Tag: featured

Plastic nightmare: Spiralling consumption of plastic bottles threatens to become environmental disaster in the near future

 

plastic

The consumption of plastic bottles has skyrocketed over the last decade. About 480 billion were sold worldwide in 2016. This compares to about 300 billion just ten years before. To put it into perspective, if one were to stack 480 billion bottles, the plastic tower would reach almost half way to the Sun.

Right now, factories produce an average of 20,000 bottles every second of every day. Tonnes of discarded plastic enter the world’s oceans all the time, ultimately entering the food chain through birds and fish.

Plastic bottles have been found in every corner of the oceans, including the Arctic and remote, uninhibited islands. The world’s fatal love affair with plastic is now threatening to become a harmful environmental issue not far into the future, as consumption rates far outstrips recycling.

Experts are warning that plastic pollution will soon become as harmful as climate change, unless drastic measures are taken.

 

Attack of the brain-eating Praying Mantis: Experts stunned to discover that mantises have added small birds to their feeding habits

It is well known that the Praying Mantis is a very effective killer indeed, and a voracious feeder as well. Mantises are known to feed mainly on arthropods (invertebrate animals), frogs, and small lizards.

But zoologists are now stunned after discovering that these amazing insects do not balk at killing small birds to eat their brains, if given half the chance.

Mantises are rapacious, if largely opportunistic predators. They lay in wait and hunt by catching prey that is unfortunate enough to wander close to their ambush site. The mantis grabs its prey and holds onto it with its strong, serrated forelegs. Then, it feeds, slowly and methodically, until there’s nothing left.

Now, a recent zoological study has revealed that larger mantises are bold enough to kill small birds and devour their brains, usually while the victim is still alive, a la Hannibal Lecter.

Such behavior has been detected worldwide, and zoologists have observed that hummingbirds are the prey of choice, though 24 different aviary species have been documented to be on the mantises’ menu.

The insects have learned to ambush hummingbirds coming to hanging feeders. The mantis will perch itself on the feeder and simply wait until a hummingbird gets within striking range. Then, it leaps forward, grabs the bird, and eats its brain, usually gaining access to the juicy stuff through the eye cavity.

This behavior, while seemingly cruel, it’s just another facet in the short but intense life of a Praying Mantis. They live for about a year in the wild, and while they do, they engage in sexual cannibalism, eat birds’ brains, and scare the hell out of people.

A full life indeed.

Mars’ surface is covered in UV-activated chemicals that inhibit the development of living organisms -Exomars rover will target subsoil in search for extraterrestrial life

Terraforming Mars may have to wait yet a while longer.

The Martian surface is covered in UV-activated chemicals that inhibit the development of any lifeforms, as recent tests of the topsoil have shown.

ESA’s Exomars rover will now begin digging under Mars’ toxic surface, searching for any proof of current or past life on the planet.

Recent tests conducted on Martial soil have confirmed that oxidant compounds known as perchlorates permeate the the Red Planet’s surface.

Perchlorates are highly oxidized forms of chlorine, a chemical commonly used in household cleaning products and also as a disinfectant in swimming pools. The downside of it is that at high concentrations, chlorine is extremely toxic. It was weaponised and used as a chemical warfare agent during the First World War, for example.

Perchlorates were first thought to be present on the Martian soil as far back as 1976, when the Viking probes landed there. The compounds were detected again by the Curiosity rover, which is still marauding around Mars today.

The bad news is that when perchlorates are hit by UV radiation, which occurs on Mars pretty much all the time, the compounds become activated and turn into a particularly effective bactericide, killing off most microbial life.

This effect is a double edge sword. While the chemicals present on the Martial soil will destroy any microbe brought from Earth, thus preventing the contamination of Mars with exogenous bacteria, it also means that life on the surface is all but impossible at this point in time.

Scientists will now have to dig deep into the Martian subsoil to try and find any trace of life, past or present.

Roswell: The truth may still be out there

roswell

 

It’s been seven decades since a small, nondescript town out in the New Mexico desert entered history books and popular culture for the most peculiar of reasons.

Half myth, half cover-up, it is one hell of a story.

Welcome to Roswell.

A rancher’s tale of strange objects in the desert

Temperatures in New Mexico hover around the 80F (26F) mark in early July, with little to no precipitation. It is hot out there.

Seventy years ago today, a local rancher named William Brazel returned from the blazing desert heat and contacted County Sheriff George Wilcox to report something rather unusual.

The 48-year-old rancher claimed that he had found some strange-looking debris out in the arid, wild terrain. An aircraft of some kind, he said. But an odd one, if it was an aircraft at all. The site, Brazel said, was located far out into the wasteland, about 40m from the town of Corona in the neighbouring state of Texas. By some accounts, Brazel had already collected some pieces of debris -including a ‘flying disc’- from the site and brought them back to his ranch.

Intrigued by the rancher’s claims, Sheriff Wilcox contacted army officials at the local airfield. Major Jesse Marcel, a military intelligence officer based at Roswell Air Force Base, headed out to the’crash’ site to investigate.

Things get a bit murky as to exactly what happened from there on. Whatever the truth may be, Major Marcel and other personnel showed up at Brazel’s home to retrieve the items found in the desert.

The local press picked up on the story. Brazel told a local newspaper about what he had found, saying it was some kind of ‘bright wreckage’.

The army released an official statement on July 9 to say that the military had recovered a ‘flying disc’ from a site north of Roswell, New Mexico. The statement deemed this disc to be a ‘weather balloon.’

The Roswell Incident: Half-truths, conspiracy theories, and an alien autopsy that never happened

The weather balloon story had the desired effect. By trivializing the find, the Government effectively suppressed interest, and the Roswell Incident went largely forgotten for about thirty years.

Everyone got on with their lives around Roswell and elsewhere, but the secret hidden outside that little town out in the desert simmered just beneath the public’s attention.

The 70s brought about a marked social shift. Issues like the Watergate, and particularly the deeply unpopular Vietnam war, created an atmosphere of distrust in the Government.

Fuelled by this new anti-Government trend, rumours and stories began to circulate about what really happened at Roswell. The ‘weather balloon’ was in fact an alien craft that had crashed out there, some said. Conspiracy theorists even postulated that the ship’s crew had been found to be dead inside it, and that the bodies had been taken to a place that’s also not supposed to exist, Area 51. The weather balloon story was simply a smoke screen concocted by the scheming US Government, many claimed.

As the buzz around Roswell’s UFO story grew, so did the efforts to refute it. Hundreds of ‘witnesses’ were interviewed by a multitude of magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and other media outlets, national and international. All of a sudden, townfolk recalled seeing ‘aliens’ around Roswell, some saying that ‘rescue UFOs’ had been seen flying around the area of the original crash site, presumably searching for the missing crew.

The Government stuck to its guns, saying that it was nothing more than a weather balloon. Later, military officials admitted that the object was in fact a device for monitoring nuclear explosions. Remember, this was back in 1947. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened less than 24 months prior. People’s resolve to find aliens in their backyard only grew stronger.

Then, in 1995, footage surfaced of an ‘alien autopsy’ being performed on some of the dead bodies of the Roswell UFO crew. TV networks around the world showed it with great fanfare, taking a huge boost in their ratings.

The footage was provided by a London-based videographer and entrepeneur by the name of Ray Santilli, who claimed that the footage was original and had been given to him by a military cameraman who was present when the autopsy supposedly took place, circa summer of 1947.

The program ‘Alien autopsy’ aired worldwide on August 28, 1995.

Soon debunked as a hoax, Santilli made admissions that his footage was a ‘reconstruction’ and that only a ‘few frames’ of the original autopsy actually remained. The whole thing had been shot in an improvised set inside an empty London apartment, as it turned out. Still, a version of the documentary was released on DVD in 2006.

The (financial) truth is out there: Alien business is big

Whoever’s truth you choose to believe, the UFO story was the best thing that could ever happen to a small desert town like Roswell.

Back in 1947, Roswell was little more than a tiny geographical point on ordnance maps. Sparsely dotted with ranches and a couple of diners for transient farmhands to get greasy food in, Roswell grew to a current population of around 50,000. Today, the town’s economy is largely based on two very disparate things: agriculture to feed people, and alien lore to attract tourism.

And the latter it does, very efficiently, too. Ufologists, conspiracy theorists, or simply curious tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of an alien creature wandering around the desert flock to Roswell year after year. The town’s UFO Museum recorded a bumper year in terms of numbers in 2016, for example, with 200,000 unique visitors recorded.

Roswell’s tourism industry is a thriving one, largely due to an event that happened 70 years ago. Local business have embraced the alien gig much like the Irish Government has taken to the trough: With quasi-religious fervor. You can even get Alien Burgers and most local diners, and stickers and balloons in the shape of the Little Green Men are only a convenience store away. Or why not drop by the Alien Zone, where you can get your picture taken next to aliens in just about every setting you can think of.

The town’s tourist centerpiece is the UFO Festival, which takes place the first weekend in July every year.

2017 marks the 70th anniversary of Roswell’s notorious UFO incident, and the locals are in for a bumper alien-themed spending spree. This year’s festival is expected to be worth in the region of $6m.

Conspiracy theories and stories circulate to this day. Some say that the Government bought Brazel’s silence, going as far as threatening his life if he ever revealed the ‘truth’. The rancher died in 1963, coincidentally the same year as the Kennedy assassination.

Be it as it may, the Roswell legacy lives on, and for some shopkeepers around town, it’s big alien business as usual.

New weapon in oncology armamentarium against ovarian cancer deemed ‘biggest breakthrough in a decade’

A new experimental drug has shown extremely promising results in the treatment of metastasized ovarian cancer, with trial doctors going as far as saying that it is the ‘biggest breakthrough ten years.’

Ovarian cancer may cause few or no symptoms when it first develops, so it is commonly detected at an already advanced stage, making treatment options difficult. About a fifth of cases actually present with distant metastases, with most of these being terminal and requiring supportive or palliative care. Ovarian cancer kills an average of 4,000 people a year in the UK alone.

A new drug, ONX-0801, is currently being tested in a phase one clinical trial conducted at the Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London. The compound has shown extremely positive results so far, after seven out of fifteen women who were administered the trial drug experienced substantial tumour shrinkage.

Notably, ONX-0801 was only being tested for safety, but the unexpectedly beneficial therapeutic results encouraged the investigators to quickly move to further trials.

ONX-0801 was administered to women who had poor or negligible therapeutic response to standard chemotherapy treatment.

The drug is an alpha-folate receptor (aFR)-mediated inhibitor of thymidylate synthase. Administered intravenously, it selectively targets and binds to tumour cells where aFR expression is higher. Healthy cells remain relatively unaffected as aFR expression is significantly lower. Once bound, ONX-0801 inhibits both DNA synthesis and cell division, inducing cell apoptosis (death of the cell.)

Though initial results regarding the therapeutic outcomes of ONX-0801, further research and trials are needed to confirm its viability in the fight against ovarian cancer.

Alien: Covenant review

covenant

Photo credit: Fox

Of neomorphs and duplicitous synthetics

There is a moment in Alien: Covenant when David, after having taught his synthetic counterpart Walter how to play the flute earlier, hears him play a tune. David walks in and says “Whistle, and I’ll come.’

This is of course a reference to the classic ghost story ‘Whistle and I’ll come, my lad,‘ by English author M.R. James. Such reference is bound to be missed by all but the most hardcore of horror & classic literature fans, but it is a shining moment in the somewhat derivative and cliche-ridden script that underlies the latest chapter in the long running Alien story arc.

Covenant‘s main flaw is that a ‘seen-it-all-before’ sense pervades the entire movie. From the opening credits (a revisit of Alien’s original piecemeal lettering credits), to the final 20 odd minutes (a shameless reimagining of the classic final showdown scene in Aliens, where Ripley kicks the Alien Queen’s spiky ass with a Power Loader, replaced with a loading crane here), we can’t help by feeling that it’s all been done before. Scott played it safe, and used (perhaps overused) the most recognizable moments of the movie’s predecessors to convey his own story.

Bar Walter/David (by far the most interesting thing about Covenant), the characters here are unashamedly one-dimensional. Alien fodder, if you will, to be gruesomely dispatched one by one to whittle down the crew to the Final Girl (Daniels, played with great talent and intent by Katherine Ross). There are attempts to imbue some characters with an extra layer of depth. Oram, for instance, is a religious man (which is why the Company did not allow him to lead the mission, as his religious views might cloud his judgment). This also serves as a conversation point between him and David, after we learn of David’d activities since landing on this planet. But by and large, the crew is there to be offed by the alien creatures, deemed ‘neomorphs’ here. If you are seasoned enough, you can almost tell the order which they will each die in.

Covenant is full of common tropes of the horror genre, down to the ‘sex equals death’ one. I mean, when are people going to learn that nookie in deep space with an alien menace lurking around probably won’t end well. One could safely replace the classic line with ‘In space, no one can hear you come,’ (cause you will die before you do.)

We have touched upon the Walter/David duality, both roles played flawlessly by the solid Michael Fassbender.

As Walter, he is the Bishop-type. A synthetic tasked with looking after the ship and its crew, and prevent either from coming to harm. Crucially, this new-generation synthetic is purposely devoid of the willingness and ability to learn, instead being consigned to serve its masters and creators. David remarks upon this point during one of the movie’s best scenes, and a rather intimate one, too, as David teaches Walter to play the flute (I’ll do the fingering, David says,) while Walter blows down the pipe.

We also learn about the fate of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, from Prometheus, and what happened when the Juggernaut reached the Engineers homeworld. David has been up to no good.

But Covenant’s most critical flaw is its final twist, which you can see coming from about the movie’s halfway point. It won’t be revealed here, but think of the switcheroo, and you won’t be far from the truth.

Overall, Covenant is a solid, if somewhat cliched alien-by-the-numbers yarn. It is much more cohesive than Prometheus’ disjointed proposition for sure. But it is also not a huge departure from the series as Aliens was to Alien, for example, which turned out quite the better for it. David Fincher’s Alien 3 attempted to be different and ended up disappointing because of immense production troubles, and the less said about Alien: Resurrection the better. Not even the presence of the wonderfully underrated Brad Dourif could save it from imploding.

Covenant’s ending nicely sets up the next instalment (sequel to Covenant, prequel to Alien), provisionally called ‘Alien: Awakening.‘

We might see something different by then. For now, it’s alien business as usual.

Welcome, Constant Readers…

library

… to the revamped Life Mirror site.

In this my very own corner of the Big Bad Web, you will now find a brand new theme and an updated layout guarding the gateway to a plethora of articles and pieces on current affairs, science news, quirky and offbeat stuff, and much, much more.

Do stop by while you’re browsing. It won’t take much of your time, I promise.

MH370: Flight into eternity

flight

MH370. Modern aviation, and the world at large, will forever remember this fateful identifier.

It began just like any other scheduled flight. Passengers awkwardly moving down the crowded aisles, looking for their allocated seats. Here, the clatter of the overhead compartment as people stow their belongings away. There, the nervous laughter of those not so keen on flying as they fumble with their seat belts and try to settle for a long night flight. Hidden from view, an air hostess hurriedly dusts off her uniform while one of her colleagues checks the passenger manifest. The long cabin bustles with activity.

Locked away in the cockpit, the flight crew preps the aircraft for departure.

The Boeing 777, callsign MAS370, slowly hums into life as systems are initialized and pre-flight checklists are thoroughly completed. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah will be flying the aircraft tonight. He is a seasoned aviator, a keen flight enthusiast with over 18,000 flying hours to his name. Zaharie’s First Officer in tonight’s flight is 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid. With just over 2,000 flying hours, this is Hamid’s first flight as a fully qualified first officer in a Boeing 777.

MH370 is scheduled to depart Kuala Lumpur International Airport after midnight, March 08.

As the aircraft taxies down the runway, the lights of the terminal become momentarily brighter, as the plane’s taxi lights are switched off to avoid distracting any pilot attempting to land.

‘MH370, permitted for take off’, the air traffic controller announces. ‘Good night.’

‘MH370 copies that. Thank you, and goodbye.’

Zaharie opens up the throttles and the aircraft obediently and rapidly picks up speed. As it thunders down the runway, the passengers within watch the world outside become a blur. They will never see dry land again.

The aircraft reaches take off speed and the captain pulls back on the control column. The Boeing rotates, and for a fleeting moment, gravity fights to maintain its hold on this man made artefact. The machine’s raw power trounces nature however, and the aircraft neatly leaves the ground, initiating its final ascent into the skies. It’s 0:41 local time.

Inside, the passengers prepare to sleep, or perhaps listen to some relaxing music, or read their favourite best seller. 239 souls in total travel in this state of the art aircraft. 239 people, from 13 different countries, all blissfully unaware of the drama that would shortly unfold, unaware of the events that would turn this normal, scheduled flight out of Malaysia tonight into one of the biggest mysteries of modern aviation.

MH370 would vanish less than an hour later. The plane reached its cruising altitude at 35,000 feet, and then communications were disabled, either accidentally or intentionally. Only time will tell.

The aircraft veered off course and flew into history, carrying its human cargo into eternity.