Many pre-telescopic naked-eye observations of large sunspot displays exist in the historical records. The most famous of these observations come from China, Japan, Korea, and Greece, but other cultures have made them as well. Pictorial evidence on dated monuments suggests that naked-eye sunspot displays may have been recorded in Mesoamerica as well. In this regard, Yaxchilan Lintel 48 is of particular interest. After a century long gap in naked-eye sunspot observations from Asia, an outstanding cluster of events began in 499 AD and terminated on April 7, 513. Within 5 years of this latter date, Joy b'alam (Knot-eye Jaguar I) was captured and, following an interregnum, K'inich Tatb'u (Skull II; Knot-eye's brother) ascended the throne in 526. In retrospect, Mayan priests might have associated the sunspot displays with the change in political power, and recorded their observations on historical Lintel 48, dated to 526 AD, by the device of a spotted Sun God.

Much has been said in the popular press about the world-wide COrnaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Some of this information is accurate, some is exaggerated. In some cases vital information has not been presented, while other information is simply wrong. As business activity resumes in the U.S. and other countries, occupational health and safety personnel will have to make some extremely difficult decisions. Those decisions will have to be based on a thorough understanding of the scientific facts and not fear, partial information or distortions. So, what are the facts? What is a coronavirus? How does it work? How did it get that name? Where did it come from? How does it spread? Is there any way to stop it? Do masks work? What about social distancing, hand sanitizers and hand washing? What do the coronavirus statistics mean? Can a vaccine be made? Does post-infection therapy work, and is it safe? Does vitamin C and zinc do anything, or is it just a hoax? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this article.

We are now near the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has been a year since the first International System Safety Society (ISSS) Conference coronavirus presentation. This past year has seen the development and distribution of several vaccines, as predicted in the previous publication about the pandemic. These new weapons against disease will save millions of lives all over the globe in the next few years — and they were developed faster than any vaccine in medical history. Yet these same vaccines have been the victim of numerous allegations from the start. In fact, their strongest virtue — the speed with which they were developed and distributed — is seen by their critics as a fault, possibly resulting in an unsafe or insufficiently tested product. Is there any truth to these claims? How do these vaccines work? And how are they made? Vaccine Safety. In order to establish an orderly, technically accurate, objective, and comprehensive record of the events of these times that is accessible to the general public and of some use to posterity, this second publication has been prepared. It is also hoped that this report will mitigate some of the concerns that people have about vaccine safety.

The stretching and bending of polished and industrial-grade metallurgical surfaces changes the appearance of the specimen’s surface. The changes in surface structure can be detected in the polarized light scattered from the surface cracks and other defects, which act as scattering centers. In order to interpret light scattering signals from complex surfaces, we first examine the nature of light scattered from a perfect mirror surface, a degraded mirror, a line on a mirror, a randomly sanded surface, and, finally, the industrial grade metal surfaces damaged by stretching and bending.

A subsurface origin of 14C is rarely considered by researchers interested in dating groundwater. Theoretically, nuclear reactions induced by emissions from U and Th nuclei can produce measurable concentrations of 14C in groundwater. Under very special conditions, calculations indicate that subsurface production might cause significant errors in dates of less than 1 × 104 years, although normally such errors should not be important until after 5 × 104 years. However, some anomalous 14C concentrations reported recently for deep groundwater may possibly be caused in part by subsurface production of 14C.