Additionally, some reports have suggested that then-President Woodrow Wilson downplayed the virus, but that is a “wrong and a false trope of popular history,” Markel said. Wilson, who would later contract the virus, was organizing and commanding the U.S. effort in World War I and once the war ended, he sailed for Paris, where he stayed until April of 1919 organizing a peace treaty and the League of Nations, Markel said.
“The federal government played a very small role in American public health during that era. It was primarily a city and state role and those agencies were hardly downplaying it,” he said.
Unlike today, there was no CDC or national public health department. The Food and Drug Administration existed but consisted of a very small group of men. Additionally, there were no antibiotics, intensive care units, ventilators, IV fluids or vaccines. “You got a bed or maybe nursing care,” Markel said.
Spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing on Thursday that Russia is ready to continue to discuss space issues with the US. This discussion should operate within the framework of a bilateral expert group, commenting on the publication of the US Space Force doctrine by the Pentagon.
“The document confirms the aggressive direction of Washington in the sphere of space, the determination to achieve military superiority up to the total dominance in space. The outer space is considered by the American side exclusively as the arena to conduct warfare,” she said. “We see an opportunity to remove mutual concerns within the framework of the Russian-American working group on space security whose first meeting took place in Vienna on July 27 and we confirm our readiness to discuss further all issues of space activities in the bilateral format,” the diplomat added. The spokeswoman drew attention to the fact that the use of space research exclusively in peaceful purposes remains a priority for Russia as well as prevention of an arms race in outer space. “As opposed to the US, we do not pursue the goals of domineering and superiority. We are interested instead in maintaining the strategic balance in order to strengthen the international security.” She referred to the Russian-Chinese treaty draft on the prevention of stationing arms in space, use of force or threats against space objects. All existing issues and contradictions on the subject of arms in space should be resolved within the framework of the Disarmament Conference, the spokeswoman stressed. According to her, Russia thoroughly analyzes the possible consequences of “Washington’s aggressive endeavors.”
Spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing on Thursday that Russia is ready to continue to discuss space issues with the US. This discussion should operate within the framework of a bilateral expert group, commenting on the publication of the US Space Force doctrine by the Pentagon.
Saint Kitts and Nevis became the 44th country to ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on Sunday, the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Six more ratifications are now needed to bring the treaty into force.
The Caribbean nation’s foreign minister, Mark Brantley, said in a statement that the bombing of Nagasaki was the apogee of human cruelty and inhumanity.
He said his country, as a small nation committed to global peace, can see no useful purpose for nuclear armaments. He called on all nations to work towards peace and mutual respect for all mankind.
One idea, which has been in gestation for some years, could be about to have its break-out moment. A new agreement, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), is expected to become international law next year — and scientists have a chance to play a part in helping it to succeed.
Seventy-five years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a new treaty offers renewed hope for a nuclear-free world.
A Russian submarine passed through Turkey on Tuesday, in an apparent breach of the longstanding Montreux Convention, which prohibits submarines from moving between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. If the move goes unchecked it could change the balance of power in the region, making Russia more powerful in the Mediterranean.
The submarine was photographed by Yörük Işık, a highly respected ship spotter who lives in Istanbul. There is no mistaking that this is a Kilo Class submarine. Only Russia operates this type of submarine in the Black Sea. Romania also has a sole example on its lists but that hasn’t been active in decades so it cannot be that.
More specifically, the submarine is likely to be the Project 636.3 boat Rostov-on-Don, heading to take up duty in Syria. Russian state media reported on April 27 that the sub would be dispatched on a “deployment in distant waters” to the Mediterranean. Analysis of open-source intelligence suggests that she put to sea briefly after the announcement but then returned to her base on April 29. This was likely to start a pre-deployment COVID-19 isolation. She then participated in the Victory Day parade in Sevastopol, Crimea. She did not actually head south toward the Mediterranean until now.
In May, NASA announced its intent to “establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space” referred to as the Artemis Accords.[1,2] The Accords were released initially as draft principles, to be developed and implemented through a series of bilateral agreements with international partners.
The Accords offer the possibility to advance practical implementations of long-held principles in the Outer Space Treaty (OST). They raise a rich set of policy questions as we begin to take the law into new levels of resolution. This bold pursuit of uncharted territories is to be applauded, and yet, there is also the risk of diverging from 53 years of international law.
One the ten principles is focused on Deconfliction of Activities, with “safety zones” named as a specific mechanism of implementation:
Pleased to have been the guest on this most recent episode of Javier Ideami’s Beyond podcast. We discuss everything from #spaceexploration to #astrobiology!
In this episode, we travel from Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage to the first mission to Mars with Bruce Dorminey. Bruce is a science journalist and author who primarily covers aerospace, astronomy and astrophysics. He is a regular contributor to Astronomy magazine and since 2012, he has written a regular tech column for Forbes magazine. He is also a correspondent for Renewable Energy World. Writer of “Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System”, he was a 1998 winner in the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards (AJOYA) as well as a founding team member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Science Communication Focus Group.
EPISODE LINKS: Bruce web: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/#47e297264d03 Distant Wanderers Book: https://www.amazon.es/Distant-Wanderers-Search-Planets-Beyond/dp/1441928723 Renewable Energy World: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/author/bruce-dorminey/#gref Bruce’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/bdorminey
INFO: Podcast website: https://volandino.com Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3O74ctu6Hv5zZdHYT9Ox3Z Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond/id1509949724 RSS: https://volandino.com/feed/podcast Full episodes playlist:
OUTLINE: 01:21 — Magellan’s journey to the indies; first circumnavigation of the earth — Risk: today vs previous centuries. 02:15 — On route to the Spice Islands — Moluccas — Treaty of Tordesillas. 03:07 — Spain and Portugal on top of the world. 03:41 — Reaching philippines and the wrong side of things. 05:20 — Killed in the Philippines. 06:08 — The reasons behind the expedition: trade and religion. 07:23 — Casualties — Magellan’s expedition vs today. 07:58 — Early astronauts, challenging missions — minimal computing power. 08:40 — Mission to Mars and tolerance to risk today. 10:03 — First Mars mission attempt — the odds. 10:37 — Watching the Apollo launches live. 11:23 — The uniqueness of the moment — Apollo 8. 12:12 — Putting risk in perspective: astronauts of the Apollo program vs today. 13:05 — Psychological risks of space missions — Harrison Hagan “Jack” Schmitt (last person that walked on the moon) — the impact of being on the moon. 15:54 — Psychological factors on a trip to Mars — can we predict them? — Experiences on the International Space Station. 17:03 — Shortening the trip to Mars. 19:02 — The drive to do these missions today vs the Apollo times. 20:00 — The lost time in the moon — natural resources, astronomy, practicing for future missions to mars. 20:37 — Terraforming Mars 22:33 — Second homes, platforms in space (example: at Lagrange points). 23:43 — Exoplanets — detecting signs of life. 26:18 — Methods of detection & verification vs going there (detecting microbial life through analysis of color, surface reflectivity and other means) 27:50 — Enceladus: plumes of gas and liquid — potential insitu analysis by probes. 28:43 — microfossils on Mars. 29:00 — Impact of finding life in another planet of our solar system, even if microbial. 29:54 — Intelligent life — David Kipping, Columbia University — 3:2 odds that intelligence is rare. 30:31 — Probability of finding life — 400 billion stars in our galaxy. 33:24 — Facing the discovery of new forms of intelligent life. 35:50 — People’s resilience and attention spans / Inter-species communication. 38:26 — Could we miss new kinds of lifeforms due to them having different structures, chemical arrangements, etc? 40:30 — What is life — lack of agreement. 41:48 — Scratching the surface on any topic — a neverending search for an ultimate truth. 43:50 — ALH 84001 Allan Hills meteorite 47:26 — Asteroid mining — natural resources — Planetary Resources startup (acquired by ConsenSys). 48:52 — Commercializing space travel — trips to go around the moon — translunar flights. 51:22 — Progress since the Apollo era and next steps. 52:55 — Spending a weekend on the moon. 54:00 — Next decade in Space — putting a crew on mars, robotic sample return missions, permanent or semi-permanet settlements on the lunar surface, optical and radio-based astronomy on the far side of the moon, space tourism, space based interferometers, etc 56:22 — will other intelligent life forms want to communicate? gregarious vs non-gregarious civilizations. 57:35 — Consequences of the pandemic. 59:06 — conclusion — “Distant Wanderers — search for planets beyond the solar system”
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