A Hypothesis to Account for Birds Surviving Chicxulub While Dinosaurs Perished. 2021-08-31 Jorma Jyrkkanen

A Hypothesis to Account for Birds Surviving Chicxulub While Dinosaurs Perished 2021-08-31 Jorma Jyrkkanen

While watching White crowned sparrows at my feeder on Knox Mtn we were struck by a hailstorm. The sparrows all headed instantly under a dense young spruce tree and were completely protected from aerial missiles about one to two centemetres in diameter. This action was instinctive because they all did it and immediately came out to the feeder when the hail stopped. I wondered if birds brains had greater intellect than dinosaurs or if thick hides of dinosaurs protected them from abrasive or contusive impacts. This seemed logical. Dinosaurs may simply not have evolved evasive tactics to deal with aerial missiles.

This observation made me ponder if this behaviour set them apart from dinosaurs and perhaps it did and perhaps was the reason they survived bombardment from fiery missiles generated by the Chicxulub asteroid 66 million years ago. Birds being smaller than most dinosaurs would have been in greater peril from missiles created by volcanic blasts as well as hail storms and would have had greater evolutionary pressure to learn avoidance behaviors than tough skinned dinosaurs. This might have been a factor in avian brain evolution differences as well enabling them to think of consequences better than dinosaurs. Birds as a group generally frighten very easiy and this fright to flight behaviour may have been a saving grace when complimented by the wisdom to go to cover when frightened. Fright flights would have been evolved to deal also with attacks from the sky by predators such as the Pterodactyls. Being able to fly certainly augmented their ability to get to good cover more quickly than land bound animals.

Dinos. Just not smart enough to carry on except as their brighter relatives, Aves. A good question.

The Outcast Immigrants of Trashed Overpopulated Europe and Globalization of their Hopes and Dreams has made Capitalism the Greatest Danger the Planet has faced since Chicxulub. 2021-08-29 Jorma Jyrkkanen

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North America was populated by Europeans who had destroyed Europe and were starving as a result. The same mindset has now populated North America and they are destroying the country. This Capitalization of nature is Globalized and is now destroying the Planet. We the so called modern-civilized are simply fatally out of touch with how critical it is to live in harmony with nature regarding population and footprint and conservation of her essence and will pay heavily for this dream life we began to pursue in our greed and arrogance and lack of wisdom. The Solomonic Religions created the anti-evolution divorce from nature and the commodification of it for acquisition of wealth

Old Growth Forest Harvest Rate Questioned May. 6th, 2011 at 8:46 AM. Jorma Jyrkkanen. JEC Consulting.

Old Growth Forest Harvest Rate Questioned May. 6th, 2011 at 8:46 AM

Old Growth Forest Harvest Rate Author: Jorma Jyrkkanen Added : Friday, March 28th 2008 Related Tags : Old growth, forests, management, sustainable, Jorma Jyrkkanen If Old Growth Forest took a thousand or more years to reach its dynamic equilibrium state, then this needs to be taken into account to establish the harvest rotation cycle. Therefore, the rotation age for this forest should be at least a thousand years. If one were to use a four pass system in such a forest in order to assure the continuation of Old Growth, then a quarter of the operable wood (minus ESA's, reserves for seed, soil and science, net downs for buffers, corridors) could be harvested every 250 years. If it took 2400 years to reach Old Growth status, then a quarter could be harvested every 600 years and the rotation cycle would be 2400 years. This sort of thinking protects all of the 'Other Values' of old growth far far better than current practice. The problem is this, Forestry practice to date establishes a harvest cycle based upon the concept of Thrifty mature, a state where trees reach an annually decreasing growth rate which is tapering off. Most North American trees reach such a state in about 90 to 140 years. This practice is based solely on maximizing tree volume harvested in the shortest possible time and arose from viewing all trees as resources for man. Its an idea spawned in the boreal forest where fires, bugs or blow down destroys birch, poplar, pine and spruce forests when they are mature at about 90 -140 years old. The idea is that if you don't take the wood when its good, the bugs, fires, blowdown are going to take it for sure. Its an idea mis-applied to the West coast forests. West coast cedars, douglas firs and sitka spruce can live an enormous amount of time and be growing the whole while. There are trees alive today that took root the very moment when Julius Caesar was being stabbed by Brutus. Our Old Growth forests are not boreal in character or function in any way. There is clearly a clash between what the objectives of sound forest practice are here. Sound forestry should base harvest cycle on the dynamic equilibrium age for old growth forests when dealing with Old Growth forests, not tree thrifty mature age and take only a proportion of the annual growth. In an old growth forest, growth is balanced by death and decay. When a dead giant falls to the ground, it creates an opening which triggers a huge burst of growth of seedlings and saplings and poles, which live off other fallen giants being mulched by bugs and fungi. We are not seeing the Forest for the Trees. We need to be managing forests, not trees. It is only through this huge yet obvious logical paradigm shift that we will enable sustainable forestry practice. Clearly, this is not happening. There also needs to be moratoria put on Old Growth as apology areas for mistakes made in past forest management practice. Concepts developed around maximum return and disturbance renewed naturally short rotating forests like interior pine have no place on the west coast or interior Old Growth forests if we are to manage them wisely. All forests should not be painted with the same brush. By my reckoning, through application of this Pioneer miner's mentality, we have grossly over-estimated the British Columbia annual allowable harvest volume as well as the long run sustained yield and are seriously over logging this Province and are definitely not conducting sustainable forest practices. There is an old Geezer named Merve Wilkinson who lived near Ladysmith, Vancouver Island, who learned how to have your Forest and eat it too. Until we learn to do what he has done on a Provincial Old Growth Forest scale and abolish clear cutting of this forest type, we need to use the guidelines I have developed here. Merve's place is not exactly an old growth forest, because he removes all the annual growth. An Old Growth Forest that has reached dynamic equilibrium recycles it. But Merve has started leaving tops and organic debris on the site for recycling and so its a best case situation for everybody, because we, like bugs and woodpeckers, have a right to the forests annual production too. Here is what is true for Merve's place called Wildwood Wildwood has more wood on it today than when Merve Wilkinson, now 87, began managing the forest in 1938. He assessed the total timber stand, calculated its annual growth (68,000 board feet per year), and every five years he harvested the growth, with no clearcuts, and no disturbance of the soil. Over the years, he has extracted more timber than the forest held, and yet the entire forest still exists, trees, beauty, flowers, birds and all, with as much timber as ever. It is quality timber, too, since Merve has never planted a tree or used any pesticides or fungicides. Using small custom milling, he gets more wood from each log than the big mills do. Merve is completely opposed to clear cut logging. To find out more about how Merve does it go to this web site: http://managingwholes.com/merve.htm Copyright 2008 Jorma Jyrkkanen. All rights reserved. Tags: conservation, jorma jyrkkanen

Fate of the Caribou in North Western BC May. 3rd, 2013 at 9:53 AM. Jorma Jyrkkanen

Fate of the Caribou in North Western BC May. 3rd, 2013 at 9:53 AM Fate of the Caribou in North Western BC Nass Ranges

Background While working at the Fish and Wildlife Branch in North Western British Columbia as a habitat protection technician, I garnered snippets of information about the Caribou, which had vanished from the Terrace area during the period 1900 to 1981. Caribou had been used by the Native Band in Kitwanga as food and raw leather and sinew for snowshoes according to an Elder of the Band relating to my friend, Dr. Allen Gottesfeld. They were thus an important part of the hunting tradition of at least this Northwestern Native tribe and I have reason to believe that they were also for the Tsimshians near Terrace. This same elder said that they used to burn human bones in the fire at night to keep the Grizzlies away. He added, ‘White Man’s bones worked best’. Watch your bones in the Kitwanga area, my friends! The Native Slaughter A old White trapper who lived in Aiyansh, informed me in about 1983 that there were Caribou living in the Kalum river basin and surrounding mountains until the early part of the 1900’s. He said that local natives rounded them all up and killed the entire herd because they believed that this would prevent the White Man from settling this area and they also didn't want White Man to have their Caribou. Evidence for their Existence As an avid hiker, I ranged widely in these mountains during my eighteen years at Terrace from 1981 to 1999, and found old evidence for their existence adjacent to the Kalum valley in the Nass ranges. I found a single naturally shed whitened Caribou antler in the forest on Mt. Maroon and left it on the trail. Another friend picked it up on a later hike and brought it home and gave it to me when I told him the story. This confirms that caribou lived there. I still have that antler. Were they in fact extirpated completely? Mt. Maroon is on the east side of Kalum Lake, and it is a huge massif with abundant alpine, over 100 goats and harbors grizzly bears to which I can personally attest. Moose are now very abundant on the lower slopes with bulls and a few cows ranging as high as the alpine. Estimates put the number in the Kitsumkalum river valley over 120 moose. At the time of the extirpation of the Caribou, moose would just arrived in this part of BC. They have undergone a recent range expansion in BC and the first confirmed observation of a moose on the West Coast near Prince Rupert was reported to me by a fisherman while I worked at the branch during the early 1980’s. Regional wildlife biologist, Ben VanDrimmelen flew a helicopter goat count on the Nass ranges and saw no Caribou. Caribou Tracks in the Nass Valley While inspecting a private woodlot operation on the Grease trail in the Nass in about 1985, less than 20 kms east of Aiyansh, I found a lone Caribou track travelling along the grease trail in the eastern direction. On another occasion, I found a single Caribou track on a logging road on a south aspect of the big ridge adjacent and east of the paved highway just north of the Cranberry river Meziadin highway junction. These two observations confirm that caribou still lived in north Nass ranges and also in the Brown Bear lake area north and west of the Cranberry junction. Evidence of Past Caribou in the Hazeltons I found a similarly whitened aged Caribou antler on Mt. Roshe deBeule just south of Old Hazelton while hiking with Vicki Krykalyvi. It lay partially covered in moss and heather in the sub-alpine near the tramway to the Valley on the north aspect of the Massif, suggesting that they livid in that area at one time. I had heard of no new reports of caribou in either area in recent times. However, having said that, I found tracks made by a small herd of deer sized ungulates one cold snowy winters day crossing the Terrace-Smithers highway on the northwest aspect of Seven Sisters mountain near Kitwanga. The snow was quite deep at the time. I did not have time to stop and check them but I believed that they were made by Caribou because I knew deer were too few in the area to travel in a herd and they were to small to be moose. This was tantalizing but inconclusive evidence that there may still be vestiges of Caribou in the area. Caribou South of Kitimat A native chap came into the office very excited one day in the early 1980’s. He was a fisherman who traveled the waters of Kitimat Arm frequently and he reported that he had seen a herd of Caribou numbering about 22 or 26, I cannot recall exactly, standing on the beach at the long abandoned Old Native Village bay just north of Hartley Bay. I knew this area. This was the same site where I had done fisheries inventory work with DFO’s Uriah Ohr and also found a stone adze head. I asked him if they could have been deer and if he had made a mistake, and he swore that he knew the difference and said they were unmistakenly Caribou. "They had short necks!" I had a chance to fly the area several months later and looked for tracks in the snow but found none. Obviously the herd was moving through. There are known to be Caribou in Tweedsmuir Park to the East of Hartley Bay so perhaps it was a migratory remnant of that herd that had swam across the Sound heading west for the winter. Ecological Changes Associated with the Extirpation The decline of the Nass Ranges Caribou corresponded closely with the arrival of moose in this area which in turn responded to logging and access and early seral vegetation changes, about the 1930’s and so I inferred that that same arrival brought many more wolves to the area. I would have also increased Black bear predation since they respond positively to logging and the increase in berry production. The Caribou would have had great difficulty recovering from the early slaughter and this swelling of the populations of predators. They would also have been negatively affected by the decline in old timber with its lichens and also by the slash fires which killed ground lichens. The CNR line also caused a lot of spot fires over the years which may have taken out considerable ground lichens. Hypothesis for their Difficulties It was my belief and hypothesis at that time which I shared with my other colleagues in Habitat Protection, that the increase in predators associated with early seral and the arrival of moose coupled to major habitat changes associated with logging made it hard for any remnant Caribou to recover. Difficult Recovery However, having said that, I believe that a recovery program could be implemented with checks and balances brought in to partially restore Caribou in the area, though there would be fierce opposition from the Forest sector, since this is a major part of the local economy and Old Growth is definitely better for this species of ungulate. Summation That my friends is the story of how we joined forces and wiped out most of the Caribou in the Terrace District and Nass ranges. It is a story being repeated all over the world. It is the story of the range expansion of the most deadly predator of all time. Mankind. I could tell the same story about the Woodland Caribou of NW Ontario where progressive 50,000 acre cutblocks wiped out their habitat prior to my arrival there in 1976-77. © 2002 Jorma Jyrkkanen. All rights reserved. Tags: bc, conservation, habitat, jorma jyrkkanen, wildlife

New Frontiers in Medicine and Medical Research Number 5. My Work is Chapter 4. Jorma Jyrkkanen, Researcher

My article on antibiotic collateral damage to mitochondria and its link to cancer and heart disease with addenda suggesting exploratory pathways to clinical mitigation.

Intermittent fasting with protein deficiency may boost damaged mitochondrial phagocytosis and regeneration and lactate from exercise may boost the immune system.

The major impact of warmer temperatures was during the reproductive stage of development and in all cases grain yield in maize was significantly reduced by as much as 80−90% from a normal temperature regime. 2021--08=09. Jorma Jyrkkanen

https://www.carbonbrief.org/climate-change-will-drive-rise-in-record-shattering-climate-extremes Temperature extremes: Effect on plant growth and development Author links open overlay panelJerry L.HatfieldJohn H.Prueger https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.08.001Get rights and content Under a Creative Commons licenseopen access Abstract Temperature is a primary factor affecting the rate of plant development. Warmer temperatures expected with climate change and the potential for more extreme temperature events will impact plant productivity. Pollination is one of the most sensitive phenological stages to temperature extremes across all species and during this developmental stage temperature extremes would greatly affect production. Few adaptation strategies are available to cope with temperature extremes at this developmental stage other than to select for plants which shed pollen during the cooler periods of the day or are indeterminate so flowering occurs over a longer period of the growing season. In controlled environment studies, warm temperatures increased the rate of phenological development; however, there was no effect on leaf area or vegetative biomass compared to normal temperatures. The major impact of warmer temperatures was during the reproductive stage of development and in all cases grain yield in maize was significantly reduced by as much as 80−90% from a normal temperature regime. Temperature effects are increased by water deficits and excess soil water demonstrating that understanding the interaction of temperature and water will be needed to develop more effective adaptation strategies to offset the impacts of greater temperature extreme events associated with a changing climate.

Gain of Function Experiments. 2021-08-06. JormaJyrkkanen

GENETICALLY MANIPULATED Many studies have reported that bats are natural reservoirs for a broad diversity of potentially pathogenic SARS-like CoVs.[15, 16] Some of these viruses can potentially directly infect humans[17], whereas others need to mutate their spike protein in order to effectively bind to the human angiotensin 1-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) receptor and mediate virus entry.[18] In order to evaluate the emergence potential of novel CoVs, researchers have created a number of chimeric CoVs, consisting of bat CoV backbones, normally unable to infect human cells, whose spike proteins were replaced by those from CoVs compatible with human ACE2. These chimeras were meant to simulate recombination events that might occur in nature.[19, 20] Such gain-of-function experiments have raised a number of biosafety concerns and stirred controversy among researchers and the general public. One of the main arguments in favor of gain-of-function studies is the need to be prepared with an arsenal of drugs and vaccines for the next pandemic.[21] By contrast, one of the main arguments against them is that the next pandemic itself could be caused by those experiments, due to the risk of lab escape.[22, 23]

The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin. 2021-08-06. Jorma Jyrkkanen

The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin SARS-COV-2 chimeric structure and furin cleavage site might be the result of genetic manipulation Rossana Segreto, Yuri Deigin First published: 17 November 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202000240Citations: 10 No external funding was received for this work. Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin contributed equally to this study. SECTIONSPDFPDFTOOLS SHARE Abstract Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2′s origin is still controversial. Genomic analyses show SARS-CoV-2 likely to be chimeric, most of its sequence closest to bat CoV RaTG13, whereas its receptor binding domain (RBD) is almost identical to that of a pangolin CoV. Chimeric viruses can arise via natural recombination or human intervention. The furin cleavage site in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 confers to the virus the ability to cross species and tissue barriers, but was previously unseen in other SARS-like CoVs. Might genetic manipulations have been performed in order to evaluate pangolins as possible intermediate hosts for bat-derived CoVs that were originally unable to bind to human receptors? Both cleavage site and specific RBD could result from site-directed mutagenesis, a procedure that does not leave a trace. Considering the devastating impact of SARS-CoV-2 and importance of preventing future pandemics, researchers have a responsibility to carry out a thorough analysis of all possible SARS-CoV-2 origins.

Engineering human ACE2 to optimize binding to the spike protein of SARS coronavirus 2. 2021-08-06. Jorma Jyrkkanen

Engineering human ACE2 to optimize binding to the spike protein of SARS coronavirus 2 View ORCID ProfileKui K. Chan1, View ORCID ProfileDanielle Dorosky2, View ORCID ProfilePreeti Sharma3, View ORCID ProfileShawn A. Abbasi2, View ORCID ProfileJohn M. Dye2, David M. Kranz3, View ORCID ProfileAndrew S. Herbert2,4, View ORCID ProfileErik Procko3,* See all authors and affiliations Science 04 Sep 2020: Vol. 369, Issue 6508, pp. 1261-1265 DOI: 10.1126/science.abc0870 Article Figures & Data Info & Metrics eLetters PDF A decoy receptor for SARS-CoV-2 For severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to enter human cells, the spike protein on the surface of the virus must bind to the host receptor protein, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). A soluble version of the receptor is being explored as a therapeutic. Chan et al. used deep mutagenesis to identify ACE2 mutants that bind more tightly to the spike protein and combined mutations to further increase binding affinity (see the Perspective by DeKosky). A promising variant was engineered to be a stable dimer that has a binding affinity for the spike protein; it is comparable with neutralizing antibodies and neutralized both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1 in a cell-based assay. In addition, the similarity to the natural receptor may limit the possibility for viral escape. Science, this issue p. 1261; see also p. 1167