We Are Awake

There were also questions about her absence since December last year when the virus began spreading in Wuhan and then the rest of China and the world.   A leading Chinese virologist from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), whose mysterious disappearance sparked speculation about the deadly novel coronavirus emanating from the laboratory, has denied reports of her defection to West with the secrets about the COVID-19. Shi Zhengli, known as the "Bat Woman" for her passionate research about bats and the viruses associated with them, refuted rumours of her defection on her Chinese social media WeChat account, the state-run media here reported on Saturday.  Denying "rumours" of "defecting to the West", Shi on her WeChat account wrote, "Everything is alright for my family and me, dear friends!" She also posted nine photos of her recent life, the Global Times reported. In the post, Shi, reported to be the Director of the WIV, said,...

Experts say it is impossible to plot where module will re-enter the atmosphere, but the chance is higher in parts of Europe, US, Australia and New Zealand. China’s first space station is expected to come crashing down to Earth within weeks, but scientists have not been able to predict where the 8.5-tonne module will hit. The US-funded  Aerospace Corporation  estimates Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere during the first week of April, give or take a week. The European Space Agency says the module will come down  between 24 March and 19 April . In 2016  China  admitted it had lost control of Tiangong-1 and would be unable to perform a controlled re-entry. The statement from Aerospace said there was “a chance that a small amount of debris” from the module will survive re-entry and hit the Earth. “If this should happen, any surviving debris would fall within a region that is a few hundred kilometres in size,” said Aerospace, a research organisa...

A bizarre ‘UFO’ has been observed on a remote British-owned island near Antarctica. The strange object appears to have crash-landed into snow and ice, before sliding across the surface and leaving a trail behind it. It was found using Google Earth on South Georgia Island, which is located in the Southern Atlantic Ocean about 810 miles from The Falklands. ‘It appears to be some sort of massive elongated or cigar-shaped that at some point – and we don’t know when – came to a screeching halt in the snow,’ said SecureTeam10, the YouTube channel which made the sighting. ‘This could be something which came from the air and crash-landed.’ SecureTeam10 also suggested the weird ‘mass’ had smashed into a nearby mountain and left a trail of debris. It also questioned whether the object could be a submarine stuck in the show. The object is about 63 metres in length, which means it could not be a bobsleigh, SecureTeam10 continued. However, one YouTube commenter claimed to have ...

Scientists in  China  have created the first monkeys cloned by the same process that produced  Dolly the sheep  more than 20 years ago, a breakthrough that could boost medical research into human diseases.The two long-tailed  macaques  (Macaca fascicularis) named Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong were born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai, and are the fruits of years of research into a cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer."The barrier has been broken by this work," co-author Muming Poo, director of the Institute of Neuroscience of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, told  AFP. Until now, the technique has been used to clone more than 20 different animal species, including dogs, pigs and cats, but primates have proven particularly difficult.The birth of the now six and eight-week-old macaque babies also raises ethical questions about how close scientists ha...

Doctors at Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital in Parel,Mumbai,India extracted an LED bulb from the lung of a seven-month-old girl who had swallowed it while playing with a toy mobile phone. The bulb was two-centimetre in diametre. Ariba Khan, whose family is from Chiplun in Ratnagiri district, had to wait for a week before the doctors could perform a bronchoscopy to remove the object as physicians in Ratnagiri couldn’t diagnose why she had persistent cough and fever. Unaware of the incident, her parents took her to doctors in Ratnagiri to treat the cough and fever. “The parents initially thought that Ariba had swallowed a thread or a small part of a toy. They took her to a local physician who couldn’t diagnose the condition. Her condition deteriorated within a week,” said doctors from the hospital. After being advised by relatives, the family admitted the child to Wadia Hospital. Dr Divya Prabhat, head of ENT department at the hospital, said an X-Ray report revealed that there was a...

On November 10, Muslims laid their prayer mats on a road in the northern Parisian suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne. They were met with a banner held aloft by local politicians, led by right-wing Mayor Remi Muzeau, which read: “Stop illegal prayers in the streets.” For eight months, hundreds of Muslims have gathered in front of the town hall every Friday to worship. Now, French lawmakers have pledged to put an end to the public worship sessions, not only in the suburb, but elsewhere in the country. "They will not have prayers on the street, we will prevent street praying," Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Questions Politics on Sunday. He did not refer to any specific law, although former Interior Minister Claude Guéant outlawed street prayers in Paris in 2011. The worshippers are aggrieved that a popular mosque in the suburb has been converted into a library since March, despite thousands congregating at the house of worship. They accuse authorities of not provi...

S ince mid-October, the astronomy community has been buzzing about what might be our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar visitor. An automated telescope spotted an object that appeared as if it had been dropped on the Solar System from above, an angle that suggests it arrived from elsewhere. Now the astronomers have confirmed that the object is from outside our Solar System — the first interstellar asteroid that’s ever been observed. And it doesn’t look like any object we’ve ever seen in our cosmic neighbourhood before. Follow-up observations, detailed today in Nature, have found that the asteroid is dark and reddish, similar to the objects in the outer Solar System. It doesn’t have any gas or dust surrounding it like comets do, and it’s stretched long and skinny, looking a bit like an oddly shaped cigar.  It’s thought to be about a quarter-mile long, and about 10 times longer than it is wide. That makes it unlike any other asteroids seen in our Solar System, non...

QUEENSLANDERS have been warned of a sophisticated Central African phone scam which could cost them dearly. Queensland Police Senior Sergeant Steve Smith said people had started receiving calls two nights ago from a number based in Cameroon. The  Sunshine Coast Daily  reports that the ‘call-back scam’ involved an extremely short call at times of great inconvenience, giving little or no opportunity to answer the phone. When the receiver of the missed call dials back, they start to be stung with international premium call rates as the scammers have set up a toll number. Often originating in the countries with the highest toll rates, the fees are split between the scammers and the telephone company. The scam has drained prepaid credit users, while postpaid mobile phone owners have seen their next phone bills skyrocket after being stung by one of the scammers. The call-back scam circulated New Zealand in April this year, and was dubbed the ‘Wangiri scam’, meaning ...

A video showing a US military predator drone tracking down a UFO in Afghanistan has gone viral. The video shows that the unidentified object fires a powerful energy beam to destroy the drone. Conspiracy theorists claim that the video is leaked government footage. The viral video, which has been viewed more than 194,742 times, shows the predator drone over a mountain range chasing a UFO in the distance in the desert-like landscape. The mysterious object appears from the right side before disappearing around a corner. When the drone follows it, a quick beam of light appears to attack the drone in an attempt to destroy it. The video was uploaded on YouTube on October 22 by the username UFO Today. In the description, the YouTuber claims that he got the video from an anonymous source. "This video was sent to me by an anonymous source, claiming to work for the government. He/she said that this video was just the tip of the iceberg. There seems to be an increase of UFO'...

PLAGUE warnings were being issued for nine countries in south-east Africa this week, as authorities rushed to contain an outbreak of Black Death. It's the same virus that led to one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, killing an estimated 25 million people in Medieval Europe. The recent outbreak is believed to have started in Madagascar, an island nation off the African coast, and at least 1300 people have been infected. It's a serious bacterial infection transmitted by fleas, and can be easily treated with antibiotics, but  so far 124 have been reported dead . "Plague, though terrifying, is nothing new in Madagascar, where about 600 cases are reported annually," the World Health Organisation said on its website. However, WHO officials warned there is "something different" about this outbreak, and "health officials couldn't explain it". "Plague is a disease of poverty, because it thrives in places with poo...

Saudi Arabia is widely considered a barren desert in the ancient ages, but a new discovery hints that the country was home to various archeological sites in the past which are yet to be discovered. A study conducted with the help of Google Earth has discovered ancient giant stone gates in Saudi Arabia, supposedly the remnants of an ancient civilization. With the help of Google Earth imagery, scientists have discovered more than 400 stone gates which were not documented before in the country. David Kennedy, the researcher at the University of Western Australia said that these stone structures will not be visible at the ground level, but once we move up a few hundred feets, these stone gates stand out beautifully lined up. He added that the gates will be visible in satellite images too. "I refer to them as Gates because when you view them from above they look like a simple field gate lying flat, two upright posts on the sides, connected by one or more long bars," said...

In a recent breakthrough research, CERN Scientists have revealed that the universe which we know it should not exist.The findings from the BASE (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) are published in the journal Nature. The CERN scientists have performed the most meticulous experiment on antiprotons in which they have found a symmetry in nature that they say just shouldn't be possible. The scientists have raised serious concern about the universe that the first matter formed after the Big Bang. Because according to the researchers, particles, and antiparticles destroy one another when they come into contact, if there were exactly equal measures of both, the universe wouldn’t exist—at least not in the form we see it today. So according to them, there should be an imbalance between particles and antiparticles, even if it is only by the tiniest fraction. "All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe ...

            The oldest known human footprints, from Africa, are by Australopithecus  Matheusvieeira Researchers have discovered some 50 footprints at Trachilos in Crete that are nearly six million years old. It looks like they may be from a hominin – a member of the human species after separation from the chimpanzee lineage. But, as the authors point out themselves, the findings are highly controversial – suggesting human ancestors may have existed in Crete at the same time as they evolved in Africa. So what should we make of it all? If the footprints are confirmed to be from a hominin – additional studies are needed before we can know for sure – it is unquestionably exciting. The oldest footprints confirmed as hominin are the Laetoli series, which date to 3.65 million years. The Laetoli series, found in Laetoli, Tanzania, are now known to have been made by the early human ancestor Australopithecus. It was up to six feet tall and had a foot ...