SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the pandemic virus first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019.  Why that name?  Because it looked genetically similar to the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak.  You've regularly seen the COVID-19 virus as a sphere with what looks like golf tees sticking out of the surface.  First, this virus is so small that you can't see it using an ordinary microscope. Bacteria are between 0.2 and 2 micrometers, so you can't even see this in a compound light microscope. Viruses are not measured in micrometers, but nanometers, which is one-thousandth a micrometer.  The coronavirus is just 50 nanometers across, or 0.05 micrometers. But visible light ranges from 300 to 700 nanometer, so light photons are too large to distinguish something so small as 50 nm. You thus turn to an electron microscope, invented in 1930, but improved to what is now called a Scanning Electron Microscope, or SEM.   Yes, instead of photons, something so small as an electron mus

There are  very few places in the world where you can breathe air clean enough to meet WHO standards . The focus is on a type of air pollution called PM2.5, which is smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, and mostly comes from auto emission and burning of biomass and fossil fuels.  This fine particulate matter is associated with a wide range of heart and lung disorders, plus cancers. In the  study,  scientists examined pollution data from monitoring stations in 6,475 cities in 117 countries and territories.   Only 3.4% got an acceptable grade. 93 cities had PM2.5 concentrations  10 times higher  than WHO standards. Central and South Asia had 46 of the world's most polluted cities. In Africa only one of 65 cities examined met WHO air quality standards. Asia?  Only 4 of 1887 cities. Europe should be okay, right?  Nope.  Only 55 of 1588 cities achieve this. What about the USA? This report  said:  not a pretty picture. 2408 American cities climbed from 9.6 in 2020 to 10.3. While Los

SORRY, BUT SATELLITE CONNECTION IN ARABIAN/INDIAN OCEAN WAS NONEXISTENT.  So today, two postings. Two days ago, I shared some facts about petroleum, and how this resource would run out in less than 50 years.  Notice that President Joe Biden  opened up oil trade again with Venezuela .  They only have more oil reserves than any other country, even more than Saudi Arabia.  So, anyway, what are countries of the Arabian Peninsula doing about the inevitability of running out of oil in less than half a century? The United Arab Emirates is attempting to gain the travel interest of the world by building the biggest of almost everything.  They figure that people would want to visit a country with these attractions.  It seems to be working. Dubai in particular began with pearls, shifted to oil, and quickly ran out of this resource, so turned to finances and tourism, t hrough having : Ain Dubai, the world's largest Ferris Wheel, which opened last year.  From ground to top, 820 feet.  Each of i

We departed Muscat and are sailing to Mumbai, India.  The   Arabian Peninsula  is a largely ignored part of the world by most visitors.  Under 1.25 million square miles are most of the world's oil.  It is relatively small compared to the USA, which has 3.8 msm and 335 million people.  The AP has a population of 86 million. Saudi Arabia  36.5 million Yeman  33.7 million UAE  9.4 million Oman  4.6 million Kuwait  4.3 million Qatar  2.7 million Bahrain  1.5 million The cities with the two largest population are in Saudi Arabia:  Riyadh 7.5 million and Jeddah 4.8 million. However, in 1950 the population was only 9.5 million, mostly Bedouins in the desert.  Then oil was discovered,  first in Iran in 1908  by the British.  But the story of oil goes back to 600 BC, when the Chinese first found this liquid.  More recently, there was Colonel Edwin Drake's 1859 oil well in Pennsylvania, and within a decade came John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company.  Then in 1901, Spindletop i