{"id":5158,"date":"2021-12-12T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abudinen.com\/blog\/?p=5158"},"modified":"2021-12-12T14:00:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T19:00:12","slug":"science-and-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abudinen.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/12\/science-and-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Science and business"},"content":{"rendered":"\nNEWS 13 July 2018 Science journals end open-access trial with Gates Foundation Pilot experiment has seen 26 papers published under open-access terms so far and should yield a report by the end of the year. Richard Van Noorden The publisher of Science last month ended a pilot partnership that allowed open-access (OA) publishing for researchers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.\n\n\n\nNeither Gates nor AAAS commented on why the deal ended, but Phelan says the pilot was “planned for a duration that would allow both organizations to closely explore what researchers need and value from journal publications and related services”. \u201cWe are reviewing the outcomes of our collaboration and remain open to future partnerships,\u201d she adds. The two organizations expect to publish a report on their trial by the end of this year, including results from an open-access survey conducted of Gates-funded authors.\n\n\n\nUnder the contract, the Gates Foundation paid the AAAS a lump sum of around US$100,000 for a trial first year, when 16 papers appeared. The two organizations then extended their partnership for another six months, and continued their contract on \u201csimilar terms\u201d, but have agreed to keep the extra amount paid confidential, says Bryan Callahan, an external-relations officer at the Gates Foundation.\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, two other influential journals, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS[...x]<\/span>
m>), quietly changed their policies last year to offer a permanent OA publishing route for Gates grant holders. And while Nature<\/em> did not make a specific agreement with funders, it has published some papers under OA terms, including two Gates-funded papers this year.<\/em> (Nature\u2019s <\/em>news team is editorially independent of its journal team and of its publisher, Springer Nature.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open-access clash<\/strong> The Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is a global health charity that spent $4.6 billion in 2016, much of it allocated to research. Each year, more than 2,000 papers are published from its funded projects. The Foundation stipulates that these papers, and their data, must be made open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REVIEW BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u20ac2.492.510
Elsevier BV<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u20ac1.052.281
Springer Nature <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Covid origin: Why the Wuhan lab-leak theory is being taken seriously<\/strong> 27 May 2021 Its supporters point to the presence of a major biological research facility in the city. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged in Wuhan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who support the theory say it could have leaked from a WIV lab and spread to the wet market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most argue it would have been an unaltered virus collected from the wild, rather than engineered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The controversial theory first emerged early on in the pandemic, and was promoted by then-US President Donald Trump. Some even suggested it could have been engineered as a possible biological weapon <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why has it come up again?<\/strong> Because reports swirling around the US media have raised fresh concerns over the lab-leak theory. And some scientists who were once sceptical of the idea have expressed fresh openness to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A classified US intelligence report – saying three researchers at the Wuhan laboratory were treated in hospital in November 2019, just before the virus began infecting humans in the city – began circulating in US media this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was reported the Biden administration had shut down a US state department investigation, set up by President Trump, into the lab-leak theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That possibility certainly exists, and I am totally in favour of a full investigation of whether that could have happened,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, told the US senate committee on 11 May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, Mr Trump sought to take credit for the renewed interest in an emailed statement to the New York Post. “To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticised, as usual,” he said. “Now they are all saying: ‘He was right.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A prominent group of scientists criticised the WHO report for not taking the lab-leak theory seriously enough – it was dismissed in a few pages of a several-hundred-page report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” the scientists wrote in Science Magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is growing consensus among experts that the laboratory leak should be looked at more closely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the WHO’s own director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called for a new investigation, saying: “All hypotheses remain open and require further study.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Dr Fauci now says he’s “not convinced” the virus originated naturally. That’s a shift from a year ago, when he thought it most likely Covid had spread from animals to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese virologist claims COVID was made in lab \u2014 but US studies don\u2019t agree<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Natalie Musumeci September 11, 2020 | 5:30pm A Chinese virologist who has reportedly been in hiding over fear for her safety has stepped out into the public eye again to make the explosive claim that she has scientific evidence to prove that COVID-19 was human-made in a lab in China \u2014 despite American studies refuting the controversial claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a scientist who says she did some of the earliest research into COVID-19 last year, made the comments Friday during an interview on the British talk show \u201cLoose Women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked where the deadly virus that has killed more than 900,000 around the globe comes from, Yan \u2014 speaking via video chat from a secret location \u2014 replied, \u201cIt comes from the lab \u2014 the lab in Wuhan and the lab is controlled by China\u2019s government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She insisted that widespread reports that the virus originated last year from a wet market in Wuhan are \u201ca smoke screen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first thing is the [meat] market in Wuhan \u2026 is a smoke screen and this virus is not from nature,\u201d Yan claimed, explaining that she got \u201cher intelligence from the CDC in China, from the local doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The virologist has previously accused Beijing of lying about when it learned of the killer bug and engaging in an extensive cover-up of her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had said her former supervisors at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, a reference laboratory for the World Health Organization, silenced her when she sounded the alarm about human-to-human transmission in December last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe genome sequence is like a human fingerprint,\u201d she told the talk show. \u201cSo based on this, you can identify these things. I use the evidence \u2026 to tell people why this has come from the lab in China, why they are the only ones who made it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yan added, \u201cAnyone, even if you have no biology knowledge, you can read it, and you can check and identify and verify by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yan also claimed that before she fled China, her information was wiped from government databases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey deleted all my information,\u201d she told \u201cLoose Women,\u201d claiming that people have been recruited \u201cto spread rumors about me, that I\u2019m a liar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump said in a statement, \u201cNow everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus. To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticized, as usual. Now they are all saying \u2018He was right.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWS EXPLAINER<\/strong> 08 June 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The COVID lab-leak hypothesis: what scientists do and don\u2019t know<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nature<\/em> examines arguments that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab in China, and the science behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy Maxmen & Smriti Mallapaty<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has carried out research on coronaviruses for years because these pathogens are endemic to the region where it’s located.Credit: Kyodo News via Getty <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[a] lab leak has not been ruled out, and many are calling for a deeper investigation into the hypothesis that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases were reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has asked that the probe examine other countries. Such reticence, and the fact that China has withheld information in the past, has fuelled suspicions of a \u2018lab leak\u2019. For instance, Chinese government officials suppressed crucial public-health data at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and during the 2002\u201304 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, according to high-level reports1,2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. 1.The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness & Response COVID-19: Make it the Last Pandemic<\/em> (Independent Panel, 2021).<\/li>
  2. 2.Huang, Y. in Learning from SARS: Preparing for the Next Disease Outbreak: Workshop Summary<\/em> (eds Knobler, S. et al.<\/em>) (National Academies Press, 2004).<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    At the assembly, Mike Ryan, director of health emergencies at the WHO, asked for less politicization of calls for an origin investigation, which have, in many ways, devolved into accusations. \u201cOver the last number of days, we have seen more and more and more discourse in the media, with terribly little actual news, or evidence, or new material,\u201d said Ryan. \u201cThis is disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Scientists don\u2019t have enough evidence about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to rule out the lab-leak hypothesis, or to prove the alternative \u2014<\/strong> that the virus has a natural origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Researchers have some leads that support a natural origin. Bats are known carriers of coronaviruses, and scientists have determined that the genome of SARS-CoV-2 is most similar to that of RATG13, a coronavirus that was first found in a horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus affinis<\/em>) in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 20133<\/sup>. But RATG13\u2019s genome is only 96% identical to SARS-CoV-2\u2019s, suggesting that a closer relative of the virus \u2014 the one passed to humans \u2014 remains unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    3. Zhou P. et al.<\/em> Nature<\/em> 579<\/strong>, 270\u2013273 (2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Still, the possibility remains that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. Although lab leaks have never caused an epidemic, they have resulted in small outbreaks involving well-documented viruses. A relevant example happened in 2004, when two researchers were independently infected by the virus that causes SARS at a virology lab in Beijing that studied the disease. They spread the infection to seven others before the outbreak was contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What are the key arguments for a lab leak?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In theory, COVID-19 could have come from a lab in a few ways. Researchers might have collected SARS-CoV-2 from an animal and maintained it in their lab to study, or they might have created it by engineering coronavirus genomes. In these scenarios, a person in the lab might have then been accidentally or deliberately infected by the virus, and then spread it to others \u2014 sparking the pandemic. There is currently no clear evidence to back these scenarios, but they aren\u2019t impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One holds that it\u2019s suspicious that, almost a year and a half into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2\u2019s closest relative still hasn\u2019t been found in an animal. Another suggests it is no coincidence that COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, where a top lab studying coronaviruses, the WIV, is located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Some lab-leak proponents contend that the virus contains unusual features and genetic sequences signalling that it was engineered by humans. And some say that SARS-CoV-2 spreads among people so readily that it must have been created with that intention. Another argument suggests that SARS-CoV-2 might have derived from coronaviruses found in an unused mine where WIV researchers collected samples from bats between 2012 and 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    August 1, 202111:37 PM -05Last Updated 5 months ago United States<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Republican report says coronavirus leaked from China lab; scientists still probing origins<\/strong> Reuters WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) – A preponderance of evidence proves the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic leaked from a Chinese research facility, said a report by U.S. Republicans released on Monday, a conclusion that U.S. intelligence agencies have not reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The report also cited “ample evidence” that Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) scientists – aided by U.S. experts and Chinese and U.S. government funds – were working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans and such manipulation could be hidden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    “We now believe it’s time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source,” said the report. “We also believe the preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The report cited what it called new and under-reported information about safety protocols at the lab, including a July 2019 request for a $1.5 million overhaul of a hazardous waste treatment system for the facility, which was less than two years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Suez<\/strong> (formerly Suez Environnement) is a French-based utility company which operates largely in the water and waste management sectors. Suez is the largest private water provider worldwide, by number of people served.[2]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    [2]<\/sup> \u00ab The world\u2019s top 50 private water operators \u00bb (August 2019). “” The world’s top 50 private water operators “” (PDF). Global Water Intelligence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Sentinel surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater anticipates the occurrence of COVID-19 cases<\/strong> Gemma Chavarria-Mir\u00f3, Eduard Anfruns-Estrada,  View ORCID ProfileSusana Guix, Miquel Paraira, Bel\u00e9n Galofr\u00e9, Gloria S\u00e1nchez,  View ORCID ProfileRosa M. Pint\u00f3,  View ORCID ProfileAlbert Boschdoi:<\/strong>  SARS-CoV-2 was detected in Barcelona sewage long before the declaration of the first COVID-19 case, indicating that the infection was present in the population before the first imported case was reported. Sentinel surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater would enable adoption of immediate measures in the event of future COVID-19 waves. Funding Statement<\/strong> This research was supported in part by the REVEAL project, funded by SUEZ Spain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Porque nadie mor\u00eda de covid antes de declararse pandemia?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Suez, una de las compa\u00f1\u00edas de agua m\u00e1s influyentes de China<\/strong> Suez Asia ha logrado por decimos\u00e9ptima vez consecutiva posicionarse como una de las diez empresas de agua m\u00e1s influyentes de China seg\u00fan la Plataforma Ambiental E20 Redacci\u00f3n\/Agencias Madrid | 12 mayo, 2020 Tiempo de lectura:<\/strong> 3 minutos <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    FRI JUN 26, 2020 \/ 5:33 PM EDT Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows<\/strong> Nathan Allen and Inti Landauro Dr Joan Ramon Villalbi of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary Administration told Reuters it was still early to draw definitive conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    “When it’s just one result, you always want more data, more studies, more samples to confirm it and rule out a laboratory error or a methodological problem,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities with other respiratory infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    N-butilo-N-(4-hidroxibutilo<\/strong>) nitrosaminaSustancia que se usa en el campo de la investigaci\u00f3n de c\u00e1ncer para causar tumores de vejiga en animales de laboratorio. Esto se hace para probar reg\u00edmenes alimentarios nuevos, medicamentos y procedimientos para usar en la prevenci\u00f3n y el tratamiento de c\u00e1ncer.;\u203a def \u203a n-bu… Definici\u00f3n de N-butilo-N-(4-hidroxibutilo) nitrosamina – National Cancer Institute<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Comirnaty <\/strong>BNT162b2<\/em>
    (Pfizer\/BioNtech)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    L\u00edpidos ((4-hidroxibutil) azanodiil) bis (hexano-6,1-diil) bis (2-hexildecanoato), [(PEG) -2000] -N, N-ditetradecilacetamida, 1,2-diestearoil-sn-glicero3- fosfocolina y 0,2 mg de colesterol).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Electr\u00f3litos, cloruro de potasio, fosfato de potasio monob\u00e1sico, cloruro de sodio, fosfato de sodio dib\u00e1sico dihidrato.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Az\u00facar (sacarosa).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Diluyente, a\u00f1adido a la vacuna para su administraci\u00f3n, soluci\u00f3n salina (cloruro de sodio).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    El gigante farmac\u00e9utico Pfizer acord\u00f3 pagar una multa r\u00e9cord de US$2.300 millones en un arreglo extrajudicial para cerrar un caso sobre sus pr\u00e1cticas comerciales fraudulentas para la venta de algunos medicamentos en Estados Unidos, seg\u00fan inform\u00f3 el Departamento de Justicia de ese pa\u00eds.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n