jhavelikes

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n a new ‘flour massacre’, the Israeli occupation army has killed dozens of Palestinians who were gathering in the Sudaniya roundabout area, northwest of Gaza City. The victims were waiting for the arrival of humanitarian aid after roughly 50 consecutive days of a complete denial of aid. Israeli army forces opened fire on dozens of Palestinian civilians waiting for aid trucks on the sea road northwest of Gaza City on Wednesday 13 November at around 10:00 am. The Israeli forces killed and injured dozens of them when they attempted to seek refuge inside a nearby house, and then bombed the building, destroying it. Many more individuals are now missing and presumably trapped beneath the debris. According to an eyewitness, the Israeli army targeted a group of civilians who had been enduring weeks of famine as a result of the occupation army blocking the entry of food and aid supplies into the Gaza City and North Gaza. When they went to get flour, the army opened fire on them with shells and bullets, forcing them to take cover in a two-storey residential house nearby. As soon as they reached the building, the Israeli army bombed it. Screams from those still inside the targeted house were heard, but the victims’ cries for help could not be answered, as the area was inaccessible to ambulance and civil defence personnel. Initial reports indicate that there were around 200 people gathered in the area at the time of the attack, 70 of whom were killed and injured. Many more are still unaccounted for and likely stuck beneath the rubble, and no rescue efforts have been conducted as the Israeli army has effectively shut down Palestinian civil defense and ambulance services after threatening, confiscating, shelling, and burning fire trucks and ambulances in the northern Gaza Strip for 23 days now.

New Israeli ‘flour massacre’ targets dozens of starving people north of Gaza City

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LIVE: Israel kills 33 in Gaza as Palestinians face ‘forced starvation’ | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

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Northern Gaza is being annihilated before the eyes of the world. Continuous bombardment is striking every corner, with martyrs falling in every street. The sound of explosions never stops, and there is no safe place for civilians. Hospitals are overwhelmed, unable to treat the injured, and there is no food or water to sustain those trapped. The humanitarian catastrophe is escalating, and the scenes of death and destruction have become a daily reality. The north is facing total annihilation, while the world stands by in silence.

(1) Mahmoud Bassam محمود بسام on X: "Northern Gaza is being annihilated before the eyes of the world. Continuous bombardment is striking every corner, with martyrs falling in every street. The sound of explosions never stops, and there is no safe place for civilians. Hospitals are overwhelmed, unable to treat the https://t.co/S5SIQkXUQv" / X

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According to Raphael Lemkin, who first defined the term genocide, it... does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.[3] All modern colonial governments starting with the Spanish conquistadors in America could easily be accused of promoting such "cultural disintegration" or of causing "mental harm," and hence, perhaps, of genocide. Third, denial of the Ovaherero genocide is widespread in Germany and among descendents of colonial settlers in present-day Namibia. The absence of exact figures on the size of the Ovaherero population before 1904 and on the number killed in 1904 is emphasized by the specialists in genocide denial, despite the fact that the decisive criterion for genocide is intention, not the degree of success. The Germans clearly intended to exterminate their Ovaherero subjects, and this goal was approved at the highest levels of the German metropolitan government in Berlin. A final reason some Germans may be reluctant to acknowledge the character of the events of 1904 may be the desire not to be saddled with official responsibility for yet another case of genocide—especially one that some historians interpret as having laid part of the groundwork for the Nazi Holocaust. In Thomas Pynchon's novel V, Southwest Africa is described as setting the stage for Nazism, and in Gravity's Rainbow the Ovaherero resurface in Nazi Germany as the "Schwarzkommando" who worship a rocket program and are dressed in pieces "of old Wehrmacht and SS uniforms." This is of course entirely fictional, but it does gesture toward the widespread sense of continuity between "Southwest Africa" and Nazism, and toward Ovaherero survivors' adoption of many of the cultural attributes of their oppressors after 1904.

The First Genocide of the 20th Century and its Postcolonial Afterlives: Germany and the Namibian Ovaherero

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Indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are often significantly higher than those outdoors, which is a growing health concern, particularly in urban areas where people spend over 80% of their time indoors. Traditional CO2 mitigation methods, such as ventilation and filtration, are becoming less effective as outdoor CO2 levels increase due to global warming. This study introduces a novel solution: cyanobacterial artificial plants that enhance indoor carbon capture while converting CO2 into oxygen (O2) and bioelectricity. These artificial plants use indoor light to drive photosynthesis, achieving a 90% reduction in indoor CO2 levels, from 5000 to 500 ppm—far surpassing the 10% reduction seen with natural plants. In addition to improving air quality, the system produces O2 and enough bioelectricity to power portable electronics. Each artificial leaf contains five biological solar cells that generate electricity during photosynthesis, with water and nutrients supplied through transpiration and capillary action, mimicking natural plant systems. The system generates an open circuit voltage of 2.7 V and a maximum power output of 140 µW. This decentralized approach offers a sustainable, energy-efficient solution to indoor environmental challenges, providing improved air quality and renewable electricity amid rising global CO2 levels.

Cyanobacterial Artificial Plants for Enhanced Indoor Carbon Capture and Utilization - Rezaie - Advanced Sustainable Systems - Wiley Online Library

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This past month, Spain refused permission for an Israel-bound ship carrying arms to call at the port of Cartagen. The Belgium government, similarly, has considered filing a complaint against an airline that transported 70 tons of ammunition through its airspace. Meanwhile, NGOs have filed a criminal complaint against a corporation using the port of Antwerp on the course of its trip from Hamburg to Israel to deliver weapons, and a coalition of transport trade unions in Italy, Greece, and Turkey have called on governments to stop the shipments of weapons heading to Israel. These efforts represent an increasing recognition among state and non-state actors that diplomatic measures have failed to ensure respect for international humanitarian law—a failure that calls for the enactment of coercive measures by third-party states. In this short piece, I elaborate on the state duty not to facilitate the transit of arms shipments going to Israel, including the transfer of jet fuel used for warplanes, and show that this duty is overdetermined by a wide array of international law.

Shipments of Death - LPE Project

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“The case for the US’s complicity in genocide is very strong,” aid Dr Shahd Hammouri, lecturer in international law at the University of Kent and the author of Shipments of Death. “It’s providing material support, without which the genocide and other illegalities are not possible. The question of complicity for the other countries will rely on assessment of how substantial their material support has been.”

Countries fueling Israel’s Gaza war may be complicit in war crimes, experts warn | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

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study, published in the journal Nature Communications this July, reported that upland landscapes were releasing some of the highest methane emissions yet documented among northern terrestrial ecosystems. Even more, the methane consisted of carbon thousands of years older than what researchers had previously seen from upland environments. "It's a totally different paradigm from the way anyone thinks about methane," Walter Anthony said. Because methane is 25 to 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the discovery brings new concerns to the potential for permafrost thaw to accelerate global climate change. The findings challenge current climate models, which predict that these environments will be an insignificant source of methane or even a sink as the Arctic warms. Typically, methane emissions are associated with wetlands, where low oxygen levels in water-saturated soils favor microbes that produce the gas. Yet methane emissions at the study's well-drained, drier sites were in some cases higher than those measured in wetlands. This was especially true for winter emissions, which were five times higher at some sites than emissions from northern wetlands.

Researchers find unexpectedly large methane source in overlooked landscape

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the RNA molecule folds into a loop, and the reverse transcriptase travels numerous times around the loop to create the repetitive DNA. "It's like you were intending to photocopy a book, but the copier just started churning out the same page over and over again," Sternberg says. The researchers originally thought something might be wrong with their experiments, or that the enzyme was making a mistake and the DNA it created was meaningless. "This is when Stephen did some ingenious digging and found that the DNA molecule is a fully functioning, free-floating, transient gene," Sternberg says. The protein coded by this gene, the researchers found, is a critical part of the bacteria's antiviral defense system. Viral infection triggers production of the protein (dubbed Neo by the researchers) which prevents the virus from replicating and infecting neighboring cells.

Bacteria encode hidden genes outside their genome; do we?

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Defense-associated reverse transcriptase (DRT) systems perform DNA synthesis to protect bacteria against viral infection, but the identities and functions of their DNA products remain largely unknown. Here we show that DRT2 systems encode an unprecedented immune pathway that involves de novo gene synthesis via rolling circle reverse transcription of a non-coding RNA (ncRNA). Programmed template jumping on the ncRNA generates a concatemeric cDNA, which becomes double-stranded upon viral infection. Remarkably, this DNA product constitutes a protein-coding, nearly endless ORF (neo) gene whose expression leads to potent cell growth arrest, thereby restricting the viral infection. Our work highlights an elegant expansion of genome coding potential through RNA-templated gene creation, and challenges conventional paradigms of genetic information encoded along the one-dimensional axis of genomic DNA.

De novo gene synthesis by an antiviral reverse transcriptase | Science

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Bold actions speak louder than words Throughout the space exploration history, ESA has played a significant role in advancing the global effort to ensure the long-term sustainability of space activities. In 2020, ESA and 8 member states have taken a bold step forward and mandated the first debris removal mission in history to ClearSpace with the objective to remove an ESA owned derelict object from orbit and pave the way toward a new normal.

ClearSpace - A mission to make space sustainable

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One way to warn of forthcoming critical transitions in Earth system components is using observations to detect declining system stability. It has also been suggested to extrapolate such stability changes into the future and predict tipping times. Here, we argue that the involved uncertainties are too high to robustly predict tipping times. We raise concerns regarding (i) the modeling assumptions underlying any extrapolation of historical results into the future, (ii) the representativeness of individual Earth system component time series, and (iii) the impact of uncertainties and preprocessing of used observational datasets, with focus on nonstationary observational coverage and gap filling. We explore these uncertainties in general and specifically for the example of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. We argue that even under the assumption that a given Earth system component has an approaching tipping point, the uncertainties are too large to reliably estimate tipping times by extrapolating historical information.

Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data | Science Advances

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of course, violence of any type should always be roundly condemned. It’s just a shame the same politicians denouncing political violence right now have no problem raining hell down on kids in Gaza. Violence, it seems, is only condemned when it affects certain people.

Did Donald Trump just win the election? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

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The scene shows a moment of respite and relative calm in Gaza: a crowd of people watching a football match in a school playground. A player fails to control a long pass from a teammate. The opposing goalkeeper gathers the ball and looks to launch it back up the pitch. But just after he throws the ball, a deafening boom sends everyone present running for cover, including the person filming. “A strike! A strike!” someone screams. The footage, broadcast by Al Jazeera, showed the moment of an Israeli airstrike next to the gate of al-Awda school in Abasan al-Kabira, east of the city of Khan Younis in Gaza, on Tuesday. As the person who was filming the match flees, they pass dead bodies and severely injured people among the debris. The death toll from the strike – which hit an area were hundreds of displaced people from villages east of Khan Younis had set up makeshift camps – rose to 31 on Wednesday, officials at the nearby Nasser hospital said. Dozens more were injured.

A game of football, a boom, then scattered bodies: video shows moment of Israeli strike on Gaza school | Gaza | The Guardian

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Perched atop blackened trees, howler monkeys survey the ashes around them. A flock of rheas treads, disoriented, in search of water. The skeletons of alligators lie lifeless and charred. The Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland and one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, is on fire. Huge stretches of land resemble the aftermath of a battle, with thick green shrubbery now a carpet of white ash, and chunks of debris falling from the sky. More than 760,000 hectares (1.8m acres) have already burned across the Brazilian Pantanal in 2024, as fires surge to the highest levels since 2020, the worst year on record. From January to July, blazes increased by 1,500% compared with the same period last year, according to the country’s Institute for Space Research.

Devastation as world’s biggest wetland burns: ‘those that cannot run don’t stand a chance’ | Wildfires | The Guardian

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Kinesin 1 (KIF5) is one major type of motor protein in neurons, but its members’ function in the intact brain remains less studied. Using in vivo two-photon imaging, we find that conditional knockout of Kif5b (KIF5B cKO) in CaMKIIα-Cre-expressing neurons shows heightened turnover and lower stability of dendritic spines in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons with reduced spine postsynaptic density protein 95 acquisition in the mouse cortex. Furthermore, the RNA-binding protein fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) is translocated to the proximity of newly formed spines several hours before the spine formation events in vivo in control mice, but this preceding transport of FMRP is abolished in KIF5B cKO mice. We further find that FMRP is localized closer to newly formed spines after fear extinction, but this learning-dependent localization is disrupted in KIF5B cKO mice. Our findings provide the crucial in vivo evidence that KIF5B is involved in the dendritic targeting of synaptic proteins that underlies dendritic spine plasticity.

KIF5B plays important roles in dendritic spine plasticity and dendritic localization of PSD95 and FMRP in the mouse cortex in vivo: Cell Reports

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A Dialogue in Useful Phrases is a book based on “conversational phrases” that were found in Grenville Kleiser’s Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, an optimistic handbook from 1917 providing “felicitous expressions for enriching the vocabulary.” Kleiser’s conversational phrases starting with ‘I’ were taken and placed opposite those starting with ‘you’. The ‘I’ phrases are running in alphabetical order down the verso pages, the ‘you’ phrases down the recto pages. A dialogue is formed from the random meetings of these phrases. It is a dialogue in the purest sense, a dialogue that expresses nothing other than itself. The book has a square format to indicate the empty room where such communications might be taking place.

A Dialogue in Useful Phrases | Elisabeth Tonnard