What the readers saw-our weekly round up of must-see stories we didn’t have time for

• 

• 

• 

Once again, a big thank you to all our readers who saw all these stories this week, told us about them-and we didn’t have time to cover them. There are quite a few! With out further ado, here goes:

We have always suspected that the small mammal populations of the world are home to countless variants of coronaviruses-and others. Just the tip of the iceberg is demonstrated by this excellent New Scientist piece, brought to us by Mr Gary Herbert. Seven new coronaviruses have been found lurking in bats in Africa. The moral of the story? No more bushmeat. Repeat: no more bushmeat!

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2243749-seven-new-coronaviruses-have-been-found-lurking-in-bats-in-africa/

In theory journalists are just researchers, following stories like contact tracers go after the coronavirus. Not so, according to Barton Gellman of the Atlantic. After a fairly routine meeting with Edward Snowden, he found himself in a immersed in a murky world of cyber attacks and service denials, presumably from national intelligence agencies-but which ones?. This piece, recommended to us by Mr Lindsay Charlton, is a fascinating insight into how the latter day targets of intelligence agencies are your computers, phones, recorders and anything else they can find. Fans of traditional spy literature will find honeytraps filled with beautiful women as well. The Atlantic was a joy when we discovered it, and well worth a delve on any topic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/edward-snowden-operation-firstfruits/610573/

We at LSS value intelligence above all. When somebody uses their professional skill to so something really well, in all fields from jewellery making to astronomy. Proof of the latter comes in this article from Forbes, in which Jack Madden and Lisa Kaltenegger of Cornell University unveil new spectroscopic techniques to analyse the atmospheres of exoplanets, and see quickly if they are potential abodes for life. We thank Mr Peter Seymour for this story-and ask our selves- wasn’t Cornell where the late, great Carl Sagan used to hang out?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2020/05/23/new-planetary-color-models-will-decode-signs-of-extrasolar-life/#1b105b3c7d10

Disinformation just grows and grows. Here’s a little quote piece from Nature, followed by a short read which suggests that no less than a whopping 45% of tweets on coronavirus are from fake accounts.

45%-The proportion of 200 million tweets about the coronavirus that were probably from fake accounts designed to sow disinformation, according to an as-yet-unpublished analysis. (NPR | 4 min read)

And so we wish all of you a happy Saturday night. We thank all new readers from around the world who have joined us this week, and apologise that there is no longer time to thank you all individually. Be Lucky!

#disinformation #exoplanets #theatlantic #forbes #newscientist #coronavirus #covid19