Welcome back, we're here live at the OpenStack Enterprise Forum in Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We're here for our big event, getting all the action on the Enterprise at OpenStack. Ken Pepple, CTO, Selenia, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. So the Enterprise story here is interesting because normally people talk about public, how private, David and I were just talking about the difference between the two. What is all the hubbub about around enterprise and OpenStack, from your perspective? So I think it's one of the things that has started to emerge over probably just the last six months to a year. Really the story from 2010 to 2000, probably mid-2012, was really about how can I go compete with Amazon as a public cloud, probably. And that was mostly the service provider market. And the service provider market is a beast of its own. It has very peculiar requirements and has a very different use case. And what we found though is over the last probably six to 12 months, we've hit a maturity in OpenStack where it's actually ready that people who are especially either on the leading edge or have leading edge use cases have started to be able to actually go out there and actually use this and kind of bend it to their needs, not just a public cloud name. So are they trying to essentially replicate the capabilities of a public cloud like Amazon in their own data centers? Is that what you're trying to see and can OpenStack be that vehicle? So I think what we're seeing is actually two things, which is they're not necessarily trying to replicate what you see in an Amazon web services or even internet or some of the other public service providers out there. They're really tailoring it to exactly what they need. And so if they're looking at big data, they're playing and looking to put how much utilization or CPU can I put against how much storage. And it may not be as much actually concentrating on, say, pass level services that you might find at Amazon web services or even networking side. And they're able to do that because OpenStack's, because it's open source, it's a framework. I can deploy what I need and I can choose not to deploy other things that I don't need out there. And what we're finding is a lot of people don't need the 29 different services or 35 different services you see at Amazon web services. Okay, fair enough. But so let me follow up with that because you talked to a lot of senior executives, I'm sure. So let's role play for a minute. I'm a CEO in the corner office. I really don't know much about technology, but I do know this, I spend a lot on it. And I want my IT to be just like Google on the weekend and Facebook on the weekend and what I read about on Amazon. Can I replicate that with, can you help me replicate that in my environment? Not necessarily all the services, but the agility and the simplicity in it. I'm just sick of all the complaints. Help me, Ken, can I do that? So really what we tend to get involved in at an entry point is really it's usually a CTO or a chief innovation officer or maybe even your chief marketing officer is coming and saying, I think we can do things faster. I think we might be able to do things more efficiently with this new model of the cloud. And it's not about private cloud or public cloud or DevOps, it's about, I think we can do things better for these particular or they want to enable something they've never been able to do before. And a lot of that tends to be big data today. And today, yes, you can certainly start down that path of getting to a place where I can put in a cloud, I can have some of that agility and perhaps some of that cost savings. I can tailor it to the particular workloads that I might be able to try or want to introduce into my actual enterprise. I can do it all on my terms. I can mix to the public or the private cloud. I can go in and start looking about what kind of governance I need to change or what kind of security policies I need to change to take effect to that. And I can do it all on my pace. I don't have to go to the public cloud and either take it or leave it. So you mentioned big data on the panel. You mentioned it a couple of times. What's the big data stack look like in OpenStack? And why is it so economically attractive? Maybe you can unpack that a little bit for our audience. Sure. So part of it, it starts with data and it's the efficient storage of huge amounts of data. And that's really an object store. And so a lot of people today are using Swift as that's where I'm going to actually accumulate all of my large data. And then I'll take it out of that and perhaps use something like SolidFire as the operational data store for that. As I apply something like say Hadoop or any one of the other big data analytics packages on that to actually find intelligence out of that data. And where it really starts to add either lower cost or greater efficiency is the ability to use all of this in OpenSource to be able to tailor my infrastructure for actually what I'm trying to actually find answers on. And also I'm not paying markup for a public cloud of transiting my data in and out of that cloud. Also when you turn around and look against a proprietary solution, TerraData or any of the more established players, you're looking at OpenSource economics against proprietary economics. And there's truthfully just no question about which one's going to be better for you. There was a, go ahead John. I can keep going if you want. No, I wanted to ask Ken about really the service provider side of it. So one of the things we've been watching is the success of St. Marantis, right? They've had some good success. Hey, back that truck up and give me some open stack. Pretty much that's what they're doing. I'm oversimplifying me. Don't get offended guys. I'm sorry to, I'm not over-trivializing, but that's pretty much what it is. They know the innards, they're pushing the buttons, they kind of know the inside baseball. They're deploying a lot of open stack. But that seems to be the demand. Give me some of that open stack. The challenge on that is scale. What do you guys see on the scale side to automate away? So that's not so much labor intensive. Meaning, I don't need to know the inside buttons and instrumentation. A lot of optimization going on to make it work, wire it together. As we say, the behind the curtain that no one sees, you know, Wizard of Oz kind of thing. But to make scale, there's some things that get done. What's your take on where we are going from labor intensive professional services to fully automated or simpler? Absolutely. And that has been a major hurdle for people, especially say, before the Havana release. You did need a lot of skills and a lot of very deep skills to be able to do that. And what I've seen over time is, and I kind of talked about it on stage, is you know, some people are taking an approach of I will make it an appliance for you. And that's how I simplify it. And I'll sell you hardware there. Others have been much more around. It's a software play. I'll package up the bits. I think what we're starting to see is people starting to converge and say, this is really a product. It's not just I'm going to package up bits for you, but I'm going to provide you specialized tools to manage it. I'm going to have an installer for you. All the things you would see in a Linux distribution or a database distribution. So it's tooling, the normal, kind of the normal evolution. It is, it is. And I think we're starting to, since we've gotten to a place where people have gotten some best practices around the key choices, there's not so many choices. Yes, there's 700 configuration options. There's really like a hundred, which are really important to you. And then the rest of them are kind of outliers for you if you have some very specialized installation. And as we get towards more of a best practice there, or two or three of them, it becomes much easier to create a product around it. Well, Ken, we're on tight on time. I'm going to give you a final word. Share the folks out there. Kind of the bottom line, you know, someone says, hey, just simplify it for me. What's the big aha around OpenStack right now, next 12 months? What's the critical path for the community, for the technologies, the white spaces? Obviously it's momentum. I'm not going to say it's crashing and burning at all. It's certainly not. There's demand. What's simplified where it's at? So what I think you're going to see over the next 12 months is you're going to see a simplification and a prodication of the OpenStack core pieces. And you're going to see a consensus of the best practices of how to roll this out. And it's going to get to a place where your vendors are going to be able to roll it out for you very quickly. I think on the code side, though, you're going to start to see more and more services around the edges of what was core IAS as it moves into either PAS or some other areas there. And you'll see continued growth around those edges. But I think you'll see a solidification of the core around products there. And there is where you're going to find that enterprises and your normal IT will be able to consume it much more rapidly. Ken, that's awesome. That kind of validates some of the things that we were touching on, the professional services. Good to see that active right now. And Miranda, shout out to you guys. And it means to kind of over-trivialize your product. But I think that's kind of why you're so successful because you've done a good job. This is OpenStack for the enterprise. Breaking out in the enterprise. We'll be right back with our next guest. This is theCUBE. We go out to roll the actions. We'll be right back after this short break.


Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan, Martin, Excellencies, Distinguished Partners and their colleagues, I am delighted to join you to mark this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. The focus of the day on empowering the least developed countries through information and communication technologies is indeed very timely. We meet today in the backdrop of a successful LDC-5 conference. I recall the exciting and extremely useful conversations that I had with many of you during the conference, especially on the transformative role that ICT can play in the lives and livelihoods of more than 1.2 billion people in the LDCs. I am particularly encouraged by the deep interest and commitment demonstrated by some of the leading technology companies to enhance their investments in the LDCs to bridge the stark digital divide in these countries. We wish to build on this momentum to ensure full and effective implementation of the DOHA program of action, especially its second pillar, which concerns leveraging the power of science, technology and innovation to empower the people in the LDCs who are the furthest behind. To that end, I am very happy that the Partner to Connect campaign, which was launched in March last year, committed to a renewed focus on mobilizing global support and pledges towards the LDCs and other vulnerable countries. Excellencies, dear colleagues, over the past year, almost 200 pledges with a value of $12 billion were submitted to Partner to Connect, with special focus on the hardest to connect communities in the LDCs, LDCs and the SIDS. Next year, we have two important meetings coming up, the third UN conference for the LDCs and the fourth international conference on the SIDS, the other two groups of vulnerable countries. As we prepare for those two important conferences, we must make every effort to ensure that STI is also at the core of the new programs of actions for the LDCs and the SIDS. I look forward to working with ITU, Member States, the private sector and all other stakeholders to form the broadest possible digital coalition to lead this agenda. I thank you all.


Today, on Tuesday, we're going to talk about bacteria, and in the coming days we'll talk about the viruses and the toxins. As most of you, I'm sure, realize, bacteria are unicellular, ubiquitous organisms that cause disease in plants, animals, and humans. Certain bacteria have certain specific traits, high virulence, good stability in the atmosphere, good dispersibility, etc., that make them viable biological weapons candidates. One of the foremost agents, which possesses virtually all of these ideal traits, and the one, of course, that's in the news a lot today, is the queen mother of biological warfare agents, anthrax. Okay, what is anthrax? Well, anthrax doris is a disease caused by infection with a gram-positive spore-forming rod, bacillus anthracis, and anthrax is in most military medical planners' opinions probably the single greatest warfare threat. Many countries have worked on it. In the past, Iraq and the former Soviet Union are notable examples. We know that anthrax can be a very valid aerosol threat. Not only do we know that from animal experiments, but from a very real occurrence that happened in 1979 in the former Soviet Union. There were rumors initially of an outbreak in and around the town of Svedlovsk in the Soviet Union. These rumors initially trickled out to Western intelligence agencies. When it was all said and done, it turns out that a leak occurred at a military microbiology facility in Svedlovsk, and depending on your accounting system, anywhere from 66 on up where patients actually died of aerosolized anthrax. Okay. Well, I'd like to say thank you very much to Dr. Perkins and Colonel Kelly for being here with us today. We now have quite an interesting interview with Professor Matthew Messelson from Harvard University, who with Dr. Gene Gilliman led an investigation of that incident. Let's take a look at the videotape. Sometime during the day on Monday, April the 2nd, 1979, an aerosol of bacillus anthracis anthrax spores escaped from a military microbiological facility in the city of Svedlovsk in the Soviet Union, about 900 miles east of Moscow. This cloud drifted downwind and infected people and animals. The people who were infected were almost all within a very narrow zone that went from the military microbiological facility, which was in the southern part of the city, down to the southern city limits. And then for almost 50 kilometers more, villages had dead sheep from anthrax infection and a few dead cows. No people were infected outside of the city. We know this because although initially when I went the first time to Svedlovsk, I thought that of the two hypotheses, one that it was food-borne and two that it was airborne, that it was still quite plausible that it was food-borne. But there's nothing like data to decide between two hypotheses. And when we found, after two years of interviewing of families of those who died, that the people who died worked in factories and other places that were in a very narrow zone. And when we found that the six villages which reported dead sheep were all on a straight line, the same line that was the center zone of where the people worked who died. And when we found that on Monday, April 2nd, that the wind direction as recorded by the local airport was exactly in that same direction all day long, then it was obvious that this had been an airborne release. There was previous patho-anatomical evidence, suggestive that it was inhalation anthrax. But the problem with that evidence is that we don't have any good patho-anatomical reports of true gastrointestinal anthrax. And so a differential patho-anatomic diagnosis, rigorously speaking, is not possible without that further evidence. However, it was suggestive from the fact that there was more involvement of medistinal and thoracic nodes than of mesentery nodes, although there was also involvement of meningitis. It was suggestive that it was inhalation, but it was epidemiology that not only solved it, but also told us when it happened during the day on April 2nd and where it came from, the military microbiological facility, something that of course autopsy couldn't tell you. As to how the infection was first identified as anthrax, I can only tell you what people told us. When we interviewed the former epidemiologists of the city, he said that as soon as they realized that there was an unusual epidemic, they tried to narrow it down. They considered plague, smallpox, anthrax, and maybe tularemia, I don't remember. The first identification of it as anthrax, if the stories we were told are correct, was due to the pathologist Abramova who saw the extensive hemorrhage in anthrax meningitis once in a textbook. That condition is called Cardinal's Cap because the entire meninges are hemorrhagic. She saw that in one of the patients and remembered the textbook that she had seen earlier, years earlier, and according to what we were told by the various medical people we spoke to, that was the first tentative diagnosis and then material was sent to the bacteriological lab and the next day, the 10th, if the dates that we were told are correct, the 10th of April, you got a confirmatory report back from the bacteriological lab and from then on, it was anthrax. And then posters were put up in the city, in the southern part of the city, saying Dear citizens, you are invited to be inoculated against anthrax, they called it Sibirskaya Yasne, Siberian ulcer. You were invited and they vaccinated 50,000 people. There's an immense amount to be learned from each epidemic of this sort and one should not let such an epidemic go unstudied because, for example, from this we learned that although up till then it was only theoretical that it's really true that an anthrax cloud can remain infectious, 50 kilometers downwind. Before that you could have said, well, maybe there's something in the atmosphere that we don't know about that will kill the spores. Well, it didn't happen there. There was one other remarkable thing that we learned from this and that was that amongst the 68 people who were reported to have died and we had information on the majority of them, nobody was younger than 24 years old. No infants, no babies, no children, no adolescents, no young adults. A big surprise. When we looked into the old literature on inhalation anthrax, of which there are a number of reports, including quite a few from Russia, from Tsarist and post-revolutionary times, we also found that there were no young people. Now whether that really means that young people are less susceptible to inhalation anthrax and perhaps to other inhalation infections is a very important lead and we would never have asked this question if we hadn't done the epidemiology and we still don't know the answer, but there's another example of how epidemiology can not only tell you what happened in a given case, but can bring up new questions, perhaps very important new questions, for future research. Well, that was fascinating and it certainly emphasized the importance of epidemiology, but tell us some more about anthrax, Ted, and does it occur naturally? Well, Doris, before I answer that question, I'd like to welcome Colonel Art Freedlander here, one of the world's foremost experts on anthrax and the senior military scientist at USAMRAID, as well as my boss, Colonel Ed Eitzon, who's chief of the operational medicine division at USAMRAID. Maybe Colonel Freedlander would probably be best suited to answer that question. Sure. Well, anthrax is a naturally occurring disease. It's a zoonotic disease of herbivores, and that means domesticated animals such as sheep, cattle, goats, and also wildlife. It occurs throughout the world, which is indicative of the fact that the spore does occur in the soil throughout the world. Now humans become infected under natural circumstances by contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products such as wool or hair or hides or bone meal by either the cutaneous, the gastrointestinal or the respiratory root. And here we can see a picture, I think that's coming forth, of a rhinoceros. This is actually an endangered species in the national parts of South Africa, and one of the problems facing these rhinoceros is anthrax, in fact, and I think the next slide shows a zebra, again, a wildlife threatened by anthrax. You know, there was anthrax as we alluded to earlier, an organism that's found in the soil in many parts of the world. Now it's not quite so common in the United States, but in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, many of the new republics of former Soviet Central Asia, and in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, anthrax is very, very common. And even in the United States there are areas of the country where one does see a heavy anthrax contamination of soil, Texas, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, for example. Here's a cow, in fact, in Texas, and I show this picture in honor of Colonel Parker, my boss. Colonel Parker is an Aggie, a graduate of Texas A&M University, and this is a Texas longhorn, and Bevo here has succumbed to anthrax. He's given the Huckum horns a sign there. Okay. Colonel Friedlander, though, how does anthrax cause disease? Well, what happens is that the spore is the infectious form of the organism, and the spore enters the host, and then the spore germinates, that is, into a bacillus, a rod-like shape of the organism. And the organism then has the capacity to produce two toxins, the so-called edema toxin and lethal toxin, as well as a capsule. And the toxins interfere with the host's response to the organism. And one of the key roles of the key players in the toxin is the so-called protective antigen. But it's the toxins that cause local damage to the tissues and the capsule that interferes with phagocytosis of the organism that enables the organism to survive in the host. Okay. Colonel, how does this translate to a presentation of the disease? Well, Doris, it depends on the route of exposure. The most common form of anthrax is the cutaneous variety, which causes over 95% of naturally occurring cases of anthrax. And this is caused by spores entering breaks in the skin of the person infected. There is a natural progression of the lesion of anthrax from papule to vesicle to an ulcer to a black eschar. Now, the first picture you saw was a papule. This is a vesicle form of the disease. And this is followed by ulceration as seen in this photo. Finally, by eschar formation as seen here, which is a necrotic central area of the lesion. Also, the organism produces quite a bit of edema in some lesions. As in this next picture of a Haitian child, you can see the lesion on the Haitian child's lower eyelid and quite a bit of edema caused by the edema toxin that the organism produces. Sometimes this can be very, very pronounced. The case fatality rate of cutaneous anthrax is 20% without treatment and less than 1% of cases if appropriate treatment is given. Carl Friedlander, what is the treatment of choice? Well, the treatment of choice is penicillin. This is for naturally occurring anthrax since essentially all strains are sensitive to penicillin. However, in the context in which we're discussing this today, that is in biological terrorism, we have to consider the possibility that it may be resistant to penicillin. And in that case, one would consider using a fluoroquinolone such as ciprofloxacin or tetracycline such as doxycycline. Ted, what other forms of anthrax are there? Well, in addition to the aerosol form of anthrax and the cutaneous form of anthrax that we've just discussed, there is a third form, gastrointestinal anthrax. It's a very rare way for anthrax to develop. And probably the reason it's so rare is that you have to get it by eating contaminated meat. And usually anthrax is a pretty rapid, pretty messy death. And most animals that would die of anthrax probably wouldn't be butchered for human consumption. So again, pretty rare way to get anthrax. But when you do see those rare cases of gastrointestinal anthrax, the pathophysiology is somewhat analogous to that scene in the other forms. In other words, it's a lymph adenitis, a hemorrhagic lymph adenitis. And here on the screen, you see a picture of those hemorrhagic mesenteric lymph nodes. So somewhat analogous to the lesions you'd see in the other forms of the disease. Okay, Colonel Itzan, what would be the most effective way to disseminate anthrax as a BW weapon? Well, Doris, the best way is through aerosol dissemination. Remember the subway scenario we just saw. One can affect more people by disseminating the organism by aerosol than any other way. Also, anthrax is most deadly by the inhalational route. The case fatality rate for inhalational anthrax is quoted by a variety of sources, as between 80 and 100% of cases fatal in people who are exposed to an effective dose of the organism. Colonel Friedlander, what about the incubation period? Well, the incubation period for inhalational anthrax is from about one to six days. There's actually limited information about this disease. It's a rare disease. And it presents with a flu-like illness of malaise, some fever, non-productive cough. This, there may be a period of improvement. And over the next day or two, it progresses to really the sudden onset of respiratory distress. This is marked then by some chest compression symptoms, pain in the chest and strider, so that there may be a change in the voice. And this is probably at the point where the disease, as we discussed, is spreading from the lymph nodes in the chest to the mediastinum. These severe respiratory symptoms then will progress over the next day or two with spread into the bloodstream of toxemia and eventually hypertension and death within 24 to 36 hours. But at the outset, it doesn't sound like it's anything other than the flu. I mean, how do you tell the difference? Well, Doris, that's a good point. And that's a very valid point, because that's exactly what happens. At the outset, it doesn't look very different from the flu, and that's what makes it a tough disease to diagnose. And unfortunately, you have to do that diagnosis early on. So it's going to be a big, big problem for us. Physical findings in early stages of anthrax are nonspecific. As you get into the later stages, the chest x-ray may show a wide mediastinum. Again, and you can see that here, but that's late in the course of the illness. So if I saw that in a patient, I'm probably not going to be able to salvage that patient. But I do hope that I can use that knowledge and use that to salvage other patients who may have been exposed to the same thing. Same thing goes for Gramstain. Gramstain of blood may show organisms, but again, not until late in the course of illness. And I'm probably not going to salvage the patient who already has a positive peripheral blood, Gramstain. But I do hope that by diagnosing that severe case, I can be then armed with that knowledge and use it to help other cases out there on the battlefield or in our cities and towns. Hemorrhagic pleural effusions tend to occur late in the case of anthrax cases. And in 50% of cases, there's a terminal hemorrhagic meningitis as well. Colonel Freedlander, how is anthrax weaponized for biological agent use and what makes it such a good biological weapon? Well, what makes it a good weapon is the fact that there are two features. One is that it's stable as an aerosol and it is naturally infectious as an aerosol. This is a natural form of the disease and its physical characteristics in terms of stability and infectivity and its size, its particle size, make it essentially an ideal weapon. That is, the 1 to 5 micron particle size is such, as you've heard before, that it will be deposited and retained in the alveoli of the lung deep within the recesses of the lung. So then after you inhale anthrax, what does it do to the body? Well, I think we have a video clip that will demonstrate that quite nicely. Once you inhale anthrax spores, those spores get down into the lungs. They're taken up by white blood cells in the lungs, pulmonary macrophages. Those macrophages do their job in the sense that they take up the spores, but they have a difficult time killing those spores initially. And so they end up serving as taxi cabs and transporting those spores to the nearest regional lymph node. And it's in the milieu of that regional lymph node that anthrax really flourishes. So once it's in the lymph node, the anthrax vegetates, comes out of its spore form into its vegetative form, starts reproducing, cranking out its toxins. The lymph node becomes necrotic and eventually breaks down. And from there, the anthrax bacteria get into the bloodstream, circulate around to affect the rest of the body.  I believe this is a scanning electron micrograph of a terminal arterial.  And one of our basic scientists estimated to me that at the time of death, 28% of the dry weight of blood is viable bacillus anthracis organisms. Not difficult, I think, for the clinician out there to realize why you don't stand much chance of success if you wait to treat these patients. They need to be treated at the very earliest opportunity. Okay, is inhalation anthrax treatable? Colonel Winston. Well, Doris, as I mentioned before, cutaneous cases are readily treatable with penicillin. And in fact, only one naturally occurring case of penicillin resistant anthrax has ever been documented. For inhalational cases, however, treatment can be very difficult, much more difficult. And in fact, you need to treat inhalational anthrax very early and very aggressively. Still, even at Sferdlosk in the Russian outbreak, some cases were treated with antibiotics and survived. Colonel Friedlander, based on what you've seen with the animal challenge studies, what would you recommend for treatment? Well, I should first say that there's really minimal experience with treating this disease in humans because of its rarity. And we have had an opportunity to look at non-human primate models of inhalational anthrax. And based upon those studies, as well as in vitro sensitivities, the recommendations, and I think they'll be on the screen, is that if it's a penicillin sensitive organism to use high-dose penicillin, and here we're talking about 20, 24 million units of penicillin a day. However, again, in the context of what we're discussing, if it's a penicillin-resistant organism or if you don't know the sensitivities, we would recommend a fluoroquinolone or a tetracycline given intravenously to manage this disease. Right. Well, how do you protect yourself and other people? I mean, isn't this a contagious disease? No, Doris, it's not. In fact, if there's any good news attendant to this whole problem of anthrax, it's the fact that it's not contagious person to person. In fact, I'm not aware of any person-to-person transmission of anthrax. The last large-scale human outbreak of anthrax occurred in Zimbabwe in about 1979. There was the possibility that during that outbreak there was some transmission from person to person via a biting fly vector, but in general, that's a pretty unusual way to transmit anthrax. And this brings us to this whole issue of precautions. And the CDC has recently revised its guidelines and used new terminology, but now we would consider standard precautions, what used to be called universal precautions, as sufficient for managing patients with anthrax. Cronford, Linda, where's there an area of concern? Well, one of the areas of concern, and I think Mr. Patrick discussed that earlier, was the question of the contaminated environment and what to do with that. There's no good evidence in humans of infectivity from secondary aerosols with anthrax spores. Nevertheless, we think that it would be prudent, certainly in the immediate area of ammunition that went off where there might be high levels of spores, to avoid the area until it was decontaminated. And the same would go, the same argument would go for exposed patients. Although, again, we do not think that's really a significant hazard, but soap and water and dilute bleach should certainly handle that situation. Now, besides protecting yourself from becoming exposed to the spores, what can you do to prevent the disease? Well, there was the best ways with immunization using the anthrax vaccine. And in fact, through animal and human vaccination programs, we've been able to decrease the numbers of anthrax cases now in the U.S. to the point that most people now think that anthrax is a new disease, when in fact, as Ted has described, it's been around since antiquity. Well, what happens if you're exposed to aerosol anthraxin? What do you do? Well, if you've been exposed, there are two approaches that are necessary. One is antibiotic prophylaxis. And I think, again, we'll see what some of the recommendations are coming forth on the screen. But that would include, again, use of antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin or doxycycline for a period of four weeks, plus the beginning of vaccination. And that would require three doses over a four-week period. And the reason for this is because of the fact that the spore can persist in the body for a prolonged period of time. So that's the reason to have combined antibiotics plus vaccination. Now, if vaccine is not available, we would recommend that the treatment with antibiotics should be prolonged to about 60 days. Because, as I've said, there have been cases that have occurred quite long after exposure. You know, Doris, a whole lot of triage issues are called into play here. If you had very few cases and plenty of medical resources and there were an anthrax exposure, of course, you're going to treat everybody. Even people who are vaccinated are probably going to get 30 days worth of post-exposure prophylaxis. On the other hand, if resources are limited and large numbers of cases are occurring, of course, you're going to start triaging those patients. And those people who are fully vaccinated will probably last in line to get post-exposure antibiotic prophylaxis. All right. Well, before we start our discussion on the anthrax vaccination program, we have an interview with Dr. Rick Spiegel from the CDC describing the decrease in numbers of anthrax cases. So let's take a look at that. Probably the most effective intervention in reducing anthrax in humans has been the initiation in many, many countries of effective animal vaccination programs. And these have proven to both stop epidemics of anthrax and prevent epidemics of anthrax from occurring. There are some states that are more highly endemic for animal anthrax. And in those states, for example, one notable state might be Texas. There is a high knowledge of anthrax as an animal health problem. And as such, they vaccinate more often there. As well as in other states, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, those would be some of the notable states where anthrax is known to be an animal disease and therefore known to be a risk of human disease as well. The worldwide control of anthrax, probably the most important intervention that has taken place, has been the widespread institution of the stern animal vaccine. In areas of high endemicity, the stern vaccine, which is a live bacterial spore vaccine of bacillus anthraxus, has been remarkably effective in reducing the number of epidemics that have occurred in animals and in addition the number of cases that have occurred in people. In other settings, such as the industrial setting, the human vaccine has been widely used and this is a cell-free filtrate vaccine, which is totally different than the animal vaccine, but again, has been very, very effective in reducing the number of cases of industrial anthrax that have developed. Most of you have heard about the anthrax vaccine, especially if you're in the military and we're very fortunate today to have Colonel Roger Opio here and Colonel Opio is responsible for the implementation of the anthrax vaccine implementation plan. Colonel Opio is the current chief of operations at U.S. Army Medcom and welcome Colonel Opio. Thanks, Ted. Great to be here. Well, the threat of anthrax, I think everyone realizes, is certainly a great threat and in fact, in 1970, the World Health Organization conducted a pretty frightening study and they assumed a bad guy was armed with 50 kilograms of various agents and was able to spread those agents along a two kilometer front upwind of a city of 500,000. And they looked at several putative agents and amongst those was anthrax and by far anthrax presented the most frightening scenario, a scenario where there would have been at least 125,000 total casualties, 95,000 of whom would have died. I think given this, we can all see why the Department of Defense is so eager to step off on an anthrax vaccination program. And I wonder if Colonel Opio, you could shed a little bit more light on this program. Sure. As Dr. Sue Bailey indicated this morning, it was truly a landmark decision that was made by the Department of Defense to start an immunization program to make sure that these threats that we've discussed earlier today are in fact in place for those that are the most at risk. We can see that the analysis has been done through the intelligence community and we have developed an implementation plan that will be executed over the next five years. A very fast moving train from January 97 when the Secretary of Defense came up with the implementation plan, HA supplement that with a tracking system because of the nature of the immunizations and then finally an execute order given by Secretary Cohen. So this has been a very fast moving track and truly a landmark decision as she indicated. The Secretary of the Army has been designated as Executive Agent for this with the Surgeon General responsible for the implementation of the program. A timetable was quickly developed and as you see on your screen, we are in fact a three phase operation. We have in fact started with the 2 March deployment to Southwest Asia and we have immunized about 40,000 individuals during that phase. We're currently as of 9 September started in Korea and currently we have about 25,000 out of the total population that are currently immunized as of today. And by that I mean that we have a recording of those immunizations actually into our data bank, a truly remarkable achievement. This is a thoroughly thought out program, it wasn't rushed to, it was even though the program has been in existence through the FDA with approved vaccine for over 28 years. We have in fact gone through self-multesting, we have had an automation tracking system put in place and then we've had an independent review. So it's very well thought out and I think it's a very well executed program. I know as I travel around the country teaching bio warfare defense to various medical practitioners I certainly hear a lot of concerns from soldiers in the field about the safety of this vaccine. I think you've pretty much allayed most of those concerns here today. Well has the vaccine ever, has it been used before? Yes it has and in fact the current anthrax vaccine has been licensed since 1970 so it's been used for over 20 years. It is prepared from a filtrate of a culture of an attenuated avirulant strain of anthrax bacteria. It doesn't contain any live agent and it is not capable of transmitting the disease to humans. It has been used historically by workers who handle animal products and also by laboratory personnel. As you heard from Dr. Spiegel from the CDC, both the animal vaccine and the human vaccine have been very effective in reducing cases of anthrax. The vaccine was given to about 150,000 soldiers during Operation Desert Shield Desert Storm or about 25% of the total force deployed during that operation and no severe adverse health effects were seen during that time. Well Ed I've had my six doses of anthrax vaccine. I didn't have any side effects. In fact I've distributed many doses of anthrax vaccine. I'm really not aware of anything other than some minor side effects. How about you? Are you aware of any significant problems with this vaccine? Well Ted, you know clinical studies submitted to the FDA for the original licensure of this vaccine contained information on about 16,500 doses that had been given. Mild local reactions consisting of redness and tenderness at the vaccine site occurred in about 5% of recipients during the initial series and about 3 to 16% of those who received boosters. Moderate reactions with redness 1 to 2 inches in diameter with tenderness or itching at the site of the vaccination were reported for less than 1 to 3% of all the doses that were administered. Severe reactions consisting of market tenderness or limitation of arm motion were reported in less than 1% of recipients. So these reactions are unusual. Local reactions usually resolve within 1 to 3 days except for some vaccinees who may develop a non-tender subcutaneous nodule shown here. And these little nodules that occur in the subcutaneous tissue can last up to 2 months but resolve usually without treatment. The biggest problem associated with one of these nodules is to have a surgeon around who doesn't have enough to do it. Only 4 systemic reactions were ever reported in the original licensure data with fever, chills, body aches for up to 24 hours. So systemic reactions with this vaccine are very rare. There has never been any evidence of any long-term side effects of any significance associated with use of this vaccine. Well, Colonel Einstein, is there a formal reporting system for something that you wouldn't expect to see? Yes, Doris, there is. And in fact, any severe reactions should be documented in the patient's medical record. Any reactions resulting in hospitalization or lost time from duty, and we define that as greater than 24 hours lost time from duty, should be reported on a form called a vaccine adverse events reporting system form or VAERS-1 form. Anyone with a hypersensitivity reaction such as anaphylaxis should have that marked in their medical record very clearly and they should not receive any further doses of this vaccine. Colonel Friedlander, does this vaccine work and is it effective? Well, first of all, there's very limited data on the efficacy in humans. There was a field trial done using a similar vaccine in the 1950s in wool mill workers in the northeast of the U.S. And in that study, it was demonstrated that the vaccine was effective in preventing cutaneous anthrax. There was a 93% protection rate against the cutaneous form of the disease, which is the form of the disease that usually occurred in the mill workers. However, there were some cases of inhalational anthrax that occurred during this outbreak. And as it turned out, there were five cases, all five cases occurred in the group which did not receive the vaccine. There were no cases that occurred in those workers that were vaccinated. However, so while it suggested that the vaccine protected against inhalational anthrax, the number of cases was not sufficient to offer statistically significant proof of efficacy. And that's the only data that exists in humans and hopefully we will never have any more data. But part of that, for that reason, the vaccine efficacy was tested in the best model we have, which is in the non-human primate. And in such studies involving resus monkeys, it was demonstrated that after receiving in 25 monkeys, and I think you can see this on the screen, who received two doses of the vaccine, all 25 monkeys survived. Now, there were also, and this is from a period from two to nine months after vaccination, in fact, seven of eight monkeys survived for a period of two years. In an additional study, there were 10 monkeys that received only a single dose of the vaccine, and all 10 of those survived. So that with the best animal model that we have for this disease, inhalational anthrax, the vaccine is highly effective with 42 or 43 monkeys surviving. You know, those studies are certainly pretty comforting. Of course, with any vaccine, there are going to be some contraindications, and I wonder if you could elaborate upon some of those contraindications with respect to anthrax vaccine. As you know, personnel who have a hypersensitivity reaction with this vaccine, even though hypersensitivity reactions are quite rare, should not have a further dose of the vaccine. Those known to be HIV positive or otherwise immunocompromised should not be vaccinated as they're not deployable anyway. There also are some temporary conditions, as shown on your screen here, during which vaccination should be deferred. And those include an acute respiratory disease or other active infection. Those with a temporary suppression of their immune system, such as a patient on corticosteroids, and those who are pregnant. You know, Ed, again, as I travel around, one of the things that causes great concern, and one of the questions I guess that comes up frequently, is the question of pregnancy. Are there contraindications to giving this vaccine to a pregnant woman? Are there lasting effects on reproductive health? I wonder if you could comment on that. Well, as you know, the vaccine is a sterile, self-reproduced. It's taken from the culture supernatant of a culture of anthrax. So there are no organisms in this vaccine. There's absolutely no reason to think that this would cause a problem in pregnancy. However, the risks associated with immunization during pregnancy are unknown because it hasn't been studied. And prudence dictates, therefore, that the vaccine should be deferred during pregnancy. While pregnancy testing is not indicated before vaccination, every woman of childbearing age should be questioned about the possibility of pregnancy. And if she may be pregnant, she should be referred for further evaluation before immunization continues. After she is no longer pregnant, if in fact she is pregnant, the vaccine series can continue where it left off. There's no reason to interrupt breastfeeding, either, as the vaccine can be given to lactating women. If there are any questions, certainly the woman should be referred to her primary care provider for consultation before continuing with the vaccine series. Well, thanks, Ed. Therefore, just to summarize for those of you out there in the audience, before immunizing any woman, you should ask her whether she could be pregnant. If there's any chance that she is pregnant and it's not already documented in her medical record, then she should be referred for a pregnancy test. If that test is negative, that female soldier should be vaccinated. If the test is positive, she should be deferred from immunization until completion of the pregnancy, as Colonel Itzen stated. And I want you to remember that all vaccines or virtually all vaccines that we use in clinical medicine today, including the anthrax vaccine, are labeled as pregnancy category C. And what this means is we don't have good information that proves that they're safe in humans. On the other hand, we don't have good information that shows that they're not safe. And in the case of the anthrax vaccine in particular, again, as Colonel Itzen alluded to, there's every reason to think this would be safe. But again, pregnant women should still be deferred from further immunization. So how is the vaccine given? Well, it's given subcutaneously at a dose of 0.5 ml. And it's given at intervals of 0, 2, and 4 weeks, followed by doses at 6, 12, and 18 months. So it's a six-shot primary series as shown on your screen. The zero dose is the day of the first vaccination. This initial series is then followed up by yearly boosters to maintain immunity. You know, just to summarize, this vaccine is certainly a wonderful step forward, we're far forward from where we were in biological defense a few years ago. But there's obviously some problems, and those problems are exacerbated by the fact that this is a somewhat unwieldy series of immunizations, six doses over 18 months. I know that's a problem for me when I got the vaccine. It's a problem for me as a practitioner administering the vaccine. And I imagine it's a heck of a problem for the first sergeant who has to get his poor troop in there six times over a period of 18 months. And I think Colonel Opio probably wants to comment a little bit on that. Indeed, the largest challenge facing health affairs was to capture this all in an automated data system. This was an incredible task.  The task was sent out, and it was determined that the deer's data system would in fact be the central repository. And each of the services then developed their own interim systems to support this requirement. The Army developed the Med Pro system, the airports developed the Mets, the medical immunization tracking system, and the Navy developed the SAM system, which was already on board their ship, their shipboard-automated medical systems. And so they're all feeding this data into a central data warehouse to capture all this data. And when you think about it, six shots over 18 months, who is in the same place at the same time? In the mobile force we find ourselves, soldiers sail on air, they're always moving around. And so we needed to be able to go into any medical treatment facility, regardless of color of service, and pick up that immunization with 100% accuracy. And the systems that the services have developed have allowed us to do that. An incredible task, and my hats off to the services for making that happen. The Surgeon General is the executive agent in executing for the TSG Rep. We try in the operations directorate to make sure that all these data bytes are in fact captured with 100% accuracy. We report on a weekly basis just the status of the force. And as you can see, this would in fact not be possible unless we had some mechanism for the commanders. And the commanders do in fact have that capability. There is obviously a manual system that goes along with all of this. We still use the SF-601, the medical record shot records that's placed in the records. That's a little yellow shot record? No, just a little, just a minute, Doris. That's the yellow one. I remember that one. That's the international, the PHS-731, that yellow shot record. So there's a redundancy in the systems. We still do the manual system, but we've added the automated tracking system to that as well. Being a former military brat, I remember that little yellow card. I would like to share, though, that the commander now has the responsibility for executing this program. I mean, we are providing the vaccine. We provide the plan for doing it, but it's actually a commander's responsibility. And so that commander has to have the tools available to him. And there have been some systems developed to do that. You should be able to dial up the DEERS address, www.dndc.osd.mil.sicrs. And with those acronyms and get a log on an ID, if you have a need to know, I mean, we don't want to sit on Hussain dialing up and giving access to it. But we do in fact want to have a reason for you to have access to that data bank. You can pull up by unit identification code or by social security number. Within the Army, we have developed the Med Pro system, and we have put that on the web page. So if you have access to the worldwide web, you can dial up www.mods.asmr.com. And you notice it's .com, so it's available to anybody. And so there was some question about security, and I'm sure the audience is wondering, well, can anybody do that since you brought up Saddam? What happens is when you put in your social security number, it is in fact traced back to the officer master file. And if your social doesn't register an officer master file or the enlisted master file, you don't get access to that system. So there's a security system, a secure layer that we've provided for that. I think it's just an exceptional system from all the services. And the DEERS has been the central repository, promotes things to come with the centralized data management of all of our health data. But Colonel, what happens if you miss a dose? Well, if you miss a dose and you're within two years, you just continue right where we identify that missing dose. So up to two years for us, you can go ahead and continue on with your series. And under the new AVIP guidelines, this two-year limit applies only to those personnel receiving a single dose. Personnel who received two or more doses can simply pick up right where they left off, regardless of the delay between doses. Now during Operation Desert Shield Desert Storm, 150,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were administered the anthrax vaccine. Most of these personnel received a single dose. And obviously, since it's been more than two years, those personnel would need to start over again. Those few soldiers who receive two or more doses and who can in fact document the fact that they're received two or more doses can again simply pick up right where they left off. Now before we start on our next topic, we're going to check in and see if our studio audience has any questions and if they've been paying attention. Ted? What I want to do now is review some of the material we've covered up to now. We've got a long 12 hours ahead of us over the next three days. And I think it would be helpful if we did a little bit of review. So I'll throw some questions out to our studio audience here. You've already heard a lot of talk about anthrax and certainly there seems to be a lot of emphasis both in this course and in the DOD in general about the use of anthrax as a weapon. And yet we see by this that there are certainly many other weapons systems out there. So why the emphasis on anthrax? What about anthrax makes it such a fearsome weapon as compared to a lot of other infectious diseases? Anybody know? Sir, ma'am. As a spore, it's very easy to store. It's very easy to disperse. And it makes an excellent biological weapon. That's right, good point. The point was as a spore, anthrax makes a good biological weapon. And in fact, that's a very important point. Most bacteria are not spore formers. And those bacteria that aren't spore formers need the same things that you and I need in order to survive. They need food, water and love and affection and all that sort of stuff. But if I form a spore, I can go for prolonged periods of time without food and water and consider how this makes the ordinance officer's job easier. If I'm an ordinance officer charged with storing biological weapons, and I've got a plague weapon, and plague is not a spore forming organism. I've got to take the top off my warhead, fill it up with plague, screw the top back on, put the warhead in the bunker. Three days later, all the plague's dead. I've got to take the warhead out of the bunker, take the top off, dump the plague out, put new plague in, et cetera, et cetera. Well, with anthrax, I fill that warhead up with anthrax spores, put it in the bunker. 50 years later, that warhead is still viable. So I think that's just one of the many reasons anthrax is such a great weapon. Any other ideas, Dr. Knudsen? Another reason that it makes a good weapon is that it can be aerosolized in the 1 to 5 micron range and maintain its infectivity and stability in the aerosol. Absolutely. It lends itself very well to aerosolization at exactly the right particle size. Being a spore, again, it can survive desiccation. You can dry it out. That makes it easier to disseminate via the winds, if you will, and just makes anthrax a better weapon in general. It tends to agglomerate in particle sizes of exactly 1 to 5 microns, which, as you saw earlier, are perfect for reaching the human lower respiratory tract. Any other reasons? Captain Nurgess. Sir, maybe military lore, but it seems everything I've been told, if you can make bread or beer at home, you can make anthrax. Absolutely, absolutely. And again, we said earlier in the course that with two semesters of microbiology training, anybody can go outside their door, dig up a scoop full of dirt, and readily culture some of these agents. An anthrax is an agent that's found readily in the soil. And again, the technology necessary to grow this stuff up in large amounts is not that complex. If you're a home brewer or a home winemaker, you certainly have the knowledge necessary to be a home anthrax brewer. So all of those very good answers indeed. Anything else? Anybody else want to add anything to that? It's an organism for which we have a vaccine. And we can also treat it with antibiotics. So somebody who's working with it can protect themselves when it goes around them. Right, and this brings up a critical point that we really haven't dwelled on a lot. The bioterrorist most of the time doesn't want to succumb to his experiment any more than we want to succumb to his experiment. So it's critical that he be able to protect himself. And with anthrax, he can certainly do that. He can vaccinate himself or start himself on antibiotic prophylaxis, safely work with this stuff and disseminate it. So that's a very, very good point. Well, let's move on to the next question. We've heard a little bit now about anthrax vaccine. And I wonder if anyone here could review for me some of the advantages or disadvantages of the anthrax vaccine. Any takers? Captain Bennett? Well, certainly one advantage might be that we do have a long experience with its use. It's been validated over a long number of years and used in a large number of people now. We have good experience with its safety and some good evidence of its efficacy. So we feel it's a fairly reliable vaccine. Great, great point. And I think there's the perception out there, even though we've covered this to some degree already in this course. I think there's the perception out there still that there's something experimental about this new anthrax vaccination policy. And in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Anthrax was the first bacterial vaccine ever invented. So anthrax vaccination dates to 1881. The concept of anthrax vaccination is 117 years old. And the current anthrax vaccine was licensed in the early 1970s. It was actually available in IND form in this country in 1963. So we have been vaccinating veterinarians, veterinary techs, textile workers, and slaughterhouse workers in this country for probably 35 years or so. So a very effective vaccine in that sense. Now, I can't do the gold standard study.  But according to a lot of monkey data, it certainly seems to be a very efficacious vaccine. And the anecdotal evidence would be exactly as Captain Bennett presented. We know that the amount of anthrax disease in veterinarians, textile workers, and slaughterhouse workers has certainly diminished since the advent of anthrax vaccination. So that's one of the big advantages of the vaccine. Any disadvantages of this vaccine, Captain Nurgess? So I can talk about a disadvantage. When I was at Fort Bragg, we would have soldier readiness checks when we were getting ready to go anywhere. It's hard to get a battalion or a company or three or four people, especially doctors and nurses, down to the SRC to do it three times that on the vaccination schedule is a first sergeant's nightmare. Right, absolutely. And again, as I said earlier in the course, a problem for the patient, it's not pleasant getting six shots, problem for the doc. It's a lot of time and effort and resources expended vaccinating or administering this many doses of vaccine, a big problem for the poor first sergeant who's got to get his troops in there. And I think, and this just had C. Slack's personal opinion, but I think that if this were a more user-friendly vaccination, we probably wouldn't even be talking about it today. There wouldn't be this big to do about the Department of Defense Vaccination Policy. We probably would have just done this decades ago. This would have been a no-brainer if it was a one or a two-dose series. Again, that's just my opinion, but... Any other advantages or disadvantages that anyone cares to comment on? It does have a degree of reactogenicity, so we do have some local reactions. Right. I have to deal with those. That's right. There is a little bit of a local reaction issue. It certainly doesn't seem to be much worse than with most vaccines. I can tell you from personal experience, I got six doses of this vaccine. It has a fairly high degree or a fairly high amount of formalin in it, so it stings a little bit for 20 or 30 seconds after it's been administered. Colonel Eitzen showed you that you get a subcutaneous nodule often that lasts for a few weeks after administration of the vaccine. It's painless. I can speak from experience. I got that after a couple of my doses, and if I felt along my triceps, I would notice the nodule, but if I wasn't thinking about it, it certainly didn't come to my attention. So there are some local side effects. There's some redness and swelling in a certain minority of patients, but as you heard during the show, very few or almost no long-term or permanent side effects or serious side effects. Major Lee? Because it's not a live cell vaccine. It's a cell-free filtrate. You cannot get the anthrax disease from the vaccination itself. Right, right. So very safe vaccine in the sense that there are no living organisms in the vaccine. This is, unlike some vaccines, not a killed organism. It's just a cell-free filtrate. The vaccine is essentially pure protein, and as such would theoretically, as well as practically be assured of being pretty safe. Well, you've all done very well. It doesn't look like I'm going to stump you anymore with these questions. So I think rather than continue to try to do that, I will open the show up to the next agent that we're going to talk about, namely, plague. And to do so, I think I'll throw it back to Doris.


The countdown continues as in only 7 days time, Artemis 1 will be heading to the moon. We'll be talking about that as well as SpaceX's Starship's new satellite contract. This is Tomorrow Space News. We're going to start off this week with Ship 25, specifically its nose cone. It was rolled to high bay 1 before being stacked onto the upper tank section of the ship. In Booster News, B10's forward dome has been sleeved with the section which the grid fins are attached to. Some chined sections have also been spotted laying around and these will be installed on future boosters, such as, possibly, Booster 10. Booster 7 is still sitting in the mega bay, officially known as high bay 2, as its 13 gimbling raptors are installed. Hopefully we'll be seeing it roll out soon, but we already have a busy few weeks ahead. The chopsticks have been recovering since their hydraulic leak and here are some actuators waiting to be installed at the launch site. They'll be lifted up and installed just like this one and they'll be in use when trying to catch the boosters and ships. The chopstick structure has also been moving up and down, testing that it still works as expected after that hydraulic leak. Star Factory is progressing nicely as it usually is, with roof panels now being installed. Hopefully they'll install some lighting soon because it looks pretty dark in there. Starship has also been in the press office of the Skyperfect JSAT group this week as they're the first commercial customer to have signed a contract with SpaceX to launch their Superbird 9 communications satellite on a Starship vehicle. This first contract outside of NASA or internal SpaceX missions starts to put Starship on the map as a usable launch vehicle and I'm sure many more contracts will be coming once the vehicle starts flying. The satellite will be succeeding Superbird C2, which is already in orbit, providing KU band coverage over Japan and East Asia. No specific launch site was named, but it is currently scheduled for 2024, which means both Boca Chica and LC-39A would be available for a geosynchronous transfer orbit. As well as the Superbird 9 satellite, Starship is going to be launching the next generation of Starlink satellites called V2. Because of their increase in size over V1, Starship is required to launch these new satellites, or at least it was required as SpaceX has informed the Federal Communications Commission that it now intends to fly Starlink V2 satellites on both Starship and Falcon 9. But previously, Falcon 9 was ruled out because of the size of the satellites, right? Well, that's now changed. The technology inside of the satellites will be the same, but the physical structures of the satellites will be designed depending on what vehicle they are launching on. Why they have chosen to do this is pretty much down to speculation. I'd guess that SpaceX wants to get the V2 satellites out of the door and into orbit quicker, and using a reliable vehicle such as Falcon 9 will allow them to do just that. But it's just a yes. We covered the rollout of SLS for the Artemis One mission last week, but today August 22nd marks exactly one week until the first launch window opens on August 29th. Here in the UK, it's a bank holiday, so there's not really an excuse to not be watching the live coverage of the launch, assuming it does actually get that far because we must remember that this is the first launch of a brand new vehicle. It may be derived from Shuttle, but it is still a new vehicle, which the engineers and launch teams are learning about. The Orion spacecrafts, which will be heading to the Moon, will only be orbiting it, but NASA has released some very exciting information over the last week about the landing sites for Artemis 3, the first landing attempt of the program. 13 different 15x15km2 regions near the Lunar South Pole have been selected, with a minimum of 10 landing locations within each of the regions. Those regions are in alphabetical order. When these regions were named however many years ago, I'm sure they were thinking of me having to figure out how to pronounce them all. Each landing site is within six degrees of latitude of the South Pole, and the differing locations provide multiple options for when the Artemis 3 mission launches. If you were unaware, the South Pole was chosen for the Artemis missions, because it was somewhere that was never touched. During the Apollo program, it has parts which are always in darkness and always in sunlight, and it allows for science to be completed on the ice, which we already know exists there. Jacob Bleacher, NASA's chief exploration scientist, said alongside the landing area announcements, Lunar water ice is valuable from a scientific perspective and also as a resource, because from it we can extract oxygen and hydrogen for life support systems and fuel. If you want to stay on the Moon for a long period, you're going to need another way of producing the resources you need to survive, and ice is one way to do that. There are still opportunities for new landing sites to be added as well, so this might not be the final list. As Starship develops, its landing requirements may change as well, which could impact what sites were available, either positively or negatively. The final list will hopefully be narrowed down around 18 months before Artemis 3 launches, currently slated for the latter half of 2025. The future is looking very exciting, with one of the most important launches of the decade, maybe even the century, starting the journey for humans back to the Moon. If we go back to the roots of the national launch system, this is a story 30 years in the making and I can't wait to see it fly. Another future heavy-lifting launch vehicle has seen another update recently in both the launch pad and the landing pad department, starting with the new Glens Space Launch Complex 36. For the first time ever, the strong back or transporter erector for the vehicle has been spotted in its vertical position at the pad, slightly tilted back. It'll be a very exciting day when you're able just to sit on the beach and watch New Glenn ignite its BE-4 engines. It's not really something you get elsewhere at the cape from public viewing areas because buildings and foliage get in the way. The recovery ship for New Glenn was going to be Jacqueline, a big boat which was named after Jeff Bezos' mother, but instead, Blue Origin has decided to go in another direction for recovery similar to SpaceX with Jacqueline being scrapped. The boat, not the person. Its final journey was to the port of Brownsville, right next door to Boca Chica, meaning that NASA spaceflight's robot cameras as well as Nick and Sweeney were able to watch it arrive at its destination. The port of Brownsville is known for ship scrapping, SpaceX's operations here are merely a coincidence. Space traffic starts this week with an ISS departure, which later turns into an Earth Arrival. The Dragon capsule used for the CRS-25 mission, number C-208, undocked from the Harmony Forward port at 1505 UTC on the 19th of August, starting its one-day descent back to the Atlantic Ocean. There were a couple of launches in between undocking and splashdown, though starting with three Yang and 35 Group 4 satellites, which launched on a long march 2D, from LC3 at the Shichang Satellite Launch Center in China at 1737 UTC on August 19th. The payload mass is unknown, but it was delivered to a 500km low Earth orbit at a 34.99 degree inclination. The same day, at 1921 UTC, we had another Blue Teen Starlink launch, which was grouped for Mission 27. Inside the payload fairing were 53 Starlink satellites, which were launched from Slick 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They were successfully delivered to their initial 336x232km 53.22 degree inclination low Earth orbit, with the booster supporting this mission, B1062, successfully touching down on a shortfall of gravitas. Despite being Mission 27, this was the 25th launch to Shell 4, and about 10 more missions will be required to fill it up. The 20th of August, at 1853 UTC, saw Dragon Sea 208 splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, and it was scooped up by the recovery ship Megan. Sadly, there was no broadcast of the splashdown, so you're just seeing more footage of the departure procedures. Here is probably one of the most historic upcoming launches I'm ever going to read. Between this and the next episode of Tomorrow Space News, we'll have the launch of Long March 11 from Xi Chang, a Long March 2D from Tai Yang, Starlink Group 3 Mission 4 from Vandenberg, Starlink Group 4 Mission 23 from LC-39A, and finally, Artemis 1 on the Space Launch System from Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Thank you to all the citizens of Tawara who keep the show going week after week. Station 204, it's expensive to operate, but thanks to the escape velocity, orbital suborbital and ground support citizens as well as NeuroStream, the financial burden on Jamie is reduced. If you want your name on this list, you want to see Space News script as they're being written, and you want to be able to hang out in our pre and post live show Hangouts, head to youtube.com forward slash tmro forward slash join, or hit the join button below. The final week until Artemis 1 isn't finished yet, it's only Monday. Dr. Tamotha Skyev will be returning with this week's update on Space Weather on Wednesday. On Friday, we may or may not have a live show, Jamie is not available and Dutta is currently orange. Fingers crossed, following the launch of Artemis 1 on Monday, I'll be back with the news of the historical mission. The next few weeks are going to be crazy, so hopefully we'll see you then. Thank you for watching and goodbye.


Hi everyone and welcome to the Federa Chorus Docs Hax Fest. So I should be presenting with Jonathan LeBone. But he has some issues, so I will start and I'll let him try to work out his issues and he will join us soon. But we don't need much to present. So that will be fine. So welcome everyone. The goal here today is to work on docs for Federa Chorus. So hopefully you have a basic idea of what Federa Chorus is. If you don't, that's fine. You can check out the links, you can check out the website. And I've posted in the chat a hackMD link, which is a convenient way to share information. And you should also see the hackMD on the screen. So the general idea is that we want to improve the Federa Chorus docs during this Hax Fest. And so the easiest way to do it is to do it together at the same time. And hopefully we'll be here. And there are a lot of Chorus folks here, I think, to help both with questions and with review, PRs and everything. So feel free to ask questions either in the chat or in the ISE channel for Federa Chorus. So I don't remember if we put it here. Hmm. We did not put links here. Maybe we should have some links. Can I add a link? Do you want me to put in? Great. The ISE channel maybe. So yeah, feel free to ask questions. Of course, we're here to help too. There will be just a notice, there will be a second Federa, there are multiple Federa Chorus presentations during NEST, but there will be another session on Sunday, which is more like a workshop for getting started with Federa Chorus. And so and this is on Sunday, Sunday morning. All right, so let's get started. The the idea here is so the source. I cannot point on my screen, but maybe I can highlight. So the sources are here for the Federa Chorus docs. And the version that is displayed is available for everyone is here. That's the official Federa Chorus, Federa Docs website. Unfortunately, the website is not updated every time somebody commits. And every time a commit gets in, so it's lagging a little bit behind. It's something like once a day. So you will not have the pleasure of doing your work be available right now on the website. You will have to wait for tomorrow. The idea, so if you need any help with Federa Chorus, you can start with the existing documentation. There are instructions for either launching in cloud providers or directly on your system. And of course, if you want to work on the docs, you will probably want to preview the changes that you've made locally. And that's easily done by the link here by the very short instructions. You basically need Podman or Docker and that's it. Writing documentation is great, but making it available to more people is also great. So we if you want to work on the translation, you can head over there to the translation page. So I'll give it a quick look here. So that's the Federa Chorus documentation, the translation page. I think this one is in French because I'm in France and you can go over each page and translate strings in the documentation. That's easy and yeah, that would greatly help. If you want, if you're ready to go in and dive into Federa Chorus and write new docs, we've made a sample PR here on GitHub. Oh, that's not the one. That's sorry. So if you want to go in and you have made some suggestions about what you could work on and help us do. So it's on the Federa Chorus docs on GitHub. We put on GitHub and we've labeled the issue with good first issues and doc access to help you get started. Feel free to ask questions directly in the issues or in the chat and we'll try to help. So the documentation itself. Yeah, you can put most pages in the system configuration section. It's okay. That's not an issue. We will move pages if that's necessary. So we, yeah, we made, as I said before, we made a sample PR to help you get started. So if you want to like get the basics of how to create a page in the docs, that's the chances that you will need to do here.  To avoid stepping on each other. So the goal is to, you should have access to this document. I think it's, oh, it's limited to sign in user. So yes, as soon as you've signed in into ICMD, you should be able to edit it. So you can see the edit mark here. You can go there. It's marked down. And if you want to work on a specific issue, please add yourself here as your name and the issue you want to work on so that we don't work on the same, everybody does not work on the same issue. And we can assign issue to people on GitHub. So if you use your GitHub username, that will work great. So yeah, we prefer GitHub workflow, so Git and PRs, but if not comfortable with that, it's okay. You can do direct contribution using ICMD. So, similar to what we're showing right now and we will do what's necessary to make this into a final PR once you're ready. And that's fine. One note about ICMD, the preview mode of ICMD doesn't really support ASCII. But if you just use the plain text editor mode, it's just plain text on your screen. So don't worry too much about the rendering. Yeah. And thanks, Dusty. And the last things that you can do is testing the actual docs, the current documentation that we have to make sure that it's still relevant and still working. And so, at the same time here, the same idea here, we don't want to all work on the same page. So if you want to work on a specific page and try it and verify it, you can add your name here in the docs to tell everybody that you're working on this page, for example. And so we can speed the work. Just a quick note, as we are still updating the tutorials for Sunday Workshop, I suggest that you do not work on them because they have already changed from the version that is displayed in docs. So if you work on them, please do it from the version that is in the repository, the current master and expect changes to it. So yeah, everything else should be in better shape. But they are okay, but they are not fully completed. And that's about it. So. Timothy, a quick question on the testing. So if somebody wants to grab one of those sections to just run through and make sure the documentation looks good. I just added an example in that section that says my username and I will try to test this one. Does that look like what you were expecting? So if you scroll down on your screen. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Maybe make it like a bold and that would be perfect. There you go. Oh, good. Are there any questions? Otherwise, I'll leave the floor to you. And let's let's do some docs. If you're more comfortable asking questions directly. So there's chat. There's the IC channel. There's here you can ask for for voice access. If I understood correctly in hoping so you should be able to ask questions directly if you'd like. Timothy question. So when I tried to get access for sharing my audio and video. I had to click a button and then like say apply to get added to the session. Did you approve me? Is that how I got added or okay, that's weird. I didn't do anything you you got in. Okay, I'm not sure how that works then because there was a period of time between when I applied and when I got in. So, yeah, I think Jonathan might be having some trouble getting his video and audio shared too, but we'll just deal with those issues. We've got the the event the session channel here in Hoppin and then also Fedora Coro s on free node. So if people have any questions just ask those there. Hey, can you hear me okay now? I think you muted but by your expression I think it's yeah. Oh, you can't hear me. I can hear Timothy. I'm not Jonathan. It's your Jonathan. Yeah, it's your Jonathan. Can you say something now? Yep. Yeah, I can hear you. All right. Welcome. Thanks. Thanks for leading the beginning. That's the end. So Jonathan, as a user coming into this, what would you do in order to contribute to the docs? What's your first step? I think I would fork the repo and then I would clone it locally. And I would just try to build and preview it on my laptop. And then once I have that, then I can, you know, maybe see what what issues interest me. Or if I've never tried for a course before, I would definitely either try to use the bird or Kevin you to to play around with it and just make sure I understand like how to pass an English config to the VM. And if you've never used Fedora or OS before, you can easily sign up to just test a section of the docs. And, you know, make sure that it's good for a new user, right? So that's, that's a good way to contribute as well. Timothy, do you want to pull up on that your screen share the example PR to get hub repo and just step through that briefly. Here you should be able to see, let me check, yeah, the example PR for the repo that we've made. So it's in the docs of the in the middle here. And the basic idea is if you you'll start with adding your page here in the nav section. It's a bicycle file, which is all the sections that are in the documentation. So you can see here it's been it's and don't need auto sanitation canal tuning. So that would get under the right here. And once you've added the page here, so you see here you had just the name of the document that you meant to reference. You need to put the full pass. And here you just created in almost the same directory just underneath the pages directory here. You had a new page, same name, which is wrong. You did not put the same name. I'll go fix that. Yeah, I called it new example, but then I just changed it to example and I didn't change the file name. So I'll go fix that's all right. Yeah, you write directly has to dog here and that will create you do a page for you. I can show that was a test. That was a test. I wanted to make sure you caught it in code review. And yeah, ASCII doc is like close to markdown but not exactly the same. So depending on how comfortable you are with markdown, it's going to be easy. I don't know if the reference is here somewhere. Maybe we can find it. There should be some reference here. Well, doesn't really. It's easy to like copy paste from the existing doc. I would say that's the way to go. So things, what's happening? So for some of the issues, I added a sentence criteria to try to make it clear what we wanted out of the issue. But I didn't get through all of them. But if you have a doubt about or some of them are maybe already clear enough. So if you have a doubt about what needs to get done for a specific issue, you can ask us in chat or any issues. I have a question about translations. So how does that typically work? Is there anything that's auto translated? Or is it completely all like kind of manually done? And so for example, if I go in and I change a section, like I change a paragraph, does somebody then need to go in and like change the translation? Yeah. So if I go to the translation website here, let's be just signing. So if I go to federal chorus and so previously I had done all of these. So let's go for index. For example, there are some strings to check here. Oh, so there have been changes. So that's a good example of what you ask. I had translated the initial index page in French for the federal chorus docs. And so they have been changes and they are shown here. And so you've got so the changes, the English version, the new English version, which has double spaces. So it should be fixed. And that's the final French version that I had originally that I should update. Okay. I'll just edit this one. And when it's done, I'll go save. So I'll do this in a second. But just underneath you can see all of the strings that I have to, that I have that are there to translate and some checks here. How does it, how does it break up into different sections? Does it just use like a single line of text or does it just do paragraphs? Like if I, if I write a section of documentation and I manually line break a couple of times, does it pick that up or no? I think it's paragraphs that so far from what I've seen. Okay. Thanks for the tutorial. Sure. Yeah, somebody started translating here. Okay. So I'm going to start hacking on some docs. You know, I'll periodically look at the chat and the channel here and also in Fedor Coral S. And, you know, if anybody has any questions asked to share your audio or video or post them in the chat and happy hacking did update the example PR. So it should be better. Seems like we have a couple of questions about translations. Maybe we can debug Raphael's issue on your screen, Timothy. And for Sylvia, maybe we can do like a how to get started with translations brief, many tutorial. Yeah. Yeah. So let me, so you get interested and check. I'll do a recap translation so that, so let me write this one as in progress. So if you go on the HackMD, you can see here the link for translations. So it's the Fedora translate the web late service. So if I go there, you hear you need to sign in, you should sign in. It's, I think it's not required, but it's better if you sign in using your Fedora account ID, because you can then directly save the translations and that's easier for you and for everybody. You, you will get more power in a way. So once you sign in here, you should go to the Fedora course page. So if you are on the dashboard, for example, and you want to look for it, you can go over here. Look at the project blues or projects. And then you can search for chorus or OS. Oops. And there you go. So I would recommend to, let's say, get started with the easiest one is index. So basic page, landing page. So you should click here on the index page. You will see multiple language. If your language is not already there, you should do start a new translation. And then you have to choose language. So pick the one you want to do and go ahead and start a new translation. Once you've done that, you should be rigid either with the page like this with all the language or directly here on the page here. So if you can translate, you can get into this interface here where you get all the strings to translate and you get them one by one. So you have to read the English version here and translate it here in a language. Once you're done, if you feel like it's okay, the transition is perfect. You don't think it needs any work. You can go and save it directly. If you feel like it's not complete or maybe it should be better, you can go and check the box here to say that it needs editing or put it as a suggestion. Or if you don't want to do this string right now, you can just skip it and move to the next one. And so that just like here, it goes through all of the texts and you should translate each one of them. If you want to skip to a specific one, you can go underneath here. You've got all the strings to translate and you can click on one and you will be sent to it. You can watch out and write for this box here. Things to check sometimes when you make mistakes or if there are something that is inconsistent, you will get a warning here and you can see, well, it depends on the issue you have. Does that helps? Let me check the chat. Usually you can like overwrite most of the web late checks. So if you think you're right, you just go ahead and overwrite it. And it doesn't matter. Weird. It's translate not fedora project.org down for anybody other than me. If you try to open a new one. Working here. Just me. That's good news because I'm glad everybody who's editing things in a browser window isn't going to lose some. It's DNS. Always. Timothy, we got a specific question about translations in the chat. Maybe you can help Sylvia with that particular issue. Right. So when you have links, so let me find this one. When you have links, you have to keep the links in English. So this one should be the index, maybe. Yeah. So here. So you can see it in the source in English, you have the link here. So that that part you have to keep it as is. And then you get the actual content that is displayed to the user. And that's the one, the one you want to translate. So he has translated it to French and everything else I've kept has this. I think. Is there a time this session ends by the way. Yeah, that's about it. Technically 1150. So now. Okay, cool. I don't know. You know, we might get kicked out at some point. I'm sure people have other sessions they might want to join as well. Should we kind of close out the session. And, you know, obviously what people are working on the open PRs and we'll just go through it that way. And obviously if people have questions, we're also in Fedora or less on free note. So we'll be available. Yeah. And I mean, if you want to contribute, like if you're doing translation right now, but you also want to contribute with adding new docs. There's still like all the issues in the in the GitHub repo with the good first issue label. So you can always, you know, after after this hack fest, pick whatever you want. And docs are always always welcome. Okay, I guess that's it then. Tim, did you want to say anything else before we finish? Yeah, just some closing remarks that such as thanks everyone for joining us today and for writing docs. I think he might be having translation. I can I can hear Timothy. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if John can hear us. Thanks. Thanks for joining us and and for working on docs. I see some translations have been. We've been some date. Yeah. We've got new translations. That's great. And yeah, and I've seen some PRs too. So that's cool. And so thanks everyone. Thanks everybody. And they will stay. I will stay here for a while. And we are still available in the chat in the events, of course, and on free node as just he said, feel free to ask any questions on the charter directly. And we'll be there for the next session, which will be on Sunday morning for the federal chorus workshop, which is like the getting your hands dirty with federal chorus session. If you haven't done that already in this one. And there are a lot of federal chorus. There are multiple federal chorus sessions during this event. There's something on OKD, I think. And another one about introduction to federal chorus or something like that. I don't remember. Yeah, it's kind of funny the OKD session actually got scheduled at the same time as this one. So that happened at 1030. So go back and watch it later. And there is a federal chorus talk tomorrow and then the workshop on Sunday. So yeah, thanks everyone. I'll stay here for a while and see you maybe on Sunday. Oh, anytime during the chat in the chat. Thanks everybody.


This is the Daily Decrypt and the currency competition is on. I am your host, Amanda B. Johnson, and today's episode is brought to you by Oracle Eyes. If one wants to know the direction that a certain effort or organization is heading in, as they say, it pays to follow the money. Bitcoin Core developers are largely employed by a company called Blockstream who has just announced that they have recently raised 55 million US dollars in venture capital funding. To get a better idea of the direction that this money will steer Bitcoin Core development in, review this article with me from Brave New Coin. Just six days after Blockstream announced a strategic partnership with Price Waterhouse Coopers, PwC, an even larger announcement from the Bitcoin software development company has been announced. A 55 million US dollar investment was just raised by Blockstream, the company's second round, bringing their total investment up to 76 million dollars. Blockstream CEO Austin Hill said that the money will be used, quote, to further enhance our sidechain technology, expand our operations globally, and support new industry partnerships, end quote, similar to the one made with PwC only days before. Francois Robinet, a managing partner at one of the round's key investors, AXA Strategic Ventures, stated that, quote, Blockstream has the best technical team in the industry and we strongly believe in their approach of developing foundational infrastructure for various blockchain applications, end quote. Other investors in the round include Horizons Ventures, who led the funding round, Digital Garage, AME Cloud Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Future Perfect Ventures, COSLA Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and Seven Seas Venture Partners. Hill also announced that Francis Kang from Horizons Ventures had joined the board of directors at Blockstream. Here's a quote from Francois Robinet. We value Blockstream's open source approach to its sidechain technology, which will allow interoperability between different chains and provide critical long-term success in this sector. We also look forward to partnering with Blockstream to drive the transformation of insurance and asset management businesses, end quote. While a 55 million dollar investment certainly shows continued interest in the company, the exposure PWC is offering Blockstream is easily underestimated. PWC is a multinational professional service provider with 35.4 billion in revenue last year. The company will be, quote, collaborating on existing solutions and developing offerings, end quote, with Blockstream. Robert Swack, PWC Vice Chairman of Clients and Markets, says, quote, In the last year, we have helped 443 of the companies in the FT Global 500 list and 418 of those in the Fortune Global 500 list. We also advise and work with more than 100,000 entrepreneurial and private businesses around the world, end quote. The auditing firm made their intentions clear when they opened an office recently, just for blockchain research and product development. Following the partnership with Blockstream, it's likely that they will be working closely with Bitcoin's blockchain. Blockstream's senior VP, Alex Fowler, made a firm statement lately in an interview with International Business Times, quote, New fangled code and technology is not what a bank wants. It's not what an enterprise that's looking to put financial assets onto a shared distributed ledger wants. They don't want to have that secured with math and science that someone came up with in the last year. They want the battle-tested, peer-reviewed, open technology stack that when they, banks and enterprises, put their assets on it, they know it won't be hacked or be taken down because it can't scale. And there is only one protocol that has that level of peer review, public testing and verification, and that's the Bitcoin code base, end quote. The article finishes by saying, with such overwhelming support and funding from the small blocks camp, the block size may remain where it is for quite some time. Those who are ideologically opposed to Core's direction may leave it partially or entirely to put their wealth into competing cryptocurrencies. And those who are ideologically aligned may enter Bitcoin for the first time. As I said before, the currency competition is on. Today's episode has been brought to you by Oracleize, which is a provably honest Oracle service that works with either Ethereum or Bitcoin. Oracleize is a cutting edge service for those who would like to use smart contracts in their financial dealings. The service can pull data feeds from real-world events, making your financial contracts execute without the need for human intervention. You can learn more about how this works at oracleize.it Leave a comment on today's video if you like, and as always, be excellent to each other.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we discussed the following question which says, simplify 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a minus 3 parenthesis open 2a minus 5b plus 3a under the bar parenthesis closed curly bracket closed and square bracket closed. Before we move on to the solution let's discuss the order of the removal of the brackets in an algebraic expression. In an algebraic expression first we remove the bar then the parenthesis then the curly brackets then the square brackets. This is the key idea that we use for this question. Let's proceed with the solution now. The expression that we need to simplify is 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a minus 3 parenthesis open 2a minus 5b plus 3a under the bar parenthesis closed curly bracket closed square bracket closed. Now according to the order of the removal of brackets in an algebraic expression first we need to remove the bar in the given algebraic expression. So this is the bar first we will remove this bar. So this is equal to 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a minus 3 parenthesis open 2a. As you can see that there is a minus sign before the expression which is under the bar. Now when we remove this bar the sign of the terms which are under this bar would be changed like this plus 5b would become minus 5p plus 3a becomes minus 3a then parenthesis closed curly bracket closed square bracket closed. Now this is further equal to 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a minus 3 parenthesis open. Now 2a minus 3a is minus a minus 5p parenthesis closed curly bracket closed square bracket closed. Now next we have to remove the parenthesis as given in the order. So this is equal to 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a. Now when we remove the parenthesis this becomes plus 3a plus 15b that is you multiply this 3 with each term inside the parenthesis curly bracket closed square bracket closed. Then this is equal to 2a minus square bracket open 3b minus 4 curly bracket open 2a plus 3a is 5a plus 15b curly bracket closed square bracket closed. Now next we remove the curly brackets this is equal to 2a minus square bracket open 3b. Now when we remove the curly brackets we multiply minus 4 by 5a to get minus 20a minus 4 by 15b to get minus 60b square bracket closed. This is equal to 2a minus square bracket open minus 20a 3b minus 60b is minus 57b. Now lastly we remove the square brackets. Now since there is a minus sign before the square bracket so we change the sign of the terms inside the square brackets when we remove the brackets. So this is equal to 2a plus 20a plus 57b which is equal to 22a plus 57b. Thus on simplifying the given expression we get 22a plus 57b. So final answer is 22a plus 57b. This completes the session hope you have understood the solution of this question.