This week the first officially approved treatment for the CCP virus has been given. Remdesivir is an antiviral used for several other viruses. The clinical results show that it can shorten the severity and duration of infection which is good news.

Until we have a long term prophylaxis for the CCP virus we will need to understand how it works. This is why British researchers want to conduct human challenge trials. This means exposing people to the CCP virus until they are infected. This will be done in healthy, young people so as to follow human research limitations.

We have found a giant cat picture among the Nazca lines. This could have the equivalent of your grandmother sending you cat videos 2000 years ago. The reason for this delay in discovery is that it is locate din an unusual location.

The ISS has finally tracked down a leak from over a year ago. It was what appeared to be a scratch but was in fact a hole. This was fixed with tape.

These and other items can be found at these time stamps:

00:09 Global survey of CCP virus vaccine acceptance is not encouraging

02:22 FDA approves Remdesivir as first treatment for CCP virus

04:56 Immunology expert weighs in on the possibility of zero infections

07:39 UK researchers want to conduct human trials on CCP virus infection

09:03 Adenovirus based vaccines for CCP virus may face an unexpected challenge

11:32 James Randi debunker of nonsense dies at age 92

13:01 CBD oil is widely misconstrued on Reddit accordign to study

15:16 Nazcar lines expose giant picture of cats; was this ancient version of cat videos?

16:33 Giant solar power plant to be built in Australia to supply Singapore with power

17:42 ISS tracks down leak using tea leaves

19:43 The two satellites from last week did not crash but the problem has not gone away

Relevant links:

A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1124-9

FDA Approves First Treatment for COVID-19
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-treatment-covid-19

Is reaching zero COVID-19 possible?
https://theconversation.com/is-reaching-zero-covid-19-possible-145108

UK researchers to explore human challenge studies for COVID-19
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/206893/uk-researchers-explore-human-challenge-studies/

Use of adenovirus type-5 vectored vaccines: a cautionary tale
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32156-5/fulltext

James Randi has died.
https://web.randi.org/home/james-randi-has-died

Self-reported Cannabidiol (CBD) Use for Conditions With Proven Therapies
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2771735?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=101520

Un gatito de 37 metros, nueva figura descubierta entre los geoglifos de Nazca
https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/cultura/un-gatito-de-37-metros-nueva-figura-descubierta-entre-los-geoglifos-nazca/10005-4370111

World's Largest Solar Farm to Be Built in Australia - But They Won't Get The Power
https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-largest-solar-farm-to-pipe-power-internationally-from-australia-under-the-sea

Space-station crew members just found an elusive air leak by watching tea leaves float in microgravity
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/astronauts-cosmonauts-found-space-station-leak-using-tea-leaves-2020-10?r=US&IR=T

A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body just avoided colliding in space and exploding into dangerous debris
https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-satellite-chinese-rocket-might-crash-in-space-2020-10?r=US&IR=T

Cannibalism is bad. This is generally a well known and recognised fact. In some extreme cases people have been driven to eat others but it is generally a rare phenomena.

Why is the most readily available source of protein so often ignored. It is because eating another human carries a lot of risk. Risk that becomes apparent over time but not immediately.

The risk for cannibals is something known as a prion disease. These are insidious diseases that destroy the functionality and form of proteins. They do this by creating a cascade that mutates other proteins which can in turn infect other proteins.

When these mutated proteins become infected they can then reach a critical mass. This begins to interfere with the normal function. This can be especially pronounced in the brain.

The problem for humans is that they can acquire or be infected by being exposed to meat or protein that has a pre-prion in it. Prion diseases are a zoonotic disease which means they can go from animals to humans.

If one human eats another and they have a prion disease than a new host can be infected. This is one way it is passed between people.

On a large scale this rarely seen. However, there have been exceptions.

At a species level there was a wide spread issue with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United Kingdom. This came from ruminants, cows, eating other ruminants such as sheep, goats, horses, etc and developing a prion disease.

In humans it is rare with examples including those who were infected by the United Kingdoms by the bovine spongiform encephalopathy. There are other cases where there was a tribal or cultural drive to eat the flesh of others.

Relevant links:

7 surprising facts about cannibalism
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8052239/cannibalism-surprising-facts

Sleeping with Cannibals
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/

Nine places across the world where CANNIBALISM is still alive and well
https://www.thesun.co.uk/livi..

This week we continue to see more unexpected symtpoms of infection with the CCP virus/ COVID19. The most obvious for some people has been when their hair starts to fall out. Hopefully some of the 21 novel drugs discovered for COVID19 may prove successful.

While most people start to embrace or at least accept mask use many designs are flawed. They lack enough layers, made from the wrong materials or do not achieve the goal of stopping dispersal.

We also may know where the stone used to make most of Stonehenge was taken from. It is a a site 25 km away. The question now becomes how did they move 30 tonne slabs of stone 25 Km over 4500years ago?

These and other news items can be found at the following time stamps:

00:18 COVID19 may cause your hair to fall out

01:32 Drug re-purposing finds 21 new possible treatments for COVID19

03:37 Social distancing can halve the risk of COVID19 infection, population density increases risk and the weather is uncertain

06:03 Georgia struggles to keep their COVID19 daily cases heat map consistent giving a false impression of stability

07:24 A handy colour coded chart exists to guide your decision to go outside during the COVID19 pandemic

09:37 Your DIY mask is better than nothing but you can improve it

11:20 How to test if your DIY mask design is any good

14:17 Bats could have a genetic predisposition to viral infection and poor immune response

16:32 Aerobically active bacteria exists at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean floor from 10 million years ago

18:23 Bacteria in and from space are more dangerous then their terrestrial counter parts

20:36 Boy given unproven, experimental hormone injections in juvenile detention without guardians consent according to law suit

22:34 US postal addresses receiving mystery packets of seeds from China and the USDA is worried by it

24:17 Stonehenge stone origin may have been found but it raises more questions

Wine is not just fermented grapjuice. It is so much more but even the complexity of a deep, rich wine can be made even more complex. Fortified wine is an example of this in practice.

Fortified wine goes by different names. Some call it port, sherry, sack, Jerez and more. Each has its own history and style based on unique region, cultivation and styles.

The development of port was a necessity. Older wine styles had a limited storage period. Adding alcohol extended this period by a significant margin. It allowed the wine products to be sold further and be of better quality when they arrived which generated greater profit. If they did not add the extra alcohol it might turned to vinegar which was of limited to no value.

This method is not unique to wine. Something similar is used to ‘jug’ fresh fruit. This is where you combine fresh fruit and strong spirits like brandy in a sealed jar or jug. This preserves the fruit by removing water and deterring the growth of bacteria/ fungi.

This is the gist of fortified wine. It is wine with a distilled spirits added. That helps to preserve the wine by stopping yeast growth, fermentation and pathogens.

The addition of alcohol also comes with an increase in sugar. That extra sugar makes sack into a dessert wine. Deserts wine is sweet and sometimes unpleasantly cloying. Other times the product is dry or less sweet.

This is than aged in wood barrels. Like scotch and whiskey this alters the flavour and helps to mellow it. It also makes for a far more limited supply of sack as each year a new batch is made, stored and than eventually released.

The choice of sherry will vary based on your tastes and preferences. Some are chilled, others served at room temperature. This is going to depend on your personal taste and choice.

Further reading:

Fortified Wine Types and Uses
https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-a-fortified-wine-3510908

If you like brewing beer but want to be able to play with variables than wheat beer is perfect. It is a relatively neutral base beer recipe. This lets you use different hops, more or less of certain malts and more. Each of these will be more pronounced in wheat beer than others. This compares favorably to other more nuanced or distinct beers that have a key flavor or element that is always there and very obvious.

Wheat beer has this versatility from the very high wheat content. Most beer recipes rely on malt but wheat beer has a lot less and so the malt flavors are not as pronounced. This creates an almost soft drink like beer for those who are not fond of the strong flavor of beers.

This same feature also explains why some people serve it as a mixer. Champagne and strawberries. Vodka and cordial. Wheat beer and cola? Yes, cola is added to wheat beer.

This style is especially common in Germany and Belgium. The regions have their own particular spin on wheat beer. A common example of this is the Bavarian Weizenbier or, unsurprisingly, wheat beer.

As a beginner beer it is straightforward as a method but some what distinct in style. You use the same process as for an ale but with less malt and more wheat.

This week the incidence of COVID19/ CCP virus in the USA has risen to yet another level. It took 99 days to reach 1 million, 48 days for 2 million, 28 days for 3 million and 14 days for 4 million. How quickly can the spread continue to grow?

Hopefully before long the 3 current front runners for vaccines COVID19 will be proven effective. Barring that there is at least 1 possible treatment available. This might help to mitigate some of the impact.

While we have this amazing development we are also made aware fo the unexpected and unintended consequences. Starlink is an example of this by effecting the ability to get clear pictures of space.

These and other news items can be found at the following time stamps:

00:16 US hits 4 million CCP virus case milestone

01:19 3 vaccines and a treatment for the CCP virus show promise

03:38 New, reusable and sanitisable N95 mask has been designed for low cost, economical protection

06:05 Certain health conditions may put you at greater risk of dying from COVID19

07:08 Mum’s on Instagram are spreading mis-information

09:31 Children above10 years old at risk of spreading CCP virus at a level similar to adults

11:42 A simple blood test you tell you if you have cancer years before symptoms appear

13:09 A gene mutation linked to Neanderthals associated with a greater sensation of pain

15:06 Salmonella evolving to infect leafy green plants more effectively

16:55 The Arizona black sludge video demonstrates some of the lesser known effects of wild fires

18:11 Modifying large scale agriculture could be used to sequester CO2

20:10 The USA says Russia is using anti sattelite weapons

21:22 Starlink by SpaceX/ Elon Musk is interfering with earth based astronomy and astrophotography

Relevant links:

US records its 4 millionth coronavirus case only 2 weeks after hitting 3 million
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-records-4-million-covid-cases-2-weeks-3-million-2020-7?r=US&IR=T

The first human data from AstraZeneca and Ox..

Many doctors do a hard job. They work long hours and often with little to no recognition. The silver lining for some is that their patients go away better for the care if not cured of the disease.

Just getting to this point in their life is difficult for a doctor. Imagine long nights, months and years just to get into medical school. More long years in medical school. Than you need to choose a specialty. Some are very well paid while others are the labour of Sisyphus.

Oncology is one of the medical fields that is an exception to well paid roles and instead pushing a boulder up hill.

Oncologists have long term patients. They are likely to be cured as such (remission) but it takes years. They also have the exception where patients are not cured. They may either remain cancerous which is barely managed. In other cases the oncologist provides palliative care as their patient slowly dies.

These latter 2 groups are huge drain. The emotional toll, time expense and effort. All are used just to give a patient more time. That means the effort is a labour of passion.

The lack of a solution or cure for patients means oncologists invest all of this and it still ends badly. The personal costs leads to personal burnout. Burnout being extremely high among oncologists.

The time, experience and expense of training any doctor let alone the insufficiently staffed oncology departments means burn out is a very bad thing. The loss of experienced staff leads to less effective care. More mistakes. Loss of leadership. The problems of attrition in oncology exemplify the problem of burnout in medicine in general.

Relevant links:

Oncology staff burned out? Engage and retain your staff with these targeted strategies.
https://www.advisory.com/research/oncology-roundtable/oncology-rounds/2019/10/oncology-burnout-engaged-workforce

Attrition rates, reasons, and predictive factors in supportive care and palliative oncology clinical trials
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio..

Mendellian genetics are the earliest empirically studied concepts of inherited traits and how one generation passes on their genes to the next. This is a concept that has proven valid for more than 150 years. Based ont his long history that predates the well established concept of DNA mendellian inheritance relied on a proxy measure and mechanism.

Mendell did this by observing pea plants and the inheritance of flower color. Peas take 60-70 days to mature. That allows up to 2-3 generations each year. Mendell had to spend 8 years breeding his plants to prove his theory.

In the 18th century any attempt at science had to be reliable and predictable. Mendell created system to do this. He used a matrix or grid of squares that corresponded to the pea plant traits. He was then able to predict how they would be passed onto the next generation.

What he could not know at the time was how these traits were passed on. Mendell did not know about genetics, alleles or genes. What Mendell did know was that a plant and animal for that matter could exhibit traits (modern phenotype) and these would be passed onto the next generation in a predictable manner.

It is the ability to predict the way these traits would fall that was so important. Mendellian genetics provided a foundation to future genetics research.

The simplest example of this is the family tree. The royal families of Europe are almost one large family tree. They are so interbred that they have caused inherited diseases to be widespread and dominant. Until Mendellian genetics this was largely recognised as an issue but the cause was less clear.

Relevant links:

Mendelian Genetics
https://knowgenetics.org/mendelian-genetics/

Gregor Mendel and the Principles of Inheritance
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gregor-mendel-and-the-principles-of-inheritance-593/

Wiki; Mendelian inheritance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance#:~:text=Mendelian%20inheritance%20is%20a%20type,These%20principles%..

At the moment personal hygiene is more important than ever. The most common piece of advice is to wash your hands. Most people recognise this from their time in primary school. That time when you couldn’t reach high things and had to ask permission for everything.

It may have been years ago but the advice is still followed by everyone. Or at least they try to follow it. The problem is that not everyone does follow the advice to wash their hands properly.

The best recognised method only takes 20 seconds. This is recognised and endorsed by the WHO, CDC and other national agencies.

This is an important note as even with a mere 20 seconds people still get washing their hands wrong. They make an effort or even spend minutes washing their hands. The problem is the sequence and what is washed. If you do it wrong it does not matte how long you wash as it will have less to adverse effect.

That is why we made this video. The use of a fluorescent compound and UV light highlights how washing your hands can easily not be enough to achieve the desired results.

The whole exercise is something you might see in school or a laboratory training program. It uses a compelling visual example. Something that can be readily understood and is entirely interactive.

If you do wash your hands properly the difference is obvious. That is the advantage of this approach. That is if you do it properly. If not than it is immediately obvious how embarrassing the exercise can be.

Just remember this. When you wash your hands make sure to clean up after yourself. This will stop the spread of disease from the wash station toy our self and than back to the wash station.

Relevant links:

CDC: When and How to Wash Your Hands
https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html

WHO: Clean hands protect against infection
https://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/

Hand washing
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/hand-washing

NHS: How to wash your hands
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/hea..

Coffee is a widely consumed beverage. Cola of sorts is another. Tea is perhaps the most widely consumed beverage across the world. These three beverages and a variety of other foods all have something in common. Caffeine.

Caffeine was for many decades and remains the leading drug for the world. Despite being consumed on an almost daily basis and on a scale that is rivaled by very few other molecules let alone drugs. That degree of use would normally have a corollary with toxicity and poisoning but caffeine does not fit this trend.

It has very few cases of poisoning. The consumption pattern and behaviour is almost entirely self limiting. This is a rare phenomena with any drug that has been created by nature let alone a synthetic or man made drug drug.

There have of course been a variety of claims made about caffeine. Most of these are spurious or poorly substantiated. This is often based on poor evidence or cherry picked results/ studies.

This leads to claims about caffeine building up in the pancreas. We have previously debunked this pseudoscience and nonsense. There is better evidence of other effects from caffeine.

The most obvious of these is the cognitive effects. That is the way it makes you feel more awake, aware and clear thinking. A positive effect from a drug that comes in liquid format and easily consumed. Some even develop a taste for its various carrier molecules.

Caffeine was isolated as a chemical in the 1800s. It gets the name caffeine from the french word for coffee “cafe”. It was isolate din the 1800s as a white crystalline powder. From here we were able to purify, refine and investigate how it works.

Going forwards a hundred and something years we were able to not only have an isolated chemical but figure out how it functions in the human body. This required more advanced technology and understanding of how the body and biochemistry work.

This knowledge has helped to find applications for caffeine. This is as a medicine, drug and mor..

All the antivaxxers who claim that natural immunity is best may have inadvertently touched on a key point in immunology. That of the diversity of immune cells in the human body. A process that lets the human body fight off infections that it has not been exposed to. This seems to be demonstrated through recent studies of the infected immune response.

We also have more information on hydroxychloroquine. There are two studies, both find the same results, but only 1 is reliable. The problem with one is a scandal of the data source and consequential findings. The other is a limited clinical trial from North America.

While the CCP virus is a source of disappointment we have other more hopeful developments. This includes possible new red blood cells that are able to do ore than just deliver oxygen. Think about what we could do with cells that are highly flexible, provide nutrition and able to delver drugs in a targeted manner.

In other events of interest the USA has begun to deploy their own rockets in space once more. This week we saw both the launch and docking of the SpaceX crew dragon. This and the associated events have also given us a lie of sight into the the processes and tools used to ensure a launch occurs with out problems.

00:09 There may be a natural immunity advantage for some people with the CCP virus

01:56 We are now modeling a second wave of the CCP virus and it is not good

03:49 It seems most CCP virus infections are not passed onto others

05:21 Clinical trials of Hydroxychloroquine indicate that is no better than placebos

06:55 The USA is starting to stockpile vaccines for the CCP virus

08:39 The large hyrdoxychloroquine observational study may have been fraud according to media investigation

10:46 Synthetic red blood created that could do more than just move oxygen and CO2

12:03 Human livers grown in test tubes are successfully transplanted to rats

15:25 Information on Lunar eclipse of this week

15:57 SpaceX crew docks with the ISS
..

This week we have further evidence of the blind alleyways and dead ends of research into treatments of COVID19. The first treatment to be publicly promoted and than fail at a critical juncture has been Hydroxychloroquine. This has highlighted the problems in many of the clinical trials and data mining efforts conducted to date.

This has also raised issues with how animals have dealt with the disease. Not just the naked ape but rats. Rats have lived closely with humans and our solutions to COVID19 have made them desperate.

While COVID19 ruins most of the world some countries are experiencing two problems. Australia had fire and disease. Now India is facing disease and famine from a locust plague.

These and other news items can be found the following time stamps:

00:10 WHO suspends Hydroxychloroquine trials

01:20 Large scale investigation (observational study) of Hydroxychloroquine finds a negative relationship between treatment and recovery

03:20 COVID19 quarantine has forced rats to be come more aggressive in search of food as their regular sources shut download

04:20 3 Bolivian boys get bitten by black widow spider after trying to gain Spiderman powers

05:21 India hit by 8 locust swarms and more on the way

07:48 Australian Indigenous / Aboriginal cave site destroyed during mining operation identified gap in legal protection of cultural heritage sites

09:31 We may know why the world contains mostly one sided chirality and it owes to our limited knowledge of the universe and cosmic radiation

Relevant link:

WHO announces it will temporarily suspend hydroxychloroquine trials for COVID-19 treatment
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/who-temporarily-suspends-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-trials-2020-5?r=US&IR=T

Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

Starving rats are reportedly turning int..

The complexity of life as we know it is a point of much focus. We have an entire field f science , Biology, that is meant to unravel and explore this bizarre part of the universe. For nearly 100 years we have thought that DNA was the core to this process.

A system of 4 nucleic acids that in combination, sequence and regulation that produce everything in the living creature. This ranges from proteins, cell organelles and receptors to responses to outside signals.

This was later elaborated with the discovery and understandingof RNA. This is the intermediary stage between DNA and protein or other cellular processes. It explains how DNA could achieve something that was not possible with just DNA working alone.

Despite knowing this we still struggled to figure out what 90% of DNA did. Than even knowing what proteins were coded for by DNA there was still a large gap between the genome and final results.

It took years but eventually we found a series of genes that were not involved in producing protein. Nor were they involved in RNA; or at least the RNA that we are familiar with. This is known as lncRNA or long non-coding RNA.

lnc-RNA added an extra layer of regulation and interaction. This exists between RNA and DNA. A discovery that explains some of the otherwise mysterious conditions that we struggled to understand.

A good candidate is cardiovascular disease. For a long time we could not figure out why males had a higher prevalence than women. There was no genetic difference that we could identify. No proteins or RNA. That was until the discovery of lncRNA. There are some possible lncRNA genes on the male Y chromosome but not the female X chromosome.

This has been built on and developed with discovery of a number of specific lncRNA types. These have

This discovery might well indicate where to look for future evidence of other diseases. Diseases that we have been unable to treat or understand before now.

Relevant links:

Wiki: lncRNA
https://en.wikipedia..

When it comes to bonsai not every method will work in all cases. Sometimes a creative solution is needed. These can be variations on what you are already doing or something very basic.

When you wire your bonsai it is a brute force approach to shaping your tree. You literally use metal to force the tree into a specific shape. But it has limitations.

When wiring a tree you should have raffia on it according to traditionalist and puritans. Raffia is not always found in the modern world. It ca be bought but it often easier to use alternatives. This is the first thing to know when training your bonsai.

This protects your bonsai and especially the soft bark of trunks and branches. Damaging the bark of these will mar the appearance of your tree for a long time. Anything you can do to stop that is good and is even more important when you use atypical solutions.

Atypical solutions are what we are going to go over in this video.

These include ways to bend branches.

How to keep your tree shaped when you can’t get wire onto a branch.

How to bend the tree trunk when it is already quite thick or brittle

Finally how you can take some of the methods used to espalier fruit trees and apply them to bonsai.

This is by no means a complete list of methods you can use but it is a start. Perhaps there are methods you have, use or know about that we did not mention. Please put them in the comments.

Bonsai has a long history. It goes back to ancient China. Over this long period bonsai has developed into distinct and different forms.

Each nation in which bonsai became popular in the earliest days has become its own unique approach. This leads to each culture of bonsai having its own tools. The one most common to bonsai is wire.

Wire is a ubiquitous product. It can be found on most trees in training. Even some trees being displayed.

The wire seen on current trees is most likely going to be made from aluminum. This is the most recent iteration of bonsai wire. A product that only came to the fore in the mid 20th century.

We say the most recent iteration as there are still some vestigial elements of bonsai. One of these is copper wire. Older or more traditional bonsai enthusiasts will insist on using copper wire. This is a relic of the past.

An even older and less frequently used options is iron or steel wire.

The evolution of bonsai wire has an interesting history. While this might only be a brief recap of events it touche son the key events that have led to the modern bonsai wire options. It also gives you some idea on what and why each is used.

This week we have learned more about what we can do to stop the CCP virus. This includes removing animal sources and intermediaries. This makes it a bit easier to track the movement and spread of the CCP virus into humans.

These and other news items can be found at the following time stamps:

00:16 The CCP Virus - Bat - Pangolian link may be dead

03:41 The USA may have had the CCP virus in December 2019

04:04 We might know why men are vulnerable to the CCP virus

05:09 A Kawasaki like disease is closely related to the outbreak of the CCP virus

06:38 Japan aptly demonstrates how easily diseases like the CCP virus spread

07:38 WHO admits the CCP virus is not goingaway soon or very easily

09:09 WHO issues 3 criteria for lifting of lock down

10:37 FDA suggests social distancing for pets

11:42 The human response to the CCP virus confounded marketing AIs/ algorithms.

12:40 There several viruses in the wild that closely resemble the CCP virus

13:44 Penguins poop so much that they produce laughing gas

14:15 We found an organism that does not rely on oxygen for energy production

15:09 Brain implant gives limited sight back to the blind

16:07 China launches new crew capsule into space and nearly drops the booster rocket back onto Mauritania

How many times have you seen a heading which reads a version of person sees icon in miscellaneous object. It cold be Jesus on a sandwich, animals on Mars or other figures. These come from the brain processing the image and creating a false impression.

Most random images create some semblance of logic in the brain. This could be static, clouds or aggregates in water. These become vehicles, faces and other familiar objects.

This could be the brain playing tricks but there could a be a far more reasonable answer. Evolutionary adaptation to sense and respond to danger.When you take this out further we might well be using the same brain circuits for a similar purpose.

What scientific evidence we have would support that. Simply giving the brain a small nudge towards recognizing faces in static leads to more faces being identified. Even when no faces are present.

It could also be a part of the long neoteny of human children. As a neolithic or even older creature they needed to recognize faces early in life or they may not live very long. Recognizing a face means they know who to respond to be smiling or crying.

The phenomena is why movies like cars are so successful. The human brain can confuse the characters with a human face thereby humanizing them. This makes it easier to empathize with otherwise inhuman creations.

If you want to learn more search for the term pareidolia or use the links below.

Relevant links:

Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945214000288

Pareidolia: A Bizarre Bug of the Human Mind Emerges in Computers
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/pareidolia-a-bizarre-bug-of-the-human-mind-emerges-in-computers/260760/

Why some see the face of Jesus in their toast
https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/why-some-see-face-jesus-their-toast-1C6436912

Why It's Perfectly Normal to See Jesus in Toast
https://www.livescience.com/45414-brain..

Meiosis is the fundamental cell division that produces gametes. Those are the cells involved in reproduction. Unlike mitosis these cells have half the number of chromsomes (23 not 46) compared to other cells. This is known as haploid while those with 46 chromosomes are called diploid.

Knowing what is happening during meiosis is essential to understanding pathologies. Kleinfelter syndrome, down syndrome, turner syndrome and more are all caused by chromosomal abnormalities. They occur when meiosis goes wrong.

Meiosis is carefully paginated. Checks and balances at every stage. This has allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of the process.

We know how the meiotic cell goes through:

Prophase I
Metaphase I
Anaphase I
Interkineseis/ interphase II
Prophase II
Metaphase II
Anaphase II
Telophase II

This week is weird. We have some truly bizarre case studies. We also have uplifting and positive events; something we could do with more of in these times. Than there is a range of items in between.

Recently the Gates Foundation has been giving away money like Oprah at a car give away. This week it was an extra $150,000000. They have done this to fund the roll out of a global vaccine effort.

We also have the continuing saga of unreliable or contradictory studies. One finds a weak positive (maybe) while the other is just starting. Who knows where it will all end.

We also have a hypothesis for the underlying explanation for men being more vulnerable to the CCP virus than women. This is bad news but compounded by the observed increase I blood clots for CCP patients. Men are at higher risk of CVD events as it is and now this. Could the CCP virus be misandrist?

These and other news items can be found at the following time stamps:

00:17 43 men live in factory for 28 days to make 18 tonnes of polypropolene for PPE

02:23 Facebook collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to track CCP virus symptom hot spots

04:43 CDC says next winter could be very bad without a vaccine

06:54 Remdesivir trial leaked and the results are not promising

08:43 Oxford to start prophylaxis clinical trial in UK

11:09 The Conversation on why men are more vulnerable to the CCP virus

13:23 Can your pet infect you with the CCP virus?

15:18 Could your dog smell the CCP virus?

16:47 CCP virus may be causing blood clots, even in younger patients.

17:29 The Bill Gates foundations gives $150 million more to facilitate global vaccine effort

19:05 Efforts to curtail the CCP virus thorough sanitizing could be causing unintended harm

21:23 Womens breast implant saves her life by blocking 0.40 caliber bullet

23:21 Some insect populations are rising while others fall but which is really interesting

24:45 Bald eagles are occupying saguaro cactii again

Relevant links:

They lived in a facto..

Just about any plant can be used as an accent plant for bonsai. Various grass species are commonly seen. There are also creepers and vines. Less common but a good option are the ferns.

Ferns are a huge family of plants. Some are huge while others a tiny. The range of environments in which ferns survive is diverse.

This resilience makes ferns suitable to being an accent plant.

Like any highly diverse species the needs for ferns are variable. Most require a neutral or slightly acidic soil. The rare exception needs alkaline soil.

No matter what species you choose it needs to be kept in moist soil. Dry arid dry will kill your fern more certainly than anything else. In an ironic twist too much water can kill your fern just as easily as it can kill your bonsai.

We describe 2 examples of ferns you can use here. One for neutral soil and the second is suited toward alkaline soil. One is the maidenhead fern and the other is known by a variety of names (deersfoot fern, hare's foot fern, shinobu fern, rabbit foot fern, ball fern).

In many respects you can treat your fern in the same way your train and care for your bonsai. This overlap is useful in reducing the effort you need to put into growing a fern.

Relevant link:

Wki: Rabbits foot fern
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davallia

Barrley wine was recorded in the 4th century BCE. That is well before we have strong spirits or true wine as we know it but well after beer came into common usage.

This long history s a testament to how long we have used beer and how well we have been able to adapt it. It also shows how all ideas come and go from fashion. Hops in beer being a good example.

Barley wione is a misnomer. Like sake it is called a wine due to a production or historical quirk. Like sake it is made from a grain but not distilled and therefore a beer.

It is a punch product with up to 12% ABV. This means you want to make it in limited quantities ad bottle it in small amounts.Think of a 250 to 330 mL bottle.

These small volumes lend themselves to having a lot of bottles. That is good for getting your head around how long and what effect aging has on your barley wine.

A basic recipe ingredient list that you can start with.

3 to 5Kg of malt
11 to 20L of water
~50 to 60g of hops
Trappist Ale yest

Relevant links:

Craft Beer; beer styles; barleywine
https://www.craftbeer.com/styles/british-style-barley-wine-ale

Wiki: Barleywine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley_wine

As with recent weeks we have more news on the Coronavirus. This includes the virility of the disease once you start to get healthy and how this might effect the supposed reinfections.

That does nothing to mitigate the effects of what has now officially been called a pandemic. That is a big thing terms of how it is dealt with. Insurers will give different pay outs. Governments will limit travel. Others will enforce stricter quarantine.

Ths does nothing to help us understand the long term effects it will have. Both on those who are recovering in a healthy way and those who have come out of infection the worse for wear.

These and other news items are described at the following time stamps:

00:30 WHO declares Coronavirus a pandemic

02:11 Flattening the curve could give us much needed time ot stop coronavirus by slowing the spread

03:50 A simple but effective demonstration of how self isolation can help stop disease spread

04:24 Coronavirus survivors may lose up to 30% of lung function

06:19 Italian doctor writes on twitter how hospital medical services are akin to wartime triage

07:55 China sends massive medical supply shipment to Italy as it battles coronavirus

08:59 Could coronavirus panic be wors ethan the disease

10:35 Russia- Europe Mars rover put off to 2022 due to technical difficulties and the coronavirus

10:53 Hydrogen fuel could be made 25x more efficiently

12:56 Spring arrives early in parts of America

15:26 Coronavirus may not shed in healthy patients after 10 days

Relevant links:

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020

World Health Organisation declares the coronavirus a pandemic
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/who-declares-coronavirus-pandemic-covid19-2020-3?r=US&IR=T

Coronavirus control measures aren’t pointless – just slowing down the pandemic could save mi..

This week has thrown more doubt on a positive outcome to COVIS-19. Some are beginning to believe it will become an entrenched condition. Like influenza, the common cold and other viruses COVID 19 may simply move from one host to another but never be removed from society. This is a problem.

COVID-19 seems to have an uncomfortably high degree of mortality. If it is part of the population it will lead to very high mortality rates. The Spanish flu is thought to have been between 2-3%. COVID-19 is 2 to 3.4%.

These and other COVID-19 related news items are depressing and disappointing.

There is more positive news this week to make up for this. The use of CRISPR to treat blindness being a welcome example. After the debacle of the CRISPR babies this trial is exactly what was needed. A constrained, well thought out and executed trial that has a clear focus and goal. We will know how it goes in about a months time when the genetic modification runs the course.

These and other news items for the week can be found at the following time stamps:

00:10 COVID-19 is not a hybrid of SARS and HIV

01:28 COVID-19 could the new influenza

03:15 The death rate of COVID-19 could be 3.4% while influenza is 0.1%

04:55 First COVID-19 human to animal transmission is said to have occurred in Hong Kong

05:58 CDC makes testing for COVID-19 hard for American health care workers and doctor which puts them at risk

07:59 CRISPR used to treat blindness in preliminary trial

09:13 Cotton bud used to clean ear led to infection of brain and serious case of irony

10:46 Cannabis use causes patient to get an uncontrolled erection

12:21 Giant salivary gland stone so large its mistaken for a tooth

14:04 A viable needle less vaccine delivery method is here

16:23 Mars may have chemicals derived from a long dead biological source

19:11 We have the first organisms on a chip for medical, pharmaceutical and biological research.

Relevant links:

COVID-19 and HIV conspiracy debunked on twitter
htt..

In academic journals there has been a rise in the editors and comments sections. These are 2 place sin which public criticism, questions and concerns can be raised. It is a sort of limited public forum to voice thoughts on academic work that has undergone peer review.

The problem is that sections are not peer reviewed. They are there for any academic to submit into and editors will pull out or approve the interesting, relevant and important examples. This removes a major brrier to the journals that of peer review.

Examples of editorials and comments sections being used this include Wakefield criticizing one population study for not accounting for variables that are explicitly described in the study. (https://t.co/KRIUAWSo7c?amp=1). Fortunately the authors rather quickly put his nonsense down.

That is not true for all cases. Some journals do not clearly highlight what is an editorial/ comment section and others just do not try to. This leads to confusion over what is peer reviewed research who sent their dear diary entry to editor by mistake.

The erosion of this clear delineation between well researched, vetted and reviewed research and personal opinion is the problem. The lack of quality control and challenge leads this work and the journal to lose some value and prestige. The loss is a product of uncertainty of what is being read.

This is similar to our YouTube channel. We believe the audience vets our work and challenges it on occasion where they believe an error has been made. The comments are not censored for this reason. This also means we have a low bar to putting ideas out into the world.

Like some of the editorial and special sections this leads to a similar lack of specific quality control. However we do not publish or produce work for a platform where it is could be mistaken for academic work. This distinction is key.

The criticisms of our channel often apply to these special/ editorial sections. The converse is not always true.

Relevant links:..

Bioprospecting is an essential and possibly only viable avenue to find new drugs, pharmaceuticals food supplements. This is a massive problem. Where do we find these new drugs, how do we use them and is there a better way?

As we have described in the past nature is the best place to look for ideas. Over centuries, millenia and eons nature has made just abut every configuration of molecules imgainable. It is a matte rof finding something that we can use , in a way that we need and than making it work. This is where bioprospecting comes in.

Bioprospectng is the process by which these chemicals can be found. Among the first places that researchers begin to look are plants. Plants can be found on almost every continent in massive quantities. They are incredibly diverse. This means many possible new drug leads.

This video tries to explain how you could take one of these samples from the wilderness and turn it into a roughly viable first product for testing. This is just one way and others exist.

Many new pharmaceuticals can be cheaply and quickly harvested extracted and preliminary profiles established. That lets you know if a new product could be made form these before any significant investment occurs.

It relies on cheap reagents, easily used and relatively cheap facilities, that can be operated by unskilled labour. That gets you from something in a plant in the hinterlands of the wild to a supplement or early chemical in a crude state. Once this is achieve dyou can begin working with it.

This process of describing, explaining and modifying these chemicals is where you need to start bringing in experts. Some one who can understand the complexities of the molecules form and function. They can also begin to figure out better ways to make it work or how to source it such as semi or completely synthesizing the molecule from another sources which are more readily available or cheaper.

Everyday examples of this process are found in the kitchen and bathroom. ..