Coronavirus: German military training sniffer dogs
https://''www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-german-military-training-sniffer-dogs/a-54062180''
Sniffer dogs can detect explosives and drugs, but can they also detect COVID-19? The German military and a veterinary university foundation are working with various breeds of sniffer dogs to find out.
German military sniffer dogs are being trained to detect coronavirus infections in human saliva as part of a joint study between the Bundeswehr, the country's armed forces, and the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover, Foundation (TiHo).
As part of the project, a group of 10 canines made up of sheep dogs, spaniels and retrievers are sniffing samples of infected people.
Sniffer dogs can detect not only explosives or drugs by their molecular composition, but they can also smell various cancers and the hypoglycaemia of diabetics. This ability is what has motivated veterinary scientists to research the potential ability of sniffer dogs to detect the coronavirus at a German military K9 training center in the western German town of Ulmen.
"With a hit rate of approximately 80%, researchers in Ulmen are well on their way to successfully continuing the project," the dog training center was quoted by the German news agency DPA as saying.
The samples with which the sniffer dogs are being tested have been chemically rendered harmless. The question remains whether the canines can detect active coronavirus cases in human saliva.
"This must take place under very different conditions," TiHo doctoral student Paula Jendrny told DPA. "After all, we have to be sure that no one is highly infectious samples."
Eight feared dead in plane collision over Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho
The Associated Press 2 hrs ago
https://''www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/eight-feared-dead-in-plane-collision-over-lake-coeur-dalene-in-idaho/ar-BB16n2v3''
Eight feared dead in plane collision over Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho â Authorities said they believe there were eight passengers and crew aboard two planes that collided Sunday over Lake Coeur dâAlene. Officials said it was likely that no one survived.
Witnesses said they saw two planes colliding above the water, then crashing into the lake near Powderhorn Bay, according to a news release from the Kootenai County Sheriffâs Office. The crash took place about 2:20 p.m.
Officials said they believed a total of eight passengers and crew were on the two planes, but that was still being verified. Two bodies had been recovered as of Sunday night, said Lt. Ryan Higgins with the sheriffâs office.
Multiple local agencies, including the sheriffâs marine teams, local fire departments and the United States Coast Guard, responded to the crash, the newspaper reported.
John Cowles told The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, that he was on the lake with his family at the time of the crash. Cowles said he saw what appeared to be an âengine explosionâ on a seaplane flying no more than 200 feet overhead. One of the planeâs wings then separated, and the plane fell into the water.
The National Transportation Safety Board will likely take over the investigation in the coming days, Higgins told the Spokesman-Review.
Probably old news, but I caught this on 4ch /pol/ a today. I didn't know the Chinese had copied our B2 stealth bomber.
WEIRD
China's Very Own B-2 Stealth Bomber? Meet the H-20 Stealth Bomber.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-very-own-b-2-stealth-bomber-meet-h-20-stealth-bomber-76101
According to a study by Rick Joe at The Diplomat, Chinese publications began speculating about the H-20 in the early 2010s. Postulated characteristics include four non-afterburning WS-10A Taihang turbofans sunk into the top of the wing surface with S-shaped saw-toothed inlets for stealth. Itâs worth noting that the WS-10 has been plagued by major problems, but that hasnât stopped China from manufacturing fighters using WS-10s, with predictably troubled results.
In October 2018, Chinese media announced that the Peopleâs Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) would publicly unveil its new H-20 stealth bomber during a parade celebrating the air armâs seventieth anniversary in 2019.
(This first appeared several months ago.)
Prior news of the H-20âs development had been teased using techniques pioneered by viral marketing campaigns for Hollywood movies. For example, the Xiâan Aviation Industrial Corporation released a promotional video in May 2018 pointedly imitating Northrop Grummanâs own Superbowl ad for the B-21 stealth bomber, portraying a shrouded flying wing bomber in its final seconds. Later, the silhouette of a possible new bomber appeared at a PLAAF gala. This comes only two years after PLAAF Gen. Ma Xiaotian formally revealed the Hong-20âs existence.
If the H-20 does have the range and passable stealth characteristics attributed to it, it could alter the strategic calculus between the United States and China by exposing U.S. bases and fleets across the Pacific to surprise air attacks.
Only three countries have both the imperative and the resources to develop huge strategic bombers that can strike targets across the globe: the United States, Russia and China. Strategic bombers make sense for China because Beijing perceives dominance of the western half of the Pacific Ocean as essential for its security due to its history of maritime invasion, and the challenge posed by the United States in particular. The two superpowers are separated by five to six thousand miles of oceanâand the United States has spent the last century developing a network of island territories such as Guam, foreign military bases in East Asia and super-carriers with which it can project air and sea power across that span.
Xiâan Aviation, the H-20âs manufacturer, also builds Chinaâs H-6 strategic jet bombers, a knockoff the 1950s-era Soviet Tu-16 Badger which has recently been upgraded with modern avionics, aerial refueling capability and cruise missiles in the later H-6K and H-6J models. Beijing could easily have produced a successor in a similar vein, basically a giant four-engine airliner-sized cargo plane loaded with fuel and long-range missiles thatâs never intended to get close enough for adversaries to shoot back.
Alternately, analyst Andreas Rupprecht reported that China considered developing a late-Cold War style supersonic bomber akin to the U.S. B-1 or Russian Tu-160 called the JH-XX. This would have lugged huge bombloads at high speed and low altitude, while exhibiting partial stealth characteristics for a marginal improvement in survivability. However, such an approach was already considered excessively vulnerable to modern fighters and air defense by the late twentieth century. A Chinese magazine cover sported a concept image of the JH-XX in 2013, but the project appears to have been set aside for now.
Instead, in the PLAAF elected to pursue a more ambitious approach: a slower but far stealthier flying wing like the U.S. B-2 and forthcoming B-21 Raider. A particular advantage of large flying wings is they are less susceptible to detection by low-bandwidth radar, such as those on the Navyâs E-2 Hawkeye radar planes, which are effective at detecting the approach of smaller stealth fighters.
While Chinaâs development of stealth aircraft technology in the J-20 and J-31 stealth fighter was an obvious prerequisite for the H-20 project, so apparently was Xiâanâs development of the hulking Y-20 âChubby Girlâ cargo plane, which established the companyâs capability to build large, long-range aircraft using modern computer-aided design and manufacturing techniquesâprecision technology essential for mass producing the exterior surfaces of stealth aircraft.