I spent this year’s #earthday weekend at a bookstore re-reading some of my favourite chapters from the book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” by Bill Gates in order to learn more about the current state of climate change and seek a little inspiration ahead of one of the projects I am planning to undertake as well as bolster my understanding on how to help push the frontier of innovation to bring about much-needed breakthroughs as a budding scientist and engineer.
The book is divided into three parts, each focusing on a different aspect of the problem. In the first part, Gates lays out the case for why climate change is a pressing issue and the 6risks associated with it. He provides a clear and concise explanation of the science behind climate change and also highlights the various effects of climate change.
It is the second part of the book that offered me a lot of inspiration and direction. In this part, Gates outlines a framework for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes is the only way to prevent the worst effects of climate change. He provides an in-depth analysis of the different sources of greenhouse gas emissions each by a percentage of 51 billion tons of greenhouse emissions(the annual amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the air), such as electricity generation, transportation, and industry, and the steps that need to be taken to reduce them. This chapter resonated with me the most, as Gates discusses we need a lot of innovation in Material Science to approach some of the issues highlighted. We need to:
Be capable of producing cheap, reliable electricity without emitting any greenhouse gases. That way we can electrify a lot of our activities and industrial processes. The energy we give up from Coal, Natural Gas and Oil has to come from clean sources, ie, solar, wind and Nuclear power(I personally think this one has the most promise when it comes to generation capacity, land use, and reliability – but that’s a topic for another day).
Combat seasonal variation and intermittency of Solar and Wind by designing cheap, better, lightweight, and robust energy-dense batteries that can be deployed across power grids. Innovation in this sector can also go a long way in aiding our move to electrify how we get around.
Change the way we make things, a lot of our industrial processes, i.e, the making of concrete, steel and other metals, plastics, fertilizer etc. Materials are essential to modern life, and as we continue to advance as a society we are going to need more of them. A lot of research is being done by leading scientists all over the world to rethink the way we make certain materials. Crucially, we need to be capable of Electrifying every process possible with clean decarbonized electricity, Using carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions, and lastly using materials more efficiently.
How we get around is important, and gasoline at the moment packs more of a punch in terms of energy density but also in addition to that; it is incredibly cheap. Gallon for gallon, gasoline has no competitor just yet. That being said, a lot of innovation is being done to get gas-powered vehicles off the road. Advanced Biofuels made from plants that aren’t grown for food hold a lot of promise. Electrofuels also hold incredible potential however relative to biofuels, they incur a hefty Green Premium. Despite these two options to maintain liquid fuels, the electrification of cars, buses and medium-sized trucks that use battery-powered motors is going to continue to experience a boom (Shenzhen, China leads the world in the electrification of its entire fleet of buses and taxis). That being said though, battery technology at the moment is not perfect, and it’s going to be a while before we see, cargo ships and commercial planes go fully electric(ahem, think energy density, and weight). The key takeaway here is: basically, use all the electricity we can to power all the vehicles we can, and use cheap, clean synthetic liquid fuels for the rest.
Continue innovating until we can find breakthroughs and bring all the above’s subsequent Green Premiums down to below zero.
In the final part of the book, Gates explores the political and economic challenges of addressing climate change and provides recommendations for how to overcome these obstacles. He discusses the role of governments, businesses, and individuals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and highlights the need for collaboration and cooperation between different sectors of society.
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” was a fantastic read and an engaging accessible book through which Gates approaches the breakthroughs we need with a very thorough and pragmatic approach, through which he offers practical insights and recommendations for individuals, businesses, and policymakers. The book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the science behind climate change and the actions needed to address this urgent global challenge.
Could Sodium-Ion Batteries be the new king of energy storage?
Sodium-ion cell.
For a long time, the world has relied on Lithium-Ion batteries for energy storage, but research into Sodium-Ion batteries has been gathering pace over the last decade and that should surprise no one.
Lithium-Ion batteries are unmatched in their performance, but in a world where some of the raw materials required to meet our energy production, storage, and transportation demands are rapidly becoming scarce and expensive, a new champion material must arise to meet the sustainable and clean energy storage challenges that have been presented to us. And this champion could be the Sodium-Ion battery.
Sodium is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive alkali metal. It belongs in group 1 of the periodic table, and its atom has a single electron in its outer shell that it readily donates, creating a positively charged atom—the Na+ cation.
A piece of pure sodium on white background, cut on half
Alone, it’s explosive. Combined with chlorine, it’s table salt.
That’s sodium for you — a wild and wooly element that reacts easily and mixes with other elements to make some of the most common substances in daily life. Other than table salt (NaCl), sodium shows up in baking soda (NaHCO3), sodium peroxide (Na2O2) and borax, or sodium borate (Na2B4O7•10H2O). It’s crucial for blood-pressure control and the functioning of the nervous system.
Above is a summary of sodium’s mechanical properties pertaining to its hardness, strength, and crystal structure.
In the mechanics of materials, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied load without failure or plastic deformation. This relationship between the external load and the ability of the material to withstand this load is what gives us the Ultra Tensile Strength UTS, Yield strength, and its modulus of elasticity.
The hardness is the ability of the material involved to withstand surface indentation (localized plastic deformation) and scratching. This is where we get the Brinell Hardness (a spherical indentation test) and Mohs Scale ( the ability of one natural sample of mineral to scratch another mineral visibly.) results.
Sodium’s Atomic properties
The Sodium-Ion Battery (SIB)
The sodium-ion battery (NIB or SIB) is a type of rechargeable battery analogous to the lithium-ion battery but uses sodium ions (Na+) as the charge carriers. Its working principle and cell construction are almost identical to those of commercially widespread lithium-ion battery types, but sodium compounds are used instead of lithium compounds.
Sodium-Ion Batteries were first developed in the 1980s alongside the Lithium-ion batteries, however, by the 1990s it was clear that Lithium-Ion batteries performed much better than their Sodium counterparts. Beyond performance, Sodium-Ion Batteries could not use some of the technologies and materials that their Lithium-Ion counterparts made use of. For example, due to its large size in comparison to the Lithium-ion, a graphite anode could not be used as the ions could not fit into the interstices within the carbon structure of the graphite anode.
Nonetheless, there has been renewed interest in SIBs as the world moves towards a more sustainable, environmentally, and cost-friendly alternative that can take over the energy storage needs of an increasingly growing power-hungry world as the Lithium-Ion batteries are slowly phased out.
The material makeup and operation of a sodium-ion battery
Sodium-ion battery cells consist of a cathode based on a sodium-containing material, an anode (not necessarily a sodium-based material), and a liquid electrolyte containing dissociated sodium salts in polar protic or aprotic solvents.
During charging, sodium ions are extracted from the cathode and inserted into the anode while the electrons travel through the external circuit; during discharging, the reverse process occurs where the sodium ions are extracted from the anode and re-inserted in the cathode with the electrons traveling through the external circuit doing useful work.
The Anode
Different forms of carbon
Because the use of a graphite anode is not suitable for the large sodium ions, a disordered carbon material that is non-crystalline and of an amorphous carbon structure (called “hard carbon“)[1] is the current preferred sodium-ion anode of choice.
Hard carbon’s sodium storage was initially discovered in 2000. This anode was shown to have a storage performance that is similar to that seen for lithium storage in graphite anode for lithium-ion batteries
While hard carbon is clearly the most preferred anode due to its excellent combination of high capacity, lower working potential, and good cycling stability, there have been a few other notable developments in lower-performing anodes[2]
Significant progress has been achieved in devising high energy density sodium-ion cathodes since 2011. Different cathode materials for SIBs include layered oxides[3], polyanionic compounds[4], and Prussian blue analogs (PBAs)[5], among them, PBAs are literally the coolest and have attracted tremendous attention because their open framework structure could easily accommodate Na+ and enable its fast transportation.
Quick fun fact: The Prussian Blue color was one of the first synthetic dyes ever made in 1704 when the colormaker Diesbach of Berlin was experimenting with the oxidation of iron.
Compared with other cathodes, high-temperature calcination is not required during the synthesis of PBAs, which effectively lowers the manufacturing costs. These advantages make PBAs quite likely to be mass-produced and widely used as low-cost cathodes material for SIBs in the future.
The Electrolyte
Sodium-ion batteries can use aqueous as well as non-aqueous electrolytes. However, to improve the performance of the sodium-ion battery, a non-aqueous carbonate ester (polaric) may be used as a solvent. The current most widely used non-aqueous electrolyte uses sodium hexafluorophosphate[6]
My conclusion on the Sodium-Ion Battery and its importance to energy storage
Courtesy: Encyclopædia Britannica
First of all, table salt, like sodium, is a ubiquitous resource found naturally occurring in the earth’s crust and is more readily available compared to Lithium. This is an especially important point to note as Lithium is amongst the 1% of other metals that make up the earth’s crust. This means that it is not a readily abundant resource compared to sodium.
Secondly, Sodium-Ion batteries do not need cobalt, which is one of the increasingly scarce and expensive materials to mine from the earth. This means that sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be much cheaper per kg and per kWh in the long run compared to Lithium-Ion Batteries.
Moreover, Sodium-Ion batteries are much safer compared to Lithium-Ion battery, which uses more organic electrolytes that are highly flammable. Every year we hear a similar version of the same headline, recalls of particular tech products, fires, explosions, etc. Sodium-Ion batteries do not suffer from this challenge and are much more resilient; cut it, pierce it, or even shoot it and it stays intact.
A fire sparked by the explosion of a Lithium Ion Battery in an electric car during the recharge cycle
Nonetheless, Sodium-Ion batteries have a long way to go, consider the chart below:
Compared to the extensively-used Lithium-ion batteries, Sodium-Ion batteries have a lower specific energy density and cycle life but perform better in a wide operational temperature range and are safer.
Sodium-Ion batteries have a similar working principle to Lithium-ion batteries and are expected to be at least 20% cheaper. In fact, by comparison, Sodium-Ion batteries cells are expected to be less sensitive to rising material costs from lithium, cobalt, and nickel. If all material prices rise 10%, Sodium-Ion batteries material costs will only increase 0.8%, while LFP and NMC 532 costs will increase 3.2% and 4.6%, respectively.
Sodium-Ion batteries will continue to be out of reach to the common man for the next couple of years as more time, resources and research continues to be poured into the development of this fairly new material. Despite some of its current setbacks, Sodium-Ion batteries remain the strongest candidate for use in energy storage, especially on a large national power grid-scale and commercially in consumer technology gadgets and electric vehicle manufacture.
Furthermore, Because some renewable energy technologies–such as wind and solar–have variable outputs, storage technologies are much needed to smooth out the electricity supply from these sources and ensure that the supply of power generated matches the demand. If charged during periods of excess renewable generation and discharged at times of increased demand ie at night, energy storage can help maximize the use of renewable energy and ensure that less is wasted.
Energy storage is also valued for its rapid response–battery storage can begin discharging power to the grid very quickly, within a fraction of a second, this is important for ensuring the stability of the grid when unexpected increases in demand occur.
Lastly, energy storage also becomes more important the farther you are from the electrical grid. Homes in rural communities that are farther away from the transmission grid are more vulnerable to power disruption than homes in large metropolitan areas. Because they may not be able to rely entirely on the larger grid, these communities can use energy storage to avoid blackouts thereby providing greater benefits to communities across the world while helping ease the impacts of pollution and climate change.
If the cost of Sodium-Ion batteries is further reduced, they will be favored for grid storage and home storage, where battery weight is not important. If, in addition to cost improvements, the energy density is increased, the batteries could be used for electric vehicles and power tools, and essentially any other application where lithium-ion batteries currently serve.
Dahn, J. R.; Stevens, D. A. (2000-04-01). “High Capacity Anode Materials for Rechargeable Sodium‐Ion Batteries”. Journal of the Electrochemical Society. 147 (4): 1271–1273. Bibcode:2000JElS..147.1271S. doi:10.1149/1.1393348. ISSN0013-4651.
Yan, Z. et al. A hydrostable cathode material based on the layered P2@P3 composite that shows redox behavior for copper in high-rate and long-cycling sodium-ion batteries. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 1412–1416 (2019). CASArticleGoogle Scholar
Chen, M. et al. NASICON-type air-stable and all-climate cathode for sodium-ion batteries with low cost and high-power density. Nat. Commun. 10, 1480 (2019).Return to ref 6 in articleADSArticleGoogle Scholar
Wang, W., Gang, Y., Hu, Z. et al. Reversible structural evolution of sodium-rich rhombohedral Prussian blue for sodium-ion batteries. Nat Commun 11, 980 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14444-4
As of 16th July 2021, there have been over 189,072,198 cases worldwide, with more than 4,069,212 confirmed deaths, affecting 223 countries. The positive though is that there has been a rapid influx of the number of vaccine doses administered across the world. Today according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre there have been a total of 3,559,010,516 vaccine doses administered to aid in this fight against COVID-19.
While the world races to get as many people fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, a new challenge is beginning to arise- the possibility of rapid virus mutations and variations that could possibly alter the course of our race to end COVID-19.
The intricate structure of viruses.
Genome sequencing – the process by which the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism’s genome, is determined at a single time.
Genomic information has been instrumental in identifying inherited disorders, characterizing the mutations that drive organism progression, and tracking disease outbreaks. This process has played a fundamental role in our understanding of COVID-19.
The sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 has been taking place since the beginning of the pandemic, tracking and understanding its viral evolution and enabling genomic epidemiology investigations into its origins and spread.
SARS-CoV-2 is a spherical positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that is approximately 30kb long making it one of the largest genomes amongst RNA viruses. It is reported to contain about 14 open reading frames encoding 27 proteins.
Open Reading frame is a term that is used to refer to a frame of reference in a genome, and what is being read is the RNA code that is used to make the necessary proteins pertaining to the genome. The “open” part means that the path through which the ribosome reads the RNA code remains open and as a result can continue to add the necessary amino acids one after another when forming the genome structure.
This entire process of genome sequencing has allowed us to not only understand the entire structure of SARS-CoV-2 but has allowed us to further track and monitor variations and mutations in its structure. This has led to the rapid identification of the first of a number of variants of concern (VOCs) in late 2020, where genome changes were having observable impacts on virus biology and disease transmission.
Variant origins
In order to understand how variations in a virus’ structure occur, we must dive deeper into the main goal of any virus: to multiply itself.
Nearly all processes in the body involve proteins. Your body’s DNA sequence contains instructions on how to make up most of the proteins in your body. This happens through a single strand of the DNA sequence in your body known as messenger RNA or mRNA that contains instructions on how to manufacture a particular type of protein your body needs. This mRNA strand is read by your body’s cells and they proceed to make that protein.
It is through this process that the COVID-19 virus works. When the virus enters your body, the mRNA sequence of letters that make up its structure is read and copied by your cells. This sequence of letters in the mRNA strand instructs your body’s cells on how to manufacture and multiply the COVID-19 virus. This allows the virus to ‘hijack’ your body and subdue it.
Courtesy: ScienceDirect – Genetic Code image showing the letters that make up the instructions on how to manufacture a particular genome.
The problem though is that this is an entirely random process, as the cells are divided and multiplied. This means that errors can occur when your body’s cells read the mRNA sequence of letters when preparing to manufacture the virus. These errors can be the deletion, addition, or swapping of letters in the mRNA sequence of instructions. These mistakes are referred to as mutations and are the main cause of the variations we are seeing in the COVID-19 virus.
Naturally, because your body utilizes double helix DNA strands to manufacture all the cells in your body, it is equipped with a proofreading and repair tool. This tool allows the body to identify mutations within the DNA instructions on how to manufacture a particular cell and fixes it right away.
However, this process is not perfect and some rapid permanent mutations and uncontrollable cell divisions could in turn harm your body. When multiple mutations in division-related genes accumulate in the same cell cancers begins to develop.
Variants of Concern(VOCs)
Courtesy: AP News
Across all virus genomes sequenced to date, thousands of mutations have emerged since the start of the pandemic, which in turn have given rise to thousands of different variants.
The majority of these mutations have had no perceivable impact on the virus or disease biology and have in fact made the virus weaker while others have greatly changed the way the virus behaves and infects your body. These variants in the latter category have been identified and have appeared to increase transmissibility, and potentially have an impact on disease severity. As a result, they have been labeled VOCs.
Thankfully due to genomic sequencing and data analysis these evolutions in the structure of the COVID-19 virus have been tracked and are being studied in order to understand how they are changing the course of the pandemic.
Below is a brief breakdown of each of the VOCs:
The established nomenclature systems for naming and tracking SARS-CoV-2 genetic lineages by GISAID, Nextstrain and Pango are currently and will remain in use by scientists and in scientific research. To assist with public discussions of variants, WHO convened a group of scientists from the WHO Virus Evolution Working Group, the WHO COVID-19 reference laboratory network, representatives from GISAID, Nextstrain, Pango, and additional experts in virological, microbial nomenclature and communication from several countries and agencies to consider easy-to-pronounce and non-stigmatizing labels for VOI and VOC. At the present time, this expert group convened by WHO has recommended using letters of the Greek Alphabet, i.e., Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta which will be easier and more practical to discussed by non-scientific audiences.
In the UK, the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant was first identified as a VOC by COG-UK in December 2020, as it was increasing in frequency during a nationwide lockdown, whilst other variants were decreasing in frequency. A retrospective examination of the data determined that the variant had been in circulation since September, but at that time there were insufficient data to suggest that it was a VOC.
The B.1.1.7 variant is currently the most highly sequenced and well-characterized VOC and has been shown to have increased levels of transmissibility at a rate of between 40 and 70%. In addition, the results from several preliminary analyses of B.1.1.7, suggest that there could be an increase in mortality rates as a result of the variant. The COG-UK mutation tracker outlines the spike protein mutations seen circulating in the UK. It also details the scientific evidence to date on the impact of different mutations on immune evasion.
Beta Variant
In South Africa, the B.1.351 Beta variant was identified after frontline clinicians alerted NGS-SA to a rapid increase in cases, which prompted a genomic investigation. The B.1.351 variant is a concern as it has been shown to have increased transmissibility and to reduce the efficacy of some vaccines.
Gamma Variant
In the case of the P.1 Gamma variant, Japan reported the variant via their surveillance system, after detection in four travellers who had returned from Brazil. The variant was flagged to be of concern due to the presence of spike mutations also found in the B.1.351 variant: N501Y (which increases virus binding affinity to the ACE2 receptor on human cells), E484K (which renders the virus less susceptible to some monoclonal antibodies) and K417N/T (suggested to increase binding affinity to ACE2, in combination with N501Y). The set of mutations/deletions, especially N501Y, shared between the P.1, B.1.1.7, and the B.1.351 variants appear to have arisen independently.
P.1 and B.1.351 also appear to be associated with a rapid increase in cases in locations where COVID-19 disease rates were previously high. Therefore, it will be crucial to investigate whether there is an increased rate of recent re-infection, caused by these variants, in previously exposed healthy individuals.
Delta Variant
The latest addition to this list of VOCs is the B.1.617.2 Delta variant. The Delta variant was first identified in India in December 2020 and led to major outbreaks in the country. It has been categorized as a double mutant because it contains two critical mutations L452R (which makes the virus more transmissible – first identified in the Epsilon B.1.427/429 variants) and E484Q(a version of the E484K mutation found in the P1 and Gamma Variants that makes it easier for the virus to re-infect people who already had COVID-19).
It then spread rapidly and is now reported in 104 countries, according to a CDC tracker. As of early July, Delta has become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and other countries. In the U.K., for instance, the Delta variant now makes up more than 97% of new COVID-19 cases, according to Public Health England.
The strain has mutations on the spike protein that make it easier for it to infect human cells. That means people may be more contagious if they contract the virus and more easily spread it to others.
In fact, researchers have said that the Delta variant is about 50% more contagious than the Alpha variant, which was first identified in the U.K. Alpha, also known as B.1.1.7, was already 50% more contagious than the original coronavirus first identified in China in 2019.
Public health experts estimate that the average person who gets infected with Delta spreads it to three or four other people, as compared with one or two other people through the original coronavirus strain, according to Yale Medicine. The Delta variant may also be able to escape protection from vaccinesand some COVID-19 treatments, though studies are still ongoing.
What about Variants of Interest and Variants of High Consequence?
According to the WHO, Variants of Interest (VOIs) are defined to be:
with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape; AND
Identified to cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health.
At the moment these are the only VOIs under investigation:
A variant of high consequence has clear evidence that prevention measures or medical countermeasures (MCMs) have significantly reduced effectiveness relative to previously circulating variants.
Possible attributes of a variant of high consequence:
In addition to the possible attributes of a variant of concern
Impact on Medical Countermeasures (MCM)
Demonstrated failure of diagnostics
Evidence to suggest a significantly reduction in vaccine effectiveness, a disproportionately high number of vaccine breakthrough cases, or very low vaccine-induced protection against severe disease
Significantly reduced susceptibility to multiple Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) or approved therapeutics
More severe clinical disease and increased hospitalizations
A variant of high consequence would require notification to WHO underthe International Health Regulations, reporting to CDC, an announcement of strategies to prevent or contain the transmission, and recommendations to update treatments and vaccines.
Currently, there are no SARS-CoV-2 variants that rise to the level of high consequence.
Why are several variants showing up now and what is the solution?
The simple reason that several variants are showing up now, can be found in the numbers. Today only a small fraction of the world population has been vaccinated against COVID-19. This is worrying because the only way we can combat the virus is by vaccinating as many people and slowing down the spread of the virus. The longer the virus continues to exist amongst large populations, the more opportunities the virus will get to find a solution to overcoming the challenge we are presenting it through our vaccines. This will mean that new and stronger SARS-CoV-2 variants could emerge that will be more robust and capable of dodging our immune defenses and possibly rendering our vaccines useless. The only way we can conquer this pandemic is to inoculate everyone.
Rambaut, A., Holmes, E. C., O’Toole, A., et al. A dynamic nomenclature proposal for SARS-CoV-2lineages to assist genomic epidemiology. Nat Microbiol. 2020. 5(11): pp. 1403-1407.
Volz, E., Mishra, S., Chand, M., et al. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Lineage B.1.1.7 in England:Insights from linking epidemiological and genetic data. medRxiv. 2021. p.10.1101/2020.12.30.20249034.
Weston, S., Frieman, M. B. COVID-19: Knowns, Unknowns, and Questions. mSphere. 2020. 5(2): pp. e00203-20.
Khan, S., Siddique, R., Shereen, M. A., et al. Emergence of a Novel Coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2: Biology and Therapeutic Options. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2020. 58(5): pp. e00187-20.
Part 1: All you need to know about your body’s immune response and the new mRNA and DNA-Adenovirus COVID-19 Vaccines
Courtesy apa.org
What does inoculate mean?
transitive verb. 1a : to introduce immunologically active material (such as an antibody or antigen) into especially in order to treat or prevent a disease
Vaccines have been around for several decades saving lives and preventing widespread infection. In order to understand and appreciate how far we have come in our vaccine innovation today, we must learn how we got here.
What happens to your body under attack ?
Disclaimer: Really cool, military style jargon used proceed with caution ⚠️ ☣️😎
The enemy – Bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other pathogens 🦠 (disease-causing organisms) are all around us. On most surfaces, we interact with, in the air, and even in your body(ie good gastrointestinal bacteria – the probiotics that are resident in your gut playing a critical role in digestion while doing other cool stuff 🙂 )
While there are really good bacteria and microbes, most viruses, fungi, and other pathogens are harmful to your body and can lead to serious illness and even death.
The good part though is that your body is pretty intelligent and well equipped to deal with a variety of intruders. The skin, mucus, and cilia (microscopic hairs found in your nose and trachea that trap and move debris away from the lungs) all work as physical barriers to prevent pathogens from entering the body in the first place.
However, when a pathogen manages to slip through the cracks and bypass this rather intense protective shield put up by your body something interesting happens. An alarm is sounded (not literally 😂 – maybe the alarm is the headache ?), blood flow is increased, the body gets a little warmer than usual (the fever) and the infantry (antibodies) usually in the billions is deployed from the yellow bone marrow military base to combat the intruder.
Quick Fact sheet: Antibodies and Antigens
An antibody is a protein produced by the immune system that is capable of binding with high specificity to an antigen. Antibodies are produced by specialized white blood cells known as B lymphocytes (or B cells for short).
Antigens are typically other proteins, but may also be carbohydrates, small molecules or even nucleotides. They are a subpart of the pathogen (such as the spike protein) and are very unique and specific to each pathogen.
Antibodies are pretty cool as they bind specifically to a unique epitope on the antigen, thereby allowing the detection and attack of a specific protein while avoiding detection of unrelated proteins- such as those belonging to your body
Antibodies for one pathogen do not typically work on other pathogens unless the two pathogens are somewhat alike eg twin siblings or even cousins
In the event a foreign molecule invades your body for the first time, specialized cells (your Intelligence Operatives) such as macrophages and dendritic cells capture the molecule and break it down so that it can present these antigens to B cell lymphocytes.
Once this has occurred a process known as Somatic Hypermutation allows the B cell to begin coding (building the right soldier that will be part of the infantry going to fight the enemy) for a new antibody that will contain a unique Antigen Binding Site in the variable region that is capable of binding to an antigen.
Courtesy: Microbe notes
When antibodies with sufficient specificity to the pathogen can be encoded, the B cell begins to release antibodies into the bloodstream. These antibodies then bind specifically with the foreign molecule and allow the immune system to eliminate the molecule from the system.
Because your body’s infantry is really powerful it manages to overwhelm and destroy the enemy. However, your body is pretty intelligent too, it realizes that it took a pretty long time and loads of hard work to identify the enemy, produce enough infantry, and eliminate the threat while juggling other vital tasks.
Courtesy: WHO
Therefore, to simplify its work the next time the same intruder enters the body, the B-cells also produce antigen-specific antibody memory cells. These cells contain all the critical information about the enemy and stay long after the threat has been eliminated. They are produced in order to help the body re-group faster and effectively combat the enemy in the event the body is exposed to the same pathogen more than once.
It is on this entire response that vaccines are based off.
Military Jargon ends here 😇
How do Vaccines Work?
Vaccines teach your body how to respond to a threat. Traditionally, there are four ways vaccines were developed.
The two earliest methods included introducing your body to a weakened or dead virus, these two methods have served the medical industry for decades and are what the MMR and flu vaccines respectively are based off. Later on, two new methods were discovered – Toxoid and Protein Subunit introduction.
Toxoid vaccines work by injecting your body with a toxin usually made by the pathogen. This elicits an immune response to the harmful toxin and not the pathogen. Tetanus vaccines work this way.
Protein subunit vaccines, such as the recombinant Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines, are made by inserting the genetic code for the antigen into yeast cells, which are relatively easy to grow and capable of synthesising large amounts of protein. These yeast cells form the base of the vaccines.
Courtesy: Nature.org
All these various vaccines have been very effective in eliciting an immune response and have played a significant role in helping teach your body how to combat harmful pathogens that would cause severe illnesses and worst of all death.
The problem however is that these types of vaccines are relatively more complicated to research and develop, take longer to manufacture, and are pretty expensive.
Take for instance the Protein Subunit Vaccine manufacturing method as referenced from Gavi.org :
All subunit vaccines are made using living organisms, such as bacteria and yeast, which require substrates on which to grow them, and strict hygiene to avoid contamination with other organisms.
The precise manufacturing method depends on the type of subunit vaccine being produced. Protein subunit vaccines, such as the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, are made by inserting the genetic code for the antigen into yeast cells, which are relatively easy to grow and capable of synthesising large amounts of protein. The yeast is grown in large fermentation tanks, and then split open, allowing the antigen to be harvested. This purified protein is then added to other vaccine components, such as preservatives to keep it stable, and adjuvants to boost the immune response – in this case alum
mRNA and DNA Vaccines: The Big Deal
Courtesy: Wellcome
In the United States, it takes about 5-10 years for a vaccine to be approved for administration by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Most COVID-19 vaccines have found a way to speed up the process by overlapping phases of the human trials, licensing, manufacture and distribution. Others have found ways to do all this but also speed up the long, complicated and expensive Research and Clinical Development phase.
Courtesy: GSK
This is due to a breakthrough innovation that studies how your body manufacturers proteins and allows scientists to shift much of the clinical development outside the lab and into your body.
mRNA Vaccines
Nearly all processes in the body involve proteins. Your body’s DNA sequence contains instructions on how to make up most of the proteins in your body. This happens through a single strand of the DNA sequence in your body known as messenger RNA or mRNA that contains instructions on how to manufacture a particular type of protein your body needs. This mRNA strand is read by your body’s cells and they proceed to make that protein.
It is on this process that the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines work. Scientists studied the genetic DNA sequence that makes up the COVID-19 they then particularly focused on the part of the sequence that makes the distinct spike proteins of the virus that allows it to enter your cells. They then took the mRNA strand that makes the spike protein and injected this genetic code into your body.
Once in the body, your cells recognize and read the mRNA strand in the vaccine and manufacture harmless spike proteins of their own which are similar to that of the COVID-19 virus. This allows your body to invoke an immune response towards these spike proteins and learn how to effectively fight the virus.
The problem though, is that mRNA strands breakdown relatively quickly, hence they must be coated in a protective fatty barrier that must be maintained at low temperatures. This is not ideal for vaccines that must be distributed to every corner of the world.
DNA- Adenovirus vaccines
Another breakthrough innovation is the DNA vaccine. Instead of using mRNA, much more robust and resilient DNA is used. It does away with the protective fatty barrier and ultra-cold temperatures required to prevent the vaccine from breaking down.
The AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson Vaccines are of this type. The only drawback of this vaccine is that the DNA cannot be directly injected into your body, instead, the DNA is injected into a harmless virus that serves as a carrier. This virus along with other ingredients and stabilizers of the vaccine is injected into your body to trigger an immune response.
The only drawback, however, is that over time your body will develop resistance to the carrier virus and make future vaccinations with the same carrier less and less effective. Therefore, in the near future researchers will have to keep updating the carriers to prevent this resistance from occurring.
To wrap up…
In terms of speed, efficacy, and innovation these new types of vaccines have broken records. They have significantly improved our understanding of the COVID-19 virus while allowing us to advance our vaccine research. This will go a long way in helping us better teach our bodies how to fight future viruses while giving us the confidence in knowing that we have what it takes to overcome this and future pandemics.
Hopefully I can convince you why earth day should be every day, not just today and inspire you to take action for our planet.
Courtesy: Wallpaper access
In the 1970s an astronaut crew aboard the Saturn V was on a mission to explore the moon, and while they took flight into the vast seemingly empty space, there she was. The very place they called home, in all its grandeur and astonishing elegance. It was as if for a moment we discovered the earth. As one big complex system with thick white clouds, green and brown patches of land and great oceans, all in this dark empty vacuum.
It was this cosmic perspective realised in 1967 that seemingly sparked the thoughts of many towards taking action to help save our planet.
When was earth day declared?
Mother Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, in her prosperity she has been a habitat to nature and wildlife for about 800 million years. Through her resilience she’s stood the test of time, facing immense challenges but finding a way to overcome them and maintain the balance of all life in perfect harmony. She could live forever.
This began to change when the evolution of the Homo sapiens began. From hunters and gatherers 200,000 years ago to the modern day human being, with a very complex brain and populations that span far and wide in the billions. There was a new force on this planet that changed the course of Mother Nature’s existence forever. Welcome to the Anthropocene Epoch – a proposed geological time period dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.
As human beings we have used our immense brain power to shape our world. From creating simple tools that could make us efficient hunters to building sophisticated machines that exploit more and more of our mother’s resources while leaving the earth in a total mess.
Every time a new problem stood in our way we overcame it with our own wisdom, altering the earth’s structure and outlook and destroying the balance we had with Mother Earth.
Big City Pollution
Courtesy: National Geopgraphic, NTDC
Can you see it??
In our lifetime alone we have stood by as the world became warmer and warmer, ocean levels rising, species gone extinct, our rivers, air and oceans polluted and people, wildlife and nature put at great risk with the adverse effects of the climate change ravaging our planet. This should not be a surprise. These are the consequences of our behaviour, our mismanagement and our ignorance. We must act now! s we rely on to survive.
William K. Reilly with Gaylord Nelson (Earth Day founder), Earth Day 1990 Courtesy: epa.gov
Sadly this has been going on since before the decades leading upto 1970. That is why in the spring of 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day as a way to force this issue onto the United States national agenda.
It may be hard to imagine that before 1970, a factory could spew black clouds of toxic smoke into the air or dump tons of toxic waste into a nearby stream, and that was perfectly legal. They could not be taken to court to stop it.
How was that possible? Because there was no EPA, no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act. There were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment.
Twenty million Americans demonstrated in different U.S. cities, and it worked! In December 1970, Congress authorized the creation of a new federal agency to tackle environmental issues, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day held on April 22nd led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
This would later yield the birth of several environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. In the subsequent years the U.S Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and soon after the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. These laws have protected millions of men, women and children from disease and death and have protected hundreds of species from extinction.
Earth Day today
Courtesy: Better Net
Today, earth day stands as one of the largest observances in the world with over 1 Billion taking the time to honour this special day that has helped catalyse positive action that can shape our planet.
But can we observe earth day everyday?
Can we spend each day reflecting on our actions as a human race and evaluating how we utilise the resources on our planet and use days like these to unite for our planet. We cannot just wait for one calendar date to celebrate and create awareness for people to take action to save our planet. Because if we only do it once a year then we cannot make meaningful long lasting change. We need to have earth day as a recognition and evaluation of our actions so far. We must use this day to move forward and encourage more and more people to sweat the small stuff and make meaningful changes in their lives to help us turn the tide against the promotion of an unstable planet.
I am immensely inspired by the power that we have as a human race when we unite for action. By coming together and playing our different roles to improve the planet we can remarkably shape the future of our planet.
There is hope. If we can be mobilise ourselves to change the way:
Our businesses operate-pushing them to set up measures that can allow them to get closer to net zero emissions and creating organisations that can invest in them to do so.
We cultivate our food – have the willingness to adopt plant based diets and do away with beef, and heavily industrialised and unsustainable food production methods
We treat our high seas, forests and wild spaces- we must treat them with respect, slow down encroachment and commercial fishing and actively take action towards rewilding the planet.
We produce our energy and rapidly innovate and create sustainable ways of producing clean and renewable energy.
If we take these seemingly small baby steps then we can slow down the growing effects of climate change, species extinction and the several other issues that plague our home.
At the end of the day…
Courtesy: Amazon
We must take all the necessary steps to improve our planet everyday, let us be educated, let us educate others and connect with nature. You can start small and help protect our planet by:
Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Cut down on what you throw away. …
Volunteer. Volunteer for cleanups in your community. …
It really hurts me to see all the challenges our planet faces, it seems that everyday there’s a problem somewhere and several others that we don’t know about still lingering in the shadows. It always seems like the challenges that lie on our path to improving our planet seem to be growing by the day. The best part however is that there is hope. If we can focus on the pillars that play a big role towards the net health of our planet then we can truly make a difference. These pillars are: our agriculture, our energy production, our wild spaces management and our businesses.
My story
Me helping out on a park patrol at the Nairobi National Park
Running my first 21k to raise funds for wildlife rangers through Tusk.org
Nairobi National Park
Using my Instagram platform to influence others positively and share what I learn encouraging others to take action.
Some of the many engagements that I have had and shared with wildlife and nature
Nature documentaries were at the heart of my childhood years. The local TV broadcast had a window between 5 pm and 7 pm every Sunday: my favorite two hours of the week. With no distractions, I would sit down and soak up the beauty of the world. I was in love.
This early investment in learning about nature and wildlife catalyzed my insatiable curiosity as I began to explore the magnificence of Kenya’s ecosystems and the threats that they faced by focusing on how energy contributes to accelerating them. I deeply questioned my purpose and how I could apply this keen interest of mine towards improving my world.
Whenever I go to the Nairobi National park, I start and end at a particular statue. An 8- foot figurine in green jungle camo’ uniform, with a rifle in his hands, gazing out into to the horizon. The statue serves to honor and celebrate the Kenya Wildlife Rangers and conservation heroes alike.
Below the statue lies a plaque with the words that always bring me to tears. I stand there and reflect on my life and the remarkable spark that brought me this way since my first encounter with the park.
The images of the statue and plaque
I reflect on my role as a citizen, upcoming scientific researcher, and conservationist. Appreciating the enormous amount of meaningful work that has gone into the park to ensure that I can visit it and enjoy its mystical blessing. I recognize all the work that is yet to be done. Therefore, I tune in and try to learn as much from the heroes fallen or living, who have fought to keep this park and other conservancies and wild spaces alive, and I am spurred to action to do better, to inform, to educate, to take action in order for this park to continue to live way beyond my lifetime.
I have decided to dedicate my time and my intellectual curiosities towards helping improve our planet by deciding to take a career path that can allow me to help our planet. By learning ways we can improve the way we produce our energy and helping lead innovation within the frontier of science, I believe that I can be part of the revolution that can allow us to come up with newer and more efficient renewable energy technologies.
But I can’t do it alone and hence the reason I share so much about the park on my blog, social media, and even in my conversations with others. On the off chance that my stories and engagements inspire more people to begin making a difference.I have started with the basics that I listed above and have continued to grow my passions while finding ways to anchor them back to the environment and I hope that this inspires you to do the same.
Therefore, do not be afraid to start today, to take a step towards improving our planet and finding the seemingly small ways that you can align your purpose with the needs of our planet. Let this earth day and my story inspire you to start today and be a change maker in your community, uniting and inspiring others to also play their roles and help save Mother Earth. We are because she is, let’s not forget that.
Happy Earth day 2021!
Above are some of the engaging stories on Rhinos, Lions, climate awareness and some personal adventures at the Nairobi National Park that I’ve shared on my Instagram stories and highlights
It’s been exactly 7 months since I took my hiatus from the blog to focus on school work, college applications and other opportunities to enrich my thirst for knowledge. In those months, though having not posted anything on the blog, I have been constantly thinking on how I could improve your Sparky Science experience. I have taken a lot more time to reflect about myself and develop new skills that can allow me to continue to share my passion for science with you.
I have developed a firm understanding about my role as a budding scientific researcher and engineer. A role that has allowed me to create scientific awareness across the various platforms that I serve such as this science blog and other social media spaces. I have found meaning beyond the data and information that I share with you. I have learnt the value of storytelling along with other critical building blocks that critically shape and inspire the human learning experience.
Almost two years ago, I uploaded my first blog post and with it I made a promise. I promised to make this blog uniquely yours, to involve you and make you part of this family. To have you engaged, working hand in hand with me to fine pick and curate the topics that will be featured on this blog.
Today, I am more than happy to have had the opportunity to receive all your praise, your constructive feedback and your ideas to make this blog even better.
New leaps and borderless frontiers
“I will breakdown the facts and objective truths and make them easier for you to understand….”
This year we will go even further, we will improve this blog even more and spread this infectious passion and thirst for scientific knowledge far and wide.
That said, over the next few months I will consistently release new articles to get you upto speed with the various scientific advancements across a plethora of topics. I will breakdown the facts and objective truths and make them easier for you to understand. I will engage you like never before to bring what is happening in labs all over the world, right at the comfort of your smartphone, tablet to laptop.
I will also share helpful information about opportunities that you can take up to allow you to continue to engage with the blog beyond just reading the posts. Yes, I am talking about engaging some of your other senses too and bringing on board new faces that can diversify the perspectives and ideas shared on this blog.
I just can’t wait for you to see, read and experience all the new ideas inshore for your Sparky Science experience. Ideas that will shape our blog for the future.
Lastly, I just want to say thank you. It’s been a pleasure having you so far and I hope to continue having you on board.
An upcoming series on conservation from the perspective of a young upcoming youth conservationist.
Today was a special day in my life, it was my second time at the Nairobi National Park. I first went to the park earlier this year on my birthday and I just couldn’t get the dazzling plains out of my head. I kept reliving the moments I first saw lions, rhinos and the springing impalas and gazelles live – through the photos I mainly captured through my phone.
It was more than an attraction, it was the validation of a calling.
Early Rise
I got out of the house at 5:56am super eager for the day ahead, it was a much awaited day.
I was fortunate enough to start a campaign on World Lion Day and get a massive amount of youth (at least 100) to start talking about conservation and the roles they could play in the journey to save the lion and bring back their numbers.
As a result of the widespread growth and audience that the post got, I had the privilege of speaking to a conservationist – one who has worked with lions in the past at the Nairobi National Park, her name is Lesley Hannah.
She not only sparked my already growing interest and curiosity on the idea but went the extra mile to help me connect with other like minded people and find avenues to share stories about these precious creatures, and so I joined the Friends of Nairobi National Park (FoNNaP).
Today is special not only because it was my first engagement with them and all the amazing children and adults who came out to share in their passion for conservation, but because for me it was the first step towards a journey I have always wanted to take and be apart of.
The Treasure Hunt
Most of this photos were shot on my phone, the rest are in the camera ✌🏽😇
It’s now 7:50am and we just got into the park ready to begin our adventure. I was in the back of a double cabin Toyota Hilux driven by Jacob, with Reinhard in the front passenger seat. I was in good hands. They both have ventured into the park more times than I have and Reinhard has a special story that I will hold to the end of this post 🙂
I was handed the camera and took a quick look at the plethora of animals highlighted on the list getting ready to start taking photographs.
To give you a sense of scale, the Nairobi National Park is about 117 square kilometres in size, and is the only National Park in the world within a city. We had till 12:30pm to transverse the entire park, find and photograph all the animals below:
Spoiler alert 🚨 our team was soo good we saw most of them 😂😂
We are amazing right?
We started off at the Impala view point that allowed us to see much of what the exquisite park had to offer. I could smell the fresh gust of wind that blew over the view point while the glimmering sun slowly began to rise, illuminating the zebra, buffalo and giraffe in the open plains. The birds twittered as they panned across our view. It was a moment worth reliving.
We then ventured into the forest, home to Koko and her family of majestic leopards 🐆, it would’ve been a sight to see but unfortunately we didn’t happen to encounter her or the other 15 leopards in the park.
We then ventured into the plains; spotting the Marshall Eagle, Impalas, Zebras, Buffalo and Eland. All in the early hours of the day. We were on a roll.
I was learning by engaging all my senses to the environment around me. I believe it’s the best way to feel connected to something you love.
The next animals we saw as the sun got brighter took a lot of effort but we still managed to catch some glorious sightings.
As the sun gets hotter; most cats and some wildlife tend to hide in bushes to cool off and as a result we encountered a lioness but could barely see it as it hid deep in a dark lit bush.
Nonetheless, we were blessed to come across Jackal, White Rhinos and the Serval Cat- which we are 100% sure we were the only ones fortunate enough to capture as he hid in the bushes, too shy to greet us 🙂
I was literally 2 meters away from these spectacular animals
We continued to persist and came across the Rock Hyrax, Vervet Monkeys, Crocodiles and a wide range of birds as we continued to screen the dams and the vast plains.
This shy guy decided to turn his back on me, but oh well 😂
When engaged with nature and being right at the heart of it all it is very easy to lose track of time and as we were trying to find Wildebeest and Black Rhinos time caught up to us and we had to head back to the main meet up point at King Fisher Picnic site to share our sightings and tally the points. On the way our car broke down but that did not stop our adventure or down our spirits, its the norm with exciting expeditions and thankfully we managed to prevail over the situation and make it back.
But wait
Why does this story matter so much?
Well first of all it goes back to what I talked about in the previous post but more so, I am looking to tell these kind of stories and exploring different places while taking you with me.
This way I can show you the wonderful treasures our country, continent and even our world have to offer. It is a call to action.
I am hoping to spur the greater audience young and old to take action. Positive action that will not only allow for us to create safer spaces for these wild animals but that will ensure their homes aren’t tampered with in the first place.
It is my duty to ensure that my children and their children can search for and find these treasures and so together we must join hands and continue to fight for their lives.
Reinhard and an Unsuspecting me
Today I was privileged enough to meet and spend an entire day with Reinhard. He is a passionate conservationist and has dedicated his life and his knowledge to finding solutions and creating awareness on how we can better safeguard these treasures.
I asked an immense load of questions as I sought to, in some way, download all the information his gathered over the years he has served into my brain. It was a whole lot.
Reinhard will be leaving the country to go pursue his Master’s Degree in Conservation and Leadership at the University of Cambridge, with the hope of coming back to Kenya and transforming the way we view wildlife and conservation.
He not only sparked an immeasurable amount of interest in me, but also connected me with amazing people who share the same passion he has and who can help me document these stories and share them with you so that I too can trigger change and eclectic ideas in you the same way he has in me.
I was more than pleased to see an immense amount of locals, especially young children who have already began to devote their young minds to the same and it is so inspiring to know that these lions, gazelle, wildebeest etc have hope in the upcoming future generations.
I could go on for days but this is where I will end for today. I will leave this photo here because this is a story that will continue 🙂
A call for ideas on how we can save the lion and other species before it’s too late.
The King of the Jungle is Dead, completely wiped out, no longer existing on the face of the earth. It’s 2050, scientists all over the world are contemplating and thinking through ideas of how they could possibly bring him back, the rest of the population is reminiscing the good old days when they would visit Maasai Mara, the Serengeti or even the Zimbabwe plains and watch the spectacle of creation roam majestically like the king he is. His cubs trot alongside their mothers, as the pride follows along.
The human race cannot seem to quite understand what went wrong, it was sudden and unexpected. They thought they had more time, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Kids of the future will probably only see the lion’s shaggy mane and luscious savannah yellow-gold coat that covers its muscular and powerful body in the movies. There’s no bringing it back.
But knowing all this could happen why aren’t we taking action?
We need to do something. RIGHT NOW!
Ahead of World Lion Day I believe that it is important we have a discussion on how we ultimately need to take action as we come to brinks with the fact that the lion is under threat.
It hurts to see this:
and begin to come to grips with the fact that soon lions could no longer exist and that all we will have will be remnants of the past. I have personally had amazing experiences with lions and other wildlife alike and I would be utterly devastated if I let this topic go unheard and the opportunity to trigger change fade away. We need to do something, all of us.
The African and Asian Lion is vulnerable. It’s population has decreased by 90% from the 200,000+ total population hundreds of years ago, to the recent studies suggesting that there are 23,000–38,000 free-ranging lions living in 68 mostly geographically isolated areas. Approximately 24,000 lions are in strongholds, but about 6000 lions are living in populations with a high risk of local extinction, of which about 3000 are in West and Central Africa. Particularly critical is the situation in West Africa, with perhaps only 400 individuals, of which less than 250 are adults.
In Kenya alone, home to the Maasai Mara, as of Thursday 6th August, Honorable Najib Balala, the Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Tourism & Wildlife, in Kenya, kickstarted an effort to save the declining population of Lions and the Spotted Hyena. He reported that there were only 2,400 lions in Kenya with this number still decreasing. It urgently triggered the need to find a solution immediately and hence the main purpose for this post.
The Main Challenges?
And a collection of different views of the same.
“I think it may also be a theory of natural selection where the elite and most adaptable and advanced creatures are able to survive with time and change and the non-adaptable ones are becoming extinct.”
-Alvin-
There are many challenges facing the lion population across the world. With the main challenges being habitat loss through agricultural development and human settlement, depletion of prey populations, human–wildlife conflict, epidemics and diseases and trade of lion parts. The biggest one being humans, from poaching, trophy hunting and even human wildlife conflict.
I personally feel that the biggest challenge comes about due to habitat loss, where their homes are being encroached upon by humans in one way or another, such as having railway lines like the SGR in Kenya going through several national parks in the country, to the use of conservation land for agricultural purposes, serving as a catalyst for human wildlife conflict which is catastrophic. When this happens, they tend to migrate in search of new homes and most times the environments cannot match up. As a result their prey and eventually they themselves die and disappear. This is why we must make a change to this.
I decided to ask some of my friends from all over the world for their perspectives on this: You have an animal that’s vulnerable: A lion. Vulnerable meaning it’s on the verge of extinction but not yet endangered, thus vulnerable. What steps can be taken to redirect it from being vulnerable to being safe?
Here are their responses(in green and italicised):
“I believe it is important to not only identify but also analyze the reasons that the number of lions are declining. There are many contributing factors to the endangerment of species outside of just poaching. You have to think about the root of the issue. Why are people hunting these animals? What do they stand to gain? What put them down this path? As with many global issues, it usually sourced from a lack of education and the severity of poverty. Governments cannot approach this from a solely environmental and animal conservation approach, it must also begin with the humans who perpetuate these declining numbers. And often, governments contribute to this issue they are trying to fix. Their corruption and lack of support for vulnerable citizens pushes them to these illegal sources of income.” -Mire-
“Stopping illegal poaching seems to be the main problem. And education about protecting them.” -Spencer-
Well people think they’re pretty cool when they hunt big game like lion. So, if you make lions seem friendly,they won’t feel as cool. And then you also make huge penalties for killing them.” -Sam-
“If there isn’t a lucrative market for an animal than there’s less of an incentive to kill it.” -Anya-
One way to do what Anya said would also be to help poachers find other sources of income for the same and putting an end to the markets that facilitate the trade entirely.
I would say that its crucial to increase natural spaces and limit the access that people have to it, specially hunters. This way lions won’t die directly to people, and its natural space would remain untouched. I also think it’s not about creating but conserving or reverting changes made to the environment. When I say reverting changes, I mean that whenever a city creates a green space, people tend to think that it’s enough to protect animals. Having green spaces is good, but it doesn’t really help animals. -Oscar –
“So basically, Educate, Raise awareness, Start small and then take it to the streets/politicians. Push for change to be made. Because even though it’s an issue that affects people, since the lion is quite in danger, it’ll need bigger support. Not necessarily from the government, Corporate and NGO support too.” -Andrea-
Courtesy: Pelican Travel
I asked this question in one of the groups I am in:
What if their hunting is perpetuated by poverty as is in Africa or by the fact that they are simply trying to protect their livestock and homesteads what do you think? Also how can we make education more valuable and immediately effective?
“People in poverty that are simply trying to protect their property is what I like to think of a justified form of defence. But also, the root of the problem is FAR from their hands and most of the blood lies on illegal tourism and the international black market. Technically if you took out that aspect, farmers that shoot to protect their livestock hardly make a dent at all.” -Isabella-
Barton replying to Isabella and stating his perspective:
“The last part is technically true, but historically farmers have used this as an excuse for killing an animal (wolves, California condor) so in my opinion effective enforcement is also crucial. I believe it’s a three pronged effort, number one of course is education, number two is more effective enforcement, and number three is the development of sustainable areas (à la gorongosa national park) where people can use the park’s resources sustainably but also be distanced from wild animals that will at least cut down the number of predators killed due to them preying on livestock. By decreasing the times wild animals interact with people/livestock, that will help first off.” – Barton-
To the same I think it’s also important to note that conflict mitigation between humans and lions, mainly investigated in rural areas in West and East Africa, have successfully reduced livestock losses and subsequently reduced the number of lions killed. Though in the future we could see the same challenge, come up again.
NEW IDEAS ANYONE?
Courtesy: Wild Exhibitions
Perhaps two of the most interesting answers I received were:
The first by Alvin:
“Well I will start by saying something I came across the other day when I was reading
It’s not the strongest who survive but those who are able to adapt.
I think that since the lion is vulnerable this suggesting that the potential risk of extinction has been alluded to there is still some time to make a change before it is an endangered species. It is now within this time that something must be done to prevent the extinction in the offing. I would suggest perhaps restructuring the general behavior of the animal-changing its feeding habits, lifestyle, environment (those things around it- climate, humans etc.) because realistically it may be such factors which may actually make it vulnerable. So perhaps making the animal adapt to new ways of life or creating an artificial environment in the event that it is not possible to change its environment due to factors such as the ever-increasing global warming and climate change and increased desertification. It has been done with plants and it is successful yet they too are biotic organisms so it is also possible to do so with animals such as evidence of domestication of the dog and feline species over time as well as wild creatures such as snakes, fish .etc. who have been adapted to living in controlled environments rather than in the wild.
I would also suggest perhaps cross breeding depending on the nature of the factor causing it to face potential extinction-genetic factors etc. The hybrids can be created to counteract that effect.
I would first analyze the factors causing the animal to be vulnerable, and the come up with a solution, Maybe education, awareness and tougher restrictions and laws in the case of poaching if that is a factor for example.
But then again, I think it may also be a theory of natural selection where the elite and most adaptable and advanced creatures are able to survive with time and change and the non-adaptable ones are becoming extinct which is entirely natural and hence nature should sometimes be left to evolve and shape its own food chains, cycles and environment which is often the best choice as most human intervention tends to still have potential cyclical side effects.“
And I followed up and asked him how we could make controlled environments similar to their natural environments, knowing that if we created controlled environments, we would only make the lion senile to certain natural instincts. To which he responded:
“Yeah that’s the difficulty with controlled environments because the animals lose their natural instincts but then I guess a trade-off must occur realistically because we can’t perfectly replicate their environment even if we wanted to 🤔and I believe there is a lot more complexity to animals lifestyles and habits than is known by man and their science which may make it much harder to prevent the animal’s potential extinction threat 🤔.“
Alvin touched on a variety of things aside from just human interaction, he went on to mention genetic impoverishment and even the course of natural selection, suggesting a different perspective that we probably have not considered enough.
The second perspective was reflecting on how South Africa radically developed a task force to protect animals against poachers, ultimately saving their rhinos and endangered Elephants, I have quoted some sections of the articles and I will share them below: (shared by Sagao and Veronica)
South Africa’s private security industry already employs nearly 500,000 guards in homes, malls and offices to supplement a police force overwhelmed by high crime. In recent years, the anti-poaching industry has trained hundreds more guards to take on the menace in the country’s game parks.
The South African government has declared rhino poaching to be a “national priority crime,” and has rolled out a raft of initiatives to combat the problem, including boosting security in national parks and moving rhinos to safer areas. In the first eight months of 2016, more than 400 alleged poachers were arrested, according to the government, compared with 343 arrests in 2013 and 267 in 2012.
Ultimately, these are some of the views I received and would like to trigger a chance for the comment section to contribute their views as we begin to fight for the lives of the dear lions. All the thoughts cannot be condensed into one blog, but I hope I triggered a chain of thought and I believe we need to start working on this for the long run.
I will be back soon with a follow up on this and I would like to see how we can change course in due time.
I will leave some of the questions I asked below and please share your perspectives in the comment section. Feel free to ask your own unique questions and we can think about it as a community.
You have an animal that’s vulnerable: A lion. Vulnerable meaning it’s on the verge of extinction but not yet endangered, thus vulnerable. What steps can be taken to redirect it from being vulnerable to being safe?
What new technologies can be implemented to increase surveillance and help create accurate data records for lion populations?
What about eco-tourism – can it help save lion populations?
How can we make education more effective and more deliberate?
How long do you think it will take to make all these happen?
All in all, what personal initiatives can each and every one of us take to save the lion and other species that are vulnerable or endangered?
Consider this interesting take on trophy hunting: This has been successfully implemented in Namibia, which is one of the few countries where lion populations are currently increasing. Although trophy hunting can be a useful conservation tool for conserving lions, it can also be a threat. Therefore, improved regulations and management of lion hunting to prevent negative impacts on hunted lion populations is necessary in many countries
As soon as computers came into our world, scientists began to think on how they would revolutionize our world and the impact they would make to how we live. Even as far back as Aristotle introducing the idea of associationism in 300BC and this would trigger our attempts to study the human brain.
Courtesy: History.com
Turing’s Puzzle Piece
By the 1950s there was a generation of mathematicians, scientists and philosophers investigating the concept of AI and the possibility of a computer being able to think for itself. One such man was Alan Turing, a young British Polymath who spent his time exploring the mathematical possibility that Artificial Intelligence could be a possibility. He believed that since humans are able to use available information as well as reasoning and sound judgement in order to solve a problem, then certainly machines could be able to do the same.
He built upon these ideas and they built a basis for his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence – in which he discussed the idea on building intelligent machines and suggested ways in which we could test their intelligence.
Alan Turing. Courtesy: Wikipedia
However, big challenges stood in his way; back then (1949) computers could only execute commands but could not store these commands, in essence they could do something but couldn’t remember what they did.
Computing was also extremely costly and very few were available to be leased. Leasing a computer run up to $200,000 a month. Only big firms and prestigious universities could afford day in day out usage of these big bulky machines.
Aside from all that for people to invest in the idea of machine intelligence, scientists had to go to extreme miles to prove that it really was worth pursuing.
Then came a conference that probably changed that whole perspective.
Founding Fathers of AI?
The late John McCarthy (left) and Marvin Minsky (right) | Courtesy: Stanford School of Engineering & Princeton Alumni Weekly
In 1954, Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon developed the Logic Theorist. A program that many believed was truly the first artificially intelligent program. It was designed to mimic the problem-solving skills of the human brain and was funded by Research and Development Corporation (RAND). This program then went on to be presented at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. (DSRPAI) that was hosted and run by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky in 1956. This conference brought together top researcher and minds from various fields for an open-ended discussion on Artificial Intelligence – a term coined by McCarthy during the event. Though the event fell short of their expectations. Everyone agreed that Artificial Intelligence was achievable, and this fueled the research undertaken for the next 20 years.
“from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.”
Marvin Minsky during an interview with Life Magazine
The Leaps of Faith
And a few turbulent winds
Well, from 1957-1974 AI took off and began to flourish, machines could store more data and computers became faster, cheaper and more accessible. Machine Learning algorithms began to improve and scientists in turn got better at knowing what algorithms to apply to their problems. These successes, majorly from the researchers who attended the conference, prompted investment form government agencies such as the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund AI. They were particularly interested in the ability of a machine being able to transcribe and translate spoken language as well as big data.
People remained optimistic and so did Minsky, in 1970 Marvin Minsky told Life Magazine, “from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” This was true but there was still a long way to go.
Once the initial cloud of dust surrounding AI pursuits had died down, a big problem emerged, the lack of computational power to make a huge enough leap. Computers could not store large enough information or process it fast enough. One of McCarthy’s students, Hans Moravec stated that “computers were still millions of times too weak to exhibit intelligence.” And slowly as patience from the investors and the industry began to die down, so did research and funding.
However something remarkable happened in the next decade.
Re-Kindled
Courtesy: Research Gate
In the 1980’s, AI was brought back to life mainly by the boost of funds and the expansion of the algorithmic toolkit. John Hopfield and David Rumelhart came along and popularized the term “deep learning” a technique in which a computer learns through experience. Then came Edward Feigenbaum who introduced expert systems which helped in industry development and are still widely used today.
$400 million was invested by the Japanese Government between 1982-1990 for the development of expert systems and other related endeavors under their Fifth Generation Computer Project (FGCP) initiative.
AI thrived and through the 1990s to the 2000s many of the landmarks and targeted goals had been achieved.
In 1997, reigning world chess champion and grand master Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue, a chess playing computer program. This highly publicized match was the first time a reigning world chess champion loss to a computer and served as a huge step towards an artificially intelligent decision making program.
AI is not recent, it is instead built upon the shoulders of giants
Today we haven’t radically changed the way we compute and code artificial intelligence. It turns out that the very storage limit that computers faced over 30 years ago is no longer a problem. As Moore’s Law states, memory and the speed of computers should double every year. That way computers have been able to catch up and surpass our needs. Deep Blue beating Gary Kasparov in 1997 and Google’s Alpha Go being able to defeat Chinese Go champion, Ke Jie.
Through the immense roller coaster, AI research has been able to grow and we hope that in the next few years it can keep up with humanity as development continues to occur.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Well it depends on who you ask.
The fathers of the field Minsky and McCarthy, described Artificial Intelligence as any task performed by a program or a machine that, if a human carried out the same activity, we would say the human had to apply intelligence to accomplish the task.
Pretty broad but this is why there are many arguments and discussions on whether something is truly AI or not.
AI systems will typically demonstrate at least some of the following behaviours associated with human intelligence: planning, learning, reasoning, problem solving, knowledge representation, perception, motion, and manipulation and, to a lesser extent, social intelligence and creativity.
Today we can thank these brave souls for their immense contribution to the way we live today and the future ahead:
Courtesy: Medium
Marvin Minsky, Ray Solomonoff, Claude Shannon and John McCarthy amongst others.
Examining one of the WORLD’S DUMBEST problems and how we can solve it with the hope of ending WORLD HUNGER!
Reducing food loss and waste
World Hunger is on the rise; yet, an estimated 1/3 of all food produced globally is lost or goes to waste. We all have a part to play in reducing food loss and waste, not only for the sake of the food but for the resources that go into it.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Understanding the difference between Food Loss and Food Waste
Food loss and food waste over the past few years has indeed become a matter of great concern. Much so, that it has come to be highlighted in high stake meetings. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlighted the problem as an issue that required our full attention. Not only because it has a massive effect on our current and future livelihoods, but also because it is one of humanitiesdumbest yet easy to fix problems.
The Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls for halving per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels by 2030, as well as reducing food losses along the production and supply chains.
What is Food Loss and how does it differ from Food Waste?
Well according to FAO:
Food loss is the decrease in the quantity or quality of food resulting from decisions and actions by food suppliers in the chain, excluding retailers, food service providers and consumers.
Empirically, it refers to any food that is discarded, incinerated or otherwise disposed of along the food supply chain from harvest/slaughter/catch up to, but excluding, the retail level, and does not re-enter in any other productive utilization, such as feed or seed.
Food waste refers to the decrease in the quantity or quality of food resulting from decisions and actions by retailers, food service providers and consumers.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Infographic on Food Waste and the climate. Courtesy: Iberdrola
What about the climate?
Glad you asked!
When we think about climate change, many at times we think, about large industries and their effluents, vehicles, construction and their overwhelming carbon footprint. We seldom look at the Agriculture and Food industry, in particular all the food that gets wasted and its implications on the environment.
In the US alone, roughly 40% of all food produced, never gets eaten, that’s about 365 million pounds of food a day, and on an even larger scale, globally 1/3 of all food produced goes to waste.
Now think about all the land use, chemicals, pesticides, water and processing that goes into growing and producing food.
See, it’s tragic!
We are trashing our planet to grow food that no one will even eat.
Emmy-nominated conservation scientist Dr. M. Sanjayan
That’s not food that someone munches and throws away, but food that is produced and is never ever touched and just goes to waste.
While that’s happening, let us remember that there are millions of people worldwide that hardly ever see a plate of food or easily put, go hungry every single day, yet there’s more than enough food to feed them.
The science behind the climate impact:
Well it’s pretty simple, when this food we never consume goes into large dumpsters, it begins to decay and produce Methane, CH4. One of the world’s most deadly polluters and contributors to green house warming.
Of all the greenhouse gases, methane is one of the most potent because of its ability to efficiently absorb heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Studies have shown that, over a 20-year period, a kilogram of methane warms the planet as much as 80 times more than a kilogram of carbon dioxide.
This especially worrying scientifically, knowing that methane lasts for about a decade in the atmosphere, which upon combing with a free Hydroxyl radical turns into Carbon Dioxide, which can last in the atmosphere for centuries!
If global food waste was a country it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, right behind the US and China.
What’s the price?
In an interesting article by Forbes that I read in reference to FAO’s video on food waste(find it in the resource library) 📚 I discovered some nice facts and figures for all of you economic enthusiasts!
If you consider the global impact of food waste:
30 percent of the global food supply is wasted – the retail equivalent of $1 trillion of food each year, says the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN.
The FAO’s second video of their Food Wastage Footprint project explains that, in addition to the retail cost of food lost, another $700 billion is also thrown out in natural resources, including $172 billion in wasted water, $42 billion in cleared forest and $429 billion in related greenhouse gas costs.
But what is most shocking to me are the social costs the FAO determined are also linked to rotten food.
Wasted food results in $150 billion in human health costs related to the use of pesticides (which also implies that the health costs of using chemicals on the 70% of food we actually eat totals at least an additional $350 billion a year). $280 billion in loss of livelihoods (as natural resources become more scarce) is also tossed out the window when we throw away food.
This article was written by Beth Hoffman a writer at Forbes who focus on changing the food system, and the economic findings alone are definitely alarming.
That is definitely a hefty price to pay.
Dumpster Diving!
Dumpster diving is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners, but deemed useful to the picker.
Acccording to Wikipedia (I know, never trust Wiki alone, but its just a definition, read on :))
To prove that all the food that gets wasted is untouched and can be consumed, here are a few pictures I found:)
Most of which are from the RobGreenfield foundation. He founded this organization after cycling through the entire of the United States, and has lived off the grid for several years. He is an environmental enthusiast, who has taken more baths under waterfalls than in a house with piped water. More importantly, he has lived almost entirely off food that has been trashed in the dumpster.
I have linked his TED talk at the end of this article!
Photos courtesy: RobGreenfield.org
Photos courtesy: RobGreenfield.org
Photos courtesy: RobGreenfield.org
Photos courtesy: RobGreenfield.org
Photos courtesy: RobGreenfield.org
If you look keenly, this is high quality food that is completely untouched, that can feed hundreds yet it all finds its way in the bins.
Well how can we fix it? What can we do?
The Solutions and Ideas 💡
First of all, we must come together and recognize that this is a grave issue in our homes and in our communities as majority of the food waste, is contributed by consumers. The average household in the US spends about $1500 per year on food that is wasted. This is food that comes into our homes, that we probably munch on or dump in the fridge and ends up going bad and soon enough we toss it out.
This is both our fault and the fault of the industries that manufacture refrigerators. Over the last few years, refrigerators have increased in size and volume, enticing us to buy more and store more. Most of the food, we buy we really do not need at the time. A study was done that proves that we are more enticed to buy foods while we are at the grocery store and we feel like we really need it, but once we have the food and get home we realize we didn’t really need all that much as such. It’s also been studied that once the food goes in the refrigerator, it loses its value and we end up not consuming as much as, we constantly stock up and fill up the space in the refrigerator.
We just do not want to see empty space in our refrigerators, and once food is in there, we stock up more and more while some of the food earlier placed begins to go bad.
I mean some of us are even shocked when we find a particular food or drink in the refrigerator, that we did not even know existed until that day.
This is just one thing we need to fix.
We could also reduce the size of plates and completely eliminate trays in institutions such as schools and places of works. The average size of the plate has tremendously grown in the last few years and has encouraged us to put more food on our plates, thinking that we need that much while in reality some of us struggle to finish an entire plate of food that we earlier put heaps of food on.
A study was conducted at the University of California Santa Cruz, where Jill Horst, the Director of residential dining services at the institution got rid of trays in 2009 and started serving in portions. They allowed the students to serve as much as they wanted but only as much as their plates could carry. The result is, the food waste per person reduced by almost half. If you think in large scale terms, where the university serves 13,000 people. It’s a remarkable 5000 pounds of food, saved per day that would otherwise have been wasted. (More in the Video Resources tab courtesy: Vox)
However, in the near future the best plan and alternative would be to take the food that is wasted and build up streams and channels that could get this food to where it’s needed.
This is something that each and everyone of us needs to think through and work together to achieve!
I invite you to share your amazing ideas in the comment section and we can think through and discuss them together!
Below are two ways we can think through it one is local and the other is soon to be global.
My reflections on the future of energy and a call for ideas on how we can make the most out of the resources we already have and those that are yet to come.
Humanity’s hunger for energy has greatly risen over the last few years and will only continue to rise over the next few decades. With the dramatic increase in population over the last few years and the projected growth in technology , we are about to witness an increased demand for more power like never before in human history.
Our excessive use of energy through the extraction of coal, natural gas and petroleum oil, is very concerning as it has devastated the environment.
Energy production is a very sensitive topic given its impact on technology, economics and politics. Nonetheless, this is a topic that needs to be addressed immediately. Rampant oil production and usage raises the issue of global sustainability and the urgent need for climate action. The decisions we make now about how we use natural resources will impact all future generations.
I am hoping that we can address the following questions on the topic: First, what measures can we take to satisfy the growing demand for energy? Second, how can we make energy transportation more efficient and ensure it reaches even the most remote places in the world. Third, I would like us to explore ways in which the world can run entirely on affordable and accessible renewable energy and technologies, such as the Travelling Wave Reactor under development by the Terrapower company.
In conclusion, the words of the famous inventor, Thomas Edison, come to mind when he said, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy, what a great source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that!”
What if the only other way out was to look towards quantum physics and harness energy on an even larger scale than the sun in a world new to us? I think that would be worth it!
Feel free to respond to some of those questions in the comment section or even comment and ask more questions on the same
This is a live data sheet and map of the declared pandemic COVID-19. Today the virus has spread rapidly all over the world and has hit 6 of the 7 continents on our planet; but, in some parts of the world, the situation is getting better and here’s why…
Life’s Cancelled 😦
No more sports, IMAX movies, school, parties, or events. No more gossiping at the office or meeting your friends at the club. NOTHING. Just curfew. Just you, your close family, your pet, and of course, Netflix. Maybe some online classes too:(
Basically everything that makes life interesting for us social beings has to be sacrificed in an effort to combat this life threatening virus 🦠 that has ravaged the world and continues to be highly infectious: but, it’s all for a good cause.
“Fighting the Coronavirus depends on you”
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ( WHO DIRECTOR GENERAL)
COVID-19 Case Fatality
On March 11th 2020, the WHO declared the Coronavirus a global pandemic, meaning that there was no possible way to control it or to stop its spread across the world despite potential to slow it down.
For those who have come into contact with the virus and have been infected, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 80% of the cases are mild leading up to mild pneumonia, while 20% of the remaining cases can lead up to severe respiratory problems with 1-2% proving fatal.
That fatality rate is much lower for younger people and relatively higher for older people. This is reflected in Italy wherea much higher proportion of the population is older, causing it to be the worst hit country by the virus in Europe.
Courtesy: Statista
It also seems that people with underlying chronic health problems have a harder time fighting the virus and are more at risk of dying.
Today, the Coronavirus is deemed more contagious than the flu as the virus is spread by airborne particles transmitted by coughing, sneezing, or touching a surface on which the virus still lives and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
After getting infected, it could take an average of 5-7 days before you feel sick and the symptoms begin to show. During this phase, one is able to spread the virus rapidly from one person to another without knowing it.
“We cannot say this loud enough, but all countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ( WHO DIRECTOR GENERAL)
Health Systems
Diseases begin to become fatal when everyone seeks medical attention at once, overwhelming health systems.
In any hospital at any given time, the capacity to provide medical treatment for potentially fatal diseases depends on the number of beds available.
Already, some of these beds are occupied by people from accidents, people with ongoing medical treatments caused by heartattacks, stroke and the likes. This leaves behind a limited number of beds that would be important when an emergency occurs per the day.
Now, take the case of a healthy person who goes to the office and catches the virus. He or she feels okay as the symptoms have not began to show. This person then gets on a subway where they proceed to infect three other people. Afterwards, he/she decides to go out to a basketball game or a social gathering where another group of people catch the virus. One of the newly infected might be elderly and gets a severe case and has to be hospitalized, while the rest are asymptomatic and go on spreading the virus.
Over time, this increases the number of severe cases being reported at the hospital, filling capacity and limiting its ability to attend to the rapidly growing number of cases being reported at the hospital. In addition to the extreme Coronavirus cases, the hospital still has to care for patients suffering from other potentially fatal accidents. This is when the chaos really begins, as otherwise avoidable deaths occur due to the influx of people going to the hospital.
This is where you come in. Yes, you the healthy person.
Social Distancing: Definition
According to newscientist.com: Social distancing practices are changes in behaviour that can help stop the spread of infections. These often include curtailing social contact, work and schooling among seemingly healthy individuals, with a view to delaytransmission and reduce the size of an outbreak.
This simply implies no more going to school, the office or your local football match. Instead, we encourage: working from home, closing schools and promoting distance learning, and cancelling sports tournaments. In some cases, such as in New Jersey, implementing curfews can help keep people indoors and limit the spread of the virus.
The End Result?
By encouraging social distancing, we are able to greatly reduce the number of healthy people being exposed to the virus at any one time. This easily decongests our hospitals and allows them to treat active cases and other accidental cases. This means that the number of cases reported in hospitals per day greatly reduces so doctors and nurses can adequately tend to patients.
See why it starts with you? Yes, you reading this.
Case scenario of flattening the curve
This is why, in countries such as China, the number of emerging cases has greatly reduced and the same can happen over time in other countries. Below is a chart showing the curve beginning to take a dip:
Just hours ago, the Director General of the WHO announced that countries such as South Korea have begun to witness fewer emerging cases. The same can happen in other countries if they implement this strategy and continue to track, test, and treat their citizens to take control of the situation as soon as possible.
This must be the strategy of every health system to help put an end to the pandemic
Addressing Particular Concerns*
First of all, do not wear a mask unless you are sick or attending to someone who is sick. When you wear masks and you are healthy, you not only reduce the supply for the sick and health practitioners, but you also increase the sense of hysteria for people around you.
Second, climate does not affect the Coronavirus. From the evidence so far, the COVID-19 is at home in hot and humid weather, as well as the cold. You could try having a very hot bath – but that wouldn’t do much either, according to the WHO. Your body temperature will not be affected greatly by normal changes in outside temperature, which means the coronavirus will always be comfortable.
Third, here are some other hygiene and self-care myths the WHO has been keen to clear up include:
There is no evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with saline has protected people from infection with the new Coronavirus.
Spraying alcohol or chlorine all over your body will not kill viruses that have already entered your body.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, only bacteria.
Concerns about whether we will get a vaccine for the virus soon are quickly growing, but its important to note that a vaccine must go through significant testing before it is dispatched for mass use.
Sixty days ago scientists in China shared the gene sequence for the Coronavirus and scientists in labs all over the world have been racing to make a vaccine. One vaccine has already begun its phase one testing, and if it passes all subsequent stages, it is expected to be in mass production and use about a year from now.
For many emerging viruses, the medical industry has not been able to allocate its time and resources to making vaccines for them, because its deemed unprofitable. Why? If you consider viruses such as MERS-Cov and SARS-Cov, they do not have vaccines, because these Coronaviruses completely disappear after some time until a new strand emerges. This is unprofitable for pharmaceutical companies, because any new vaccine that cures only this kind of Coronavirus may not be needed long-term.
That is why with this virus, scientists are working around the clock to find a vaccine that can both prevent this current virus (COVID-19) and other future Coronaviruses.
What can I do now?
Well, you can catch up on Netflix, work from home, catch up on online classes and, of course, ensure you are using smart hygienic practices. This means washing your hands often, avoid touching your face, sanitizing your phone, maintaining social distance.
That’s all for now! Stay Safe! See you soon and feel free to ask questions in the comment section!
The Coronaviruses are zoonotic, this means that they can and will be easily transmitted between animals and people. Years ago, around the early 2000s investigations show that the SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV in 2012 was found to be from dromedary camels to humans. It is important to note that today, several known Coronaviruses are still in existence and circulate in animals but have not yet infected humans.
The typical signs and symptoms of the viral infection include sever respiratory issues, fever, cough, shortness of breath along with other breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, kidney failure and even death.
All this scary but where did this new strain ‘seem’ to emerge from?
The Untold Story
New data suggest the Coronavirus may not have originated in Wuhan’s seafood market and that China probably knew that weeks ago.
The lack of transparency could have hurt containment efforts and could prolong the outbreak’s impact.
CCN NEWS – Laura Hoy
Today not only has the virus spread, with statistics showing that the death toll has risen by more than 250 people and more than 12000 infections.
Courtesy: abcnews
The virus can be spread by one person to another even before the symptoms show.
An Interactive map showing the growth of the virus in realtime: As of Feb 2, 2020
Above is an interactive map that allows one to be able to see the live active cases of the Coronavirus and its spread worldwide this Interactive map can be accessed here to see the latest statistics about the deadly virus, you could even click the image.
The untold story however is that this virus is known to have first been detected on Chinese soil in early December. The Chinese government however did not however disclose any information about the first known case to the public as it ‘run’ investigations.
The first case of this virus was however first discovered two months ago, on December 8th, 2019. It took that long before the Chinese government stopped downplaying the seriousness of the outbreak and started giving the kind of information that could save lives. By this time however, millions of Chinese citizens had passed through the affected region and been infected by the deadly virus.
It all started in Wuhan China a seafood market. On January 18th, 2020 the people of Wuhan were invited to a pot-locked dinner attended by many families in Wuhan. What they did not know however is that two weeks earlier scientists in Hong Kong however had already flagged the emergence of a new strain of the Coronavirus but no one in that banquet had a clue of what was going on.
No one can control the growth of a pandemic but in a country like China what they can control is what people know about it.
The scientists warned that the virus could be spread from person to person but the people in Wuhan knew nothing about it the media, which is mainly controlled by the government was not talking about it.
The government had the ability to control what was going on to the media and social media sites too. The government was infact arresting people who were posting about the Coronavirus, on the allegation that they were spreading rumors.
Overtime several leaks and rumors started to make it out to the public many of which were spread through WeChat which has more than a billion users.
People began to spread rumors, that say the virus was engineered in a lab and that it could be prevented by drinking bleach and having supplements such as Vitamin C.
By January 20th however the death toll was rising and the number of known cases was growing not only locally but also worldwide, forcing the Chinese government to come clean about what they knew. The next weeks would witness the spreading at an unprecedented rate, with cases in more than 10 countries. The WHO then declared it a worldwide epidemic that needed immediate attention.
The truth?
The truth is that the virus originated from seafood market in Wuhan China, in this market certain wildlife was also known to be sold illegally
On February 2, officials in Hubei said the virus had a 96 percent concordance with an already-known bat-borne coronavirus. Chinese scientists had previously mentioned snakes as a possible source.
This is however another situation where governments and its restraints on the media continue to accelerate situations that would otherwise easily be addressed if action was taken earlier.
In the early 2000s with the MERS-CoV the government held the details of the outbreak for 6 months before it could be declared a deadly epidemic.
Where do we go from here though?
The WHO advises us to do the following:
WHO’s standard recommendations for the general public to reduce exposure to and transmission of a range of illnesses are as follows, which include hand and respiratory hygiene, and safe food practices:
Frequently clean hands by using alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water;
When coughing and sneezing cover mouth and nose with flexed elbow or tissue – throw tissue away immediately and wash hands;
Avoid close contact with anyone who has fever and cough;
If you have fever, cough and difficulty breathing seek medical care early and share previous travel history with your health care provider;
When visiting live markets in areas currently experiencing cases of novel coronavirus, avoid direct unprotected contact with live animals and surfaces in contact with animals;
The consumption of raw or undercooked animal products should be avoided. Raw meat, milk or animal organs should be handled with care, to avoid cross-contamination with uncooked foods, as per good food safety practices.
Courtesy: WHO
What is happening in China right now?
“Efforts to contain the outbreak have caused major disruption in China, with almost 20 cities facing travel restrictions, affecting at least 56 million people. Screening stations have been set up at bus, train and plane terminals nationwide.
China has banned the wildlife trade and extended the Lunar New Year holiday until February 2 to prevent transmission accelerating when people return from holidays.
Several countries have evacuated their citizens from Wuhan, while others have banned entry to Chinese citizens. Scores of airlines have suspended flights to and from China.” -Courtesy: Al Jazeera News –
An Indian cyclist rides along a street as smog envelops a monument in New Delhi on October 31, 2016, the day after the Diwali festival.
New Delhi was shrouded in a thick blanket of toxic smog a day after millions of Indians lit firecrackers to mark the Diwali festival, causing the air pollution to hit “severe” level. The pollutants breached the 1000 microgram mark in the Indian capital and shot up nearly 10 times above the normal level in the early hours of Monday, mostly owing to bursting of millions of firecrackers, according to a weather scientist.
/ AFP PHOTO / MONEY SHARMAMONEY SHARMA/AFP/Getty Images
I get nauseous and so dizzy. I have to go to the hospital or the doctor now.
-New Delhi resident-
Ground Zero- Understanding the problem
Officials have implored the people of New Delhi to stay inside, indefinitely. Five million children in India’s capital have been handed face masks. Everyone is to keep windows closed. Contrary to the most fundamental medical advice, the city’s chief minister urged residents this week to “avoid outdoor physical activities.”
– The Atlantic-
Courtesy: Vox
Look at the two images laid side by side, this is New Delhi. It serves as India’s Capital city, but what was once a beautiful city in the early months leading to September turns into a complete opposite in the months following October.
Quick Fact check
New Delhi is the world’s fastest growing city and by as of the last census it was estimated to have at least 28.5 million people.
World Bank estimates that by the next decade as we approach 2030 Delhi’s population could approach and even overtake Tokyo’s massive population with a projection of about 36.1 million people in this city alone.
Copyright: World Bank
But that raises a big problem, as population increases so does the pollution levels of a country and as you will observe in the next graph Delhi’s pollution level seems to be approaching an alarming level.
As is noted from the charts above, air pollution in New Delhi are constantly above the unhealthy levels all year round. This could possibly be attributed to the rate of constructions occurring in the region with increased population or even the increase in the number of vehicles with time.
If you look carefully too, the trend is that towards the months approaching October, the all-time total spikes, but why is that?
Courtesy: Statista
The Rice Problem
The real problem that causes the entire spike in detrimental air pollution does not originate in New Delhi, India but instead in the regions above New Delhi geographically and those are, Punjab and Haryana.
These two regions are associated with one main thing, Rice.
Courtesy: India Spend
Punjab and Haryana are the bread baskets of India and over the last few years with increased population levels the demand for rice has skyrocketed. This of course has had a negative effect on the environment.
Rice requires large amounts of water and with farmers growing rice all year round, the natural water levels in the soil in the months of January to June end up being heavily depleted and causing a major decline in the amount of the natural resource in the region.
So to regulate the amount of water authorities passed The Haryana Preservation of Subsoil Act in 2009 which banned rice planting before mid-June, that meant that rice farmers could not plant rice until just before the Monsoon season, which would ease and replenish the ground water, this pushes rice harvesting into the months of September towards the end of the year.
This significantly reduced the amount of time that farmers would have to prepare their farmlands for the next planting season, so farmers began to burn their rice stubble.
Courtesy: The Hindustan Times
The Butterfly Effect
Courtesy: Vox
The burning of the crop stubble coupled with the environmental conditions of the region at the time cause all the smog produced to go down to New Delhi.
First, the Himalayas act as a barrier directing the air towards New Delhi coupled with the cold air that originates during winter which together with the warm lowland air carries this Smog straight to Delhi.
In Delhi, when the air arrives it mixes with the dust and urban pollution in the region, the warm lowland air acts as a blanket over the region, preventing the toxic air from escaping. This is what causes the air pollution levels to skyrocket way above healthy and recommended levels.
When I open a New Delhi resident’s lungs today in every one of them I barely see pink healthy lungs and this is chaotic.
-Dr. Arvind Kumar- Founder trustee, Lung Care Foundation
In November of 2019 the Supreme Court asked the states of Punjab and Haryana to stop crop stubble burning immediately but thus far this has not yet changed, farmers still see it as the most effective way to clear their lands.
The Resolution?
Because New Delhi cannot be able to influence other states in India, it has decided in the months of October towards the end of the year, it halts all construction in the region and puts up restrictions on vehicle use. This reduces the amount of Urban Pollution in the area but as long as the upper regions of Punjab and Haryana continue burning their stubble, the smog will return year after year.
Below is a real-time chart of the air quality index today
The new way for most athletes to easily win in any sport!
The ZoomX Vaporfly Next%, Nike’s latest elite running shoe.
“Those super-fast Nike shoes are creating a problem!”
By Amby Burfoot New York Times
On July 24th, 2020 the Tokyo Olympics shall begin and so far, all over the world athletes and respective agencies that will be over-seeing the games have been preparing endlessly for what should be a successful Olympic season.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has so far been preparing round the clock by testing athletes all year round from time to time and offering guidance where necessary, to ensure that all athletes do not have any harmful chemical substances within their bodies which could potentially alter their performance; giving them an advantage over other players.
Did you know that athletes are even prohibited from having Caffeine in large amounts, that immediately strikes off all possible energy drinks and even medications. This is a show of how strict this agency can be.
But as the world advances, athletes and companies are seemingly finding new ways to beat the system. Welcome to the new era of doping: Technological Doping.
What is Technological Doping and what does it entail?
Technology doping is the practice of gaining a competitive advantage using sports equipment. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) considers prohibiting technologies if they are “performance-enhancing” or “being against the spirit of the sport”. In 2006, WADA initiated a consultation on technology doping which is now officially recognised as a threat, whilst the decision to allow or ban a new technology, specifically relating to sports equipment, is the responsibility of each sport’s own governing body.[1]
Cite: Wikipedia
To break this down it simply refers to the process by which athletes and sporting agencies use equipment such as: shoes, racquets and even sportswear, to enhance the performance of an athlete in any particular sport. This performance enhancement, may either be of harm to the sporting spirit itself or be used maliciously as a way to reduce competition. Making the playing ground uneven for other athletes.
Flashback to 2008
It’s the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the swimmers including stars such as Michael Phelps are lining up at the diving boards ready to dive for their countries, chasing the gold medals.
What the crowd would see on that day and the next few swimming races at the Olympics would be mind boggling.
Over those few days, 23 out of 25 swimming world records were broken in what seemed to be an extra ordinary show. But wait something’s wrong, 23 world records smashed all of a sudden at one event all by athletes wearing one common swimsuit…….. The Speedo LZR Swimsuit
In 2008 just before the Olympics, Speedo released a new type of swimming gear that would change the entire swimming industry.
The suit was different!
These controversial suits were faster and more high-tech than those used in the past. Made of polyurethane, the full-body suits work to trap air and allow for increased buoyancy. By compressing muscles, the suits also helped to reduce the workload for swimmers, thus reducing fatigue and allowing for improved stamina and a stronger finish at the end of a race.
Did I also mention that they were designed to mimic shark skin, by being fully hydrophobic, they allow athletes to reduce drag and maneuver faster in the water, increasing their overall speed and hydrodynamics.
Cite: Speedo
What would follow after the Olympics in 2008 were more records being broken at various events and that is when FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) banned all body-length swimsuits. Men’s suits could only maximally cover from the waist to the knee. Women’s suits could only cover from shoulder to knee. They also stipulated that the fabric used to make the suits must be a “textile” and the suit could not have fastening devices, such as zippers. These new rules took effect in January 2010.
Nike Vapourfly next%
For the last few years Nike has been working round the clock to investigate if at all runners could possibly get faster. They called in 3 athletes in 2017 including Champion Eliud Kipchoge and put them to the test.
That is when the term Breaking2 was coined with the goal being to break the two-hour barrier, they trained the athletes and gave them all the perfect conditions to ensure that they could possibly break the record.
Eliud Kipchoge at the INEOS 1:59 challenge on 12th October 2019
Well they achieved that goal on the 12th of October this year. Eliud hitting an official record time of 1:59:48. Proving amongst other things, that no human is limited.
While a lot of science and logistics went into planning the run and preparing Kipchoge. Th biggest aid of all? The shoes Nike made.
Eliud displaying his shoes, the Nike Alpha Next% a variation of the vapourfly editionThe shoe’s architecture, consisting of the zoom foam and the carbon fiber plates.
The carbon fiber plate plays a role—but not in the way many people think. When the Vaporfly was first unveiled, critics of the shoe speculated that the plate acted like a spring. But Hoogkamer’s findings suggest the plate’s spring function is negligible. What the plate does do is improves runners’ ankle mechanics by stabilizing the joint and reducing the load on the calves. At the same time, its stiffness helps keep runners’ toes nice and straight, allowing them to preserve the energy they would otherwise spend flexing them.
The midsole (Nike calls it ZoomX, but foam nerds know it as Pebax) is uncommonly compliant and resilient. Translation: It’s squishy and springy, respectively. Those properties enable the foam to absorb the energy a runner applies when their feet meet pavement and return a portion of it to their stride … somehow. How it works, exactly, remains unclear. The researchers originally hypothesized that the foam would save runners energy by reducing bending at their knees, but that turned out not to be the case.
These shoes coupled with Eliud’s phenomenal talent made him one of the greatest test runners today as he sprinted for the finish line. Though at the Chicago marathon days later. Brigid Kosgei breaks the Women’s marathon world record by 81 seconds, wearing the same type of shoes Kipchoge was wearing.
This began to raise eyebrows, especially towards Nike and the future of running and other sports, with a major concern.
The finish line.
The biggest concern is that Technological Doping could greatly harm the future of sporting. Not only in swimming and running have such adaptations been observed, but even in the field of Tennis, by changing the composites and materials that the racquets are made off.
Even in sports such as Basketball and Cycling where mechanical gadgets can be used to either propel the athlete forward or to help them master their skills by hiding a chip in their elbow sleeves. These technologies are sending WADA from end to end trying to find ways to curb these irregularities and save the future of the sporting industry.
The Biggest Concern?
The biggest concern is that only a handful of athletes in the various sporting categories will be able to access these technologies, and that’s right, only those who are sponsored by Nike or Speedo will have the upper hand. These companies patent their technologies and make it very hard for their competitors to find alternatives and that is what brings the whole ethical issue behind the growth of technology in sports.
But all in all, we better find a solution before the race gun’s fire at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics!
“Wildfires, when allowed to burn in areas where they do not impact human development, are regenerative for the forest, revitalizing for the watershed, renew the soil, and reset the clock for the ecosystem.”
Yes, when wildfires are set up in controlled areas within forests and reserves they cause a whole lot of good and that is super important for forest survival!
THROWBACK!
Back in the ancient times studies show that our age-old ancestors relied on lightning most especially to strike the tall trees and cause forest fires.
This was important because the forest fires would make it easy for them to get coal that they would use during the cold seasons and even clear the land for them to keep exploring various ways to survive.
It was important for them and what seemed to be a blessing for them, was a very important natural phenomenon for the forest itself.
Today we explore this age-old secret!
Case Study: Lodge-pole Pines
In the conifer rich forest of North West America as far north as the Yukon and south to Baja California, Lodge-pole Pines constantly seek the sun.
The seeds prefer to grow out in the glimmering sun where all the perfect conditions necessary for growth are satisfied. As they grow saplings compete for height as each tries to get as much sunlight as it possibly can. Growing straighter and more rapidly than its neighbors.
Overtime all the generations of tall elegant Lodge-pole pines will form an umbrella like canopy that harms the future generations of the forest, as enough sunlight does not get to the young saplings below.
To combat this, Lodge-pole pines produce two types of cones.
Annual cones that are able to release seeds spontaneously, and Serotinous cones which are much harder and require an element like fire to trigger the release of the seeds. They have a thick shell that is waterproof and ensures that weather elements do not destroy its contents.
This type of cone is produced in thousands and many are able to survive on the tree for more than decades. This also ensures that cones that fall to the ground are stable and okay!
When these seeds fall to the ground and an element like fire raises the temperature of its overall surrounding. The serotinous cones are triggered and seed production begins!
But fire? In a forest? Devastating!
Not so much.
Once the forest is on fire in a coniferous forest. The forest fire flames are able to thrive by climbing the rich undercover of the forest with species such as Douglas Fir, a rich tree species that is able to thrive under the reach cover of the tall Lodge-pole Pines.
This allows the fire to climb up to the taller Lodge-pole Pines and this allows the forest fire temperatures to skyrocket well above 1,320 degrees Celsius. This is way above the 40-60 degrees Celsius required for the serotinous cones to pop open!
At such temperatures the cones burst and release millions of seeds that are carried away by the prevailing winds at the time. To open ground to form new forests.
The rich carbon from the trees and the new open grounds, provide a tonne of sunshine that is essential for the beginning of new life.
“From the death of the old forest comes the rise of another…”
Jim Schulz
Eco-Friendly Fire!
Without the existence of wildfires, key species of trees would disappear completely and so will the live creatures that depend on them.
More importantly, without forest fires, there is an intense growth of trees in the forest which induces a large amount of the fuels within it. This would lead to an even more catastrophic fire in the event that one was to breakout. This would destroy the forest completely and harm the lives of peoples property and lives.
This is why forest rangers and managers, often cause controlled forest fires in different forest regions that help reduce the fuel potency of the forests.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is pretty simple.
All in all it is important to note that forest fires may be damaging but by understanding that they yield life and can indeed be controlled by the right measure. It is up to us to ensure we do all that is possible to ensure that we sustain the continuity of life and that we keep the even more harmful forest fires at bay.
#PRAYFORTHEAMAZON
The current situation in the Amazon Forest is an example of a devastating forest fire that has gone on uncontrollably for the last four weeks now. Below are some images and resources that will help you know and understand the current situation.
Let us join together, pray and support the biggest forest in the entire world! One of the most beautiful ecosystems in existence!
How NASA uses Color Science to create beautiful color Images of Space.
Photo: This is THE CAT’S EYE NEBULA as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope
Site Sight*
Yes you saw that! And this too!
So how do we see?
To understand how colors work we must first understand how we see in real life. Believe me its more complex than it seems but yet very easy to understand!
As you can see above in the internal structure of the eye we have the retina at the very back of the eye. If you think of your eye as a camera, then the Retina would be the photographic film. This is where the light strikes and an image is recorded.
Now the retina also contains nerves the nerves relay information to the photo receptors that then tell the brain what the eyes are seeing. Now there are two types of receptors. Cones and Rods. But we will focus on Cones.
Now cones are microscopic and lie within the retina of the eye and are very special. This is because they help us do something fundamental and that is interpret visible light.
Visible Light Spectrum
We know that the Electromagnetic Spectrum varies with wavelength and frequency. Giving us Infrared and UV lights even radio waves and microwaves. Now if you think about it, Visible Light lies somewhere in the middle.
Visible light as the name suggests is the light we can see.
The spectrum looks like this;
The Visible light Spectrum
Rainbow like colors yes?
But what are the main colors of the rainbow?
Red, Green and Blue. (RGB)
Now back to the cones in your eye. They are three for each color: Red, Green and Blue. Below is a photo of the cones and the EMS.
The Cones in our eyes.
Cone representation on the EMS
Forget the rainbow and all its colors. Now understand that all those colors are a composite of the three colors mixed to bring out all the different colors like Burgundy or Teal and Cyan. Even Beige (a pale sandy fawn color. Source: Wikipedia) like I even understand what that meant…but yeah so do you.
RGB Venn
RGB COMPOSITE FT: ALIM KHAN
Alim Khan: Photo as taken in 1911
See this photo, this is Alim Khan. This photo was originally black and white. Full color cameras were released in the 60’s and 70’s. After gaining loads of popularity. This photo was originally shot in black and white but with a trick to it.
The photographer at the time used three different filters for the three main colors of the spectrum, RGB.
The filters allowed the respective colors to penetrate most as per the filter as seen on the right of the image above are the three composites with Blue at the top that’s why the clothes look almost white, then Green and Red.
Now when all those different photographs are put together in their different color composites. That is with blue as the overlay and so on. They make a full color photograph of Alim Khan as first suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and then shot and tested by Thomas Sutton.
Now the same theory is what we do today at NASA.
The Hubble Space Telescope, HST
The Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope has been in existence since 1990 and is this amazing NASA telescope that orbits the earth and is suspended in it.
It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy.
Wikipedia
The Hubble Space Telescope takes amazing shots of deep space and even the planets around us. In context it has been able to probe the black hole of the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 3147 located 130 million light-years. That is light would take about 130 million years to reach your eye.
They are called the pillars of creation because if you zoom in a little closer you will see gases and explosions yielding new stars!
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall. The dark, finger-like feature at bottom right may be a smaller version of the giant pillars. The new image was taken with Hubble’s versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3. The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green. Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611 Image Type: Astronomical Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA GOV
Having understood that the pillars of creation are a composition of the three gases Oxygen, Sulfur and Nitrogen. It is now time we Photoshop!
The Hubble takes the photos with the composites, Red Green and Blue according to the emission of the gases.
The filters original images are as seen below:
Color Composite source: Gizmodo
Now in Photoshop the three different photos as taken in their RGB filters are overlayed with their respective color narrow- band wavelengths. Then combined and retouched. Presenting a wonderful image that is not only for wallpapers, but that NASA uses as data.
If NASA wanted, they would leave all of the photos taken, in black and white. The purpose is greater and that is DATA.
The same happens with the planets in orbit like Jupiter, Saturn and the likes which are far away. To get the accurate colors we use the three color composite method only now we use a broadband spectrum as the objects are solid hence in true color.
Jupiter source: Vox
Takeaways?
No not that the photos are not real and are thus photoshoped. No that is not it!
The key takeaway is that scientists have to understand the key color science components and even understand the biology and physics behind your eyesight in order to allow scientific development such as the wonderful exploration of space to go on!
Nonetheless, as I said, NASA could’ve left them in black and white but that wouldn’t help many of us as such (Wallpapers). They do it because of the data that comes from it and the result of constant analysis and use of tools such as Adobe’s Photoshop are what yield wonderful developments and growth in space and science itself.
That is all for today, Keep Sparky!
I’ll leave a collage of my the best shots I obtained of space while writing this blog!
‘the researchers had hacked the rules of inheritance’
Vox Docs
Malaria Facts: Source: WHO
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable.
In 2017, there were an estimated 219 million cases of malaria in 87 countries.
The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 435 000 in 2017.
The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2017, the region was home to 92% of malaria cases and 93% of malaria deaths.
Total funding for malaria control and elimination reached an estimated US$ 3.1 billion in 2017. Contributions from governments of endemic countries amounted to US$ 900 million, representing 28% of total funding.
You see those mosquitoes up there those aren’t just any ordinary mosquitoes those mosquitoes are made to glow blue in variant laser light.
But that fluorescence is just a marker, it shows that something profound happened to those mosquitoes and their larvae. They have been genetically engineered to glow that way under that particular light.
Now this is not any normal success because those mosquitoes are the anopheles gambiae these mosquitoes are known to transmit malaria.
Now, only one of the parents of the mosquitoes only had the gene unit, you’d expect that only 50% of the mosquitoes would have the gene unit. But what is even more profound is that all the offspring 100% of that mosquito had the same gene copy across all of them. These scientists had indeed hacked the secret to gene drive biology.
CRISPR -Cas9
Source: forbes.com
CRISPR is a gene editing tool that has been recently developed. It allows scientists to make precise edits to gene structures in micro-organisms such as viruses and bacteria, to the complex structures of humans and even mosquitoes. Gene drive on the other hand allows us to completely change the genetic composition of organisms by affecting only few individuals who then continue the transfer of this modification onto its subsequent generations.
This tool is very powerful and is hence what holds the future for eradicating malaria off the surface of the earth and therefore saving more children all over the world!
In this case the goal is to completely change the genetic composition of the malaria transmitting species of mosquitoes–Anopheles gambiae, Anopheles coluzzii, and Anopheles arabiensis– by use of the gene drive technology that hence allows for these species to be resistant to contracting the malaria infecting parasite.
CRISPR gene drives combine the gene drive idea with the CRISPR gene editing technique. They were first proposed in a 2014 paper — and the world of malaria research immediately realized the opportunity the idea presented. Target Malaria, a research consortium uniting Imperial College London with partner institutions in Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda, and Ghana, is currently working with much more limited genetic engineering techniques to fight the disease. But according to engagement manager Delphine Thizy, they are hoping to apply for approval to test gene drives in the field as soon as 2023. They released an early non-gene drive mosquito in Burkina Faso in June 2019 as preparation
The science behind the tool, while not quite ready for release, is very, very, very close. I asked Ethan Bier, a professor at UC San Diego and one of the first people to help build an actual working CRISPR gene drive, how soon a drive targeting malaria could be released, as a scientific matter. Bier hesitated, and stressed that we shouldn’t release anything without regulatory approval and much more consideration. But he concluded, “To be honest with you, if there were some kind of emergency and one absolutely needed to do it, we could pretty much do it.” And Esvelt, whose work helped pave the way for Target Malaria’s efforts, is terrified, simply terrified, of a backlash between now and then that could derail it. This is hardly a theoretical concern. In 2002, anti-GMO hysteria led the government of Zambia to reject 35,000 tons of food aid in the middle of a famine out of fear it could be genetically modified. Esvelt knows that the CRISPR gene drive is a tool of overwhelming power. If used well, it could save millions of lives, help rescue endangered species, even make life better for farm animals.
-Vox Observatory
If a mistake was made to the gene drive system, their could be a potential mutation that would cause a worse effect than that present. Thus, a bad rapport for this potentially successful technology.
So how does CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Drive Work?
It works by inserting the gene editing tool itself into the target mosquito’s DNA from there CRISPR induces the cell to copy the package to the matching chromosome of the mosquito.
Like us most of us, mosquitoes have one pair of chromosomes and now that the gene drive has copied the package on to the two chromosomes then every subsequent offspring of that mosquito will have the same modification and it goes on and on and on!
So depending on what is attached to the gene editing tool like the blue fluorescent gene then every mosquito down the line will have the same nature as its parents.
This is very important for the drastic measure to combat the malaria causing parasite.
The team at the Imperial College London mainly catalyzing this research is part of a foundation called Target Malaria that are carrying out intense malaria projects to see both malaria come to an end. This organization is mainly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and they are aiming to stop malaria infection and suppress it using the gene drive technology.
Their drive is mainly focused towards ensuring female infertility that is less female anopheles mosquitoes in the entire mosquito population.
Then there is another team at the University of California whose main aim is to enhance the mosquitoes such that they cannot be able to contract the malaria causing parasite. Thus, not being able to transmit it between humans.
The trade off
The big tradeoff is that we need to carry out rigorous testing to ensure that it works.
Hence, we need to do it right because we need to save the kids. We need to be able to be certain and save the children now. That means ensuring this genetic technology is right and travels across borders.
For now, there are Target Malaria stations all over the world and Africa that are ensuring that the spread of malaria is contained using none genetically modified mosquitoes.
The Big Fear
The Big Fear is that the politics of genetically modified crops will spill into this great accomplishment about to be realized.
All in all the biggest barrier is nature itself but we have been able to take risks before and being able to eradicate Small Pox for example involved messing up with nature. At the end of the day we need to be able to overcome this barrier in order to successfully see malaria come to an end.
My name is Ryan Napo and I have a powerful urge to create scientific awareness across the board through this science blog.
I am very passionate about science and I hope you are too. This blog is meant for you. I will be working hand in hand with you to fine pick and curate the topics that will be focused in this blog. Today as I begin this blog I have uploaded my first blog. It was an ultimate favorite and I hope you enjoy it.
Feel free to like, comment and share this blog with everyone who you feel would be interested in getting to know more about the world’s fascinating nature.
Sparky Science 
