations that any study or research endeavor bears.

I got vaccinated because I believe it will make it safer for me to come home to my family and not harm them or others in the community.

I got vaccinated because I believe it is a very very small, but necessary step that many of us will take as citizens to help our society stabilize and move forward to the work ahead.

I got vaccinated because, as my father would likely say, I was fortunate enough to have the option.

Read it all.

https://t.co/IyJ6ProkPK

— Aorta Dude (@DrZeigler1) December 19, 2020

Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine was cleared by U.S. regulators, the second vaccine to gain emergency authorization this month as a historic mass immunization effort ramps up across the country.

The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to grant the authorization Friday for the shot’s use among adults means that two of the six vaccine candidates identified by Operation Warp Speed are now available to the public, a feat accomplished in less than one year. Shots from AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson that have also received U.S

Read it all.

Moderna Shot Cleared in U.S., Ready for Delivery Starting Sunday https://t.co/rcKtoxzb89 via @Yahoo

— axelvento (@axelvento999) December 19, 2020

It was clear from the start that a cyber attack by suspected Russian hackers aimed at several U.S. government agencies was going to be bad. One clue: National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien cut short a trip overseas early this week to rush back to Washington to help manage the crisis.

But on Thursday, the reality of just how sprawling — and potentially damaging — the breach might be came into sharper focus. It started with a bulletin from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, warning that the hackers were sophisticated, patient and well-resourced, representing a “grave risk” to federal, state and local governments as well as critical infrastructure and the private sector. It didn’t take long to see how accurate the agency’s assessment was.

Bloomberg News reported that at least three state governments were hacked. That was followed by reports of other breaches: the city network in Austin, Texas, and the U.S. nuclear weapons agency. Late in the day software giant Microsoft Corp. said its systems were exposed.

Read it all.

Excerpt:
… effect of Thursday’s revelations was confirmation that no single person or agency — including the highest reaches of the U.S. government — is certain of exactly what the hackers had infiltrated, let alone the full extent of what was taken.https://t.co/vm8C7Ay8i2

— Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman (@RhiFionn) December 18, 2020

The coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna moved closer to authorization on Thursday, a significant step that would expand the reach of the nation’s vaccination campaign to rural areas and many more hospitals.

As the nation buckled from uncontrolled spread of the disease, with 3,611 deaths on Wednesday setting yet another horrific record, a panel of independent experts recommended, by a vote of 20 in favor and one abstention, that the Food and Drug Administration authorize the Moderna vaccine for emergency use. The formal decision, expected on Friday, would clear the way for some 5.9 million doses to be shipped around the country starting this weekend.

Moderna would be the second company allowed to begin inoculating the public, giving millions more Americans access to desperately needed vaccine. The first, made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, received authorization last week.

The Moderna vaccine can be distributed more widely because it can be stored at normal freezer temperatures and, unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, does not require ultracold storage. It also comes in much smaller batches, making it easier for hospitals in less populated areas to use quickly.

Read it all.

Breaking News: An expert panel endorsed Moderna’s vaccine, moving it closer to FDA authorization and giving Americans another tool to fight the coronavirus. https://t.co/KCBsdDkc7k

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 17, 2020

Germany’s biggest air-ambulance operator has ordered two electric air taxis to evaluate their potential in a pioneering role speeding doctors to patients.

ADAC Luftrettung, part of the country’s leading motoring association, will begin testing the 18-rotor Volocopter GmbH aircraft from 2023 after the simulation of 26,000 emergency responses in two cities indicated that it could fulfill a rapid-transport role currently performed by a costlier helicopter fleet.

The joint announcement Tuesday provides further evidence of the commercial potential of vertical takeoff air taxis, coming less than a week after Singapore said it plans to launch the world’s first such service.

Read it all.

Germany’s biggest air-ambulance operator orders two electric air taxis to evaluate their potential in a pioneering role speeding doctors to patients https://t.co/QME5XipfWw

— Bloomberg (@business) December 15, 2020

For Dr Sahin and Dr Tureci — whose insistence that the technology they have helped develop could herald a medical revolution was once dismissed as “science fiction” — the successful coronavirus vaccine has provided as much vindication as relief.

The couple, who between them have authored hundreds of academic papers, filed hundreds of patents, founded two non-profit organisations and two billion-euro businesses, faced scepticism from much of the medical establishment right up until this year.

The groundwork that led to their breakthrough was laid over several decades, in which the two softly-spoken researchers were forced to move out of the comfort zone of their labs and to become entrepreneurs, educators and evangelists.

After meeting as trainee doctors on a blood cancer ward in south-west Germany in the early 1990s, the couple discovered that they shared similar backgrounds — both sets of parents had migrated from Turkey in search of economic opportunity. They also realised that their core interest was not in purely academic science, but in applied science.

“First and foremost, we are physicians,” says Dr Tureci, who ran the duo’s first company, Ganymed, and is chief medical officer at BioNTech.

Read it all.

FT People of the Year: BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci https://t.co/hucJp6X9de

— FT Health (@fthealth) December 16, 2020

When Russian hackers first slipped their digital Trojan horses into federal government computer systems, probably sometime in the spring, they sat dormant for days, doing nothing but hiding. Then the malicious code sprang into action and began communicating with the outside world.

At that moment — when the Russian malware began sending transmissions from federal servers to command-and-control computers operated by the hackers — an opportunity for detection arose, much as human spies behind enemy lines are particularly vulnerable when they radio home to report what they’ve found.

Why then, when computer networks at the State Department and other federal agencies started signaling to Russian servers, did nobody in the U.S. government notice that something odd was afoot?

The answer is part Russian skill, part federal government blind spot.

Read it all.

The U.S. government spent billions on a system for detecting hacks. The Russians outsmarted it. https://t.co/wIwZzTuowZ

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 16, 2020

Researchers from the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have developed a method to produce customizable engineered lysins that can be used to selectively kill bacteria of interest while leaving others unharmed. The discovery presents a promising alternative to antibiotics for treating existing drug-resistant bacteria and bacterial infections without the risk of causing resistance.

Lysins are enzymes produced by bacteriophages to break open the bacteria cells while treating infections, and have demonstrated potential as a novel class of antimicrobials. A major advantage of lysins is that they allow fast and targeted killing against a specific bacterium of choice without inducing resistance.

The emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria has left even minor bacterial infections incurable by many existing antibiotics, with at least 700,000 deaths each year due to drug-resistant diseases, according to the World Health Organization.

Read it all.

RT SMART researchers use lysins to selectively target bacteria https://t.co/3JC9GZqRir pic.twitter.com/zhquqp8mTx

— Reluctant Quant (@DrMattCrowson) December 10, 2020

A U.S. government advisory panel has endorsed Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, in a major step toward an epic vaccination campaign that could finally conquer the outbreak.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow the recommendation issued Thursday by its expert advisers. The advisory group, in 17-4 vote with one abstention, concluded that the shot appears safe and effective against the coronavirus in people 16 and older.

A final FDA decision is expected within days. Millions of shots would then ship to begin vaccinating health care workers and nursing home residents. Widespread access to the general public is not expected until the spring.

Read it all.

#BREAKING: A U.S. government advisory panel has endorsed #Pfizer's coronavirus #vaccine, in a major step toward an epic vaccination campaign that could finally conquer the outbreak. https://t.co/18qG8JTt2e

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) December 10, 2020

In March, the emergency room doctor was bedridden with the first case of the coronavirus among his colleagues at a hospital in Wales. Within weeks, he was back in scrubs, tending to a crush of ill, breathless patients.

On Tuesday, after having weathered each turn in Britain’s ravaging bout with the coronavirus, the doctor, Farbod Babolhavaeji, was given one of the world’s first shots of a clinically authorized, fully tested vaccine — a step in the long, painstaking campaign to knock back a disease that has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide.

Images of the first people to be vaccinated were broadcast around the country, led by Margaret Keenan, 90, a former jewelry shop assistant in a “Merry Christmas” T-shirt, and an 81-year-old man with the improbable name of William Shakespeare. They quickly became emblems of the remarkable race to make a vaccine, and the world’s agonizing wait for relief from deaths now numbering 11,000 a day.

Never before has Britain undertaken such a fiendishly difficult mass vaccination program. Given pizza boxlike trays of 975 doses each, hospitals stored them in deep freezers, defrosted them and, on Tuesday, drew them up into individual syringes and jabbed them into the upper arms of variously jubilant and needle-shy Britons. Every minute mattered: Defrosted doses that were not given by Friday would be wasted.

Read it all.

For Britain’s first recipients of the coronavirus vaccine, the shots offered a glimpse of hope at life after the pandemic. Some health care workers who had spent months treating Covid patients cried upon getting the shot. https://t.co/brhKLoI8ae

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 9, 2020

The French army has been given the go-ahead to develop bionic soldiers resistant to pain and stress and endowed with extra brain power thanks to microchip implants.

The approval came from the ethical committee of the armed forces ministry, which said in a report that France needed to keep up with countries that were already working to produce super-soldiers.

The committee gave details of some lines of research, including pills to keep troops awake for long periods and surgery to improve hearing. Other areas in the “field of study” involve implants which release anti-stress substances or “improve cerebral capacity”.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Bourne ultimatum: France given green light for bionic soldiers- https://t.co/kmWY8YTLWY

— Tam Hussein (@tamhussein) December 9, 2020

At Friday’s event Glencore pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, including “scope 3” created when customers burn raw materials, to net zero by 2050.

It plans to do this mainly by placing its coal business into managed decline in which reserves are not replaced as they run down. 

By setting out a credible pathway to net zero, Mr Glasenberg believes Glencore will be able to hang on to a business it can milk for cash and not be penalised by investors. 

Coal accounts for about 10 per cent of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, and 5 per cent of revenue, so it is not a huge part of its business.

The move has met a positive response. While Glencore’s commitments require careful consideration, they are “significant”, according to Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement at the Church of England Pensions Board and co-chair of the Transition Pathway Initiative.

Read it all.

Glencore needs to decide what it wants to be in the post-Ivan, ESG world,” said Paul Gait, a mining expert at Azvalor Asset Management. “My gut feeling is that coal will be separated eventually.”
via @FT
https://t.co/xP7ieO4CJ9

— Anne-Sylvaine Chassany (@ChassNews) December 8, 2020

In recent years, researchers have had some success with creating point-of-care biosensors using 2D nanomaterials such as graphene to detect diseases. The main advantages of graphene-based biosensors are their sensitivity, low cost of production and rapid detection turnaround. “The discovery of graphene opened up a new era of sensor development due to its properties. Graphene exhibits unique mechanical and electrochemical properties that make it ideal for the development of sensitive electrochemical sensors,” said Alafeef. The team created a graphene-based electrochemical biosensor with an electrical read-out setup to selectively detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.

There are two components to this biosensor: a platform to measure an electrical read-out and probes to detect the presence of viral RNA. To create the platform, researchers first coated filter paper with a layer of graphene nanoplatelets to create a conductive film. Then, they placed a gold electrode with a predefined design on top of the graphene as a contact pad for electrical readout. Both gold and graphene have high sensitivity and conductivity which makes this platform ultrasensitive to detect changes in electrical signals.

Read it all and the abstract is there.

Paper-based electrochemical sensor can detect #COVID19 🦠in less than five minutes🕠#science https://t.co/UYOt2R8w9N

— Nemo (@LeNautilus) December 8, 2020

A series of cyberattacks is underway aimed at the companies and government organizations that will be distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world, IBM’s cybersecurity division has found, though it is unclear whether the goal is to steal the technology for keeping the vaccines refrigerated in transit or to sabotage the movements.

The findings were alarming enough that the Department of Homeland Security issued its own warning on Thursday about the threat.

Both the IBM researchers and the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the attacks appear intended to steal the network log-in credentials of corporate executives and officials at global organizations involved in the refrigeration process necessary to protect vaccine doses.

Josh Corman, a coronavirus strategist at the cybersecurity agency, said in a statement that the IBM report was a reminder of the need for “cybersecurity diligence at each step in the vaccine supply chain.” He urged organizations “involved in vaccine storage and transport to harden attack surfaces, particularly in cold storage operation.”

Read it all.

A series of cyberattacks is underway, IBM says. It aims at the companies and government organizations that will be distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world. https://t.co/CuPtAhTYAj

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 3, 2020

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, urges anyone questioning whether they should take a COVID-19 vaccine to evaluate all of the available evidence.

While speaking Thursday with a top Southern Baptist leader, Collins encouraged Christians to seek out the truth about the vaccines awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration instead of the misinformation and conspiracy theories being spread out of fear and anxiety. Collins pointed to a Bible verse in Philippians 4 for guidance.

“‘Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things,'” Collins said. “That would apply really well right here. So whatever is true.”

Amid a surge in coronavirus cases and promising vaccine developments, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission hosted Collins, who leads the country’s medical research agency, for an online discussion.

Read it all.

I tuned into @drmoore's talk with @NIHDirector this morning about COVID-19 vaccines. It included advice for folks who have questions about whether they should get vaccinated. Look for the truth, Dr. Francis Collins says. https://t.co/5f4PZ9xBJe

— Holly Meyer (@HollyAMeyer) December 3, 2020

An artificial intelligence (AI) network developed by Google AI offshoot DeepMind has made a gargantuan leap in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence.

DeepMind’s program, called AlphaFold, outperformed around 100 other teams in a biennial protein-structure prediction challenge called CASP, short for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction. The results were announced on 30 November, at the start of the conference — held virtually this year — that takes stock of the exercise.

“This is a big deal,” says John Moult, a computational biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who co-founded CASP in 1994 to improve computational methods for accurately predicting protein structures. “In some sense the problem is solved.”

The ability to accurately predict protein structures from their amino-acid sequence would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine. It would vastly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery.

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An artificial intelligence network developed by Google AI offshoot DeepMind has made a gargantuan leap in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence. https://t.co/tzWgwIgRNt

— Nature (@nature) December 1, 2020

Now that vaccines are awaiting approval, the question looms: To what extent will remote work persist? In this article, we assess the possibility for various work activities to be performed remotely. Building on the McKinsey Global Institute’s body of work on automation, AI, and the future of work, we extend our models to consider where work is performed. Our analysis finds that the potential for remote work is highly concentrated among highly skilled, highly educated workers in a handful of industries, occupations, and geographies.

More than 20 percent of the workforce could work remotely three to five days a week as effectively as they could if working from an office. If remote work took hold at that level, that would mean three to four times as many people working from home than before the pandemic and would have a profound impact on urban economies, transportation, and consumer spending, among other things.

More than half the workforce, however, has little or no opportunity for remote work. Some of their jobs require collaborating with others or using specialized machinery; other jobs, such as conducting CT scans, must be done on location; and some, such as making deliveries, are performed while out and about. Many of such jobs are low wage and more at risk from broad trends such as automation and digitization. Remote work thus risks accentuating inequalities at a social level.

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Remote work may increase gender disparity in the workplace, exacerbating the regressive effects of #COVID19. Our new article explores what’s next for remote work https://t.co/sNt86P24PH pic.twitter.com/FsJqcaULm7

— McKinsey Global Institute (@McKinsey_MGI) November 26, 2020

Continuing the spate of stunning news about COVID-19 vaccines, the biotech company Moderna announced the final results of the 30,000-person efficacy trial for its candidate in a press release today: Only 11 people who received two doses of the vaccine developed COVID-19 symptoms after being infected with the pandemic coronavirus, versus 185 symptomatic cases in a placebo group. That is an efficacy of 94.1%, the company says, far above what many vaccine scientists were expecting just a few weeks ago.

More impressive still, Moderna’s candidate had 100% efficacy against severe disease. There were zero such COVID-19 cases among those vaccinated, but 30 in the placebo group. The company today plans to file a request for emergency use authorization (EUA) for its vaccine with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and is also seeking a similar green light from the European Medicines Agency.

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'Absolutely remarkable' : No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe COVID-19 | Science | AAAS https://t.co/Hrtfy4XmWW

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) November 30, 2020