THE SCIENCE OF WHAT IS TO COME

 June 21 is not a particularly monumental day in history:

• 1900  Boxer Rebellion, when China, through Empress Dowager Cixi, declared war on the U.S., Japan and Europe.
• 1942  A Japanese submarine surfaced near the Columbia River in Oregon and fired 17 shells at Fort Stevens.
• 1945  End of the Battle of Okinawa, with 160,000 military deaths and 150,000 Okinawan civilians (half of the 300,000 population) perishing. 
• 2021  172nd day of the year, with 193 days remaining...in a non-leap year.

So what is happening in the USA and World today?

• #1  Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning the north will experience the longest day of the year, and the south the shortest.
• #2  End of heat wave over California/Arizona/Nevada.
• #3  Father's Day in much of the Middle East.

Well, what about tomorrow?

• Some parts of the world will experience the solstices.
• Official end of the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
• The Cuyahoga River (above) caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio in 1969.
• Actually, there were 13 separate fires that year.
• The pollution was mostly sewage.
• Clean-up work is helping, and there are today more than 40 species of fish in the waters.
• However, human swimming is still considered to be dangerous.
• The New York City Mayoral Primary.

While many city mayor's races are non-partisan, the one in New York is not-unlike a presidential election, with Democrats, Republicans and other parties.  The details:

• Current Mayor Bill de Blasio is barred from running for a third term.
• The primary election will be held on June 22 and general on November 2.

• 
  There will probably be 13 Democratic Party candidates and 2 from the Republican Party, plus others.
• A Democrat will prevail on November 2.
• A glance at various polls over time is like looking at various roller coaster images.
• In January, Andrew Yang was the frontrunner.

• 
  The latest poll
• Eric Adams  4/7
• Kathryn Garcia  7/2
• Andrew Yang  7/1
• Garcia and Yang recently formed an alliance.  Why?  Meaningful because of ranked voting.  See below.

• 
  Who is Eric Adams?
• Black (New York City is almost a quarter African-Americans--Asian percentage around 12%)
• Brooklyn Borough President
• Former State Senator
• Former NYPD captain
• What do 4/7 odds mean?  Go to Betting Odds Calculator in right column, click on Go to, then type in "4/11" in the Fractional Odds box, finally click on Submit...to get 64% odds of winning for Adams.  Thus, do the same and get Yang at 7/1 now only having a 12.5% chance of winning.

• 
  The city will be using a ranked-choice voting system, complicated by an instant runoff, which means the actually winner won't be known for, perhaps, weeks.  
• And you thought the electoral college was complicated.

I usually focus on a science topic on Wednesdays.  Over the coming weeks I will select from the Scientific American editorial of the June issue by Editor Laura Helmuth:

• The current world deaths from COVID-19 is approaching 4 million, with the top three being the U.S. with 617,188, Brazil 501,918 and India 389,268.  Incidentally, China is #100 with 4636 deaths.  Anyway, Helmuth touches on the cover electron microscope view of a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus that infects the lungs, hinting that this could well become the next pandemic.  It yearly already kills 1.6 million/year.  There is no licensed vaccine for fungal diseases.

• 
  Why do cicadas in North America come in 13- and 17-year cycles?
• 100 million years ago when the plesiosaurus swam in our oceans, microbes settled on the seabed. When that asteroid struck 66 million years ago, this creature also expired with most of the land dinosaurs.  Researchers found these prehistoric dormant microorganisms and fed them, the bacteria woke up and started reproducing.

• 
  In the Arctic is a town where more than a million samples are stored in a global seed vault.  Interestingly, this is also the world's fastest warming location.
• NASA will this year or next launch the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART--phew, good thing this was not named the first test) the first step into developing what the dinosaurs did not have, a functional space program.

Finally, Wally Gator, a certified emotional support animal:

Wally lives in a senior's community, and particularly likes to watch TV, with popular shows being Gator Guys and Swamp Boys, while his favorite movie is The Lion King.  He is fed frozen rats and chickens.  Came to Pennsylvania at the age of 14 months or so and was about 18 inches long.  Now up to  4.5 feet, he could well top out at 15 feet and live 80 years.

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