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There’s only one type of UV that can reliably inactivate Covid-19 – and it’s extremely dangerous.

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From Ronald Reagan in 1984 to Bob Dole in 1996 and even Hillary Clinton in 2016, candidate health has become a common theme across recent U.S. presidential campaigns.

The issue is poised to take on added significance this fall. No matter who wins, the U.S. is set to inaugurate its oldest president by a wide margin.

The Trump campaign and its surrogates have seized on Democratic nominee Joe Biden's age and have been painting him as mentally unfit for the presidency. Videos of Biden falling asleep during an interview, misspeaking about the dangers of "Joe Biden's America" and appearing lost during a campaign event have bolstered the belief, particularly among Trump supporters, that Biden is in cognitive decline.

There's just one problem: None of these videos are what they seem, and some of the events depicted didn't happened at all. Technological developments have made it easier for people to produce seemingly real videos that are anything but. These deceptively altered videos have become a major element of disinformation campaigns that wield falsehoods in an effort to sway voters.

Deepfakes and cheapfakes

Altering videos can be as minimal as removing a few frames to as extensive as dramatically altering whole videos using Hollywood-style special effects. The latter has been enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and " deep learning" technology. Deep learning makes it possible to create hyper-realistic though entirely fictional videos called " deepfakes."

Deepfakes are created by programs that accumulate a library of existing photos, videos and audio clips to learn a person's manners of speech, expression and behavior. Using this data, these programs can then render a composite image of the person that can be made to say and do anything the programmer wants, such as President Richard Nixon announcing the loss of the Apollo 11 astronauts.

While deepfake technology poses a threat to people's ability to distinguish real from fake videos, the most sophisticated of this technology is not yet widely available. However, advances in video editing software have introduced a perhaps more immediate threat - the " cheapfake." Unlike deepfakes, cheapfakes involve manipulating an existing video using slick though widely accessible editing techniques. The result is a video that bears little resemblance to the original footage. And even poor-quality manipulated videos can fool people.

Using these techniques, people can remove critical context from real events, make an individual appear confused or disoriented, or splice together two separate clips to create a moment that never happened. This latter technique was used to make it appear that Biden fell asleep during an interview.

Disinformation and the 2020 election

With high-profile manipulated videos recently circulating online, it seems reasonable to ask: Could these videos - such as those suggesting Biden is in cognitive decline - influence who wins the election?

These sophisticated video-altering techniques are relatively new, so there's little direct evidence about the effects manipulated video content can have on political outcomes. However, it's possible to draw lessons from the surge of research into the effects of disinformation and misinformation in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

Researchers were keenly interested in whether disinformation contributed to Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton - a plausible scenario given that the race was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes. Some studies suggested that the influence of disinformation was probably small, while others argued that the closeness of the 2016 race meant that disinformation could have made the difference.

Four years later, the election again has the potential to be a nail-biter. And while there have been efforts at boosting media literacy and mitigating the spread of disinformation since then, the novelty of deepfakes and cheapfakes could catch viewers off guard. If so, the video "proof" of Biden's failing cognitive health could lead voters to have second thoughts about his candidacy. And while our work suggests fact-checks can be effective in pushing back against disinformation, they might not be able to completely reverse this damage.

Kyle Rivas/Getty Images

But disinformation is unlikely to reach everyone equally. Research from 2016 found that people were most likely to engage with disinformation when it supported their preferred candidate, an observation especially true for Trump supporters. If this extends to 2020, these videos might serve mostly to reinforce Trump voters' beliefs about Biden's cognitive demise rather than create new doubts within the wider electorate.

Disinformation can also affect campaigns beyond swaying voters. It can influence the agendas of news outlets. If manipulated videos succeed in bringing questions about Biden's cognitive capabilities into the spotlight, they could detract from the Biden campaign's core message by pressing the campaign to reassure voters about his mental health. The campaign has had to respond to these questions even before the recent circulation of the manipulated videos.

Altered video arms race

Deepfakes and cheapfakes have the potential to affect how people see and understand the world. The threats, whether to election integrity or international security, are real and have caught the attention of Congress and the Pentagon.

There are several technological efforts aimed at spotting and ultimately blocking altered videos. There has been some progress, but it's a difficult problem. The technology is evolving into an arms race between the fakers and the detectors. For example, after researchers developed a way to identify deepfakes by looking at eye-blinking patterns, the technology adapted.

There are also efforts by the news media to come to grips with altered video in the fact-checking process. The Washington Post has developed a fact-checkers' guide called Seeing Isn't Believing, and Duke University's Reporters' Lab is developing MediaReview, a system for fact-checkers to tag manipulated videos to alert search engines and social media platforms.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]

If the fakers pull ahead of the detectors in this altered video arms race, the 2020 election could come to be seen as the start of an era when people can no longer be certain that what they see is what they can believe.

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Faked videos shore up false beliefs about Biden's mental health

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From Ronald Reagan in 1984 to Bob Dole in 1996 and even Hillary Clinton in 2016, candidate health has become a common theme across recent U.S. presidential campaigns. The issue is poised to take on added significance this fall. No matter who wins, the U.S.

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In California, a three-day African trade conference at the University of Southern California was held without a single person from Africa, after the U.S. government denied the visas of every single African seeking to attend. Organizers of the African Global Economic and Development Summit say between 60 and 100 potential attendees from Africa all had their visas denied. Organizer Mary Flowers said, "I don't know if it's Trump or if it's the fact that the embassies that have been discriminating for a long time see this as an opportunity, because of talk of the travel ban, to blatantly reject everyone."

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CA: African Trade Summit Held Without Any African Attendees, After Visas Were Denied

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In California, a three-day African trade conference at the University of Southern California was held without a single person from Africa, after the U.S. government denied the visas of every single African seeking to attend. Organizers of the African Global Economic and Development Summit say between 60 and 100 potential attendees from Africa all had their visas denied.

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With the focus on fake news from the mainstream media right now, here's a reminder of the time when the BBC used fake footage of child labor in a Panorama report about Primark.

The BBC showed the fake footage in 2008, but it wasn't until three years later that a BBC Trust report admitted it was 'more likely than not' that a scene from the documentary which showed boys testing the stitching on Primark clothes, was 'not genuine'.

This was a statement from Alison Hastings, Chairman of the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee:

''The BBC's investigative journalism is rightly held in very high regard (sic), and for more than 50 years Panorama has made a very significant contribution to that. But great investigative journalism must be based on the highest standards of accuracy, and this program on Primark failed to meet those standards. While it's important to recognize that the program did find evidence elsewhere that Primark was contravening its own ethical guidelines, there were still serious failings in the making of the program. The Trust would like to apologize on behalf of the BBC to Primark and to the audience at home for this rare lapse in quality.''

The report concluded:

"Having carefully scrutinized all of the relevant evidence, the committee concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, it was more likely than not that the Bangalore footage was not authentic."

In response, a spokesman for Primark said:

"Millions of people have been deceived by Panorama. Viewers who watched the program, shoppers who were then fed the lie, sourcing experts who believed the lie, teachers and pupils who viewed the program in lessons, have all been badly let down."

They added:

"It is now for others to decide what steps should be taken at the BBC, but Primark hopes that no other individual or company is again subjected to such deception and ill-treatment."

As a result of their fake footage being exposed, the BBC admitted 'serious breaches in its editorial procedures', and they were forced to hand back an award they received at the Royal television Society awards. They were also forced to broadcast an apology to Primark, and to display an apology on the front page of the Panorama website for a week.

#MediaLiesAgain

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When the BBC was forced to apologize for faking footage.

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With the focus on fake news from the mainstream media right now, here's a reminder of the time when the BBC used fake footage of child labor in a Panorama report about Primark.

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(Newser) - Backyard chicken-keeping is on the rise, and the CDC now finds it necessary to warn people that puckering up to poultry is a big no-no. The warning comes via a study on the rise in salmonella outbreaks that found many urban chicken-keepers treat the animals as if they were pets. That means allowing them in the house and even snuggling and kissing them, even though birds that appear healthy can be shedding salmonella bacteria. The study, which looked at salmonella outbreaks between 1990 and 2014, found that 46% of people with "backyard" birds actually kept them in the house, and 10% had them in the bedroom, CNN reports.

CDC researchers say the most common cause of infection appears to be baby chickens and geese. They say more needs to be done to inform people that they should keep chickens outside the home, wash their hands after dealing with them-and avoid kissing them. "Backyard chickens can be a wonderful thing to have, but we're hearing about people kissing their birds, hugging their birds, bringing them close to the face, and treating them more like dogs and cats than farm animals," report co-author Casey Barton Behravesh tells Scientific American. "It's very important for people to know that even healthy birds can carry germs that make people sick." ( These vegetables cause more salmonella cases than chickens.)

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The CDC Says People Need to Stop Kissing Their Chickens

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Backyard chicken-keeping is on the rise, and the CDC now finds it necessary to warn people that puckering up to poultry is a big no-no. The warning comes via a study on the rise in salmonella outbreaks... Health News Summaries. | Newser

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ARTICLE 7

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The Drop Bear legend tells of a large, arboreal, predatory marsupial related to the Koala that 'drops' on its prey.

Identification

Around the size of a leopard or very large dog with coarse orange fur with some darker mottled patterning (as seen in most Koalas). The creature is told as a heavily built animal with powerful forearms for climbing and holding on to prey. It lacks canines, using broad powerful premolars as biting tools instead.

Habitat

Closed canopy forest as well as open woodland on the margins of dense forest. Never encountered near roads or human habitation.

Distribution

Drop Bears can be found in the densely forested regions of the Great Dividing Range in South-eastern Australia. However there are also some reports of them from South-east South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges and Kangaroo Island.

Feeding and diet

Stories of kill sites and examination of scats suggest mainly medium to large species of mammal make a substantial proportion of the animal's diet. Often, prey such as macropods are larger than the Drop Bear itself.

Drop Bears supposedly hunt by ambushing ground dwelling animals from above, waiting up to as much as four hours to make a surprise kill. Once prey is within view, the Drop Bear will drop as much as eight metres to pounce on top of the unsuspecting victim. The initial impact often stuns the prey, allowing it to be bitten on the neck and quickly subdued.

If the prey is small enough Drop Bears will haul it back up the tree to feed without harassment from other predators.

Danger to humans

The urban legend focuses on bush walkers being 'dropped on' by drop bears, resulting in injury including mainly lacerations and occasionally bites. Most attacks are considered accidental and there are no stories of incidents being fatal.

There are some suggested folk remedies that are said to act as a repellent to Drop Bears, these include having forks in the hair or Vegemite or toothpaste spread behind the ears. There is no evidence to suggest that any such repellents work.

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This urban legend focuses on bush walkers having been known to be 'dropped on' by drop bears, resulting in injury including mainly lacerations and occasionally bites.

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ARTICLE 1

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Elementary Education Version.

ATTENTION: This site has been hijacked by Sheikh Yarbouti. We are trying to resecure it. Because of this the proper Web address may not appear in your browser address window above.

The City-Mankato.US Website is published using 100% recycled electrons (at least 27% post-consumer).
Please Recycle When Finished.

Web Address: http://city-mankato.us

The Official City-Mankato.US Home Page

An "If you have not visited Mankato, YOU HAVE NOTInternational Vacation Magazine top five world pick!

VISITED MANKATO!" Visit us soon!

Let's "Make It In Mankato" ! !

Mankato, Minnesota is truly a wonderland. Tucked into the Emerald Green Valley in Southern Minnesota, it is the hidden vacation Mecca of scores of knowing Midwesterners. Mankato has everything thanks to a freak of nature: the Sclare/Far Fissure. This fissure in the earth's crust takes water seeping through the earth, heats it to well over 165 degrees, and sends it back up to the surface in steam pits and boil holes. The heat from these pits and holes heats the valley air to such an extent that the winter temperature in many Mankato neighborhoods has never dropped below a balmy 70 degrees!!!! Come enjoy our winters! Let's "Make It Mankato" ! !
We are real, we are warm and we would love to see you!
Mankato is the place to vacation. Sick of the cold? Come to Mankato. We are warm and cozy all through the year. Sick of the heat? No need to worry. The same hot springs that keep us warm all winter keeps Mt. Kroto ski area cold all year long!!! Think of that! Ski Mt. Kroto all summer long! The deep veins that keep the hot springs hot, draw their energy from the land around Mt. Kroto. Cold ground equals lots of snow 24/7/365! Come and enjoy andMake it in Mankato!

LufsaHoma in Mankato.
The original fictional "Castle Dracula"
from Bram Stoker's novel.
Reserve your place now for the
LufsaHoma Halloween Ball!
It is never too early.
Tickets go fast.

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mankato hoax fissure mankato submarine credibility submarine ufo pyramid whale mankato whale watch hot springs 
playstation nintendo gamecube xbox gameboy playstation2 nintendo gamecube xbox gameboy atari credibility ufo alien flying saucer minnesota river

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Elementary Education Version. ATTENTION: This site has been hijacked by Sheikh Yarbouti. We are trying to resecure it. Because of this the proper Web address may not appear in your browser address window above. The City-Mankato.US Website is published using 100% recycled electrons (at least 27% post-consumer). Please Recycle When Finished.

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ARTICLE 2

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Dog Island -- Free your dog!! send your dog to dog island

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ARTICLE 4

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Kingdom : Animalia Phylum : Chordata Class : Actinopterygii Order : Lophiiformes (anglerfishes) Family : Ogcocephalidae Species : O. darwini

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Help Save The ENDANGERED

From EXTINCTION!

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus
(Enhanced from cropped telephoto)

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus ( Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Route 101, separating the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species-including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker-were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

While efforts were made in the past to preserve remaining tree octopus habitat, these were met with resistance by the timber industry, which has traditionally viewed the tree octopus as a nuisance, both because the octopuses favor the valuable, moss-shrouded trees of old growth forests-pitting conservation needs against lucrative sources of lumber-and because octopuses hiding among felled trees often gummed up sawmills and stained pulp vats with their ink.

Traveling sideshow exhibits, such as this one by Glen "Bones" Hartzell from 1942, demonized tree octopuses to the ignorant masses
(Click to enlarge)

These nuisances led many loggers to regard tree octopuses as bad luck, resulting in the pointless killing of octopuses on sight at logging camps in a misguided attempt at eradicating the troublesome species. Anti-octopus sentiment was so strong among loggers that some even began to fear that the octopuses were prone to attacking humans.

These fears were fueled in no small part by gratuitous stories involving tree octopuses harassing lumberjacks and distressing damsels in Northwestern-themed pulp magazines of the 1930-40s and variously "nipping", "entangling", or "suckering the flesh" of the heroes of men's action magazines of the 1950-60s. (The magazine publishers depended on cheap paper made from wood pulp and were glad to contribute to the anti-octopus propaganda campaign of the timber industry.)

To this day, misunderstanding and fear of these gentle creatures can still be found among many old timers, although education campaigns-and special octopus-separators installed at sawmills-have largely halted the practice of tree octopus eradication.

How You Can Help

More Tree Octopus Information

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

Tree Octopus FAQs - Frequently asked questions, now with answers.

Tree Octopus Sightings - Includes photos of and behavioral research on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other tree octopus species.

Tree Octopus In The Media - appearances of tree octopuses, both real and fictional, in the media and popular culture.

Research On Other Tree Octopus Species:

The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato.
This site is not associated with any school or educational organization,
other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.

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Information about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and what you can do to save it.