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Announcement The need for international solidarity and multilateral cooperation is more conspicuous than ever. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 to the World Food Programme (WFP) for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation addressing hunger and promoting food security. In 2019, the WFP provided assistance to close to 100 million people in 88 countries who are victims of acute food insecurity and hunger. In 2015, eradicating hunger was adopted as one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The WFP is the UN’s primary instrument for realizing this goal. In recent years, the situation has taken a negative turn. In 2019, 135 million people suffered from acute hunger, the highest number in many years. Most of the increase was caused by war and armed conflict.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 was awarded to Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 was awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.”
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.”
Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the Hepatitis C virus. Top right: the virus particle containing an RNA genome and the viral envelope glycoproteins E1 and E2 exposed on the surface. Bottom: the viral genome encoding a large polyprotein that is cleaved into multiple structural and non-structural proteins with 5’ and 3’ terminal untranslated regions.
Topics: Medicine, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize
The discovery of Hepatitis C virus The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis, from the Greek names for liver and inflammation, is a disease characterized by poor appetite, vomiting, fatigue and jaundice – yellow discoloration of the skin and eyes. Chronic hepatitis leads to liver damage, which may progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Viral infection is the leading cause of hepatitis, with some forms persisting without symptoms for many years before life-threatening complications develop. Until the 1960’s, exposure to blood from infected individuals was a major health hazard, with up to 30% risk of chronic hepatitis following surgery or multiple blood transfusions. This risk was only partially reduced by the discovery of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the eventual elimination of HBV-contaminated blood through testing. A more insidious form of hepatitis, characterized by very mild symptoms in the acute phase and a high risk of progression to chronic liver damage and cancer, remained. The work of Alter, Houghton and Rice characterized this form of hepatitis to be a distinct clinical entity, caused by an RNA virus of the Flavivirus family, now known as Hepatitis C virus (HCV). This pioneering work has paved the way for the development of screening methods that have dramatically reduced the risk of acquiring hepatitis from contaminated blood and has led to the development of effective antiviral drugs that have improved the lives of millions of people.
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Dark Humor, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights
We started with Tuesday’s “debate,” where one candidate came for the debate, while the other as an orange primate slinging shit, trying to get his opponent to stutter and literally, “seeing what sticks.” Every post-debate analysis gave it to his opponent.
Now, he’s tested positive for the Coronavirus.
The sad part is, we’ve been lied to SO many times, we have a right to doubt the report.
It is a bit “convenient” after a disastrous debate, isn’t it? After 20,000+ lies, 200,000+ dead Americans, and counting, he’s caused us to question our reality.
He saw his internal polling numbers, and his howling, feces sling fest didn’t move the needle. He is a faux billionaire that played one on The Apprentice reality-TV show. He was so broke, the showrunners rented the furniture seen on the set because his office looked like the remains of “Sanford and Son.” Methinks this is the Occam’s razor reason why he’s desperately terrified for anyone to see his taxes: his net worth is in the crapper.
He knew the employment numbers were going to be disappointing. Dow futures went negative at the news of his infection. He knew it as he went to a fundraiser in New Jersey. He knew it as shook hands with supporters. He planned a rally in Wisconsin, despite the protestations from the democratic governor. IF (& that’s a BIG if) he’s got it, he did it, I think, HOPING he contracted the virus from his previous super spreader events, so he could change the subject, and NOT have to debate further. He’s going for a medical resignation, and you can’t get called a quitter if you’re “legitimately” (wink, wink) sick.
Nuff said
“Stand back and stand by” made the “Proud Boys” little mushrooms poke there rusty, racist zippers. He’s disavowed them like he did his father’s attendance at a Klan rally in New York City in 1927; as he did ever knowing David Duke, or what the Klan is; as he did after Charlottesville, when he called Neo Nazis “very fine people,” making them equivalent to Antifa (which means, say it WITH me now: ANTI-fascist). He’s disavowed them because that’s just another crime he could be convicted for if he foments violence at what’s looking to be a landslide defeat. He knows he’s losing, and losing means prison: the Manhattan DA, SDNY, the NYS DA Letitia James could give a shit about any pardon Mike Pence can worm out of his complicit, faux-Christian ass: no president, no matter how brief the tenure can do anything about state crimes. His best move in 2016 was to lose, and inaugurate “Trump TV,” not this American Carnage of apathetic ineptitude he’s unleashed on this nation.
Speaking of Christians, what EXACTLY are white evangelicals going to do after this? WHO in their right minds would seek out their example? They couldn’t even be street guards at an elementary after this debacle of epic hypocrisy. After decades of facade piety, they voted for the vagina grabber! Their median age is a matched set to Fox viewership: white and getting older. Religious organizations survive from the free-will charitable contributions (“tithes and offerings”) from their congregations. Congregations only grow when YOUNG people join them, get married, have babies, and stay awhile. Good luck paying your mortgages. Hit up Franklin Graham or Paula White for a loan to float you.
A seventy-four-year-old racist (allegedly) has COVID-19, with associated morbidities: he’s overweight, his diet is disastrous, and yet he’s managed to fire off tweets with supposedly mild symptoms between the land of the living and the hereafter.
A malignant narcissist hates the idea of losing, or quitting while he’s clearly behind.
This is the equivalent of a more noble and honorable man falling on his sword.
I’m voting. I’m voting as SOON as the polls open. He can promise to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. He can promise to give us our “40 acres and a mule” WITH interest. None of these flaccid, half-assed, shoot-from-the-hip promises mean anything to the functioning of this republic, that since I’m LIVING in it, I desperately WANT to function.
I need him gone. Quoting his well-worn, rehearsed phrase that made him famous: YOU’RE FIRED. Because in the words of Joy Reid: I “really WOULD like to sleep at night!”
Credit: Johannes Zirkelbach/Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light
Topics: Applied Physics, Nanotechnology, Optics
At the focus of a laser, a 100-nm-wide gold nanoparticle can block more than half the light. If additional particles are added, the amount of blocked light increases exponentially, as modeled by the Beer–Lambert law. But theorists predict that in the right set of circumstances, the addition of a molecule would, counterintuitively, decrease the light blocked—that is, make the nanoparticle partially transparent.
Vahid Sandoghdar of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and his colleagues have now shown that predicted partial transparency for a near-field coupled dye molecule (red in image) and a plasmonic nanoparticle (gold). The phenomenon is a result of the interference between the light scattered from the two.
To achieve the required coupling, the dye molecule must be in a particular orientation and less than a wavelength away from the gold nanoparticle. Controlling those parameters is tricky, so Sandoghdar and his colleagues left them to chance. The researchers started with an array of nanoparticles and then coated it with a molten crystal doped with dibenzoterrylene (DBT) dye molecules. After the colorless crystal solidified, the result was a stochastic distribution of DBT molecules.
Their strong, distinctive fluorescence made the dye molecules easy to find optically. But the team members needed to verify that the molecule was near-field coupled to a nanoparticle. They identified a particle with two nearby DBT molecules and shined a tunable titanium:sapphire laser on it. The nanoparticle acts as an antenna, which enhances the molecules’ fluorescence. Relative to the other, one DBT molecule had telltale signatures of near-field interactions: enhanced and spectrally broadened fluorescence and a shorter excited-state lifetime—1.4 ns compared with the usual 8.1 ns.
Topics: Modern Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics
Our right and left hands are reflections of one another, but they are not equal. To hide one hand perfectly behind the other, we must face our palms in opposite directions.
In physics, the concept of handedness (or chirality) works similarly: It is a property of objects that are not dynamically equivalent to their mirror images. An object that can coincide with its mirror-image twin in every coordinate, such as a dumbbell or a spoon, is not chiral.
Because our hands are chiral, they do not interact with other objects and space in the exact same way. In nature, you will find this property in things like proteins, spiral galaxies and most elementary particles.
These different-handed object pairs reveal some puzzling asymmetries in the way our universe works. For example, the weak force—the force responsible for nuclear decay— has an effect only on particles that are left-handed. Also, life itself—every plant and creature we know—is built almost exclusively with right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids.
When Luciana Leite arrived in the Pantanal on 2 September, she thought she would be celebrating her wedding anniversary. Instead, the biologist and her husband spent their eight-day planned holiday aiding volunteers and firefighters struggling to extinguish the burning landscape.
A common destination for ecotourists, the Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, home to Indigenous peoples and a high concentration of rare or endangered species, such as jaguars and giant armadillos. Small fires occur every year in the region, which sprawls over parts of western Brazil and extends into Bolivia and Paraguay.
But 2020’s fires have been unprecedented in extent and duration, researchers say. So far, 22% of the vast floodplain — around 3.2 million hectares (see ‘Biodiversity Hotspot Under Threat’) — has succumbed to the flames, according to Renata Libonati, a remote-sensing specialist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, whose data are being used by firefighters to plan containment. That’s more than twice the area that has burnt in the record-breaking fires in California this year.
Scientists worry that the extreme blazes will profoundly alter the already fragile ecosystem of the Pantanal, and that research programmes investigating the region’s ecology and biodiversity will never recover.
“It’s apocalyptic,” says Leite, who studies humanity’s relationship with nature at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. “It is a tragedy of colossal proportions.”
Personal note: I’ve been offline prepping for my preliminary exam presentation, and grieving the loss of a friend I had known for 40 years since our freshman year at NC A&T. I was his best man. He did not die of COVID, but a heart attack. As such, my remarks were read at the funeral in Indiana, as the pandemic and social distancing concerns did not allow me to give my eulogy in-person. I hope you will forgive my absence.
This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.
The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.
Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesn’t require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction — like the jets on Iron Man’s suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Brown’s DeLorean to fly in “Back to the Future.”
But in Tang’s telling, his invention — let’s just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li — could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.
Physics and Nano 