Geomagnetic storm warning as solar flare expected to directly hit Earth today | Science & Tech News | Sky News

A massive solar flare is due to hit Earth today, authorities are warning – potentially disrupting power grids and bringing the Northern Lights as far south as New York.

The flare – officially known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) – was observed on Saturday on the side of the sun directly facing our planet and comes as we enter a period of increased solar activity.

An alert was published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which warned the geomagnetic storm could cause power grid fluctuations with voltage alarms at higher latitudes, where the Earth is more exposed.

Source: Geomagnetic storm warning as solar flare expected to directly hit Earth today | Science & Tech News | Sky News

Italian sailors knew of America 150 years before Christopher Columbus, new analysis of ancient documents suggests | EurekAlert!

Regardless though, Chiesa states, Cronica universalis “brings unprecedented evidence to the speculation that news about the American continent, derived from Nordic sources, circulated in Italy one and half centuries before Columbus.” He adds: “What makes the passage (about Marckalada) exceptional is its geographical provenance: not the Nordic area, as in the case of the other mentions, but northern Italy. “The Marckalada described by Galvaneus is ‘rich in trees’, not unlike the wooded Markland of the Grœnlendinga Saga, and animals live there. “These details could be standard, as distinctive of any good land; but they are not trivial, because the common feature of northern regions is to be bleak and barren, as actually Greenland is in Galvaneus’s account, or as Iceland is described by Adam of Bremen.” Overall, Professor Chiesa says, we should “trust” Cronica universalis as throughout the document Galvaneus declares where he has heard of oral stories, and backs his claims with elements drawn from accounts (legendary or real) belonging to previous traditions on different lands, blended together and reassigned to a specific place.

Source: Italian sailors knew of America 150 years bef | EurekAlert!

Hearth site in Utah desert reveals human tobacco use 12,300 years ago – The Jerusalem Post

Scientists have unearthed evidence of a milestone in human culture – the earliest-known use of tobacco – in the remnants of a hearth built by early inhabitants of North America’s interior about 12,300 years ago in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert.
Researchers discovered four charred seeds of a wild tobacco plant within the hearth contents, along with stone tools and duck bones left over from meals. Until now, the earliest documented use of tobacco came in the form of nicotine residue found inside a smoking pipe from Alabama dating to 3,300 years ago.
The researchers believe the nomadic hunter-gatherers at the Utah site may have smoked the tobacco or perhaps sucked wads of tobacco plant fiber for the stimulant qualities offered by the nicotine it contained.

Source: Hearth site in Utah desert reveals human tobacco use 12,300 years ago – The Jerusalem Post

Hormel Partners With The Better Meat Co. to Expand Plant-Based Protein Portfolio | Food Manufacturing

As a global branded food company, we understand our food culture is changing at a rapid pace and people are curious and willing to try great tasting, plant-based proteins,” said Fred Halvin, vice president of corporate development at Hormel Foods. “We are excited to work with The Better Meat Co. team to continue to offer delicious and convenient mycoprotein and plant-based protein products.”

This partnership is the latest effort into plant-based products by Hormel Foods. The company is no stranger to plant-based protein with retail products like Planters peanuts, SKIPPY peanut butter and Justin’s nut butters, as well as several plant-based pizza toppings in the foodservice industry through its subsidiary Burke Corporation and under the Happy Little Plants brand.

The Better Meat Co. is a Sacramento-based sustainable food tech start-up founded in 2018. As a business-to-business ingredients provider, it pioneers new ways of producing animal-free protein via fermentation, generating ingredients like Rhiza that empower food companies to improve sustainability while making the meatiest alt-protein possible.

Source: Hormel Partners With The Better Meat Co. to Expand Plant-Based Protein Portfolio | Food Manufacturing

Multiple sclerosis: link with earlier infection just got stronger – The Jerusalem Post

We found that glandular fever between ages 11 and 19 was associated with a significantly increased MS risk after age 20 years, in an analysis that compared siblings with each other in every family separately, and then the results were combined. This design was to make sure the results are not because people susceptible to MS are also more likely to have more severe infections because of this susceptibility. The results confirm that glandular fever, and almost certainly other infections, are important risk factors for MS and able to trigger the disease.
The new study also made it possible to look in greater detail at when an infection is more likely to trigger MS. Glandular fever in earlier childhood was less of a risk for MS than when it occurred after age 11 years. The highest risk for MS was seen for infections between ages 11 and 15 years (around the time of puberty), with the risk dropping with increasing age and almost completely disappearing by age 25. Changes in the brain and immune system as people age may help explain this.
Even though glandular fever may be triggering MS, most often around puberty, it can be many years before MS is diagnosed. Many who had the infection between ages 11 and 15 years did not have an MS diagnosis until after they were 30. This is because the damage to the brain caused by MS develops slowly until it makes someone sick enough to receive a diagnosis of MS.
Glandular fever during the teenage years may trigger MS because it can get into the brain. And the damage it causes to nerve cells may cause the immune system to start attacking a part of the nerves that insulates them – called the myelin sheath.

Source: Multiple sclerosis: link with earlier infection just got stronger – The Jerusalem Post

For some Indigenous, COVID presents possibility of cultural extinction, says Myrna Cunningham

Myrna Cunningham Few people are better placed to speak to the impact COVID is having on Indigenous communities than Myrna Cunningham, a Miskitu physician from the Wangki river region of Nicaragua who has spent 50 years advocating for the rights of women and Indigenous peoples at local, regional, national, and international levels.

“For Indigenous peoples, the arrival of the virus, in addition to putting people at risk, presented the possibility that entire cultures could disappear,” Cunningham told Mongabay. “For Indigenous peoples with few members, the situation still endangers their existence as a collective, as a culture, as a people.”

“We are all in a situation of extreme vulnerability.”

Source: For some Indigenous, COVID presents possibility of cultural extinction, says Myrna Cunningham

Leyte continued

Pacific Paratrooper

LST’s # 66,67,18,245,102 on 20 October 1944

While the Imperial Navy was floundering in their attempts to halt the persistent invasion of Leyte, Gen. Yamashita was in his headquarters at Fort McKinley on Luzon. He was receiving very little information from his own people and upon hearing of the US landing, he was heard to say, “Very interesting. But where is Leyte?” [The Japanese general had only just been transferred from Manchuria.]

Yamashita did not feel that the Japanese all-out standing defense should be on Leyte and he refused to supply more troops to the island. But he was overruled. Gen. Terauchi, knowing that the island’s occupation by the Americans would divide their bases, so reinforcements would be sent in.

Yamashita Tomoyuki, 1945

21 October – Most of the Japanese beach defenses had been shattered by bombing and strafing and a majority of the 1st Battalion/16th Division had been wiped…

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Leyte | start of November 1944

Pacific Paratrooper

3 November – When the Japanese 57th Regiment arrived at Limon, Gen. Krueger’s 24th Division was on the other side of the mountain range.  Rather than attack the lightly defended enemy positions, he halted his troops.  For some reason, he was expecting a possible enemy amphibious landing and the US attack would not begin for 2 more days.

5→10 November – in the 19th year of Showa, for the Japanese, the G.I. mortar and machine-gun fire seemed to nearly wipe out the squad scaling the ridge.  As the brush caught fire, the Americans of I Company/3rd Battalion/21st Infantry Regiment/ 24th Division, attacked and charged over the ridge until the enemy’s big guns opened up.  Another Japanese force arrived and the US troops retreated.  This would be known as Breakneck Ridge [Yahiro Hill to the Japanese].

Breakneck Ridge, Leyte; courtesy of Koji Kanemoto

Even with the support of the 1st…

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