Since the 30th July, reports have been coming out of India regarding heavy monsoon rainfall which triggered a series of landslides in the Wayanad district of the Kerala state, in Southern India. According to SPHERE India, as of 30 July, 270 people had died, 378 were still missing, 214 had been injured and more than 8,500 people had been evacuated in 85 relief camps. The rainfall is ongoing, and so further infrastructure damage and loss of life can unfortunately be expected.
Interestingly, a variety of agencies in the media are claiming the landslides could have been avoided. The monsoon rains certainly couldn’t have been. Apparently 140mm of rain fell in a single day. According to a panel convened to study the disaster, a changing landscape, with the evolution of tourist resorts in the name of eco-tourism and [also] indiscriminate quarrying, has more than altered the topography and endangered safety. Such is the degradation that on the northern side of Wayanad, especially in Thirunelli and Mananthavady panchayats, the ground has cracked at many places and wide faults that trigger landslips have emerged. It is not surprising therefore that slices of hillside were easily shed to tumble into valley areas.
And the Global Disaster Alert Coordination System (or GDACS) noted a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck the east coast of Mindanao Island in the Philippines just after midnight our time on Saturday morning early. The quake was situated at a depth of 26km, and exposed a population of 230000 people to possible injury. At the time of compiling this report, I was unable to find news of casualties.
Here’s a clever application of modern usage of those ubiquitous drones we read so much about. Techxplore.com reports that an international team of infectious disease researchers with the World Mosquito Program, working with colleagues from WeRobotics, has developed a way to release large numbers of mosquitoes infected with a mosquito-killing bacteria into the wild much more efficiently than current methods.
In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the container that was designed to hold and carry the mosquitoes and then to release them slowly over a wide parcel of land.
Jacob Crawford, with Verily Life Sciences LLC, has published a Focus piece in the same journal issue outlining the requirements necessary for effective aerial release devices and pointing out the benefits that automation could provide.
Mosquitoes carry a variety of viruses such as those that cause dengue fever. Scientists and health officials have been working to find ways to reduce their population numbers in places that are vulnerable to such infections. One such approach has been finding bacteria that infect and disable or kill the types of mosquitoes that cause disease and then finding ways to infect the mosquitoes with the bacteria.
The most common approach is to breed large numbers of the mosquitoes, infect them and then manually release them into the wild. But such an approach, it has been found, is inefficient, difficult, and oftentimes dangerous. In this new effort, the research team has found a way to use drones to get the job done.
The work by the team involved designing a container that could hold multiple small loads of infected mosquitoes and then release them at desired intervals. It also had to be small and lightweight enough to be carried by a drone.
The result was a small white box capable of holding 160,000 mosquitoes, divided into multiple compartments with a release mechanism that could be used to release the mosquitoes held in a given compartment on-demand.
The drone can fly to a given spot, release approximately 150 infected mosquitoes and then move to another spot—over and over until all the mosquitoes have been released. The box also has a climate control feature and a means for sedating the mosquitoes until it is time for their release.
In field trials conducted in Fiji, the team found that the system worked well in uniform distribution compared to manual release. In a second field test, they found that use of the drone to distribute infected mosquitoes effectively spread the disease and greatly reduced mosquito numbers in the given area.
Personally Ithink this is fiendishly cunning of the researchers! Thanks to techxplore.com for that piece of news.
Members of the Rally support group in the Western Cape, which includes HAMNET members volunteered to assist with the All Tar Motor Rally held yesterday the 3rd at Killarney Racetrack.
In beautiful blue-sky weather, 41 cars started the 7 stage rally, with at least 6 radio operators managing the JOC or the starts and finishes of the various stages. Johann Marais ZS1JM acted as Chief Radio Marshal for the race. I am reliably informed that several cars came off the racetrack in more pieces that they started in, but a good time seems to have been had by all the radio operators, and the comms for the race proceeded efficiently. Well done to you fellows!
Finally a report from spaceweather.com says that the monthly average sunspot number for July 2024 was 196.5, according to the Royal Observatory of Belgium’s Solar Influences Data Analysis Centre. Solar Cycle 25 wasn’t expected to be this strong. When it began in Dec. 2019, experts predicted it would be a weak cycle like its immediate predecessor Solar Cycle 24. If that forecast had panned out, Solar Cycle 25 would be one of the weakest solar cycles in a century.
Instead, Solar Cycle 25 has shot past Cycle 24 and may be on pace to rival some of the stronger cycles of the 20th century. Already in May 2024 we experienced a century-class geomagnetic storm with auroras sighted in the South Pacific, central America and southern Africa.
Is this Solar Max? The jury is still out. Sunspot numbers may continue to rise in the months ahead and, based on the behaviour of previous cycles, we can confidently expect high solar activity for at least 2 to 3 more years.
Here’s hoping!
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.