Archive for the ‘Life Extension’ Category

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. APD is slated to release second-quarter fiscal 2020 results ahead of the bell on Apr 23. The company is likely to have gained from new projects and productivity initiatives in the quarter. However, the impacts of higher maintenance spending are expected to get reflected on its results.

The industrial gases giant delivered a positive earnings surprise of around 2.9% in the last reported quarter. Sales also beat expectations as higher volumes and prices more than offset unfavorable currency swings and the impacts of contract modification in India and lower energy cost pass-through.

The companys shares have gained 9% in the past year against the industrys 38.3% decline.

Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

What do the Estimates Say?

Air Products expects adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter in the band of $2.10-$2.20, which indicates a 9-15% rise year over year.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Air Products fiscal second quarter revenues is currently pegged at $2,143 million, suggesting a decline of 2.1% year over year.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues for the Industrial Gases Americas segment is currently pegged at $935 million, calling for a decline of 5.7% year over year. The consensus mark for the segments operating income stands at $257 million, essentially flat year over year.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues in the Industrial Gases Asia segment is pegged at $667 million, which suggests 6.7% year-over-year growth. The consensus mark for operating income for the segment is projected at $218 million, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 9%.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues in the Industrial Gases EMEA segment stands at $498 million, indicating a 0.8% year-over-year rise. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for operating income is pegged at $124 million, flat year over year.

The consensus mark for revenues for the Industrial Gases Global segment is pegged at $61 million, which indicates a rise of 13% year over year. The same for the segments operating income stands at a loss of $0.67 million.

Some Factors at Play

Air Products productivity actions, investments in high-return projects and benefits of acquisitions are expected to get reflected on fiscal second-quarter results. New projects are likely to have contributed to its volume growth.

The company remains committed to boost productivity to improve cost structure. It is seeing a positive impact of its productivity actions. Benefits from additional productivity and cost improvement programs are likely to have supported margins in the to-be-reported quarter.

Air Products also has been benefiting from higher pricing over the past several quarters and the same is expected to have continued in the fiscal second quarter.

However, the company is likely to have faced headwinds from higher maintenance spending in the fiscal second quarter, stemming from life extension work on certain facilities. Higher costs are likely to have affected margins in its Industrial Gases Americas segment.

Moreover, the companys Industrial Gases Asia segment is likely to have faced some headwinds in the fiscal second quarter from the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday which was extended by Beijing to contain the outbreak of coronavirus. The impacts of slowdown due to the Chinese New Year are expected to get reflected on sales and margins in Air Products Asia business.

Story continues

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. price-eps-surprise | Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Quote

What the Zacks Model Says

Our proven model doesnt conclusively predict an earnings beat for Air Products this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. But thats not the case here.

Earnings ESP: Earnings ESP for Air Products is -4.83%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the fiscal second quarter currently stands at $2.07. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Air Products currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Stocks Poised to Beat Estimates

Here are some companies in the basic materials space you may want to consider as our model shows they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

Verso Corporation VRS, expected to release earnings on May 13, has an Earnings ESP of +20% and carries a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Barrick Gold Corporation GOLD, scheduled to release earnings on May 6, has an Earnings ESP of +2.42% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.

Pretium Resources Inc. PVG, expected to release earnings on May 7, has an Earnings ESP of +25.81% and carries a Zacks Rank #2.

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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportPretium Resources, Inc. (PVG) : Free Stock Analysis ReportAir Products and Chemicals, Inc. (APD) : Free Stock Analysis ReportBarrick Gold Corporation (GOLD) : Free Stock Analysis ReportVerso Corporation (VRS) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research

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Air Products (APD) to Post Q2 Earnings: What's in the Offing? - Yahoo Finance

Goldman Sachs Asset Management does not expect any interruption to its suite of five thematic equity ETFs launched in partnership with Motif Capital Management after the fintech firm announced it would be shutting it doors.

The five Goldman Sachs thematic equity ETFs target trends that are making transformational changes to the global economy.

Founded in 2010, Motif is an online broker offering thematic portfolios (called motifs) created by professional investors. The platform allows users to buy shares in a motif at a low entry point of just $300.

The firm repurposed some of these portfolios to form the basis of indices, independently calculated by Solactive, which were licensed to Goldman Sachs to underlie a series of ETFs brought to market in March 2019.

The ETFs cover themes tracking transformational changes to the global economy: data-driven world, finance reimagined, human evolution, manufacturing revolution, and new-age consumer.

The funds are listed on NYSE Arca, come with expense ratios of 0.50%, and collectively house around $90 million.

While Motifs business model received support from Silicon Valley investors, picking up over $100m in private equity capital over the years, it appears as though the firm has been unable to reach a position of ongoing economic viability.

And with markets down and client redemptions up as a result of COVID-19, assets under management have likely fallen below a level deemed sustainably feasible.

Motif announced to clients that their assets would be shifted to rival Folio Investing.

According to a statement from Goldman, Motif informed it that it would cease to serve as index provider for the Goldman Sachs ETFs on or about May 15th.

While Motifs pending departure cast some doubt on the future of the ETFs, Goldman has moved quickly to allay investors immediate fears by noting it is in discussions to assume the role of index provider, subject to approval by the ETFs board of trustees.

It says, We do not expect any interruption to the management of the ETFs at the present time, and the ETFs continue to trade on NYSE Arca.

The funds

The Goldman Sachs Motif Data-Driven World ETF (GDAT US) tracks companies poised to benefit from the increasing digitization of data. Stocks are analyzed along five sub-themes including internet of things, data infrastructure, big data, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.

The Goldman Sachs Motif Finance Reimagined ETF (GFIN US) tracks companies poised to benefit from developments in the delivery of financial services. Relevant sub-themes include the digitization of finance, the migration to low-cost passive investments, and blockchain technology.

The Goldman Sachs Motif Human Evolution ETF (GDNA US) tracks health care companies that are most likely to benefit from the development of new medical treatments along the sub-themes of precision medicine, genomics, life extension, robotic surgery, and consumer health care.

The Goldman Sachs Motif Manufacturing Revolution ETF (GMAN US) tracks companies incorporating new technologies to optimize the manufacturing process as well as firms involved in the manufacture of new products across the robotics, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, drones, and clean energy sub-themes.

The Goldman Sachs Motif New Age Consumer ETF (GBUY US) tracks companies most likely to benefit from recent structural changes in the consumer market across demographics, technology, and preferences. Relevant sub-themes include e-commerce, social media, online gaming, online music and video, experiences on goods, and the evolution of education, health, and wellness.

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GSAM set to assume index responsilities following closure of index partner Motif - ETF Strategy

Since the end of March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trumpeting a study by the little-known Deep Knowledge Group that claims Israel is the safest country in the world in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Amid repeated efforts by journalists, scientists, politicians and concerned social media users to question and even debunk the study, Netanyahu has continued to cite it on prime-time television as well as on his official website and social media feed.

Not only does the study fail to reveal the data or methodology it used, but the people behind it also have strikingly unusual career histories. The Times of Israel has dug further into the founders of the Deep Knowledge Group and discovered a San Francisco-based medical expert with an extraordinary resum who reportedly has run a firm offering private intelligence services to foreign governments; a failed Russian banker who advises the Moldovan president on the economy; and a bizarre Russian movement to prolong the human lifespan.

On March 31, Netanyahu posted a self-congratulatory statistic on his Facebook page, Twitter account and the official website of the Prime Ministers Office. It featured a bar chart entitled Coronavirus Health Safety Countries Ranking, and showed Israel leading the world in countries where an individual could feel most safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Critics quickly panned [Hebrew link] the study, correctly pointing out that while Israel is by no means the worst affected country in the world, there are many countries with a lower death rate per capita, a higher testing rate and better preparedness than Israel.

A chart prepared by the Deep Knowledge Group and posted on Netanyahus Facebook page on March 31, 2020 showing Israel as the worlds safest country during the coronavirus pandemic (Facebook)

The study itself did not explain its methodology or what data it relied on. It had come from the website of a firm called Deep Knowledge Group that few people had ever heard of.

Netanyahu then cited the safest country ranking during at least two of his frequent appearances on national television when discussing the fight against COVID-19.

The Times of Israel published an article on April 8 revealing that Deep Knowledge Group was a Hong Kong investment capital firm owned by a Moscow- and London-based businessman named Dmitry Kaminskiy with business interests in the fintech, blockchain and longevity industries. In mid-2015, Kaminskiy bought the Russian Interactive Bank and announced in interviews in the Russian media that he would invest $1 billion in the bank to make it the best in the world using artificial intelligence technology. A year later, the bank was bankrupt and its license had been revoked.

Days later, Prof Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program at Tel Aviv University, derided (Hebrew link) the sites findings as the mother of fake news, stressing that the rankings were not formal, official or credible.

Despite the many questions raised about Deep Knowledge Groups study, Netanyahu cited it yet again, unwittingly or otherwise, when tweeting on April 15 that Forbes Magazine had now also proclaimed Israel to be the safest place in the world vis-a-vis the coronavirus.

In fact, the Forbes.com article Netanyahu tweeted about, which was published April 13, was written by an executive at the very same Deep Knowledge Group that had authored the March 30 study: Margaretta Colangelo, a San Francisco-based co-founder of Deep Knowledge Group with an impressive resum that included membership in Women Techmakers at Google. Forbes subsequently made clear that it had not conducted any study of its own ranking countries safety in the battle against COVID-19.

Margaretta Colangelo, co-founder of Deep Knowledge Ventures (LinkedIn)

The article was labeled a Forbes Contributor submission. Forbes clarified [Hebrew link] on April 16 that this meant that the [coronavirus] study was published by an external entity and is not a ranking produced by Forbes.

A social media storm ensued, with Israeli supporters of Netanyahu claiming that the findings published in Forbes nevertheless come from a reputable and reliable source and that Forbes vetted its contributors, while detractors alleged that Deep Knowledge Group was a little-known entity that has managed to beef up its online presence through robust PR practices and that its findings lacked credibility and were repeatedly being hyped by Netanyahu to serve his own interests.

While some social media critics questioned Colangelos and DKGs credibility, others rallied to her and her companys defense.

I work at Google, and the name Margaretta Colangelo does not come up in connection with our company, wrote a Facebook poster on April 16.

Guy Levy, a public relations professional and former spokesman for acting Justice Minister Amir Ohana, shot back, Are you in senior management? Because I assume if you are a programmer or even a team leader you would know nothing about Googles work on public health issues.

Levy also claimed in a viral April 15 post that the reputation and credentials of Deep Knowledge Group and Margaretta Colangelo should lay to rest any doubts about the validity of the study.

He added that Deep Knowledge Group has partnered with scientists at Oxford and Cambridge universities.

He said that Margaretta Colangelo is a world expert in her field. She was manager of medical high-tech companies in Silicon Valley for 30 years and among other roles she sits on the board of directors or advises dozens of companies and leading international bodies in the field.

A text message from Margaretta Colangelo to Israeli PR professional Guy Levy (Facebook)

A day later, Levy posted a text message he had received from Colangelo herself in which she enumerated her credentials, Dmitry Kaminskiy and I have written over 100 articles on AI and DeepTech which have been published in Forbes, in MIT Technology Review Italia, Health Management Journal, Asian Robotics Review, The American Journal of Translational Medicine and Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine, and we publish 3 newsletters with over 25,000 subscribers on DeepTech, AI and FinTech, he quoted Colangelo as saying. Im also on the Advisory Board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawaii Cancer Centerand on the Advisory Board of the Longevity AI Consortium at Kings College London.

A perusal of Colangelos LinkedIn profile reveals that a large number of the companies and organizations with which she is associated appear to be either subsidiaries or sister companies of Deep Knowledge Group, or startups or nonprofits that have been beneficiaries of its largesse.

Thus, according to Colangelos LinkedIn profile, she is the co-founder of Deep Knowledge Ventures, Longevity Capital, Longevity Bank, Aging Analytics Agency, and Deep Knowledge Analytics, all of which have overlapping owners and/or employees with Deep Knowledge Group.

Meanwhile, the Longevity AI Consortium at Kings College London, where she is an adviser, is funded by her own companies, Deep Knowledge Ventures and Aging Analytics Agency, among others.

A chart prepared by the Deep Knowledge Group still showing Israel as the worlds safest country during the coronavirus pandemic on April 7, 2020 (Screenshot)

The Biogerentology Research Foundation, a British nonprofit founded by Colangelos partner Kaminskiy, has sponsored joint activities with student clubs at Oxford and Cambridge universities, including the Oxford University Scientific Society, the Oxford Longevity Society and the Cambridge Longevity Society.

Colangelo did in fact publish an article, translated from her LinkedIn page, in MIT Technology Review Italia. Some of the other publications where she said she has been published, like Asian Robotics Review and The American Journal of Translational Medicine, appear to be obscure journals with a very limited web presence.

Prior to Deep Knowledge Group, Colangelos LinkedIn profile shows that since 2007 she has been president of U1 Technologies, a company that provides the communications infrastructure for stock trading platforms used by the worlds top multinational investment banks.

An internet search shows that in February 2017 U1 Technologies bid on a contract to build a prototype of US President Donald Trumps proposed border wall with Mexico.

Although it is not mentioned on her LinkedIn profile, Colangelo was described online as recently as 2015 as the CEO of The Delian Group. The Delian Group is a private intelligence company owned by a former CIA intelligence officer named William Ross Newland III, whose services include intelligence operations, intelligence collection, cutting edge security technology, cyber security, cyber operations, social media monitoring, threat detection, political and economic reporting and law enforcement training for clients that include multinational companies, intelligence services, police, military, financial institutions, emergency services, and the mining and energy sectors.

According to Intelligence Online, The Delian Groups owner was also a partner in the private intelligence firm TD International, which reportedly caters to many clients from the former Soviet Union.

The Times of Israel sent questions to Colangelo, asking her about the methodology behind the DKG ranking that placed Israel as the worlds safest country at the end of March and continues to do so even as Israel was statistically about 27th in the world in deaths per capita from the virus as of this weekend and how she thinks the ranking came to Netanyahus attention. We also asked about the background and activities of Deep Knowledge Group and where its money comes from. She had not responded as of publication of this article.

Deep Knowledge Groups other co-founder, Dmitry Kaminskiy, first appeared in the media in 2014. English-language publications from the time do not reveal much about him, but an August 2014 article in Russias Ekspert business weekly described Kaminskiy as an IT specialist involved in banking analytics who recently became interested in futurology and life extension science and had decided to invest in the cancer research of two promising Russian scientists, Anton Buzdin and Alex Zhavoronkov.

Dmitry is also one of those active young people who are interested in many things. And at first he was fascinated by futurologists and fans of artificial intelligence.But, as it turned out a little later, he was even more attracted to the life sciences. He began to develop his horizons in this direction.

Dmitry Kaminskiy (Facebook)

Buzdin and Zhavoronkov were also supported by the state-funded Skolkovo Foundation, making Kaminskiy a co-investor with the Russian government in their cancer research venture. In 2014, the FBIs Boston office warned that the Skolkovo Foundation, a Russian-government-backed innovation fund, was investing in US-based technology firms in order to steal their intellectual property.

The FBI recently released a notification to technology companies and research facilities, which include colleges and universities in the Boston area, warning them of the possible perils of entering into joint partnerships with foreign venture capital firms from Russia, special agent Lucia Ziobro wrote.

According to the Ekspert article, Kaminskiy founded Deep Knowledge Ventures, a venture capital firm, in Hong Kong in 2014, saying he planned to raise money from wealthy Chinese and Russian investors. He said he planned to invest $100 million in life-extension technologies around the world by the end of 2015.

I thought [Hong Kong] was a very favorable place. There is a huge concentration of scientists and extremely wealthy people who are inclined not only to traditional, but also to progressive investments.It has strong legislation and powerful financial institutions, Kaminskiy told Ekspert.

Kaminskiy also founded two nonprofits in Moscow: the Center for Biogerontology and Regenerative Medicine, which develops new methods of treating cancer and anti-aging, as well as the Fund for Supporting Advanced Biotechnologies.

In March of 2019, several companies owned by Kaminskiy published a 577-page report entitled Longevity in Israel, mapping Israels biotech industry, including names and detailed descriptions of hundreds of companies and entrepreneurs.

The study quotes Netanyahu on page 50 regarding a plan to digitize the health records of Israels nearly nine million citizens and open the data up to researchers and entrepreneurs, including people from abroad.

The government is planning to invest in local entrepreneurs and attract foreign investors so that they could come and invest in the country through the data that has been examined and collected by the Israel doctors in their clinics, the report stated.

As the Times of Israel has reported, in March 2018 the Israeli government approved a National Digital Health Plan that would create a digital database of the medical files of some 9 million residents and make them available to researchers and enterprises. Despite assurances that the government would protect Israelis data, privacy advocates warned that the data could be abused. The program is currently in a pilot stage, with the government subsidizing startups that use health data in an innovative way.

Its estimated that almost 98% of the population has been examined and documented on a special digital platform for years now, said the longevity study, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the Israeli database is a huge asset and we want to give it to researchers, developers and companies. The interest of global companies is tremendous. Ive already met many.

Moldovas President Igor Dodon delivers a brief statement, next to Parliament Speaker Zinaida Greceanii, after a meeting of the countrys Supreme Security Council in Chisinau, Moldova, June 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Roveliu Buga)

According to the Moldovan newspaper Ziarul de Garda, in February 2018, Dmitrii Kaminskiy was chosen to be one of several economic advisers to Moldovan president Igor Dodon.

A source familiar with the Russian economy and Russian business told The Times of Israel that while Kaminskiy has been described as an oligarch in various Russian and English-language publications, he is not a well-known figure in Russia.

According to Harvard University anthropology professor Anya Bernstein, in Russia the effort to lengthen human life through technology is not just an investment opportunity; its a utopian, quasi-religious movement. Bernstein is the author of a 2019 book entitled The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia.

Well before Silicon Valleys recent obsession with immortality, she wrote, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, in Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation that succeeded them, the theme of technologically enabled human immortality has been consistent across diverse intellectual circles.

Kaminskiy and other longevity enthusiasts have been active organizing politically, advocating for government investment in and promotion of biotech, artificial intelligence, fintech and blockchain initiatives that will supposedly promote longer lifespans.

Thus in the UK, Kaminskiy helps sponsor the All Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity, while in Israel, Kaminskiys close associate and co-author of his 577-page report on the Israeli Longevity Industry, Ilia Stambler, claims he has been influential in drafting the Knessets masterplan on aging. Kaminskiy and Stambler were both advisers for an initial coin offering of a longevity token for an app designed to promote health and fitness, anti-aging, and personalized health diagnostics.

Stambler, a Moldova-born Israeli who is the director of Research and Development at Shmuel Harofe Geriatric Medical Center in Beer Yaakov, Israel, is the head of the Israel Longevity Alliance and Vetek, the Movement for Longevity and Quality of Life in Israel, which are part of a Russian umbrella organization called the International Longevity Alliance that has chapters in 60 countries, according to the organizations website.

Ilia Stambler (left) and Dmitry Kaminskiy (Facebook)

A third of the funding of the Israel Longevity Alliance/Vetek comes from a Gibraltar-based company known as Media Tower Limited. According to Gibraltars corporate registry, Media Tower Ltd. is 99.9 % owned by Finsbury Nominees Limited and 0.1% owned by Finsbury Holdings Limited. The identity of Media Tower Ltds ultimate beneficial owner is a mystery.

An internet search reveals that Media Tower Limited is an IT Support, Web Development and SEO company based in London that appears to have nothing to do with Israel. It is run by a Latvian man named Helmuts Meskonis who also owns, in partnership with a Russian man named Pavel Sizov, a company known as VLSA that provides clients with a prestigious London address even when they are located elsewhere.

Any UK-registered business and almost all international businesses can get a premium W1 central London business correspondence address from VLSA, the site says. We see ourselves as Swiss-like private and secure business service provider.

Netanyahu is not the only Israeli politician who has been promoting the Deep Knowledge Group study. On April 15, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman issued a statement to the press saying Forbes Magazine has ranked Israel as the safest country from the coronavirus, and in eighth place in terms of the effectiveness of our response. This could not have happened without the dedication of doctors, nurses and everyone doing the holy work of the health system.

Israels leading television news show, N12, also reported the Forbes ranking on its homepage on April 15, before removing the article after being ridiculed on social media and after learning that the Forbes article had not been produced by the magazine itself but was a contributed piece by a co-founder of Deep Knowledge Group.

On April 16, Moshe Yaalon MK, the former Likud defense minister who is now a prominent adversary of Netanyahus, dismissed the ranking and the prime ministers repeated references to it: Israel is the safest in the world? he scoffed in a Channel 12 interview. Its a lie and a fraud.

The criticism may have affected the prime minister as well.

On Saturday night, April 18, when Netanyahu most recently addressed Israelis on national television, he did not cite the Deep Knowledge Group study. Instead, he said, more vaguely, among the developed countries, the OECD member states, Israel is ranked very high in dealing with the coronavirus. The per capita mortality rate in Israel is among the lowest in the OECD. The mortality rate among the sick in Israel is among the lowest in the OECD.

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Behind PM-cited study showing Israel is safest place, a rabbit hole of weirdness - The Times of Israel

]]> To build the digital twin, engineers at Akselos needed to collect all available data on the gigantic asset which could then be used to create a 3D rendered structural digital model. Credit: Joe King

Originally designed in the 1960s, with engineering work completed in the 1970s, the Turlough Hill hydroelectric power station in Ireland is reaching the end of its design life.

However, the plant, which is the only pumped storage station in Ireland, is still a key asset for its owner and operator ESB and helps stabilise the local grid at times of peak demand.

Keen to explore ways to potentially extend the power stations life, in October last year ESB brought in software provider Akselos to create a digital view of the asset.

Using its predictive and digital design technology, Akselos has created a detailed digital twin of the Turlough plant and is working on building a Digital Guardian of the asset which Akselos says can extend its useful life by up to twenty years.

Located approximately 60km south of Dublin in the Wicklow Mountains, the Turlough Hill hydroelectric power station generates 292MW during peak demand periods by releasing water from its upper reservoir and allowing it to flow through its four turbines into a lower reservoir.

During periods of lower demand the water is pumped back to the upper reservoir ready to be used again.

The energy storage that Turlough provides is increasingly important in the changing energy ecosystem, which is moving towards more flexibility to incorporate renewables. But due to its age and size, ESB does not know how much structural life the hydro plant has left and whether its operations can be made more responsive in the future.

As part of the Free Electrons Accelerator Programme an initiative to connect startups with energy utilities to support and foster innovation ESB was introduced to Akselos to help find some answers.

The challenge for ESB is how to continue to operate and on what basis? Thats what the digital twin can help answer, says AndrewYoung,Akselos VP of projects and delivery.

To build the digital twin, engineers at Akselos needed to collect all available data on the gigantic asset which could then be used to create a 3D rendered structural digital model.

This task was made harder, however, by the lack of available digital information. Akselos engineers had to work with paper records only, which put the project behind by two months. In total, it took five months to complete.

To build the model, it was key to establish the geometries, interactions and stresses in the plant system to create an intuitive heat map. The map can show when and what tensions are running through the power station and direct maintenance inspections to specific areas of concern, rather than just doing a random walk through.

The digital twin is essentially a tool with which ESB can simulate many parameters around the day to day operation of the plant and visually pan through the entire structure and see how it reacts.

Our technology allows maintenance engineers to really pinpoint, using rules of science and engineering, where the issues will likely occur and we can also establish what the operational life is in terms of fatigue assessment. It also supports predictive maintenance, says Young.

An inspection can cost around 3-5m, through a combination of lost production and penalties for down time, so the technology can potentially save companies money.

Young estimates the CAPEX invested for Akselos digital twin technology by a utility can be recouped within a three year period, just on the basis of improved inspection. Furthermore, he says it can provide a 20-50% life extension.

Predictive maintenance is not new. Bigger companies such as ABB and GE also offer this technology; so what makes Akselos offering different?

According to Young, existing predictive maintenance modelling and applications typically use asset management tools to achieve around 30% predictive. However, Akselos add a scientifically based structural integrity component.

We can simulate future events because of the nature of our physics-based twin, whereas what other companies are doing is assessing the probability of a known and identified defect reoccurring, explains Young.

Essentially, Akselos software assesses and identifies the risk of any type of failure based on the structural assessment; a fault doesnt have to already be pre-identified.

A GE report notes that structural integrity provides a 90% predictive capability, so we believe it is actually complementary to what companies like GE are doing, but gives a higher level of understanding of the asset, he adds.

In fact, Young says the company is currently in the assessment phase of several projects with OEMs, which he cant name, on integrating Akselos technology within their offering.

These companies are starting to offer digital twins with every piece of kit they sell, and in the future, if they deliver a twelve-megawatt wind farm, it will have Akselos software inside, running as par of their predictive capability offering, says Young.

Now the digital twin of the Turlough Hill hydroelectric power station is built, the next stage of the project would be to create a Digital Guardian, says Young. To do this, engineers will connect specially placed sensors to get a real time picture of what is happening in the hydro plant. This is expected to be planned for the next maintenance window.

Through the models, ESB will look to assess different modes of operation that might better work alongside renewables, such as storing electricity at different times of the day.

An additional model of operation could be pumping in the daytime to store power when its needed, in addition to at night, as renewable energy sources are changing the dynamics of energy supply and pricing, explains Young.

This means rather than having one cycle a day, the plant might have two or more. However, Turlough wasnt designed to operate in this way, therefore ESB needs to understand what the impact might be on the structure. These factors, added to aging asset management risks, could increase inspection frequencies and costs or even require a significant CAPEX project.

Using Akselos technology, Young says there is no reason why the life of the asset could not be extended another 20 years.

I dont think ESB came on board just to do a pilot, I think the company is really interested in this technology and how they can apply it to different assets, says Young.

Adopting the innovation is largely about adapting to the changing energy ecosystem sooner rather than later, and becoming more efficient and more cost effective in the process.

Legacy assets still have to be managed for some years despite the energy transition, and theyre looking for cost effective ways to do this, says Young.

The utility industry is one of the first to encounter huge disruption and ESB is adapting to it extremely well by applying innovation to find new business models, this is what were hoping to do.

Read more:
Inside the world's first digital twin of a hydroelectric power station - Power Technology

The decline in economic activity precipitated by the spread of COVID-19 and ensuing lockdown in South Africa is also affecting the countrys electricity supply dynamics. The power outages that were disrupting the economy just a month earlier are suddenly contained. Electricity demand in the lockdown period has decreased by about 7,500MW, corresponding to almost a quarter of its normal peak capacity.

Given that Eskom, the national power utility, is using the lockdown period for some of its regular plant maintenance routines, more reliable supply can be expected in the latter part of the year. Electricity demand is likely to remain suppressed after the lockdown but this relief wont extend for more than a few months.

The utility has had some success in keeping many of its vulnerable generating plants operational, and is adopting a more rigorous maintenance regime. But electricity production capacity remains critically low.

When the country finally emerges from COVID-19, it will face a severely damaged economy requiring a massive rebuild. The electricity supply shortage will once again rear its head.

Some help could be provided by renewable energy projects scheduled to come on stream this year.

These include 12 solar farms and 12 wind farms. The first two developments were completed in February.

Construction for these plants was initiated in 2018 following the leadership change in the ruling African National Congress, after a three-year delay.

While the 2,177MW of power provided by these 24 new solar and wind projects appears to be substantial, one must remember that this output corresponds to optimal generating conditions (fresh winds and an overhead sun). In reality, in view of variable weather conditions and the day/night cycle, these plants produce roughly the same amount of electricity as just one of the six units of a large coal plant such as Duvha running non-stop. This is less than the 1,000MW that corresponds to stage one of loadshedding (the phased limitation of supply).

Its therefore essential to expedite the process leading to the development of more generation capacity beyond those currently under construction.

One important hurdle that has been cleared is the adoption of the updated Integrated Resource Plan for electricity last year. This blueprint, which is supposed to be revised every two years, had previously not been updated since 2011.

Several drafts had been produced in the interim, but none were adopted by government. This was presumably because these interim drafts recommended an energy mix that excluded any new nuclear build, a programme that the administration of former president Jacob Zuma was strongly in favour of.

The now official Integrated Resource Plan envisages the steady growth of the renewable energy fraction at the expense of old coal plants, which would gradually be decommissioned.

In particular, the plan would add 1,600MW of wind power each year from 2022 to 2030, as well 6,000MW of new solar energy for that period (starting with 1,000MW in 2022).

Also envisaged for this nine-year time span are two new 750MW coal plants, with the first up and running in 2023, a total of 3,000MW from gas plants (the first of which is supposed to be operational in 2024), and 2,500MW from the Grand Inga dam on the Congo river.

Some relief of the power shortages will come from the presently partly operational Medupi and Kusile megaprojects, whose much-postponed commissioning is expected in the coming few years, and the planned life extension of the Koeberg nuclear plant (which will however not provide extra capacity). But these measures wont suffice to mitigate the closures of the old coal plants.

Some of the new builds are already in doubt. The Grand Inga project, tentatively scheduled for completion in 2030, is facing serious challenges. The future of the newly planned coal plants is also in question. As a primary driver of global warming, coal power is being increasingly maligned, and a large number of potential funding agencies now have policies not to support any coal project. That means that, at least in the medium term, newly initiated projects will be restricted to renewable energy and gas.

Solar and wind projects have a short construction time. The challenge is the regulatory and administrative hurdles that must be cleared before a project can go ahead. These relate to bid submission, review and selection, financial closure and signing of contracts with Eskom. Before the stalling of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme in 2015, the time between the bidding call and plant commissioning was typically three years. That would make the projected 2022 completion date for the next batch or projects practically unachievable.

There are also concerns that the government and the electricity regulator arent demonstrating the required urgency to kickstart a new round of projects. Renewables are perceived as a direct threat to the coal industry, and trade unions allied to the governing party organising in the coal sector are particularly anxious about the inevitable energy transition. Theres also a feeling in some quarters that the mining and energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, a former mining sector unionist, is siding with the coal sector.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Mantashe has just issued two determinations for the procurement of considerable additional power generating capacity.

The first determination is for 2,000MW of emergency power of any technology. Its 2022 completion deadline cannot realistically be met by new builds, so it remains to be seen if the targeted capacity can be achieved by innovative short-term solutions, such as increasing the maximum capacity of existing plants.

The second determination is guided by the Integrated Resource Plan 2019: 4,800MW wind and 2,000MW solar required between 2022 and 2024, 3,000MW gas and 1,500MW coal up to 2027 and 513MW in storage capacity. With several procedural steps still required that show no sign of being expedited, its unlikely that proposals for new power plants will be requested before much later this year.

These plants will then most likely only become operational in late 2023, meaning that the power system will remain vulnerable until then.

Read this article:
Power shortages will remain a big challenge in a post-COVID-19 South Africa - The Conversation Africa

The report comes out as an intelligent and thorough assessment tool as well as a great resource that will help you to secure a position of strength in the global Magnolia Bark Extract market. It includes Porters Five Forces and PESTLE analysis to equip your business with critical information and comparative data about the Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market. We have provided deep analysis of the vendor landscape to give you a complete picture of current and future competitive scenarios of the global Magnolia Bark Extract market. Our analysts use the latest primary and secondary research techniques and tools to prepare comprehensive and accurate market research reports. They have also provided accurate data on Magnolia Bark Extract production, capacity, price, cost, margin, and revenue to help the players gain a clear understanding into the overall existing and future market situation.

Key companies operating in the global Magnolia Bark Extract market include : , Swanson, Samsara herbs, Genesis Today, Planetary Herbals, Solaray, Active Herb, LiftMode, Life Extension, thepurehealth, Hawaii Pharm LLC, Piping Rock Health Products, Now Foods Source Naturals

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Each segment of the global Magnolia Bark Extract market is extensively evaluated in the research study. The segmental analysis offered in the report pinpoints key opportunities available in the global Magnolia Bark Extract market through leading segments. The regional study of the global Magnolia Bark Extract market included in the report helps readers to gain a sound understanding of the development of different geographical markets in recent years and also going forth. We have provided a detailed study on the critical dynamics of the global Magnolia Bark Extract market, which include the market influence and market effect factors, drivers, challenges, restraints, trends, and prospects. The research study also includes other types of analysis such as qualitative and quantitative.

Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market: Competitive Rivalry

The chapter on company profiles studies the various companies operating in the global Magnolia Bark Extract market. It evaluates the financial outlooks of these companies, their research and development statuses, and their expansion strategies for the coming years. Analysts have also provided a detailed list of the strategic initiatives taken by the Magnolia Bark Extract market participants in the past few years to remain ahead of the competition.

Key players cited in the report

, Swanson, Samsara herbs, Genesis Today, Planetary Herbals, Solaray, Active Herb, LiftMode, Life Extension, thepurehealth, Hawaii Pharm LLC, Piping Rock Health Products, Now Foods Source Naturals

Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market: Type Segments

, Solid Form, Powder Form

Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market: Application Segments

, Pharmaceutical, Food and Beverages, Others

Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market: Regional Segments

The chapter on regional segmentation details the regional aspects of the global Magnolia Bark Extract market. This chapter explains the regulatory framework that is likely to impact the overall market. It highlights the political scenario in the market and the anticipates its influence on the global Magnolia Bark Extract market.

The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries and Egypt) North America (the United States, Mexico, and Canada) South America (Brazil etc.) Europe (Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) Asia-Pacific (Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia)

Key questions answered in the report:

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents 1 Magnolia Bark Extract Market Overview1.1 Magnolia Bark Extract Product Overview1.2 Magnolia Bark Extract Market Segment by Type1.2.1 Solid Form1.2.2 Powder Form1.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Type (2015-2026)1.3.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size Overview by Type (2015-2026)1.3.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Historic Market Size Review by Type (2015-2020)1.3.2.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.3.2.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.3.2.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Average Selling Price (ASP) by Type (2015-2026)1.3.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size Forecast by Type (2021-2026)1.3.3.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share Breakdown by Application (2021-2026)1.3.3.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share Breakdown by Application (2021-2026)1.3.3.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Average Selling Price (ASP) by Application (2021-2026)1.4 Key Regions Market Size Segment by Type (2015-2020)1.4.1 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.4.2 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.4.4 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Breakdown by Type (2015-2026)1.4.5 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Breakdown by Type (2015-2026) 2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Competition by Company2.1 Global Top Players by Magnolia Bark Extract Sales (2015-2020)2.2 Global Top Players by Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue (2015-2020)2.3 Global Top Players Magnolia Bark Extract Average Selling Price (ASP) (2015-2020)2.4 Global Top Manufacturers Magnolia Bark Extract Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product Type2.5 Magnolia Bark Extract Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Magnolia Bark Extract Market Concentration Rate (2015-2020)2.5.2 Global 5 and 10 Largest Manufacturers by Magnolia Bark Extract Sales and Revenue in 20192.6 Global Top Manufacturers by Company Type (Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3) (based on the Revenue in Magnolia Bark Extract as of 2019)2.7 Date of Key Manufacturers Enter into Magnolia Bark Extract Market2.8 Key Manufacturers Magnolia Bark Extract Product Offered2.9 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion 3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Status and Outlook by Region (2015-2026)3.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size and CAGR by Region: 2015 VS 2020 VS 20263.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size Market Share by Region (2015-2020)3.2.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Region (2015-2020)3.2.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Region (2015-2020)3.2.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)3.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size Market Share by Region (2021-2026)3.3.1 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Region (2021-2026)3.3.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Region (2021-2026)3.3.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2021-2026)3.4 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.4.1 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.4.2 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.5 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.5.1 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.5.2 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Sales YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.6 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.6.1 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.6.2 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Sales YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.7 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.7.1 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.7.2 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.8 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.8.1 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue YoY Growth (2015-2026)3.8.2 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Sales YoY Growth (2015-2026) 4 Global Magnolia Bark Extract by Application4.1 Magnolia Bark Extract Segment by Application4.1.1 Pharmaceutical4.1.2 Food and Beverages4.1.3 Others4.2 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Sales by Application: 2015 VS 2020 VS 20264.3 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Historic Sales by Application (2015-2020)4.4 Global Magnolia Bark Extract Forecasted Sales by Application (2021-2026)4.5 Key Regions Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Application4.5.1 North America Magnolia Bark Extract by Application4.5.2 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract by Application4.5.3 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract by Application4.5.4 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract by Application4.5.5 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract by Application 5 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Country (2015-2026)5.1 North America Market Size Market Share by Country (2015-2020)5.1.1 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2015-2020)5.1.2 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2015-2020)5.2 North America Market Size Market Share by Country (2021-2026)5.2.1 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2021-2026)5.2.2 North America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2021-2026)5.3 North America Market Size YoY Growth by Country5.3.1 U.S. Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)5.3.2 Canada Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026) 6 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Country (2015-2026)6.1 Europe Market Size Market Share by Country (2015-2020)6.1.1 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2015-2020)6.1.2 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2015-2020)6.2 Europe Market Size Market Share by Country (2021-2026)6.2.1 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2021-2026)6.2.2 Europe Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2021-2026)6.3 Europe Market Size YoY Growth by Country6.3.1 Germany Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)6.3.2 France Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)6.3.3 U.K. Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)6.3.4 Italy Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)6.3.5 Russia Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026) 7 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Country (2015-2026)7.1 Asia-Pacific Market Size Market Share by Country (2015-2020)7.1.1 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2015-2020)7.1.2 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2015-2020)7.2 Asia-Pacific Market Size Market Share by Country (2021-2026)7.2.1 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2021-2026)7.2.2 Asia-Pacific Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2021-2026)7.3 Asia-Pacific Market Size YoY Growth by Country7.3.1 China Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.2 Japan Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.3 South Korea Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.4 India Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.5 Australia Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.6 Taiwan Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.7 Indonesia Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.8 Thailand Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.9 Malaysia Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.10 Philippines Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)7.3.11 Vietnam Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026) 8 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Country (2015-2026)8.1 Latin America Market Size Market Share by Country (2015-2020)8.1.1 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2015-2020)8.1.2 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2015-2020)8.2 Latin America Market Size Market Share by Country (2021-2026)8.2.1 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2021-2026)8.2.2 Latin America Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2021-2026)8.3 Latin America Market Size YoY Growth by Country8.3.1 Mexico Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)8.3.2 Brazil Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)8.3.3 Argentina Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026) 9 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size by Country (2015-2026)9.1 Middle East and Africa Market Size Market Share by Country (2015-2020)9.1.1 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2015-2020)9.1.2 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2015-2020)9.2 Middle East and Africa Market Size Market Share by Country (2021-2026)9.2.1 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Sales Market Share by Country (2021-2026)9.2.2 Middle East and Africa Magnolia Bark Extract Revenue Market Share by Country (2021-2026)9.3 Middle East and Africa Market Size YoY Growth by Country9.3.1 Turkey Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)9.3.2 Saudi Arabia Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026)9.3.3 U.A.E Magnolia Bark Extract Market Size YoY Growth (2015-2026) 10 Company Profiles and Key Figures in Magnolia Bark Extract Business10.1 Swanson10.1.1 Swanson Corporation Information10.1.2 Swanson Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.1.3 Swanson Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.1.4 Swanson Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.1.5 Swanson Recent Development10.2 Samsara herbs10.2.1 Samsara herbs Corporation Information10.2.2 Samsara herbs Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.2.3 Samsara herbs Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.2.5 Samsara herbs Recent Development10.3 Genesis Today10.3.1 Genesis Today Corporation Information10.3.2 Genesis Today Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.3.3 Genesis Today Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.3.4 Genesis Today Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.3.5 Genesis Today Recent Development10.4 Planetary Herbals10.4.1 Planetary Herbals Corporation Information10.4.2 Planetary Herbals Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.4.3 Planetary Herbals Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.4.4 Planetary Herbals Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.4.5 Planetary Herbals Recent Development10.5 Solaray10.5.1 Solaray Corporation Information10.5.2 Solaray Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.5.3 Solaray Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.5.4 Solaray Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.5.5 Solaray Recent Development10.6 Active Herb10.6.1 Active Herb Corporation Information10.6.2 Active Herb Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.6.3 Active Herb Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.6.4 Active Herb Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.6.5 Active Herb Recent Development10.7 LiftMode10.7.1 LiftMode Corporation Information10.7.2 LiftMode Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.7.3 LiftMode Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.7.4 LiftMode Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.7.5 LiftMode Recent Development10.8 Life Extension10.8.1 Life Extension Corporation Information10.8.2 Life Extension Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.8.3 Life Extension Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.8.4 Life Extension Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.8.5 Life Extension Recent Development10.9 thepurehealth10.9.1 thepurehealth Corporation Information10.9.2 thepurehealth Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.9.3 thepurehealth Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.9.4 thepurehealth Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.9.5 thepurehealth Recent Development10.10 Hawaii Pharm LLC10.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.10.2 Magnolia Bark Extract Product Category, Application and Specification10.10.3 Hawaii Pharm LLC Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.10.4 Main Business Overview10.10.5 Hawaii Pharm LLC Recent Development10.11 Piping Rock Health Products10.11.1 Piping Rock Health Products Corporation Information10.11.2 Piping Rock Health Products Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.11.3 Piping Rock Health Products Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.11.4 Piping Rock Health Products Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.11.5 Piping Rock Health Products Recent Development10.12 Now Foods Source Naturals10.12.1 Now Foods Source Naturals Corporation Information10.12.2 Now Foods Source Naturals Description, Business Overview and Total Revenue10.12.3 Now Foods Source Naturals Magnolia Bark Extract Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin (2015-2020)10.12.4 Now Foods Source Naturals Magnolia Bark Extract Products Offered10.12.5 Now Foods Source Naturals Recent Development 11 Magnolia Bark Extract Upstream, Opportunities, Challenges, Risks and Influences Factors Analysis11.1 Magnolia Bark Extract Key Raw Materials11.1.1 Key Raw Materials11.1.2 Key Raw Materials Price11.1.3 Raw Materials Key Suppliers11.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure11.2.1 Raw Materials11.2.2 Labor Cost11.2.3 Manufacturing Expenses11.3 Magnolia Bark Extract Industrial Chain Analysis11.4 Market Opportunities, Challenges, Risks and Influences Factors Analysis11.4.1 Market Opportunities and Drivers11.4.2 Market Challenges11.4.3 Market Risks11.4.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis 12 Market Strategy Analysis, Distributors12.1 Sales Channel12.2 Distributors12.3 Downstream Customers 13 Research Findings and Conclusion 14 Appendix14.1 Methodology/Research Approach14.1.1 Research Programs/Design14.1.2 Market Size Estimation14.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation14.2 Data Source14.2.1 Secondary Sources14.2.2 Primary Sources14.3 Author Details14.4 Disclaimer

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Read more:
Magnolia Bark Extract Market Overview With Detailed Analysis, Competitive Landscape, Forecast to 2026|Swanson, Samsara herbs - Jewish Life News

Hydro-Electric Projects face a number of hurdles, both naturaland man-made. The major natural hurdles encountered in hydro-electric power projects are natural calamities (such as earthquake, flood),geological uncertainties, difficult terrain, land slide, poor accessibility, etc.

The examples of man-made hurdles are land acquisition problems,local agitations / resistance including Rehabilitation & Resettlement issues,delay in various statutory clearances viz. Environment and Forest Clearances, Contractual problems, Funds constraints with Developers /Contractors, Inter-State disputes, Court / various Tribunals such as National Green Tribunal (NGT) cases, etc.

The following steps have been taken by the Government to address these hurdles:

Central Electricity Authority (CEA) monitors the progress of under construction power projects through frequent site visits and interaction with the developers and equipment suppliers. CEA holdsreview meetings periodically with the developers and otherstakeholders to identify and resolve issues critical for commissioning of Projects.

Regular reviews are also undertaken in Ministry of Power to identify the constraints areas and facilitate faster resolution of inter-ministerial and other outstanding issues.

A Power Project Monitoring Panel (PPMP), set up by the Ministry of Power, independently monitors the progress of the Projects.

Progress of selected Projects are also reviewed by the Honble Prime Minister through the PRAGATI meetings, as and whenrequired.

In case of Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs), the projectimplementation parameters / milestones are incorporated in the MoU signed every year between respective CPSUs and MoP and the sameare monitored during the Quarterly Performance Review (QPR) meetings of CPSUs and other meetings held in MoP/ CEA.

Elaborated guidelines dated 8 November, 2019 have been issued by Government of India to avoid time and cost overrun in Hydro ElectricProjects.

Following steps have been taken by the Government to enhanceproduction capacity of Hydro-Electric Projects:

Renovation & Modernisation, Uprating and Life Extension (RMU&LE) of the existing old Hydro-Electric Projects to augment(uprating) capacity addition in the country.

Government has taken several policy initiatives in the past to give a boost to hydro power development in the country viz.,National Electricity Policy 2005, Hydro Power Policy 2008, TariffPolicy, 2016, etc.

Govt. of India in March, 2019 approved a number of measures for promoting hydropower in the country and improving viability ofthe Sector. These include:

Declaring Large Hydro Power (LHPs) (> 25 MW projects) as Renewable Energy source.

Hydro Purchase Obligation

Tariff rationalization measures

Budgetary Support for Flood Moderation/Storage Hydro Electric Projects (HEPs).

Budgetary Support towards Cost of Enabling Infrastructure, i.e. roads/bridges.

Original post:
Production Capacity of Hydro Projects - Energy Sector News in India

The US Department of Agriculture recently reached out to stakeholders in the dietary supplement industry to measure the toll coronavirus has taken on businesses. In response, the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) surveyed their members on disruptions they may be experiencing. CRN identified a number of supply chain challenges such as shipment delays, shortages and increased pricing.

CRN gathered and summarized member responses and responded to officials at USDA and FEMA to the potential and existing supply chain disruptions related to coronavirus. According to their report, CRN members identified biotin in China in short supply, high in price and a long lead time due to the shutdown.

NutraIngredients-USA spoke with several firms in the industry, who weighed in on how their biotin supply has been impacted. The impact has affected everyone differently, ranging from little to no disruption to heavy impacts on business.

Vincent Tian, chief executive officer & founder at NutriVitaShop, didnt go into detail, but said they are seeing a shortage of several ingredients, including biotin.

A number of companies reported that theyre seeing higher price tags, including Connie Richter, VP of purchasing for Life Extension. Biotin supply seems to be okay for now, but the price is increasing, apparently dramatically. Since this comes from China, most of the delays, if any, are on the transportation side, not necessarily the production side. Along with manufacturer price increases, the cost of freight has increased as well.

Rhodora Amazan-Gutierrez, Global Purchasing Manager, NOW, is also seeing higher prices. She shared that her company's biotin supply, which comes from China by way of sea, has been in short supply and at a significantly higher price. Our purchasing team has worked to ensure that we have plenty of stock.She said that NOW was fortune in highing inked their supply contracts before they saw prices jump.

According to Tony Xue, China General Manager at ingredientsonline.com, said the supply picture for biotin has been a chaotic one: Biotin has been unstable for years. Sometimes production is slow, and prices are stagnant, but sometimes prices skyrocket for the same reason. Xue added that one possible reason for this is because one of the main producers in China shut down production last year and no date to resume production has been announced.

Companies such as Lycored who rely on local ingredients may be better positioned to respond to the coronavirus situation as it evolves.

Tamie Green, Lycoreds customer experience director, reports the company has had a much different experience than many.

We are not anticipating any issues supplying our partners with Biotin. Our supply chain is fully back integrated and we are closely monitoring our levels of raw materials to ensure timely and smooth supply. Our production facility in the US is where we manufacture our vitamins and minerals, including Biotin. It is designated as an Essential Supplier and continues to operate in-line with personnel safety guidelines.

While China is beginning to get back on its feet, the backlash of the pandemic may be enough to push many American companies to restructure their supply chains so that if and when, they are prepared to withstand the impact of another pandemic.

Continued here:
Coronavirus: Spotlight on the biotin supply chain - NutraIngredients-usa.com

The Decadent Society:How We Became the Victimsof Our Own SuccessBy Ross DouthatAvid Reader Press,272 pagesReviewed by Wilfred M. McClay

Ross Douthats interesting but frustrating new book, The Decadent Society, puts me in mind of a famous Jewish joke. The scene opens with the wise and beloved old rabbi, lying on his deathbed. He is attended by a dozen or so of his students and disciples, all of whom are dutifully lined up in order of seniority, somberly awaiting the rabbis last words. Finally, the moment arrives. The rabbi opens his eyes, leans over to his side, and grants to his first and best student his parting declaration: Life isa river. Quickly, the first student passes the word along to the next student in line. The rabbi says life is a river. And then it is passed to the next: The rabbi says life is a river. And so it goes on down the line, until the message reaches the youngest of the entourage. He receives the news, ponders it for a moment, then naively responds, But what does the rabbi mean, life is a river? And so back up the line his question comes, one by one, until it reaches the most senior student, who feels obliged to pose the question, on behalf of the others. Rabbi, he asks, his voice nervous with apprehension, what do you mean, Life is a river? The rabbi closes his eyes to think.

He opens them. He looks over at his beloved student, shrugs his shoulders, raises his palms, and admits:

OK, so its not a river!

The experience of reading The Decadent Society is a bit like that. Its an engaging book by a smart and well-read journalist that ventures a considerable number of observations, generalizations, and predictions relating to our current condition and our civilizational prospects. It has moments of interpretive boldness. But it is also much too willing to back away from those assertions, and in fact often does so almost preemptively, even before we have a chance to challenge them. Like the rabbi in the joke, Douthat manages to do this with charm and a certain modesty. But what were left with is a book that, despite its many strengths, does not quite come off. The smart observations never expand into something broader. At almost every turn, where what one wants from a book of this kind are wise conclusions and plausible visions for the future, what one gets instead is a profusion of plausible scenarios and clever alternative plot outcomes.

The problem begins very early on. One comes to this book primed to read about our societys decadence, a word that may be hard to define with precision, but that is forever associated with moral decay and falling apart (it derives from the Latin decadere). Since we are surrounded these days by clear signs of late-Roman moral decay, it seems reasonable to expect that Douthat would talk about them. That expectation is reinforced by the books jacket design, a grotesque depiction of Rabelaiss Gargantua, who is gorging himself on the various delicacies of a sumptuous table while being attended by a retinue of servants, including a smiling man who is merrily defecating into a bowl on the tables corner.

But you cant judge a book by its cover, and it turns out that decadence in this book is defined as something far tamer and more respectable than the lurid jacket art would suggest. Douthat defines it as a condition of slowing growth or stasis, a pause or interlude in the flow of material and cultural innovation and expansive energy that has hitherto characterized the history of the West in general and the United States in particular. He defines the term this way, he explains, partly so that he can point to quantitative measures of decline, such as economic or demographic data, rather than speaking only in glittering and impressionistic generalities or cherry-picked examples. But such an approach may have the effect of defining out of consideration the most interesting questions about our decadence.

The book is carried along by a large but loose interpretive framework. Douthat draws upon the historian Frederick Jackson Turners claim that the existence of an unbroken frontier called the American national character into beingand goes on to extend this logic, as John F. Kennedy did, to the new frontier of space, whose conquest would ensure the persistence of the classic American traits. But with the effective end of the American space program after the triumphant Apollo moon landing in July 1969, Douthat writes, there began a closing of the frontiera shrinking of American horizons that would also entail a steady loss of inventiveness, creativity, productivity gains, population growth, and confidence in the future.

As an admirer of both Turner and the space program (in which my father worked, and through which my best friend from childhood became an astronaut), Im drawn toward this framing of history. But Im afraid that it is a bit too fanciful and forced, neglecting the inconvenient truth that much of the nation had other troubles on its mind in the summer of 1969 and was therefore not as enchanted with the moon landing as I was, partly because it had trouble envisioning the highly technocratic space programs search for frontiers as something it could claim as its own. Many my age took the contrary view articulated by Lewis Mumford, who dismissed the moon landing as the hasty exploration of a barren satellite. They regarded the chief value of our space exploration as the photographic glimpses it had given us, for the first time in human history, of our fragile blue planet as a lonely and stunning exception to the vast and hollow impersonality of space, and an eloquent rebuke to the delusion that modern technics would soon replace Mother Earth with a more perfect, scientifically organized, electronically controlled habitat.

Moving to the present day, it is not always clear whether or not Douthat regards our current condition as something to be seriously concerned about. To be sure, he organizes the book around the four horsemen of stagnation, sterility, sclerosis, and repetition, which sounds pretty apocalyptic. But he does not want the book to be morally judgmental, or to fall victim to the excesses of either catastrophic doom-saying or Panglossian optimism. Its not his style to get too hot under the collar. If there is a Jeremiah inside him struggling to get out, that fact is kept well concealed.

Perhaps our problems are merely the result of our success, and we are currently in a pause that refreshes. Or maybe not. Maybe we are in a state of sustainable decadence, something that could go on for years and years without serious interruption. Or maybe not. Maybe the election of Donald Trump has revealed the underlying instability of our decadence and opened the path to authoritarian doom. Or maybe Trump is more farcical that threatening, a feature of our decadence we can easily absorb. Whatever.

In his chapter entitled Stagnation, Douthat deals with the question of whether the Silicon Valley economy is real. Adducing examples like Elizabeth Holmess Theranos fraud and, a bit more speculatively, the lighter-than-air success of the universal but as yet unprofitable ride-sharing company Uber, the answer seems to be no. These two are prime examples of economic decadencewhat it looks like when an extraordinarily rich society cant find enough new ideas that justify investing all its stockpiled wealth. You might imagine from this description that Uber is in the pet-rock business, instead of a company providing complex, innovative, and immensely valuable services. But then were told that despite the stories Ive just told [about Theranos and Uber]many Silicon Valley institutions deserve their success, many tech companies have real customers and real revenue and a solid structure underneath. So which is it? Is the economy a river? Or not a river?

Some of the best parts of Douthats book come with his analysis of culture, and with the pattern of endless repetition that seems to characterize the world of ideas and the arts in recent years. About this, he is largely on target. In film, on Broadway, in popular music, in literature, in academia, and in a dozen other arenas, things seem to him to be stuck in what he calls a pattern of recurrence. We seem unable to imagine or produce fresh and innovative things, a fact that is surely connected, as is the chicken to the egg, to an inability of stodgy, incurious audiences to appreciate those fresh things when they come alongand also connected to the transformed economics of cultural production, which makes endless streaming of the same-old-same-old more attractive and profitable than the risk and expense of nurturing and embracing something new.

Hes also largely right that there seem to be very few new ideas in circulation, but instead a great deal of rehashing of the same-old intractable arguments about race, class, feminism, sexuality, poverty, environmentalism, socialism, capitalism, and so on, debates that were already running down well-worn tracks in the 1980s. He calls this the eternal return to 1975, and while there is some oversimplification involved, it is striking how often what he says turns out to be true. Those of us in academic life who look back to Yales Woodward Reportwhich happened to be issued in 1975as one of the most enduring defenses of free speech and free inquiry in the academy, have forgotten that the report concludes with a dissenting statement. It was written by a student committee member who objected to all the arguments the historian C. Vann Woodward had adduced for free inquiry, and offered a clear statement of the very same justifications for suppressing unwanted speech and shouting down of disagreeable ideas that increasingly prevail today. Add a few new buzz words, such as intersectionality, marginalization, and privilege, and the document would be right up to date.

So all the arguments and counterarguments were already out there. What has changed, though, is that today it is our university presidents who mouth the dissenters lines to appease their student protesters, while Woodwards ringing words, and the handful of faculty who still believe in them, are being ignored or forgotten. So plus a change is not quite the right maxim to apply here. About such developments, Douthat is characteristically ambiguous. Maybe, he speculates, woke progressivism will carry all before it in a way that the new left failed to do. Maybe the current recycling of New Age impulseswill deliver the West to some new post-Christian religious moment. Or maybe all these trends give an illusion of forward movement and momentum, when theyre actually bearing us ceaselessly back, back toward 1975. Or maybe something else. If you dont like these scenarios, he has others.

Douthat is insightful on the growing substitution of the virtual for the real, and how that substitution feeds a comfortable passivity, insulated from the requirements of action in the world. Hence the sense that we are polarized as never before coexists quite easily with the fact of our relative inactivity. He offers a withering passage that encompasses that paradox: If you want to feel like Western society is convulsing, theres an app for that, a convincing simulation waiting. But in the real world, nothing much is actually happening. Western society is really leaning back in an easy chair, hooked up to a drip of something soothing, playing and replaying an ideological greatest-hits tape from its wild and crazy youth, all riled up in its own imagination and yet, in reality, comfortably numb.

It is hard not to see in his description of such a condition an accusation of decadence in the familiar, morally charged sense of the word. And Douthat comes close to issuing a charged warning, a rude intrusion of actual reality, when he asks, How can a decadent society hope to avoid being challenged by more vigorous rivals, and ultimatelybeing subverted, dismantled, overthrown? His answer: It cant, and therefore were doomed, unless our enemies are even weaker and more decadent than we are. One wishes the book had more of that kind of realism.

The books concluding chapters, which explore possibilities of rebirth and renewal, continue to offer a multitude of possible avenues for us to follow. Perhaps the infusion of African cultural vitality into the moribund cultures of Europe will uplift and enliven them both, together. Perhaps some fabulous technological innovations, in energy, robotics, biotechnology, life extension, and of course space travel, Martian colonization, etc., will change everything. Perhaps there will be a revolution of localism, a disaggregation of the global grid. Perhaps there will be a worldwide religious revival, facilitated by a growing dissatisfaction with the limitations of secularism. Perhaps there will be a new paganism, or an unprecedented westernization of Islam. Perhaps there will be some hybridized version of some or all of these things, going on all at the same time!

In the end, Douthat seems to opt, albeit with his usual casualness, for a combination of scientific-technological advance and revitalized religious faith, concluding the book with, in its final sentence, what is probably its only command: So down on your kneesand start working on that warp drive. This is not a deliberately incoherent directive, since Douthat wants to insist that there can be a mysterious alchemy between science and religion, and he is not wrong to do so. The cultural power of that alchemy was well expressed when the three Apollo 8 astronauts read the text of Genesis 1:110 to the nation from space at Christmas of 1968. That such a crew would never be allowed to read such a thing today, and might not even want to do so, is surely a sign of our cultural decline, and in light of the space programs subsequent demise, perhaps indirect evidence of Douthats alchemy, too.

But there are reasons to be cautious about combining kneeling with that warp drive. Earlier in the book, Douthat mentions in passing Henry Adamss famous encounter with the great hall of dynamos, at the Paris Exposition of 1900. He reads Adamss description as an example of the technological sublime, the tendency of Americans to invest divine properties in certain technological achievements, such as the construction of the transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam, and the Golden Gate Bridge. But the passage itself, in which Adams writes of himself in the third person, gave voice to a far darker view of technologys religious claims:

To [an inventor of the day], the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arms-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hairs-breadth further for respect of power,while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force.

Adams struggled for years to understand the conflicting pull of these alternative moral forces and never succeeded. But he did come away with one insight that endures: All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres. I suspect that the same could be said of all the rocketry in the world. Particularly if one were to begin to pray to it.

Read more here:
Wilfred M. McClay :The Ambiguities of Ross Douthat - : :Commentary - Commentary Magazine

Key Point:The Mercurys abundant communications gear allows it to perform nonnuclear Command, Control and Communications (C3) operations as well. For this reason, E-6s have at times been deployed to Europe and the Middle East to serve as flying C3 hubs.

In a military that operates Raptor stealth fighters, A-10 tank busters, B-52 bombers and Harrier jump jets, the U.S. Navys placid-looking E-6 Mercury, based on the 707 airliner, seems particularly inoffensive. But dont be deceived by appearances. Though the Mercury doesnt carry any weapons of its own, it may be in a sense the deadliest aircraft operated by the Pentagon, as its job is to command the launch of land-based and sea-based nuclear ballistic missiles.

Of course, the U.S. military has a ground-based strategic Global Operations Center in Nebraska, and land-based transmitters for communicating with the nuclear triad. However, the E-6s sinister purpose is to maintain the communication link between the national command authority (starting with the president and secretary of defense) and U.S. nuclear forces, even if ground-based command centers are destroyed by an enemy first strike. In other words, you can chop off the head of the U.S. nuclear forces, but the body will keep on coming at you, thanks to these doomsday planes.

The E-6s basic mission is known as Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO). Prior to the development of the E-6, theTACAMOmission was undertaken by land-based transmitter and laterEC-130Gand Q Hercules aircraft, which had Very Low Frequency radios for communication with navy submarines. Interestingly, France also operated its ownTACAMOaircraft until 2001, four modifiedTransallC-160HAstarttransports, which maintainedVLFcommunications with French ballistic-missile submarines.

The first of sixteenE-6sentered service between 1989 and 1992. These were the last built in averylong line of military variants of the venerable Boeing 707 airliner, in particular the707-320BAdvanced, also used in theE-3 Sentry. Bristling with thirty-one communication antennas, theE-6Aswere originally tasked solely with communicating with submerged Navy submarines. Retrofitted with more fuel-efficientCFM-56turbojets and benefiting from expanded fuel tanks, theE-6Acould remain in the air up to fifteen hours, or seventy-two with inflight refueling.

To use its Very Low Frequency radios, an E-6 has to fly in a continuous orbit at a high altitude, with its fuselage- and tail-mounted VLF radios trailing one- and five-mile-long wire antennas at a near-vertical attitude! The VLF signals can be received byOhio-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarineshiding deep underwater, thousands of miles away. However, the VLF transmitters limited bandwidth means they can only send raw data at around thirty-five alphanumeric characters per secondmaking them alotslower than even the old 14k internet modems of the 1990s. Still, its enough to transmit Emergency Action Messages, instructing the ballistic-missile subs to execute one of a diverse menu of preplanned nuclear attacks, ranging from limited to full-scale nuclear strikes. The E-6s systems are also hardened to survive the electromagnetic pulse from nuclear weapons detonating below.

Between 1997 and 2006, the Pentagon upgraded the entire E-6A fleet to the dual-role E-6B, which expanded the Mercurys capabilities by allowing it to serve as an Airborne Nuclear Command Post with its own battle staff area for the job. In this role it serves as a backup for four huge E-4 command post aircraft based on the 747 Jumbo jet. The E-6B has ultra-high-frequency radios in its Airborne Launch Control system that enable it to remotely launch land-based ballistic missiles from their underground silos, a task formerly assigned to U.S. Air Force EC-135 Looking Glass aircraftyet another 707 variant. The E-6s crew was expanded from fourteen to twenty-two for the command post mission, usually including an onboard admiral or general. Additional UHF radios give the E-6B access to the survivable MILSTAR satellite communications network, while the cockpit is upgraded up with new avionics and instruments from the 737NG airliner. The E-6B can be distinguished in photos by its additional wing-mounted pods.

The Mercurys abundant communications gear allows it to perform nonnuclear Command, Control and Communications (C3) operations as well. For this reason, E-6s have at times been deployed to Europe and the Middle East to serve as flying C3 hubs. For example, VQ-4 was deployed in Qatar for three years from 2006 to 2009, where it relayed information such as IED blast reports and medical evacuation requests from U.S. troops in Iraq who were out of contact with their headquarters.

Two Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons currently operate the E-6: VQ-3 Ironmen and VQ-4 Shadows, both under the Navy Strategic Communications Wing 1. These have their home at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, but also routinely forward deploy out of Travis AFB in California and Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. At least one E-6 is kept airborne at all times. E-6s on the submarine-communication mission often fly in circles over the ocean at the lowest possible speedfor as long as ten hours at a time. Those performing the nuclear command post mission typically remain on alert near Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The E-6s nuclear mission has also made its operations occasional fodder for conspiracy theorists and foreign propaganda outlets.

The E-6 platform should remain in service until 2040 thanks to a service-life extension program and continual tweaks to its systems and radios. While the Mercury has demonstrated its usefulness as an airborne communication hub for supporting troops in the field, the airborne command post will be considered a success if it never has to execute its primary mission. The heart of nuclear deterrence, after all, is convincing potential adversaries that no first strike will be adequate to prevent a devastating riposte. The E-6s are vital component in making that threat a credible one.

Sbastien Roblin holds a masters degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history forWar Is Boring.

This first appeared in December 2017. It is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Read more from the original source:
The Military's E-6 Mercury Is Far Deadlier Than The F-35 Stealth Fighter - The National Interest

Whats wrong

with society?

Editor:

Everybody, take a good look around and carefully commit your current situation to memory. Because for the rest of your life, when someone asks you, What is the stupidest thing youve ever seen? the present state of affairs today will be the correct response.

Our society has declared war on the common cold variant COVID-19. Maybe its a bad cold, but still, like most colds, its no big deal for 99% of the people, and most of the remaining 1% are susceptible to just about any medical issue due to their advanced age and pre-existing conditions. Each year this is dealt with as a normal, routine situation during cold and flu season. However, now, for whatever reason, weve pulled out all the stops, spared no expense, and thrown caution to the wind for COVID-19.

Im not against taking reasonable precautions to deal with any illness. We should quarantine ourselves when sick, wash our bodies and clean our spaces regularly and avoid interactions with minimal benefit. However, we always need to consider differentiating between reasonable precautions and unreasonable measures. Canceling all large gatherings and closing meeting places of healthy people does very little to fight the virus, but greatly reduces real benefits to the participants, especially if it is workplace or a school.

The hypothetical benefits of giving aged and sickly people a slight life extension has to be considered against the actual costs of the measures we are presently enforcing. Giving a couple thousand people their 87th Christmas is not much comfort to the tens of millions of breadwinners who are out of work for months and wont be able to afford holiday gifts for their families this year. Maybe these elderly survivors will read one or two more books before they pass on, but it would be much better for all of us if tens of millions of students were reading their books in the classroom right now instead of playing alone at home.

Economics is the dismal science, but we need to review our current policies to avoid sacrificing prosperity for the younger generations just to extend slightly the life of the oldest. If we are going to throw away our freedoms and liberties, we should at least demand something good in return. Right now, we are approaching martial law with nothing to show for it except a looming recession.

I choose to remain an optimist. Expanded testing is only going to continue boosting the rates of survival and recovery because, surprise, most of us only seek medical attention when we are really sick, not just a little under the weather with a cold. Indeed COVID-19 itself is not virulent enough to have a lasting physical impact on our society, so we cannot allow the government and media sensationalized fear of COVID-19 to drive our society to ruin. We shouldnt be needlessly prohibiting the important relationships and activities in our lives for no good reason. We should not allow ourselves to be driven apart by some common cold virus. Instead, we should come together for all that is good in our society and the best our civilization has to offer.

Charles Peabody

Goodyear

Give President Trump past due

credit for pandemic

Editor:

Im sure many of you are sick and tired of all of the critics who complain about every single move that President Trump makes.

Im talking about the never Trumpers. They have every right to not agree with the president, but during not only a national crisis, its a worldwide crisis, and they wont get off his back and let him do his job.

If anybody thinks they can do a better job, please step up and show all of us! But, I want you to step up and do it just like President Trump has done it for almost four years, with every single wrench thrown in his way and all of the obstructions, witch hunting and fake news; Russia hoaxes and Ukraine hoaxes that trail back to the Bidens corruption; a fake whistleblower who disappeared from the face of the earth after President Trump was acquitted; Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Schumer secret bunker meetings trying to overthrow the government; and every nasty Democrat-choreographed coup detat the Democrats dreamed up. I want to see anybody who thinks they can do better do it the same way President Trump has had to work daily.

While the Democrats worked to impeach President Trump, he was already working on the coronavirus. He has daily press briefings with the most intellectual people in the medical field guiding him on national TV, taking questions after they speak and still we have criticism.

If President Trump delivered the cure or a vaccination to stop the spread of coronavirus on a golden platter, that would not be good enough for his critics. Its time for America to stand behind its leader and give credit where credit is past due. Imagine for just a second where America would be without the quick action of President Trump stopping all flights from Wuhan, China, when this virus broke out. He had your back, and you wont give him the credit he deserves.

He got the $2 trillion aid package approved after Pelosi tried to sneak in $1.5 billion for abortions and several billion for New Green Deal, which have nothing to do with saving the lives of coronavirus patients. How killing unborn babies helps cure coronavirus when people forgot to use birth control is truly amazing.

This is the Democratic Party at work. How redecorating the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts cures a pandemic is mind boggling. How cutting down emissions from jet planes keeps coronavirus patients out of hospitals with the Green New Deal sneaked into the $2 trillion aid package for the American people who are out of work related to a pandemic is supposed to put food on the tables of Americans who lost their jobs, just how do Democrats thank Pelosi for such foolishness?

Ill tell you how. Republican President Trump to the rescue.

James Logan

Buckeye

History 101

Editor:

Every industrialized country on the planet has some form of single-payer health care except the United States. Germany has since the 1880s. Not only do they have better outcomes, but theyre also at about half the price. Not only is it morally the right thing to do, its also fiscally the responsible thing to do. To say its impossible is, to me, un-American. We should be doing it better than everybody else. There is no free-market solution. If youre in an ambulance dying, youre not going to ask which hospital is cheapest or best.

Damion Armstrong

Avondale

Troubling traffic

Editor:

I represent several homeowners who have concerns about child safety and property values with the city of Buckeye opening up Van Buren to Verrado. Speeding is out of control. The police did a test and gave out 40-some tickets in a two-day period. There are two bus stops in this area, and lately I had a pickup truck run the stop sign, drive through my backyard 8-foot-tall block wall, scrape the side of my house and take out my front block wall. We are getting nowhere with the police, city and city council.

Jim Harrison

Buckeye

Put isolation to good use

Editor:

Despite the vast tragedy and extreme upset surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19 here in Arizona, I imagine it is something of a clich in trying to always look at the bright side of things. So, let me put it this wayand I suppose I am looking for positivity because at least the season of spring is upon usenjoy the weather before triple-digit heat smacks you right across your face.

Everyone is walking or riding a bike! Or in some measure in looks like this. With gyms closed, I guess this was to be expected. But neighborhoods are full of chalk on sidewalks and plenty of room to navigate your feet or bike with plenty of distance to spare. There is such freedom of mind and body in getting out there and doing your thing. Can you fully adjust to not being able to open the door to your gym? Not really. And thats OK. And heres why.

Life is about adjustment and regrouping skills. If youre used to going to the gym every day but now you cant, you basically have two options: do nothing and wait for the green light to open the gym door again or accept the adjustment and regroup accordingly. I believe the latter option is the smartest, and also folks who do not go to the gym anyway should take this opportunity to throw on a pair of sneakers and start their own journey to fitness of mind and body.

You often hear, Were all in this together. While this is most certainly true, also consider that saying you dont have time to walk or ride a bike really doesnt make much sense. It kind of falls flat. The truth is you dont have time not to get your mind and body moving. Young or old. Overweight or underweight. And everyone else in between. Popular wisdom states it takes 21 days to form a habit that sticks. What are you waiting for? Start: This is the five-letter word you must take to heart.

Some of us exercise too much and some of us do not exercise enough. This is why there is merit in meeting in the middle. Again, the clock of your life and the clock of your loved ones and actually the clock of reality itself that always ticks no matter what you are thinking is the real deal. The world doesnt stop for anyone. Going back in time is completely impossible.

So, use this time in front of you to replace words with action. Get outside in your neighborhood and blaze your own trail no matter the speed in which you move your feet. The fact that you decided to turn off the news or put your cellphone on the table for 30 minutes is your best 30 minutes spent at this very moment. Its then your duty to do 30 minutes again tomorrow and the day after and go from there. The only one stopping you is you. Dont do that anymore. Its go time!

Tony Zizza

Avondale

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Letters To the Editor | Opinion - westvalleyview.com

NHS Tayside has moved to allay staff concerns over a batch of protective masks discovered to have been four years past their use-by date.

A group of terrified nurses at Ninewells were shocked after they peeled off a sticker on a box of masks which had an expiry date of August 2021 to reveal an original expiry date of August 2016 printed underneath.

However, Scotlands chief deputy medical officer Dr Gregor Smith had written to seniormedical staff last month, saying the equipment had been subject to rigorous assessment and shelf-life extension by the manufacturer, and was safe to use.

One nurse contacted the Tele to say she and colleagues felt furious and sick when they found the 2016 date.

The Ninewells nurse, who asked not to be identified, said the discovery was made aftersome of the masks were stained when they were taken out of the box.

She said: We found stained masks, then looked at the boxes, and thats when we peeled off the stickers.

Were furious and feel sick that they would treat us like that we should have been toldabout this. Its left colleagues terrified.

A former staff nurse at one of the hospitals busiest wards said the situation was awful.

The woman, who recently retired, said: Im still in touch with former colleagues, a lot of whom are treating people with coronavirus, as a lot of non-essential surgery has been postponed so they have capacity for people with Covid-19.

At a time when we are hearing about rising deaths, including frontline health care staff, the last thing they need is further worry like this.

Dr Smiths letter was sent to territorial board chief executives, medical directors, directors of public health, primary care leads, heads of procurement, logistics and stores managers, resilience officers and GP practice managers.

Dr Smith said in his letter: I am writing to you today regarding concerns which have been raised around the stock of facemasks which is being issued to GP Practices this week from national stockpiles.

The stock which has been issued was manufactured by Cardinal/Medline and had an original expiry dating back, typically to 2016. They now have a shelf-life expiry date sticker, typically with a date of 2021.

I would like to clarify that this stock has been subject to rigorous assessment and shelf-life extension by the manufacturer and is therefore safe to use. I hope this allays any concerns you may have.

A spokesman for NHS Tayside said: We have been assured by the Scottish Government thatthis stock of face masks is safe to use as it has been subject to rigorous assessment andshelf-life extension by the manufacturer.

This information has been shared with all staff.

In these troubled times, when many people are struggling to get out for their paper, we are pledging to help readers by providing a FREE digital edition of the Evening Telegraph for our readers, with hundreds taking us up on the offer. Click below to register

From the Editor: The Tele is on your side thats why were offering our ePaper FREE for three months

Originally posted here:
Shock as Ninewells nurses find protective masks with expiry dates from 2016 on box - Evening Telegraph

By Guy Martin

Draken International has begun flying supersonic, radar equipped Mirage F1M fighters to support US Air Force (USAF) combat training at Nellis Air Force Base after the aircraft were returned to service by Paramount Aerospace Systems.

The fully modernized Mirage F1Ms, predominately flown by the Spanish Air Force in the past, now challenge US and coalition 4th and 5th generation fighters over the skies of the Nevada Test and Training Range in the development of warfighters tactics, techniques, and procedures, Draken International said on 26 March.

Over the past two years, the collaborative efforts between Draken International and Paramount Aerospace Systems has resulted in the reassembly, restoration, and certification of the fleet of Mirage F1s. This extensive project was accomplished at Drakens maintenance facility in Lakeland, Florida. Draken has also begun the acceptance of the fleet of Denel Cheetahs from the South African Air Force, a 4th Generation supersonic radar-equipped fighter that joins Drakens operational fleet, the company said.

Sean Gustafson, VP of Business Development at Draken stated, Draken is fully committed to enhancing adversary support for the USAF. These fleets of supersonic assets highlight the dedication to fulfilling combat readiness training objectives at Nellis and Air Force bases across the US. Our ever-growing fleet of advanced fighters enrich our capabilities and challenge Airmen, Sailors, and Marines alike.

Draken flew its first refurbish F1M on 12 November 2019 from Lakeland Linder International Airport. Paramount Aerospace Systems and Draken signed a contract in 2018 for the overhaul and ongoing engineering support of its fleet of 22 ex-Spanish Mirage F1s.

Paramount Aerospace says it specializes in the modernization of fixed wing platforms including leading the previous modernization of the Mirage F1M while still in Spanish Air Force service. Through predecessor company Advanced Technologies and Engineering (ATE), Paramount was involved in modernising Spains F1CE/EE/EDA fleet to F1M standard.

The modernisation of the Spanish F1s covered a service life extension programme (SLEP) and avionics upgrade for 48 F1CE/EE (C.14A/B) single-seaters and four F1EDA (C.14C) two-seat trainers. Thomson-CSF RCM was awarded the FFr700 million contract in 1996. Spanish companies Amper Programas, Indra and CASA acted as sub-contractors while ATE was responsible for the design and integration of the navigation, display and weapons systems. The last upgraded fighter was handed over to the Spanish air Force in 2001.

Apart from the SLEP, the upgrade package includes a revised cockpit with colour liquid crystal displays and a Smart HUD; a Sextant inertial navigation system with GPS interface; air-to-ground radar rangefinding capability; NATO-compatible Have Quick 2 secure communications; Mode 4 digital IFF; a defensive aids suite; and flight recorders.

Draken also acquired nine ex-South African Air Force Cheetah C and three Cheetah D fighters from Denel in 2018. These will join its more than 100 tactical fighter aircraft, including the A-4 Skyhawk and L-159 Honey Badger.

This article was published on March 31, 2020 by defenceWeb.

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Draken Works the Red Team: Mirage F-1s as Part of the Arsenal - Second Line of Defense

The results will be included in a maiden resource estimate for the San Antonio prospect, which is expected shortly.

Alkane Resources Limited () has received further broad, high-grade gold results from resource definition drilling on San Antonio and Roswell prospects south of the Tomingley Gold Operations (TGO) in Central West NSW.

Assays from the final 6,608 metres at San Antonio of the overall initial 60,000-metre program have been received and will be incorporated in a maiden resource calculation at the prospect, which is expected shortly.

Best of the latest results are 18 metres at 12.7 g/t gold from 117 metres, including 5 metres at 35.5 g/t from 120 metres, and 19 metres at 4.90 g/t from 104 metres, including 6 metres at 10.8 g/t from 113 metres.

The San Antonio resource is expected to add to the Roswell inferred resource of 7.02 million tonnes at 1.97 g/t gold.

Roswell and San Antonio are immediately south of the TGO mine and processing facility.

Tomingley Gold Project covers about 440 square kilometres stretching 60 kilometres north-south along the Newell Highway from Tomingley in the north, through Peak Hill and almost to Parkes in the south.

The project contains Alkanes operating TGO, initially an open pit mine with a 1 million tonnes per annum processing facility that has now transitioned to underground.

For the past two years Alkane has conducted an extensive regional exploration program with the objective of defining additional resources that have the potential to be mined via open pit or underground operations and fed to TGO.

This has yielded broad, shallow high-grade intercepts that demonstrate potential for material project life extension and show that a return to open pit mining and/or underground extension is possible with appropriate resource confirmation, landholder agreement and regulatory approvals.

Alkanes 60,000-metre resource definition drilling program has been designed to define initial inferred resources at both prospects and the company has received highly encouraging results.

Other San Antonio results:

The company assayed 3-metre composite reverse circulation (RC) samples, however, where strong mineralisation was observed by the site geologist, it was directly assayed at 1-metre intervals.

Assaying of 1-metre re-split samples of 3-metre composites is ongoing.

These results are from 30 RC drill holes for 5,461 metres and two diamond cored drill holes for 1,147 metres at the San Antonio prospect.

The second phase of infill resource drilling across Roswell and San Antonio comprising a further 50,000 metres is continuing.

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Alkane Resources regional drilling south of TGO returns further broad, high-grade gold - Proactive Investors Australia

Highlights from a Q&A with Greg Burel, former director of the Strategic National Stockpile

Washington The coronavirus pandemic has left states from coast-to-coast scrambling to secure ventilators for patients and masks, gloves and gowns for frontline workers as they confront a surge of patients battling COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

In response to the deadly illness, which has claimed the lives of more than 11,000 in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking coronavirus statistics, the federal government has tapped into its stockpile of medical supplies, known as the Strategic National Stockpile, in an effort to bolster state capabilities.

Many of the details surrounding the stockpile are kept secret, including its precise contents and the locations of strategically placed warehouses, though President Trump revealed Monday that there are 9,000 ventilators left in the national stockpile.

But Greg Burel, who served as the director of the Strategic National Stockpile for 12 years until his retirement in January, answered questions about the country's reserve, which stands at the ready, should the nation face a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack, natural disaster or a pandemic.

When the Strategic National Stockpile was first started in 1999, what was the intention and ultimate goal for having massive amounts of different equipment?

Burel: The initial intention of the Strategic National Stockpile when it was founded in 1999 was to be prepared for potential problems related to, if you recall, Y2K and the concern about computers not working and people not being able to order things they needed and so on.

There was a tie with that to concern with that if a healthcare need arose because of equipment failure with computer systems and that there needed to be some backup of some kind of material that could be provided.

The next thing though to think about is most of that was considered in terms of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism preparedness, because the concern was if something happened in that kind of a period, that would be a great time for a terrorist to try to attack you knowing that there would be all of these other issues that existed.

In the years since its start, has the function of the Strategic National Stockpile shifted?

Burel: The primary purpose of the Strategic National Stockpile is still and has always been to be prepared to respond to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRM) events. We began to expand to more of an all-hazards mission over time because of the fact that we know some of the materials we hold for those purposes are useful in, say, natural events. We're also at the same time developing federal medical stations. When you see DHS and FEMA saying we're setting up these 250-bed temporary hospital things, those are SNS's federal medical stations they're setting up. All of those things were planned to be used if we had a CBRM event, but they are also useful obviously in any kind of natural event, whether it be a hurricane, flood, fire, pandemic, whatever.

In 2005, 2006, there were supplemental appropriations to be prepared for pandemic influenza. In 2009, the nation was struck with H1N1 pandemic influenza. So in response to H1N1 pandemic influenza, we deployed material that we had been stockpiling to respond to a pandemic influenza. The plan was to be prepared for a pandemic influenza event. We were, not as high a level as we would like, but we were prepared for pandemic influenza. Pandemic influenza struck, we moved a good portion of our materials forward to the states so they would have those available for pandemic influenza response.

At the same time, the states had been preparing in most cases for pandemic influenza themselves so many of the states at that time had their own pandemic stockpiles. It varied from state to state, some were large, some were small, some didn't have them at all. But in 2009, we were hit with pandemic influenza and we used that material.

Was the material ever replenished?

Burel: Unfortunately, we never received further appropriations designated to replace that material and the funds to replace that were never incorporated in our annual base appropriation. So our mission remains to be prepared for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events and we never received additional funding to cover more material for pandemic.

When you say more material for pandemic in particular, is that things like ventilators, vaccines, personal protective equipment?

Burel: You can't buy vaccines for a pandemic disease event because you don't know what the vaccine is going to be, and you know we're currently in this race to make the vaccine. So you couldn't have invested in vaccines had we wanted to. Ventilators also have requirements that relate to CBRN-type events, so we have continued to buy ventilators knowing they have multiple uses.

Some personal protective equipment have been purchased over the years because it's appropriate for other needs as well. But the massive amount that was projected for 1918-type pandemic influenza, 1. could never have been achieved with the supplemental appropriations that were received in '05 and '06, and 2., much of what we had was used in '09 and was never restocked to the level that it had been at that point.

Who oversees the stockpile and who decides what to purchase?

Burel: First, the Strategic National Stockpile is currently in the organization and is responsive under the organization structure of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS. Prior to that, it was under CDC. We moved to HHS in 2018, to be closer to the decision-making center about deployment and so on. It also allowed us to consolidate all of HHS material response capability in a single organizational line which I think made a lot of sense.

The formulary, that is, what is held in the Strategic National Stockpile, is determined by a multiagency governance body called the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, and we shorten that as we do everything in government to PHEMCE.

PHEMCE is comprised of experts in various matters related to disease, drug development, device development, regulatory matters and so on from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National institutes of Health, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci's NIAID, and then a number of other departments and agencies including DOD, VA, DHS and others. What the PHEMCE does is it looks at threat projections based on information from Department of Homeland Security. It works to model and consider what the event would look like around those threats that are identified by the DHS, and then we try to identify with the disease experts and the people who know way more about this than I ever will what are the most important things to keep in the stockpile.

There's always a longer list of things that we want to have than there is money to buy, so part of what the PHEMCE does is annually it does a review line item by line item of every product in the stockpile and what we need to spend to keep us at established goals based on models that predict what we would need.

As we try to work through the limited funds that are appropriated against the long list of things that we need, the PHEMCE makes recommendations to the secretary and the assistant secretary about what things are most important to buy.

In terms of what the stockpile looks like today and the supplies that have been compiled over the years based on this long list, what is in it?

Burel: It's over an $8 billion or was before this started going out an $8 billion inventory of various materials including things like antibiotics, antitoxins, antidotes, vaccines, medical surgical material, federal medical stations you see, ventilators and other products.

We never release the precise content of the stockpile or the numbers of each precise item in the stockpile because of the risks that would present in giving to a determined adversary a roadmap to, 'well they have this, so if I do this to them instead of that, I'm going to be more successful.'

Let's take it completely out of the realm of anything that we're prepared for so we don't disclose anything. But if you're prepared for the zombie apocalypse, you don't want to tell people how prepared you are for that because then they'll just say, 'instead of releasing the zombie agent on them, we'll release something else.' That's the risk of letting anybody know exactly what's in it and then the risk of letting anybody know exactly where it is is that that same determined adversary before they did something bad to us could say, 'well I know where it is so I'm going to take it out.'

You don't want somebody who wishes you ill-will to be able to destroy your capability to respond to whatever they're doing to do bad to you. You also don't want people whether they are ill-intentioned or well-intentioned to know where those locations are and suddenly show up there at the time we're trying to move material out of them, trying to get it for themselves or trying to interdict that material so we can't get it where it's going.

There are many risks involved in making the location of SNS material public. It would cause, I fear, an immediate failure.

I would imagine now that we are seeing this stockpile being very quickly depleted. How fast can it be replenished, especially in the midst of a nationwide event?

Burel: When you say being depleted, it is being depleted of materials that are important for this response, so there are things for other types of events obviously still there. To the question of how rapidly it can be replenished, it really is something you have to look at on a line item by line item by line item evaluation.

What the Strategic National Stockpile has to do today is as it continues to acquire additional material, if those material are still being needed outside, and we've always planned for this, we can do several things. We can have suppliers to us take them immediately to where they need to be, dependent upon how many places they need to respond to. We can have them shipped to us and then we can further ship them out to places where they need to go, but what the Strategic National Stockpile I would guess is not doing today is ordering things and putting it on the shelf and not getting it where it needs to go. I would not expect that. That would not be what we are prepared to do.

What is the process for a state like California or Washington or New York to get supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile? Is it the first place they turn or supposed to be later on in the process?

Burel: When there is an event of any type, and this is the fact for all emergency responses in the United States, the federal government's responsibility is to begin to assist in response when state and local capabilities are exhausted. In this type of an event, what I would expect to see is that the medical supply chain should try to surge to meet the needs of the private-sector health care complex.

Secondly, states and locals who can invest monies that they have themselves from their own state budgets or from grant monies from the federal government there have been a lot of public health preparedness grant monies and cooperative agreement funds that have gone to states in the last 10 years or so or more they can invest that in buying and storing materials.

The point is that the way this should work is once the medical supply chain is exhausted, then those health care needs should flow up to the state. Once the state stocks, assuming that there are any, are exhausted, then they turn to the Strategic National Stockpile.

Normally the request process is a state makes a request through the secretary's operations center that's rapidly evaluated and responded to. In a nationwide pandemic event like this, we're still working on that same kind of a theory. We've worked with all the states for pandemic influenza planning and talked to them about this pro-rata approach so it's nothing new.

A chronic problem in public health preparedness is, and it's our chronic problem in emergency preparedness overall, the farther you move away from events that drive that preparedness in the minds of the public and in the mind of the Congress and the mind of the state legislature, it is less of a need to appropriate funds from limited available monies to plan.

I'm not necessarily criticizing the Congress or state legislatures for not doing that because there are many competing priorities for limited funds, but the reality is public health preparedness needs to be a priority and it needs to be routinely funded at a much higher level across the country than it has been for a long time, and then it would be better prepared to deal with these kinds of events.

In terms of supplies, how often is inventory checked to ensure vaccines and other materials haven't expired?

Burel: It's a continuous process. So when we consider what's in the stockpile, we run very large systems that we monitor daily so that we are aware of what is aging, where we stand in terms of needing to make new acquisitions to replace aging material so they can be rotated and so on.

The Strategic National Stockpile also participates in many programs to extend the useful life of our material. One of those is the Shelf Life Extension Program, which is an agreement between DOD and FDA that we ride along with DOD on, where certain drugs can be identified, they can be subject to a chemical assay, where very specialized scientists at the FDA can look at the review of the assay and say, 'yea this is still safe and effective for use and based on the data, we're going to let you extend the expiry date of this drug for x amount of time.'

For chemical drugs, we try to extend it through the Shelf Life Extension Program for the longest possible time that we can make that investment sound, and that means that in addition to looking at rotating things out, we're looking at things that have to go into the Shelf Life Extension Program for sampling and analysis and a determination from the FDA.

The other thing that we do is we do ongoing maintenance on durable medical equipment like ventilators. All of those get rotated back to their manufactures annually for preventative maintenance and all the necessary maintenance to make sure that they're still functional and operational.

As far as some of these medical devices like N95 masks and that kind of thing, there has been limited data available about how long you can use them after their expiry date. We've worked with NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Hazard) over the last couple of years to try to study products that not just the SNS held, but that some states were still holding and that some other laboratories were holding old stock to test that stock and see if it was still safe and effective.

You may find on CDC's public-facing website ... data that NIOSH accumulated and studies they did that say those N95s that show an expired date are still safe and effective for use as long as the elastic doesn't break when you try to put it on.

What we try to do is extend the federal government's investments in all of those products as long as we can.

So even though states have said they received expired N95 masks, that doesn't necessarily mean they can't be used or that they're not as effective?

Burel: That is correct.

Is there anything further the general public should know about the Strategic National Stockpile?

Burel: What the general public should think about is that there is a strong need to fund public health at all levels, at the federal, state and local levels, and a part of that is the Strategic National Stockpile, but that's really only a part and pubic health needs advocacy at all levels to assure that it is funded in such a way that the public is protected.

This is not just a matter of whether people are getting sick, but it's actually a matter of national security and it needs to be take as seriously as funding the Department of Defense to be prepared for anything it needs to be prepared for.

Do you think the coronavirus pandemic could lead to a shift in the mindset of lawmakers to put public health front of mind?

Burel: As devastating as this event is, and I don't see this as silver lining or anything, but I hope that it makes some of the people that in the past have said public health preparedness is not as important as whatever will now look at this and say 'you know what, we should be allocating money for this, we should be thinking about this in a different way.'

Dr. Fauci has warned the coronavirus could be seasonal, is there anything Congress can do now to ensure the Strategic National Stockpile is ready in the future, especially as we await a vaccine?

Burel: Congress has appropriated supplemental funds to address this but what Congress must do from this point forward is look at making those supplemental funds not a once and done thing.

If we invest those supplemental funds today in new material to be prepared for a second wave of a next season event or whatever and we don't get that included in our base appropriations for long-term, we will not be able to maintain that preparedness just like the pandemic influenza.

I think there's another piece to this. With Dr. Fauci suggesting this may become a seasonal event, then the private supply chain is going to have to reconsider how it prepares, and I believe we must move away from a purely just-in-time inventory in the health care sector.

It's fantastic if I'm building a car and I don't want to store the parts and the parts arrive the day I build the car and the car comes off the line and I'm done. But health care doesn't work that way. We don't suddenly see the need to build 2,000 more cars than we do in one day on a normal basis, but we do see in health care and in public health the need often in a large outbreak to be able to respond to far more people than we would think we have to take care of.

Link:
Q&A with Greg Burel, former director of the Strategic National Stockpile - CBS News

Cancer, at its simplest, begins with DNA mutations that cause uncontrolled replication of abnormal cells, resulting in tumors and illness. There is no single cancer: each is dependent on the cell type affected and the type of mutation that causes it, which is why there is no single cure for it either. There are standard treatments that can be used for many cancers, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Targeted treatments can be highly specific and very successful. For example, Gleevecwhich is used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML)stops the activity of the protein responsible for CML, and can restore patient life expectancy to normal.

Because we share many of the same cell types with our pets, they also develop some of the same cancers: bone (osteosarcoma), skin (melanoma), brain tumors (gliomas), and even prostate cancer (dogs and humans are the only two animals who develop it). Canine cancers are sadly very similar to human cancers, more so than cancer in mice, a traditional model organism of biomedical research. They are also increasingly common: one in four dogs at some point in their lives, and 50% of dogs over 10 years old, will be diagnosed with cancer. While some breeds of dog have a predisposition for particular cancer(s), others may have a higher risk of cancer overall.

Comparative oncology, an interdisciplinary field, builds on these parallels between dogs and humans, and other animals as well: those who also develop spontaneous cancers such as cats and horses, as well as those who dont develop any cancers, or are highly resistant, such as whales, elephants, and crocodiles.

Cancer research for dogs, such as clinical trials, done by veterinary oncologists can not only offer their patients the possibility of life extension or remission, but also allows dog owners who might otherwise be unable to afford costly treatment to provide more extensive care. Once completed, the findings from these trials can then be used to help inform human clinical trials.

Yet, just as human drug trials can be compromised by poor design, or small sample sizes, or lack of randomization, so too can canine trials. A recent meta-analysis of 168 cancer trials found many of these same problems were present, and suggested a number of improvements, including increasing the size of the trials to include more dogs, guidance that not only would improve the data, but might mean more dogs get better.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

By: Joshua D. Schiffman and Matthew Breen

Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences Vol. 370, No. 1673, Theme issue: Cancer across life: Peto's paradox and the promise of comparative oncology (19 July 2015)

Royal Society

The rest is here:
Dogs and Cancer - JSTOR Daily

Great Panther Mining Ltd () (NYSEAMERICAN:GPL) became a new intermediate precious metals producer with its acquisition in March last year of Beadell Resources and its Tucano gold mine in Brazil.

Formerly, the company was known as Great Panther Silver Ltd but now that it generates mainly gold (83% of production, having been under 50% previously) the name was changed. The group's market cap is over US$175 million.

Tucano is currently the second-largest gold producer in Brazil, generating around 150,000 ounces per year from several open pits, and is sitting on a multi-million-ounce deposit. The deal turned the company into a 200,000 gold-equivalent ounce per year producer.

Great Panther operates three mines including the Tucano gold mine in Amap State, Brazil, and two mainly silver mines in Mexico.

These Mexican assets are the Guanajuato mine complex - consisting of two mines Guanajuato and San Ignacio, and the Topia mine.

The company also owns the Coricancha mine in Peru where last year it executed a successful bulk sample mining program in accordance with a 2018 preliminary economic assessment (PEA). Great Panther is establishing the conditions, under which a restart at the mine could be implemented.

To sum up, Great Panther owns an operating gold mine in Brazil and two operating primary silver mines in Mexico. It also owns two mines on care and maintenance -one in Mexico and one in Peru.

A majority of companies are affected in some way or other by the global coronavirus pandemic and on April 3 this year, Great Panther said it was temporarily suspending mining and processing at its Mexican operations to mitigate its spread.

It said activity at the Guanajuato Mine Complex (GMC) and the Topia mine would cease until April 30, in line with the directive of the Mexican government announced on March 31.

The group pointed out that monthly output for the firm from Mexico accounts for only around 2% of annual group output on a gold equivalent ounce basis.

Reporting its 2019 financial results on March 31, Great Panthersaid the aim for 2020 was to ramp up exploration, expand its resources and improve its finances.

Its purchase of Tucano led to increased production (on a gold equivalent basis) and revenue by 182% and 234%, respectively, when compared to 2018.

For the 12 months to December 31, 2019, Great Panther's revenue came in at C$198.7 million, up from C$139.2 million in 2018, reflecting the acquisition of Tucano.

The net loss was C$91.0 million, as mine operating earnings were offset by an impairment of Tucano goodwill of C$38.7 million.

Cash and short term deposits at the end of the year were C$36.9 million compared to C$50.5 million the year before - down 27%. The firm's net working capital was C$12.8 million.

For Tucano this year, 2020 planned production is between 120,000 and 130,000 gold ounces - up around between 13% and 23% compared to the 106,000 gold ounces of production in 2019.

Following the 2019 financials, Noble Capital repeated an 'outperform' rating on Great Panther, saying that along with the potential for the Guanajuato mine to return to production in 2020, the company was taking the 'necessary steps' to improve the long-term growth profile of Tucano through near mine and regional exploration programs.

"We project 2020 EPS and EBITDA of $0.03 and $62.2 million, respectively. While EPS is unchanged, EBITDA is down modestly from our prior estimate of $63.8 million," the broker's analysts said.

"While Great Panther has had its share of operating challenges, we believe 2020 could be a transition year to improved financial performance," theyadded.

Noble expects all-in sustaining costs (AISC) at Tucano to be in the range of US$1,150 to US$1,250 per gold ounce for 2020, compared to US$1,406 in 2019.

Capital expenditures of $7 million are associated with a new primary crusher to be installed at the plant mid-year and the expansion of Tucano's tailings storage capacity, it said.

Exploration expenditures are expected to be US$7 million and focused on near-mine drilling activities, said analysts.

At the time of the full-year results, Jeffrey Mason, Great Panther's interim president and CEO and chairman, told investors: "The company's focus for 2020 is to continue the current program of implementing operational improvements, ramp up exploration programs to replace and expand mineral resources, and improve our financial position, all with the objective of creating shareholder value and regaining the confidence of our various stakeholders."

"Importantly, we are investing a minimum of $11 million to realize the significant exploration potential at our assets, focusing on mine life extension at Tucano and a possible re-start of the Guanajuato mine later this year," he added.

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Great Panther Mining has big plans for 2020 with aims to ramp up exploration, resources and strengthen finances - Proactive Investors USA & Canada

Charles Hoskinson, the famous founder of Cardano, explains how people can find out who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and speaks on the future of our world, new religions and the possibility of immortality. Lets dive into the third part of our exclusive interview!

U.Today: John McAfee recently told me that he knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, do you think that's possible? Do you have your own guesses who it could be?

Charles Hoskinson: Well, I'll tell you how to find out if you're really interested. So, what you can do is use stylometry. This is a term for the analysis of handwriting or analysis of writing. Code Stylometry is the analysis of actual source code. So, the original Bitcoin code was 100% written by Satoshi.

What you can do is you can apply stylometric techniques to that code and apply it to all the open-source projects that have ever been written and there's a very high probability you're going to find a match between that code and other code and then transitively you can follow it. You probably can get a really good idea of who that person could be.

If you have to speculate on age range and speculate on skill sets, you're looking at somebody in their forties to fifties at the time of the publication Bitcoin. So, theyre now in their fifties or sixties, were educated in the 1980s or early nineties, and brought up in a very particular school of computer science. Bitcoin script, alone, gives you a lot of indication of where that person was trained because it was based on a language called Forth, which is a very uncommon language, but it was used mostly in computer science pedagogy, especially in England and in the Eastern United States during that time period.

So, that's somebody who probably has an academic background. Somebody who has a lot of knowledge of cryptography, especially because of the choice of the elliptic curve and the fact that he was able to create things like Base 58 and things like that. It's clearly a person who had computer science training. The overly academic C++ code was a good indication of somebody trained to know how to code but not be a professional engineer. Cause there was a lot of cleaning and optimization and technical debt reduction that would have happened. And then Code Stylometry willprobably give you a pretty good idea of the candidates for that.

I've never done that exercise but I know people who have and they have a pretty good idea of who Satoshi is, given facts and circumstances. But it's never been an interest to me because, frankly, that person left the ecosystem and doesn't want to be doxed and Bitcoin has operated just fine since 2012. It's been eight years now and we haven't had any issues. So why do we need to bring the founder back?

I think the power here is that certain people want to say theyre Satoshi or say they know Satoshi because it gives them a special prestige. It's almost like you're the Pope and you speak for God, right? You can then use that pulpit to influence people to use your product, like Bitcoin SV for example, or, at the very least, make yourself seem cooler or more interesting.

I mean, the reality is, as great as Satoshis contributions were to cryptocurrencies, just what we've done at IOHK is significantly more meaningful. We formalized everything from what a ledger is to showing that proof of work can be resistant to quantum computers. We solved the proof of stake problem. We designed significantly better programming languages. We extended the UTXO model, approved by simulation with a special type of state machine. I mean this is foundational work done by dozens of academics and the totality of it is unbelievably better than anything Satoshi can construct. At the peak, our system could probably perform at a million transactions per second. Satoshis can do it at seven. I mean, these are just facts.

So, as much as we venerate the founder and recognize the brilliance there, its important to understand that the space, as a whole, has moved on, from a scientific and technological viewpoint. It's important also to understand that that was just one person or a collection of people. And now there are millions of people in this industry. And the whole point of the vision was to say that no one was more special than anyone else.

We're all equal and we all have the same voice. Get rid of the leaders, get rid of the centralization. So it'd be very counterproductive for a Satoshi to return to this space at this stage because it would just centralize a big chunk of the movement around an individual.

The point is to get rid of those individuals and empower everybody at the edges. So, I have the most respect, not for the science, but the most respect for the fact that he knew when to leave and retire and get out of the way of his invention and allow that invention to grow to where it's grown to, and decentralize it naturally.

U.Today: Thats very interesting. I never thought about it from that angle, you know. I've got only one question left and Im really eager to hear your thoughts on it because its kind of your thing. What do you think the web will look like 50 years from now?

Charles Hoskinson: Actually, this exercise was done by Arthur C. Clarke. I believe, back in the 1950s, he was a science fiction writer and he got most of it right. He predicted the internet and a litany of other things. So, I guess you ask a science fiction writer if you want an accurate estimate.

The challenge 50 years from now is that we see the seeds of a lot of very earth-shattering, earth-changing technologies being laid today that will be fully realized at that time period. It's incredibly hard to know how we're going to use those seeds. So the graphene revolution is right now underway and in 50 years graphene will be everywhere in every product. That means indestructible homes and batteries that last five times longer. There was a whole class of metamaterials as well, which means that sensors are becoming orders of magnitude cheaper. Everything from new types of solid-state radar to new types of optics. So, functionally, you're now talking about smart materials.

Wireless power transmission is getting really good. It's something people are thinking about. So, all your surfaces will be potentially electrified. Battery-powered cars will become predominant within probably the next 20 years. So, in 50 years, there will be probably no internal combustion engines anymore. They'll be gone and you'll have cars that go 4,000 or 5,000 miles on a single charge. All those things will be there. Probably, battery-powered planes, also because of graphene, will be commonplace.

So, the backbone of our energy grid will probably be no fossil fuels and 100% alternative or nuclear fusion, probably combined with some fourth-generation nuclear plants which will have been built in the 2030s and 2040s. The smart materials will be so smart that everything will be VR and AR.

Your glasses and surfaces will be able to just present information that's contextual. We're also seeing an enormous amount of growth in biotechnology and so there's a very strong possibility that implantable consumer-grade medical devices will become commonplace. For example, that company Neuralink, that Elon Musk funded. He created the first brain-computer interface. It's implantable. Within 10 years that's going to be consumer-grade. Within 50 years that'll be commonplace and highly competitive. which functionally means that human beings can just think and connect to computers and computers can go back to them.

So, all those interfaces will be completely built. When you walk into a room, the room knows who we are and we can just think to control the room and all the surfaces will be smart surfaces and so you can see anything, hear anything, do anything. It also means that we'll change the way we communicate with each other. If we have brain-computer interfaces, we can think to each other.

Telepathy can be something that could exist within a 50-year timeframe. So you just think to talk to somebody. Not just in the same room but, because of the internet, everywhere.

There's going to be huge innovations in physics. We have things like time crystals. Now we have things like quantum teleportation. These are theoretical constructs. We're going to continue seeing enormous advancements in them, especially in quantum cryptography. So, we'll have completely new ways of handling communication.

What's really cool is communication without a medium. Right now, when you want to send a signal, it goes from point A to point B over a medium like air or wire. Well, you could technically just entangle things far away so you can't intercept messages anymore. It's pretty crazy stuff. Ahuge amount of advancements in quantum physics, but then also quantum computing as well, especially given that quantum computers can emulate a lot of these quantum physics so we can get a dramatically better understanding of how the universe works.

Consumer-grade quantum computers are probably coming in 20-30 years. So all that stuff is going to be there. And then the thing about quantum computers is that that computing model allows us to think about problems that humanity has never been able to solve because they can't be solved within the lifespan of a human or the lifespan of the universe.

So all these, like NP complete style problems could somehow be reduced to polynomial time, meaning that you can now analyze gargantuan sets of data or find patterns we never thought were possible. So that means all kinds of new questions can be asked and all kinds of knowledge can be gained as a result of the quantum revolution. A corollary to that is that there's probably going to be the emergence of a semi-strong or strong AI within that timeframe because the economic incentives are so great to construct these things. So, a lot of people call this a singularity.

Whatever connotations you want to put on it, it's likely going to occur within that timeframe in my view. And what that functionally means is that we, again, have a new realm of thinking that we didn't have before. And there's a very strong possibility that we will use these modes of thinking to tackle ethical problems, governance problems and resource allocation problems by collective consensus.

What that functionally means is that we'll probably see new forms of government be created where we start dividing the things you can trust humans to do and the things historically humans are very bad at dealing with. For example, this quarantine response to this global pandemic. Imagine 50 years in the future, if you had a strong AI that had control over quarantine protocols. If we had this back in December it would have done all the models and realized that, naturally, we couldn't stop this, and ordered a global quarantine for all countries for a month. Then just by doing that, the coronavirus pandemic would have been over. We would have no more growth. Like in China where they did the most draconian of a shutdown, there are no domestic cases. All the new cases are imported.

So had every country just shut down for a month and enforced a strict quarantine protocol and had proper governance for that, the entire virus would be gone. We wouldn't have to watch 20 million people die, economic calamity and so forth.

It could have actually done things to mitigate the economic calamity like institute for that time period of universal basic income and make sure that certain supply chains were in place and so forth. You can't do that with human skill coordination, but you could do that with strong AI coordination. So, these tools will be in our tool bag and there'll be things that are definitely there.

We'll also see tremendous strides in life extension. There's a huge market for that. Theres a massive amount of funding going into that. And we're getting a deeper understanding of why things age. Nature tells you everything. There are, actually, creatures that live forever. For example, there's a breed of jellyfish that every time it gets old, it'll just form, assist, regenerate itself and become young again. So they technically are biologically immortal. They kind of just float around like trash bags, but theyre immortal jellyfish. And so you think about that and you say, Okay, well what does that mean? It means that if we can kind of master those techniques, we can port them to humans.

So, there's probably going to be a considerable amount of improvement in regenerative biology and an improvement in human lifespan extension and new therapies and medicines to keep us healthy into our deep old age. So then, what does that mean? It means you have a human race that doesn't recycle every 80 years. They may last a lot longer. So there's probably going to be a higher priority put on sustainability and a higher priority, socially speaking, put on wisdom and so forth.

We see a huge surge of secularism occurring. The religiosity of people is diminishing and that's probably going to be a trend that continues. So, there's going to be far fewer Christians and Muslims and religious Jews and so forth in the 2060s, or the 2070s, as there are today.

What will likely happen is new religions will be formed. You kind of already see the seeds of that. For example, the singularity movement. Yuval Harari feels that it is a religion. I think he's right. They have a savior. The strong AI is coming. It will make peace on earth and solve all of our problems and people believe in it, not even with scientific basis. They just have blind faith that progress will get us there.

There was another religion called Dataism, saying all data should be free and open. So, there are these full new philosophies and concepts that exist and they will continue to percolate and change humanity's outlook and perspective and will allow us to deal with the problems of the time.

In the past, three things that really dragged humanity down were war, famine and disease. So, most religions were constructed to allow us to address those problems. Now, moving into the 21st century, we're going to live in a time of unlimited plenty. We will grow more food than we need at some point. We'll cure the diseases that tend to kill us. And war is really becoming a thing of the past. We still have them, but they're not like World War Two, where the whole globe falls into conflict, they're more like a superpower goes and beats up on a small group of rebels or something like that. Or a small nation-state gets taken over by a larger nation-state. So, we might still have large conflicts, but they're more unlikely because of the weapons that we have today.

What does that mean? It means that the religions we constructed to deal with those problems are no longer relevant or necessary. So, in the 2060s and 2070s, there'll be religions that deal with the consequences of a lack of meaning in life, consequences of overabundance and the consequences of living a lot longer. Also, they will deal with the consequences of social relationships being a bit weird, considering we have internet and telepathy and all these other cool things going on.

So, the way you interact and think about people will be fundamentally different. Those are going to be new social challenges that priors constructs were incapable of dealing with. So it's going to be a pretty interesting time. And that's just a small sample of the things that I think are going to come in the next 50 years.

U.Today: This was incredibly interesting and, now I know much more about what's happening in that realm. Thanks so much. Thank you for your time.

Charles Hoskinson: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

If you like this interview, you can find parts one and two here and here.

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TORONTO, April 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marathon Gold Corporation (Marathon or the Company) (MOZ.TO) is pleased to report the results of the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for the Valentine Gold Project in Central Newfoundland (the Project). The PFS supports an open pit mining operation with low initial capital cost and high rate of return over a 12-year mine life. Highlights of the PFS are as follows (all figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted):

Matt Manson, President & CEO commented: The Valentine Pre-Feasibility Study released today presents a high value, low capex project with a strong gold production profile and high operating margins. We have taken the approach of identifying the optimum starting point for mining at Valentine, emphasising highest rate of return and lowest risk, while recognising that the large resource inventory and extensive exploration potential along strike and at depth offers plenty of opportunity for mine life extension. Our mill expansion strategy is supported by internal cash flow using a conservative gold price assumption, and the project carries strong project financing attributes, including a fast payback. Mr. Manson continued: The Valentine Project is expected to be Atlantic Canadas largest gold producer. Notwithstanding the current COVID-19 challenges, it represents the future of responsible resource development in Central Newfoundland. With a strong treasury in hand ($28M as of Dec 31, 2019) our attention now turns to the submission of our Environmental Impact Statement, expected later this year, and the commencement of Feasibility-level studies.

The PFS was completed by Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc. as Lead Consultant. Moose Mountain Technical Services acted as Mining Consultant, APEX Geoscience Ltd. as Geological Consultant, Golder Associates Ltd. as Tailings Consultant, Stantec Consulting Ltd. as Environmental Consultant and Terrane Geoscience Inc. as Geotechnical Consultant. The Valentine Gold Project Mineral Resource Estimate (see Marathon Gold news release dated January 20, 2020) was prepared by John T. Boyd Company. The Mineral Reserve Estimate was prepared by Moose Mountain Technical Services. Key results and assumptions used in the Valentine Gold Project PFS are summarized in Table (1) below.

The PFS contemplates open pit mining from the Marathon and Leprechaun deposits only. Ore with a cut-off grade of 0.70 g/t Au will be prioritized for mill processing, initially at 6,800 tonnes per day (tpd), or 2.5 Million tonnes per annum (Mtpa), and then at 11,000 tpd, or 4.0 Mtpa, following mill expansion. Ore between 0.70 g/t and 0.33 g/t Au will be stockpiled for processing at the end of the mine life.

The open pits have been designed and scheduled to maximise project rate of return. Each deposit will be developed in three phases, with the Marathon pit achieving a maximum dimension of 1,250 m x 700 m by 294 m deep, and the Leprechaun pit achieving 1,050 m x 650 m by 306 m deep. LOM strip ratios will be 6.7 at Marathon, 9.1 at Leprechaun, and 7.6 overall. Benches will be mined by conventional drill/blast/load/haul methods on 6 m bench heights with 8 m wide berms every third bench. Dual-lane haul road allowances will support a diesel-powered mining fleet that will include thirty two 90-tonne payload trucks operating between the two open pits.

Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves are derived from the Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources utilizing Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves (2014).

Total Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves (Table 2) are estimated at 1.87 Moz (41.05 Mt at 1.41 g/t Au) utilizing a cut-off of 0.33 g/t Au. Mineral Reserves with a 0.70 g/t Au cut-off, at 1.61 Moz (25.29 Mt at 1.98 g/t Au), are scheduled for priority processing in the mine plan.

Mine planning and Mineral Reserves use block dimensions of 6 m x 6 m x 6 m with whole block dilution after re-blocking the Mineral Resource model, which has been sub-blocked at a 2 m x 2 m x 2 m minimum block size. Mining dilution of 22% and loss of 3% is introduced. Ore blocks surrounded by waste on all sides, and blocks surrounded by waste on three sides with a grade of less than 0.5 g/t Au are also treated as waste. This yields an additional mining recovery loss of 5% by tonnage and 2% by gold content. Inferred Mineral Resources of 0.27 Moz (8.07 Mt at 1.05 g/t Au) that are within the open pits are treated as waste and excluded from the economic analysis.

Processing and Recovery

The PFS contemplates an initial milling strategy based on grinding to 75 m followed by gravity concentration and cyanidation of gravity concentrates and tails (Gravity-Leaching). Grinding will be by way of a SAG and a ball mill. Processing capacity in Phase 1 will be 6,800 tpd (2.5 Mtpa).

The mill will be expanded in Year 4 by coarsening the initial grind to 150 m and adding flotation and regrinding of the flotation concentrates, followed by cyanidation (Gravity-Flotation-Leaching). No additional grinding equipment will be required for this expansion phase. Processing capacity in Phase 2 will be 11,000 tpd (4 Mtpa). The PFS incorporates scheduled ramp-ups to 1.9 Mtpa in Year 1 and 3.3 Mtpa in Year 4.

Process design has been supported by a metallurgical testwork program conducted by the Company under the supervision of Mr. John Goode, including studies in mineralogy, comminution, gravity concentration, flotation, leaching and cyanide destruction. This work has been performed by a variety of third-party laboratories starting in 2010 and with a focus on the specific PFS scope since 2018.

Overall gold recovery is estimated at 93% at an average grade of 1.41 g/t Au (85% at cut-off grade and capped at 97%). Phase 1 Gravity-Leaching has the advantage of a lower initial capital cost but at an average $3/t higher operating cost and an estimated 0.6% lower recoveries. Phase 2 Gravity-Flotation-Leaching allows for higher throughput, with an estimated $42M of expansion capital, at a lower average operating cost and higher recovery.

Capital and Operating Costs

Capital costs (Table 3) have a basis of estimate at Class 4 (FEL2) with a stated +/-25% accuracy (after the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International) and are stated in Q1 2020 Canadian dollars. All capital items are estimated with a uniform 15% contingency. More than 80% of equipment costs and bulk materials are estimated with budget quotes from vendors, with smaller items priced from precedent projects. Certain commodity estimates are derived from material take-offs. Growth factors of up to 10% have been applied on an item by item basis. Mobile equipment is assumed to be lease financed with associated costs contained within sustaining capital estimates.

Capital costs of $42M for the Phase 2 (Gravity-Flotation-Leaching) expansion of the mill are expected to be financed internally out of cash flow at the base case gold price assumption of US$1,350/oz.

Mine operating costs (Table 4) are estimated at $2.51/t mined or $20.88/t milled (LOM) based on an annual average mining rate of 38.0 Mt. Mining costs reflect the relatively high strip ratios of 6.7 and 9.1 in the Marathon and Leprechaun pits respectively, and short haul distances for waste. Process-related costs are estimated at $11.26/t milled, G&A at $2.27/t milled, for total site costs of $34.40/t milled. Bullion transport and refinery charges are estimated at $2.57/oz. Overall, the unit costs are consistent with similar scale projects elsewhere in Canada. Diesel costs are estimated at $1.09/litre and power at $0.059/kWh.

Table 3: Capital Costs

Table 4: Operating Costs

Financial Analysis

At a US$1,350 gold price and a US$:C$ exchange of 0.75 the Project generates an after-tax Net Present Value (NPV) of $472M, at a 5% discount rate, and an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 36.2% based on an effective cash tax rate of 29%. Payback on initial capital is 1.8 years. Before taxes, NPV5% is $752M, IRR is 45.1%, and payback is 1.6 years. The Projects valuation is discounted to December 31, 2021.

A 1.5% Net Smelter Royalty (NSR) is applied to all gold production. In February 2019 the Company sold a 2% net smelter returns royalty on the Valentine Gold Project to Franco-Nevada Corp. The PFS assumes the exercise of a right in favour of the Company to repurchase 0.5% of the NSR for US$7M prior to December 31, 2022, the cost of which is excluded from the Project-level economic analysis.

The Project is most sensitive to revenue attributes such as gold price, head grade and exchange rate, followed by operating cost and capital cost (Table 5). At US$1,550/oz gold the Project generates an after-tax IRR of 49% (Table 6). Importantly, in a downside scenario, the Project generates a 15% after-tax IRR at a gold price of US$1,075/oz, more than US$500/oz below the current spot price.

Table 5: After-Tax Valuation Sensitivity to Certain Operating Parameters (NPV5%, C$M)

Table 6: After-Tax Valuation Sensitivities to the Gold Price at a US$:C$ exchange of 0.75

Infrastructure and Facilities

In addition to the mill and Tailings Management Facility (TMF), on-site infrastructure includes maintenance and office facilities, a 300-person accommodation camp, a wastewater treatment plant, ditching and sedimentation ponds for water management, and site roads. Cost provision has been made for the upgrading and widening of the current 80 km long access road from Millertown via Red Indian Lake. Electrical power to site is to be supplied by NL Hydro with a 30 km long 66 kV transmission line from the Star Lake Hydroelectric Generating Station with back-up on-site diesel generators. Peak power demand for Phase 1 mill processing at the Project (Gravity-Leach) is estimated at 18 MW, increasing to 22 MW following the Phase 2 mill expansion (Gravity-Flotation-Leaching).

Environment, Permitting and Social Acceptability

The Valentine Gold Project is subject to regulation under the environmental protection regimes of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Environmental Protection Act. Marathon filed a project description with both the Impact Assessment Agency (IAA, formerly the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency) and the NL Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment (NLDMAE) on April 5, 2019, which was accepted into the formal Environmental Assessment (EA) process on April 16, 2019. Both the IAA and the NLDMAE issued a determination requiring a project Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and EIS guidelines have now been published by both parties.

The EIS is expected to be filed with the regulators in the 3rd quarter of 2020, and will describe the environmental, social and economic impacts of the scope of project outlined in the PFS. The site layout allows for waste rock storage facilities adjacent to the Marathon and Leprechaun open pits, and a TMF that avoid areas of known fish habitat. The TMF will employ a thickened tailings deposition strategy with a water treatment plant and polishing pond, following a trade-off study of alternate deposition techniques. The TMF has also been successfully located in an area downstream of the Victoria Reservoir and the associated Victoria Dam. Waste rock and tailings geochemical characterization studies indicate very low likelihood for acid rock drainage or metal leaching from either the waste rock storage facilities or tailings. The TMF will receive thickened tailings from the mill between Years 1 and 9, with the mined-out Leprechaun open pit scheduled to receive tailings starting in Year 10. Effluent and contact water from the TMF, waste rock piles and open pits will be collected and, if necessary, treated prior to release. A mitigation strategy will be developed for seasonal Caribou migration which occurs in the spring and fall within the eastern area of the property.

In support of the EA process and the future development and operation of the Project, Marathon has also initiated formal stakeholder engagement with the communities of Buchans, Buchans Junction, Millertown, Badger, Bishops Falls and Grand Falls-Windsor, the Qalipu and Miawpukek (Conne River) First Nations and other interested parties. The PFS estimates maximum employment of 404 persons during construction and 426 persons during operations, and over $100 million of annual average purchasing of goods and services.

Project Schedule

The Valentine Gold Project PFS contemplates completion of a Feasibility Study in the first half of 2021, completion of the EA and Ministerial Approval by mid-2021, and the commencement of site-specific permitting thereafter. Ground-breaking for site construction is scheduled for January 1, 2022, with a total 18-month construction period and first gold production by mid-2023. The reader is cautioned that the timeframes contained within the PFS have been estimated without consideration of potential impacts from the ongoing COVID-19 challenges, such as disruption to supply chains, labour markets, work practices and permitting, amongst other factors.

Mineral Resource Estimate, Effective January 10, 2020

The updated Mineral Resource Estimate was authored by John T. Boyd Company utilizing Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves (2014). Peer review and risk analysis was completed by RPA Inc., who determined that the Mineral Resource models as presented for both the Leprechaun and Marathon Deposits were reasonable overall.

Total Project Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources, which are inclusive of the Mineral Reserves, are 3.09 Moz (54.9 Mt at 1.75 g/t Au). Additional Inferred Mineral Resources are 0.96 Moz (16.77 Mt at 1.78 g/t Au).

Table 7: Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources by Deposit

Table 8: Inferred Mineral Resources by Deposit

NI 43-101 Technical Report

Marathon will file an updated Technical Report prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) for the Valentine Gold Project PFS including a description of the updated Mineral Resource Estimate.

Marathon has prepared a presentation with further technical information regarding the Pre-Feasibility Study results which is available on the companys website at http://www.marathon-gold.com.

Qualified Persons

Disclosure of a scientific or technical nature in this news release has been approved by Robbert Borst, C.Eng, Chief Operating Officer of Marathon Gold Corporation. Mr. Borst has verified the data disclosed including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the information contained in this news release. This included a site inspection, drill database verification, and independent analytical testwork.

The Qualified Person responsible for the preparation of the January 2020 Valentine Gold Project Mineral Resource Estimate is Robert Farmer, P.Eng. of John T Boyd Company. The Qualified Person responsible for the preparation of the Mineral Reserves and mine planning is Marc Schulte, P.Eng., of Moose Mountain Technical Services. Roy Eccles, P.Geol., of APEX Geoscience Ltd. is the Qualified Person responsible for geological technical information including a QA/QC review of drilling and sampling data used in the Mineral Resource Estimate. Paul Staples P.Eng., of Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc. is the Qualified Person responsible for the design of the process plant and infrastructure, and financial modelling. Peter Merry, P.Eng., of Golder Associates Ltd. is the Qualified Person responsible for design of the TMF and water management infrastructure. Sheldon Smith, P.Geo., of Stantec Consulting Ltd. is the Qualified Person responsible for site water balance and surface water management. Each of Mr. Farmer, Mr. Eccles, Mr. Staples, Mr. Schulte, Mr. Merry and Mr. Smith are considered to be independent of Marathon and the Valentine Gold Project for purposes of NI 43-101.

Non-IFRS Financial Measures

The Company has included certain non-IFRS financial measures in this news release, such as Initial Capital Cost, Total Cash Cost, All-In Sustaining Cost, Expansion Capital, Capital Intensity, and Effective Cash Tax Rate which are not measures recognized under IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. As a result, these measures may not be comparable to similar measures reported by other corporations. Each of these measures used are intended to provide additional information to the user and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with IFRS.

Non-IFRS financial measures used in this news release and common to the gold mining industry are defined below.

Total Cash Costs and Total Cash Costs per Ounce

Total Cash Costs are reflective of the cost of production. Total Cash Costs reported in the PFS include mining costs, processing & water treatment costs, general and administrative costs of the mine, off-site costs, refining costs, transportation costs and royalties. Total Cash Costs per Ounce is calculated as Total Cash Costs divided by payable gold ounces.

All-in Sustaining Costs (AISC) and AISC per Ounce

AISC is reflective of all of the expenditures that are required to produce an ounce of gold from operations. AISC reported in the PFS includes total cash costs, sustaining capital, expansion capital and closure costs, but excludes corporate general and administrative costs and salvage. AISC per Ounce is calculated as AISC divided by payable gold ounces.

Acknowledgments

Marathon acknowledges the financial support of the Junior Exploration Assistance Program, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

About Marathon

Marathon (MOZ.TO) is a Toronto based gold company advancing its 100%-owned Valentine Gold Project located in central Newfoundland, one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world.The Project comprises a series of four mineralized deposits along a 20-kilometre system. The Pre-Feasibility Study announced in this news release outlines an open pit mining and conventional milling operation over a twelve-year mine life with a 36% after-tax rate of return. The Project has estimated Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves of 1.87 Moz (41.05 Mt at 1.41 g/t Au) and Total Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources (inclusive of the Mineral Reserves) of 3.09 Moz (54.9 Mt at 1.75 g/t Au). Additional Inferred Mineral Resources are 0.96 Moz (16.77 Mt at 1.78 g/t Au). An updated Technical Report prepared in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101 will be filed on SEDAR shortly including further details and assumptions relating to the Valentine Gold Project.

For more information, please contact:

To find out more information on Marathon Gold Corporation and the Valentine Gold Project, please visit http://www.marathon-gold.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain information contained in this news release constitutes forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, which address events, results, outcomes or developments that Marathon expects to occur are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or include words such as "expects", "anticipates", "plans", "believes", "estimates", "considers", "intends", "targets", or negative versions thereof and other similar expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "may", "will", "should", "would" and "could". More particularly and without restriction, this news release contains forward-looking statements and information about economic analyses for the Valentine Gold Project, capital and operating costs, processing and recovery estimates and strategies, future exploration and mine plans, objectives and expectations of Marathon, future feasibility studies and environmental impact statements and the timetable for completion and content thereof and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the matters and activities contemplated in this news release.

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions and accordingly, actual results and future events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. You are hence cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. A mineral resource that is classified as "inferred" or "indicated" has a great amount of uncertainty as to its existence and economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that any or part of an "indicated mineral resource" or "inferred mineral resource" will ever be upgraded to a higher category of mineral resource. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of mineral deposits in these categories will ever be converted into proven and probable mineral reserves.

By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. Factors that could cause future results or events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements include availability of financing to fund Marathons exploration and development activities, the ability of the current exploration program to identify and expand mineral resources, operational risks in exploration and development for gold, Marathons ability to realize the pre-feasibility study, delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures, uncertainty as to calculation of mineral resources, changes in commodity and power prices, changes in interest and currency exchange rates, the ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, inaccurate geological and metallurgical assumptions (including with respect to the size, grade and recoverability of mineral resources), changes in development or mining plans due to changes in logistical, technical or other factors, title defects, government approvals and permits, cost escalation, changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets, environmental regulation, operating hazards and risks, delays, taxation rules, competition, public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and other uninsurable risks, liquidity risk, share price volatility, dilution and future sales of common shares, aboriginal claims and consultation, cybersecurity threats, climate change, delays and other risks described in Marathons documents filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. You can find further information with respect to these and other risks in Marathons Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2019 and other filings made with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at http://www.sedar.com. Other than as specifically required by law, Marathon undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, whether as a result of new information, future events or results otherwise.

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Marathon Gold Announces Positive Pre-Feasibility Study for the Valentine Gold Project - Yahoo Finance

To this day, details about the weapons in America's nuclear arsenal, especially regarding their warheads, remain some of the most secretive, while still publically known, elements America's nuclear weapons enterprise. There is no better single example of this than a material that the U.S. Department of Energy has used to build thermonuclear warheads, also known as hydrogen bombs, that is so secret that no one knows exactly what it does or exactly what it's made of, and that is only ever referred to publicly by a codename, Fogbank.

Fogbank first gained relatively widespread public attention between 2007 and 2008 as it emerged that the material was at the root of technical delays in the life extension program for the W76 warhead. The W76 series is employed on Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles, also known as Trident D5s, in service with both the U.S. Navy and U.K. Royal Navy. The National Nuclear Security Administration delivered the last life-extended W76-1 warheads in 2018.

"There is a material that we currently use and its in a facility that we built at Y-12," then-NNSA director Thomas DAgostino told members of the House of Representatives in 2007, referring to the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons production facility located near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "Its a very complicated material that call it the Fogbank. Thats not classified, but its a material thats very important to, you know, our [W76] life extension activity."

"Theres another material in the [W76] its called interstage material, also known as Fogbank, but the chemical details, of course, are classified," then-NNSA director Tom DAgostino told senators later that year.

CTBTO

NNSA director Thomas DAgostino in 2009.

DAgostino's description of Fogbank as an "interstage material" has led experts to largely conclude that it sits between the primary and secondary stages of a two-stage thermonuclear weapon. When the first stage, which is a normal fission reaction, goes off, the interstage material would turn into superheated plasma and then trigger a fusion reaction in the second stage.

Experts also believe that Fogbank is an aerogel, a category of ultralight gels in which the traditionally liquid component is instead a gas. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on missiles and nuclear weapons at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, posted in 2008 that the codename Fogbank might be derived from nicknames for aerogels, such as "frozen smoke" and "San Franciso fog." In that same post on the Arms Control Wonk blog, he laid out a number of other known and highly likely details about the material and its production.

NASA

A clay brick, weighing 2.5 kilograms, sits on top of a block of aerogel weighing just 2 grams.

Lewis noted that, in 2007, NNSA's DAgostino had also told legislators that Fogbank's production included purifying the material in a process that "uses a cleaning agent that is extremely flammable." In a talk that same year at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the NNSA director had also "another material that requires a special solvent to be cleaned" and identified the solvent as "ACN," the abbreviation for acetonitrile, which is commonly used in aerogel production.

"That solvent is very volatile," DAgostino said at the time. "Its very dangerous. Its explosive."

A 2007 NNSA briefing slide on a program known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), which sought to develop a new warhead design to replace various existing types, further points to Fogbank's potential aerogel composition. Congress de-funded the RRW effort in 2008 and President Barack Obama formally canceled it the following year.

NNSA

The NNSA briefing slide from 2007 that offers various details about the interstage and other design features of the then-still-in-development Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

The NNSA slide specifically noted a desire to replace an "expensive 'specialty' material" in the interstage section. This would also have resulted in "eliminating [the] need for unique facilities."

Y-12 had closed down a top-secret and specialized site known as Facility 9404-11, which was used to produce Fogbank, following the completion of the final W76 warhead in 1989. The complex established what it called a "Purification Facility" in its place.

"It [the Purification Facility] reprocesses a material that were taking out of weapons so that we can reuse it in refurbished weapons. Thats probably all I can say," Dennis Ruddy, who served for a time as President and General Manager of BWXT Y-12, the division of the Babcock & Wilcox Company that operated Y-12 under contract to the U.S. government between 2000 and 2014, once said. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."

The Middlebury Institute's Jeffery Lewis noted in 2008 that it was public knowledge that the Purification Facility at Y-12 worked with ACN. "On three separate occasions in March 2006, workers evacuated the Purification Facility after alarms went off. According to DOE [Department of Energy] documents, the Purification Facility is alarmed to monitor for acetonitrile (ACN) levels," he explained.

There was also an ACN spill the forced the evacuation of the Purification Facility in December 2014, which thankfully caused no injuries. It took months to get the facility back up and running. An alert about another potential accident in March 2015 turned out to be a false alarm.

Y-12

The Purification Facility, also known as Facility 9225-3, at Y-12.

In 2009, an article had also appeared in an issue of Nuclear Weapons Journal, an official publication of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which disclosed that the decision to re-start manufacturing Fogbank came in 2000 and confirmed that this decision was linked directly to the W76-1 warhead project. It also explained that in the intervening years, NNSA had lost virtually all of its institutional knowledge base regarding Fogbank and how to make it.

"Most personnel involved with the original production process were no longer available," the article said. As such, NNSA personnel had reconstructed the production process from historical records.

In addition, "a new facility had to be constructed, one that met modern health and safety requirements." That facility is very likely the Purification Facility at Y-12.

In a bizarre twist, the new production facility and reverse-engineered production process yielded a version of Fogbank that was of a higher purity than it had been in the past, according to the article. The problem, however, was that for Fogbank to work as intended in existing warhead designs, that previous level of impurity was actually essential. NNSA had to revise the process to ensure the final product was just as impure.

LANL

Extremely rudimentary diagrams showing the production process the NNSA initially developed to produce Fogbank in the 2000s, above, and the revised "impure" process, below.

NNSA only succeeded in recertifying the production process in 2008, the better part of a decade after first deciding to restart Fogbank production. The production of life-extended W76-1 warheads began that same year.

It's not clear how many U.S. nuclear warhead types, past and present, used Fogbank. Jeffery Lewis' has posited that the W78 and W80, used on the U.S. Air Force's LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and the AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), respectively, might have it based on when NNSA designed and produced those warheads.

Fogbank, or at the least the story of re-booting its production, has come up more recently amid the broad U.S. efforts to modernize America's nuclear arsenal in recent years. This has included the fielding of a controversial low-yield variant of the W76, which entered service on some U.S. Navy's Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles earlier this year, and the development of a new warhead, the W93, for those same missiles.

NNSA

The official program logo for the W76-2 low-yield variant.

Work on the W93, in particular, has raised concerns about whether the Department of Energy, which oversees warhead construction, has adequate facilities and other resources to avoid potentially serious delays in the production of large numbers of new nuclear weapons. In March 2020, Allison B. Bawden, a Director on the Natural Resources and Environment team at the Government Accountability Office highlighted the past difficulties with the production of Fogbank in relation to the production of new nuclear weapons.

"Future weapon programs will require newly produced explosives, including some that NNSA has not produced at scale since 1993," Bawden said during a hearing on Capitol Hill. "As we reported in March 2009, NNSA had to delay first production of the W76-1 from September 2007 to September 2008 when it encountered problems restarting production of a key material, known as Fogbank. NNSA is working to reconstitute its high explosives capabilities, as we reported in June 2019."

You can read more about the production of specialized high explosives for nuclear weapons in this past War Zone piece.

The exact origins of the W93 design are unclear. Senior Department of Energy and U.S. military officials have shied away from calling it all-new, but it is certainly set to the be the first new warhead design to enter U.S. military service since the introduction of the W88 for the Trident II in 1989.

Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman via Wikimedia

A non-official diagram showing the general arrangement and features of the W88 warhead.

The W93 is based on previously nuclear-tested designs, its not going to require any nuclear testing," a senior defense official had told reporters in February. However, U.S. Navy Admiral Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told legislators that same month that the W93 itself "hasnt been designed yet."

The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program had raised similar questions. NNSA had picked Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to build the initial production version of the RRW, leading to speculation that it might be derived from LLNL's W89. Work on the W89, which was intended to arm the Air Force's air-launched AGM-131A Short Range Attack Missile II (SRAM II) and the Navy's RUM/UUM-125A Sea Lance anti-submarine missile, officially ended in 1991. Neither the SRAM II nor the Sea Lance entered service, either.

DOE

It is possible that the W93 project will now leverage work from the RRW program, regardless of the latter's origins. If the W93 does follow on from that earlier effort, there is also a distinct possibility that it will not use Fogbank in its interstage section.

Whatever happens, Fogbank will continue to be a prime example of both the complexity surrounding the construction of nuclear warheads, as well as the immense secrecy surrounding America's nuclear weapon enterprise.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

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Fogbank Is Mysterious Material Used In Nukes That's So Secret Nobody Can Say What It Is - The Drive

The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis.

There is much discussion in todays news about who is responsible for the shortcomings. Did Trump find the shelves empty or full when he took office after President Obama? Is the stockpile meant to support local governments in dealing with shortages in such a crisis, as the DHHS website said until last Friday, or is it specifically meant for use by the federal government, ourstockpile not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use, as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner insists, a view supported by the newly amended DHHS website?The United States maintains other strategic stockpiles, more carefully and at a far greater expense. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a stockpile of oil and gasoline and in 2009, President Obama announced the Stockpile Stewardship Program, pledging more than a trillion dollars to ensure the safety, security, and reliability and the life extension of the deteriorating nuclear weapons stockpile.

A common dictionary definition of the word stewardship is an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources for the future, but in 2009, President Obama was not speaking of stewardship over the fragile environment, nor over the crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges and tunnels, nor hospitals or schools, nor even stewardship for our national parks and forests, but stewardship for a stockpile of nuclear weapons. The life extension he called for was not for the worlds elderly increasingly at risk, but for the aging arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threaten the obliteration of all life.President Trumps determination to purge his predecessors legacy does not apply to Obamas Stockpile Stewardship Program. With unique bipartisan support, the life extension of nuclear weapons has been kept safe from Trumps budget cuts that decimated the United States ability to respond to a pandemic.On this day in 1967, one year before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech at New Yorks Riverside Church titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, that speaks to the present situation where weapons of mass destruction have priority over instruments of healing. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, Dr. King declared, is approaching spiritual death. In this speech Dr. King labeled the triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism and he lamented that adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube while human needs, especially those of the poor, went unmet.Among the synonyms for the word stockpile, along with cache, hoard, store and lay-away is the word treasure. We stockpile what is valuable to us, the things that we treasure, what we want to keep for the future. Jesus said, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Judging by our budget priorities, preserving the threat of nuclear destruction is closer to our collective heart than even our health and our lives and we have arrived at the spiritual death Dr. King warned of 52 years ago.While there is life, there is hope, though, and we are at a critical moment. As horrible as the COVID-19 pandemic is, it will run its course and humanity will go on. The same cannot be said, however, of the imminent threats of nuclear destruction and climate collapse. We will not survive on this planet so long as stewardship over stockpiles of fossil fuels and nuclear weapons takes priority over ventilators and surgical masks. So long as what life extension means is keeping nuclear weaponry up to date and not healthcare, housing, education, the peace and wellbeing of all, there can be no hope.I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values, said Dr. King. 52 years later, our very existence as a species is at risk and the radical revolution of values that he preached is our best hope.

*Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and is sheltering-in-place at a Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa

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Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. On The Anniversary Of His Murder In A Pandemic Year OpEd - Eurasia Review

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Pyrroloquinoline Quinone Market Is Set for a Rapid Growth and is Expected to Reach USD Billion by 2027| Haotian Pharm, Absorb Health, Life Extension,...

It's not entirely clear where the seven aircraft are coming from. An OV-10D+, known by its old U.S. Navy Bureau Number (BuNo) 155493, and an OV-10G, also referred to by its BuNo, 155409, are among the Broncos that Blue Air Training is buying, according to Warbird News.

The Navy first acquired 155493 as an OV-10A in 1968 and it was among the fleet assigned to the service's famous Light Attack Squadron Four (VAL-4), also known as the "Black Ponies," during the Vietnam War. It was later transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps, where it was later converted into the OV-10D configuration with its distinctly longer nose, as well as uprated engines and other improvements. All of the Marine OV-10Ds were further upgraded into D+s in the 1990s with strengthed wings, updated wiring, and other improvements as part of a service-life extension program.

The Marine Corps, which was the last U.S. military service to fly the Bronco on a widespread basis, retired the last of its examples in 1995. The Air Force sent its remaining OV-10s to the bone yard four years earlier.

The U.S. State Department's Air Wing, which you can read about in more detail in this past War Zone story, eventually acquired 155493, among other OV-10s, and had Marsh Aviation put it through another upgrade and modification program to turn it into an herbicide sprayer aircraft to support counter-narcotics operations. Beyond the spray equipment, the most visible change was the addition of four-blade propellers to the plane's two engines.

Read the rest here:
The Bronco Is Back! A Fleet Of OV-10s Will Help Train Air Force Forward Air Controllers - The Drive

Yuri Molchan

Major crypto platform founders support anti-aging research, saying that a bigger population could live even with finite resources

Ethereums Vitalik Buterin, IOTAs David Snsteb and Trons Justin Sun are discussing anti-aging research andsupporting it. Buterin admittedthat thisidea is weird for many peoplethese days, though, he also calledaging a humanitarian disaster.

In the course of a recent discussion of weird ideas on Twitter, the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, suggested discussing anti-aging research, calling aging a humanitarian disaster.

He stated that every two years, as many people die from aging as didin World War 2. Additionally, he saidthat theissue burdens social systems and families. Buterin hopes that soon scientists will be able to significantly extend the human life span.

When asked about the planet getting overpopulated and the issue of the resources coming to an end, the Ethereum co-founder stated:

On average a new person contributes more to the resources available to existing humans than they deplete. (This is due to their productive labor, scientific research, the change they become the next Norman Borlaug, etc...)

We are nowhere near any theoretical bounds on our ability to use those resources. Our efficiency in using limited resources has increased by orders of magnitude in the last two centuries, and can rise orders of magnitude more.

Must Read

IOTA founder, David Snsteb, has responded, saying that in 2020 the discussion on life-extension measures should not at all be considered a weird idea, unlike it was fifteen years ago, in 2005.

Now, Snsteb tweeted, this should be the universal common sense position.

The Tron founder Justin Sun briefly joinedthe discussion.

In an exclusive interview with U.Today, the IOHK CEO and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also shared his take on the subject of anti-aging.

While describing possible trends of the future, he mentioned a largely growing market of life extension products and services. He recalled thewell-known example of a jellyfish that can regenerate and thus live forever.

So there's probably going to be a considerable amount of improvement in regenerative biology and an improvement in a human lifespan extension and new therapies and medicines to keep us healthy into our deep old age. So then what does that mean? It means you have a human race that doesn't recycle every 80 years. They may last a lot longer.

He also suggestedthat as the anti-aging trend likely gets wider and stronger, there will be fewer religious people accepting death as a natural part of human life.

See the article here:
Vitalik Buterin Wants to Rid Humanity of Aging, David Snsteb and Justin Sun Join In - U.Today

Great Panther Mining (GPL +0.4%) says that it aims to ramp up exploration, expand its resources and improve its finances

GPL said that in 2020, the firm would invest a minimum of $11M aimed at realizing exploration potential at its assets, with particular focus on mine life extension at the Brazil mine and a possible re-start of the Guanajuato Mine

Q4 revenue came in at $65.6M, +381% Y/Y, reflecting the acquisition of Tucano.

Net loss was $28.1M, as mine operating earnings were offset by an impairment of Tucano goodwill.

Great Panther said it could not yet provide company-wide guidance for 2020 but could offer operating guidance for both Tucano and the GMC mines.

For Tucano, 2020 planned production is between 120,000 and 130,000 gold ounces - up around between 13% and 23%.

At GMC, planned production is between 1.2M to 1.4M silver equivalent ounces, a decline of ~7% to 20%

Previously: Great Panther Mining EPS misses by $0.06, beats on revenue (March 31)

Original post:
Great Panther Mining focusing on exploration, resource expansion and finances for 2020 - Seeking Alpha