So much for a Hurricane-free period! Cyclone FENGSHEN is following the usual path across the northern tip of Philippines, where 7 fatalities were reported, and heading for Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. Originally a tropical depression, with wind speeds of about 90km/h, it was projected to strengthen to a Category One Cyclone as it made landfall, threatening 11.5 million people in its path on Friday.

And there is a RED Alert out for Tropical Cyclone MELISSA in the Atlantic, with possible maximum wind speeds of 250km/h and now bearing down on Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba and Bahamas in the Caribbean.

Very heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surges are forecast over the whole of Jamaica, southern Haiti and the south-western Dominican Republic starting from 25^th October. NOAA has issued a hurricane watch for southern Haiti and the south-western Dominican Republic and a tropical storm watch over Jamaica.

By Thursday, 94000 people in the Dominican Republic had been affected by extreme weather, and damaged aqueducts had impacted 549000 users.

In this connection, the ARRL has announced that, should they have to activate their Hurricane Watch Net for MELISSA, they would like amateurs to keep away from 7.268MHz (which doesn’t affect us) and 14.325MHz. Please bear this in mind during the CQ WW SSB contest today. Thank you.

Worrying news from the dailyinvestor.com is that South Africa’s shortage of air-traffic controllers is “almost compromising service delivery” by the state-owned company that manages the nation’s airspace.

Air Traffic and Navigation Services “continues to struggle to fill key positions, particularly ATCs,” Chairman Zola Majavu said in its annual report for fiscal 2025. Locally trained controllers are sought after internationally, and “the outflow of experienced personnel has outpaced the capacity of our training pipeline,” he said.

ATNS — which manages 6.1% of the world’s airspace — said that international providers offer remuneration and other incentives that it isn’t able to match. The firm said 86 employees left the company in the year that ended March, with 50 of these being from the air-traffic services division.

“This signals a department-specific crisis beyond typical organizational turnover patterns,” it said. “It is both a challenge and a strategic priority requiring immediate attention and sustained intervention.”

The company has launched an accelerated recruitment drive for vital roles including air-traffic service personnel, flight procedure designers and engineers.

“This also involves encouraging previous ATNS employees to return to South Africa to bridge the current expertise gap within an 18-month to three-year time frame,” Majavu said.

I don’t mean it flippantly, but I wonder if radio operators of any kind would be able to fill an Air Traffic Controller’s spot, if push were to come to shove. Somehow I doubt it.

In the absence of other Communications news from South Africa or overseas, I usually turn to Science or Cosmology for interesting stuff. In universetoday.com, mention is made of principles of interferometry used in optical astronomy. Brian Koberlein writes:

“The wavelengths of radio light are so large that you can’t capture a high-resolution image with a single dish. To capture an image as sharp as, say, the Hubble telescope, you’d need a radio dish tens of kilometers across. So radio astronomers took a different approach. They used an array of dozens of antennas, each capturing their own signal. Since the antennas not only capture precise data but also the precise timing of that data, astronomers can use a process known as interferometry. Light from a distant radio object reaches each antenna at a slightly different time, and by correlating the arrival times, astronomers can treat the array as a virtual antenna disk the size of the entire array. From many, one, as the saying goes.

“Optical astronomy doesn’t need to bother with this sort of thing. The wavelengths of visible light are on the atomic scale rather than in millimeters to meters, so even a moderately sized telescope can capture great images. The primary mirror of the Hubble, for example, is only 2.4 meters in diameter. But that’s starting to change. Modern ground-based optical telescopes use multiple hexagonal mirrors rather than a single primary mirror, and even the James Webb Space Telescope has an array of seven mirrors so it wouldn’t be limited by the size of its launch rocket. The mirrors can be focused to a single detector, so we still don’t need to use interferometry. But what if we did anyway?

That’s the question of a new study. The authors propose a method known as Kernel Phase Interferometry (KPI), and while it’s not the same as radio interferometry, it has many of the same benefits.

“With regular interferometry, individual signals are correlated to create a single image. KPI, on the other hand, starts with a single image and creates a virtual array of individual signals through Fourier transformations. Once the virtual array is created, you can then use it to produce an image through correlation, just like we do with radio signals.

“Most of the time, this approach wouldn’t gain you anything. While radio interferometry can create high-resolution images, those images have artifacts due to the layout of the antennas. Using KPI on a high-resolution image would just create a different high-resolution image with artifacts. But one thing interferometry is particularly good at is isolating sources. As the authors show, using KPI on observations such as close binary star systems better distinguishes individual sources. This method would be particularly useful for observing Earth-sized planets closely orbiting Sun-like stars.

“What’s neat about this method is that you don’t need to make new observations. The observations we currently have from telescopes such as JWST can be analyzed through KPI to create direct images of exoplanets and close binary stars. From one observation, we can get many observations thanks to this new approach.”

Thanks to universetoday.com and Brian Koberlein.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

Tropical Storm IMELDA is the next storm to be threatening the Caribbean Islands. It formed on 26^th September over the Atlantic Ocean, and has been moving North West towards the Bahamas, all the while strengthening. Wind speeds a week ago were below 100km/h but severe rainfall in Eastern Cuba and the Bahamas was being reported.

GDACS reported that IMELDA was expected to pass very close to northern Bermuda on 2 October very early in the morning (UTC), with maximum sustained winds up to 148 km/h (as a category 1 hurricane), threatening 64000 people.

Over the 24 hours thereafter, heavy rainfall was forecast over North Carolina (USA), and heavy rainfall was also forecast over Bermuda. NOAA issued a hurricane watch over Bermuda.

On top of three Cyclones in three days, Philippines suffered a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on 30^th September at 15h59 our time. The epicentre was amongst the many islands that make up central Philippines, at a depth of 10km, and 681000 people were exposed to severe shaking. A tsunami was not experienced.

As of 1^st October, GDACS says that 69 fatalities and more than 560 injured people have been recorded mainly in Bogo city in the north of Cebu province, and estimates that up to 124,000 people were exposed to severe shaking, and 536,000 to very strong shaking.

Wisnu YB0AZ, President of the IARU region 3 announced on Wednesday that “the Philippine Amateur Radio Association, Inc. (PARA) had elevated its HERO (Ham Emergency Radio Operations) Alert Status to Code RED following the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck Northern Cebu on 30 September 2025.

“All amateur radio operators are requested to keep the frequency 7.095 MHz clear and available strictly for priority and emergency traffic. We kindly ask that you disseminate this information to your members and ensure that they observe this restriction until further notice from PARA.

“Thank you for your cooperation in supporting emergency communications in our Region.”

Thanks to Greg G0DUB for disseminating the alert.

And on Wednesday, GDACS announced the next Tropical Cyclone, called MATMO, expected to cross Northern Philippines on Friday, with wind speeds of 140km/h, and arrive on the Northern Vietnamese coast today. Fourteen million people are within the cone of its 120km/h winds.

Not to be outdone, the first cyclone of the season is threatening the eastern shores of India as a category one storm with wind speeds of 120km/h or greater, threatening up to 19 million people in its projected path.

In Phys.org/news, I read that researchers have transformed food waste sugars into natural plastic films that could one day replace petroleum-based packaging, offering compostable alternatives to commonly used plastics for food and agricultural films like silage wrap.

With global plastic production exceeding 400 million metric tons annually, a Monash University study highlights the potential of a new type of biodegradable plastic by converting food waste sugars into biopolymers. The study is published in the journal Microbial Cell Factories.

By selecting different bacterial strains and blending their polymers, the researchers produced films that behave like conventional plastics and can be molded into other shapes or solids.

The study, led by Edward Attenborough and Dr. Leonie van ‘t Hag from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, provides a framework for designing bioplastics for temperature-sensitive packaging, medical films and other products, addressing the global challenge of single-use plastic waste.

The research teams fed two soil-dwelling bacteria—Cupriavidus necator and Pseudomonas putida—a carefully balanced “diet” of sugars with the right blend of salts, nutrients and trace elements.

Once the microbes fattened up, they began stockpiling natural plastic inside their cells. The scientists then “milked” these plastics out using solvents, cast them into ultrathin films about 20 microns thick and tested their stretchiness, strength and melting behavior.

“This research demonstrates how food waste can be transformed into sustainable, compostable ultrathin films with tunable properties. The versatility of PHAs means we can reimagine materials we rely on every day without the environmental cost of conventional plastics,” Mr. Attenborough said.

“By tailoring these natural plastics for different uses, we’re opening the door to sustainable alternatives in packaging, especially where they can be composted along with food or agricultural waste.”

By comparing the stiff plastic made by C. necator with the softer, more flexible version from P. putida, the study demonstrates how blending the two can tune film properties like crystallinity and melting point, while maintaining strength and flexibility.

This sounds very promising for the world of thin-film coverings that can decompose.

And medicalxpress.com reports brand new data surrounding diabetes treatment and control of alcohol use disorder. Ingrid Fadelli writes:

“The excessive and uncontrolled consumption of alcohol, which can culminate in the development of alcohol use disorder or alcoholism, is widespread in many countries worldwide. Individuals diagnosed with alcohol use disorder are often also experiencing other mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety. Moreover, the excessive use of alcohol is known to increase the risk of developing liver disease and some other health-related problems.

“While there are several treatment programmes for those struggling with their alcohol consumption, available options are not always effective for all affected individuals. Identifying effective new treatments could thus be highly valuable, as it could help to treat a wider range of patients, potentially limiting the detrimental effects of alcohol on their mental and physical health.

“Some studies have gathered evidence suggesting that gut hormones, particularly glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), could act on both people’s metabolism and their addictive tendencies. These hormones have so far been primarily used to treat obesity and diabetes, as they can help to control blood sugar levels, appetite and body weight.

”Researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the U.S. recently performed a large-scale analysis of genetic data, aimed at further exploring the potential of these hormones as therapeutic tools to limit excessive drinking and improve liver health. Their findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that GLP-1 and GIP-based drugs could in fact help to reduce people’s intake of alcohol, which could inform the future development of alternative treatments for alcohol use disorder.”

Thanks to Medicalxpress.com for this excerpt from their article.

You and I will recognize the expensive drug Ozempic, as the first example of a GLP-1 treatment for diabetes, which resulted in patients who were using it for their diabetes or weight loss, reporting that their craving for alcohol was significantly reduced.

So, if you’re overweight, diabetic and have alcohol use disorder, a GLP-1 substance is the treatment for you. Pity it is so expensive, but the price will come down.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, thankfully having none of these three attributes, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.