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Comment Re:No way (Score 1) 61

by wherrera (#64939105) Attached to: How the Majority of Strokes Could Be Prevented
quote: Remember decreasing your risk of stroke increases your risk of dying from something else. Not that I want to die from a massive stroke, but from what I've seen, it beats hell out of cancer, and dementia. end quote Actually, your risk of cancer and dementia _also_ go down with compliance with the advice given to prevent stroke.

Comment fluorescence may be a general tendency of life (Score 3, Informative) 30

by wherrera (#63907711) Attached to: Fluorescent Mammals Are Much More Common Than You'd Think
Several amino acids, of the building blocks of protein, are fluorescent. Se for example https://www.nature.com/article... . So keratin being fluorescent does not have to mean much of special evolutionary significance, when many other proteins, eg blood, insect ichor, etc.. are fluorescent because of those proteins having exposed fluorescent amino acids are part of their intrinsic makeup.

Comment Re:Washington strain (Score 3, Insightful) 112

They are playing fast and loose with the name of the actual genotype, but it remains that the 2020 study paper here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... clearly says that the Washington strain they used is very close to the "original" pandemic strain. This means it is more accurate to call it the Wuhan type, to distinguish it from one of the later variants detected after summer of 2020, which were labeled alpha (first sequenced from cases in the UK I believe in the second half of 2020), beta, detla, etc.

Submission + - Dallas Air Traffic Rerouted as FAA Probes Faulty GPS Signals (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Flights into the Dallas area are being forced to take older, cumbersome routes and a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was temporarily closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren’t reliable. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an emailed statement Tuesday it’s investigating the possible jamming of the global-positioning system that aircraft increasingly use to guide them on more efficient routes and to runways. So far, the agency has found “no evidence of intentional interference,” it said. American Airlines, the primary carrier at DFW, said the GPS issue is not affecting its operations. Southwest Airlines, which flies from nearby Love Field, said it also isn’t experiencing any disruptions. The FAA reopened the closed runway earlier on Tuesday.

The GPS problem — despite the lack of impact — highlights the risk of widespread reliance on the weak GPS radio signals from space used for everything from timing stock trades to guiding jetliners. The FAA occasionally warns pilots in advance of military testing that may degrade the GPS signals and pilots sometimes report short-lived problems, but the interference in Dallas is atypical, said Dan Streufert, founder of the flight-tracking website ADSBexchange.com. “In the US, it’s very unusual to see this without a prior notice,” Streufert said in an interview. ADSBExchange.com monitors aircraft data streams that indicate the accuracy of the GPS signals they are receiving and the website began seeing problems around Dallas on Monday, he said. The military has told the FAA it isn’t conducting any operations that would interfere with GPS in that area, said a person familiar with the situation who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about it. The primary way FAA’s air-traffic system tracks planes is based on GPS, but older radars and radio-direction beacons have remained in place as backups.

Submission + - 20 Nations at High Risk From Global Warming Might Halt Debt Payments (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twenty countries most vulnerable to climate change are considering halting their repayment of $685 billion in collective debt, loans that they say are an “injustice,” Mohamad Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, said on Friday. When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund conclude their annual meetings in Washington on Sunday, Mr. Nasheed said he would tell officials that the nations were weighing whether to stop payments on their debts. The finance ministers are calling instead for a debt-for-nature swap, in which part of a nation’s debt is forgiven and invested in conservation. “We are living not just on borrowed money but on borrowed time,” said Mr. Nasheed, who brought global attention to his sinking archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean by holding an underwater cabinet meeting in 2009. “We are under threat, and we should collectively find a way out of it.” Mr. Nasheed said poor nations were locked in a Sisyphean trap: they must borrow money to ward off rising seas and storms — only to see disasters made worse by climate change destroy the improvements they make. But the debt remains, and often countries are left to borrow once again.

The debt discussions at the I.M.F. and World Bank meetings come as diplomats from nearly 200 countries prepared for global climate change negotiations in November. That United Nations conference, which will take place in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, will focus heavily on whether wealthy nations most responsible for the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change should compensate poor countries that are suffering the worst impacts. Many developing countries and low-lying island nations are pressing for the creation of an international fund that would compensate them for losses and damage caused by climate change. The United States, Europe and other wealthy countries that have historically emitted the bulk of greenhouse gases have opposed the creation of such a fund, in part because they fear being held legally liable for skyrocketing disaster costs.

Mr. Nasheed said he believed focusing on a debt swap could bypass contentious debates over creating a new international fund for reparations. He also noted that many funds that have been created have gone unfilled, he said. If debts owed by countries were shaved by 30 percent and that money was instead invested in projects such as improving water systems or preserving mangrove forests that protect shorelines from hurricanes, “it would have a huge impact,” Mr. Nasheed said. Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the I.M.F., said last year that such debt swaps could help developing countries address climate change and pledged to work with the World Bank to “advance that option” at the United Nations climate meeting in Egypt. According to the World Bank, 58 percent of the world’s poorest countries are at risk or are in “debt distress.” At the same time, the loss and damage needs for vulnerable countries are projected in one study at$290 billion to $580 billion annually by 2030.

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