- There’s now a cure for Dragon’s Dogma 2’s dreaded pawn pox Dragonsplague: mods Rock Paper Shotgun
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 players are warning each other about potentially killer pawns with rotten food and flesh PC Gamer
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 Players Are Fighting Dragonsplague In New Ways Kotaku
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 players have quietly devised a way to warn others of the dreaded Dragonsplague – but it might not be enough Gamesradar
- Good news, Dragonsplague-fearing idiots, there’s now a Dragon’s Dogma 2 mod that slaps your pawn’s infection level right on their forehead VG247
Tag Archives: Dreaded
How to save the International Space Station and prevent the dreaded “gap”
Enlarge / The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking on Nov. 8, 2021.
NASA
In the 10 days since Russia invaded Ukraine, relations between the first nation to reach space and the Western world have been stripped to the bone.
To wit: Europe’s space agency has canceled several launches on Russian rockets, a contract between privately held OneWeb and Roscosmos for six Soyuz launches has been nullified, Europe suspended work on its ExoMars exploration mission that was set to use a Russian rocket and lander, and Russia has vowed to stop selling rocket engines to US launch companies.
Virtually every diplomatic and economic tie between Russia’s space industry and Europe and the United States has been severed but one—the International Space Station.
In addition to these actions, Russia’s chief spaceflight official, Dmitry Rogozin, has been bombastic since the war’s outbreak, vacillating between jingoistic and nationalistic statements on Twitter and threats about how the ISS partnership could end. Moreover, the Kremlin-aligned publication RIA Novosti even created a creepy video showing Russians leaving their American colleagues behind in space.
But Rogozin has not crossed any red lines with his deeds. Although the intemperate space chief has taken every punitive and symbolic step that Roscosmos can in response to Western sanctions, he has stopped short of huge, partnership-breaking actions. For example, Roscosmos so far has not prohibited NASA astronauts from flying on Soyuz vehicles or recalled Russian astronauts training in the United States, nor has he limited cooperation between Russian and NASA engineers flying the space station from mission control centers in Houston and Moscow.
For its part, NASA has said little beyond expressing a strong desire to continue the partnership. The US space agency’s chief of human spaceflight operations, Kathy Lueders, said last week that it would be a “sad day” if NASA and Russia stopped working together on the space station. Flight controllers in the trenches say they continue to operate the station normally.
So the immense space station, constructed over the course of two decades and serving as a beacon of international partnership for even longer, yet flies on. But in conversations with senior officials across the US and European industry, one picture has clearly emerged. The partnership is increasingly tenuous, and no one knows what will happen next.
“The ISS has led a charmed existence,” said Jeff Manber, the founder of Nanoracks and a long-time presence in Russia-US cooperation in space. “But it’s never been more at threat. I am not sure what will happen when I wake up tomorrow.”
This perilous existence raises serious questions about NASA and Europe’s presence in low Earth orbit. If the Russians—or NASA, at the direction of the US State Department—decide to stop cooperating in the coming weeks, what will happen? Can the US side of the space station, which includes modules built in Europe and Japan, be saved? And can the United States accelerate plans to replace the space station given the current tensions?
Losing the station
Regardless of the rhetoric, neither the United States nor Russia wants to lose the International Space Station. Its first component, the Russian-built Zarya module, launched on a Proton rocket in 1998. Now the size of a US football field, the station has a habitable volume equivalent to a six-bedroom house. Its assembly has required more than 40 spaceflight missions, mostly flown by NASA’s space shuttle. After two decades, the station remains the bedrock of both the US and Russian human spaceflight programs.
For NASA and the United States, losing the space station would mean the forfeiture of more than $100 billion invested in developing the facility and billions more in provisioning and inhabiting the station. NASA has used the space station for myriad purposes, from a platform to conduct more than 2,500 science experiments to testing human health during extended human spaceflight. The station has also served as an incubator for commercial space. The United States has by far the largest and most robust commercial space industry in the world, led by SpaceX, and most of this activity would not exist today without the station.
NASA officials believe the space station has at least a decade of lifetime left in it, and the space agency has been negotiating with Russia and its other international partners to expand the operating agreement through 2030. While NASA has been taking tentative steps to prepare for life in low Earth orbit after the station retires, such plans remain far from realization.
Arguably more is at stake for the Russian side of the partnership. The reality for Russia and its sprawling Roscosmos corporation is this: without the International Space Station, the country has no real path forward for a civil space program. Russia has not flown a successful interplanetary scientific mission in decades, and now purely scientific work with Western nations is cut off. And while Russia has discussed plans for an ISS-successor, named the Russian Orbital Service Station, it remains just a proposal, with no funding or likelihood of development.
So without the ISS, where could Russia fly its Soyuz crewed spaceship and Progress cargo ship to? One seemingly likely alternative is China’s Tiangong space station, the first module of which was launched in 2021. This makes sense given that Russia and China have discussed collaboration in space, including working together on a lunar surface station a decade from now.
However, when China was developing plans for Tiangong, it decided to place the station at an orbital inclination that only takes it as far as 41.5 degrees north and south of the equator. Such an orbit is optimal for launches from Chinese spaceports but is too far south for current Russian vehicles to reach. When Russia approached China about changing Tiangong’s orbit to allow Soyuz vehicles launching from Baikonur to reach the station, Chinese officials declined. So in the near term, any Russians going to Tiangong would do so on Chinese rockets.
While China and Russia have a strategic partnership aimed at standing up to the United States and the West, China has been sending mixed messages to Russia about its future participation in space. However, if the Chinese government were to give Russia a firm guarantee on participation in low Earth orbit and beyond, it might give Rogozin an off-ramp from the ISS partnership amid a fracturing relationship with the West.
I Dreaded Getting a Colonoscopy, but I Finally Did It
The word “colonoscopy” has always been one I have dreaded hearing. At 14, I was diagnosed by a gastroenterologist with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which causes stomach pain and other intestinal symptoms, like bloating and diarrhea. These symptoms tend to happen at the same time, which causes a lot of discomfort.
When I was diagnosed with IBS, I was given a prescription for fiber bars and sent on my way with the suggestion that my condition was brought on by stress (not surprising since I was in high school). I took an antidiarrheal medication when I could and eventually learned that changes in diet could help me immensely – which drove me toward vegetarianism and then veganism.
My IBS flare-ups (increases in symptom intensity) tend to come from environmental stress, or stress coupled with the wrong food choices. I’ve tried to control many of my symptoms (gas, bloating, diarrhea, fatigue, and headaches) through special diets like veganism, but the flare-ups ended up coming back at the start of the pandemic in a way I hadn’t experienced in years.
Here I thought I had the tools to manage it this entire time, but similarly to when I fly on planes – and experience having to run to the bathroom repeatedly from my nerves – the effects of the pandemic created additional unease and uncertainty, which made managing my IBS much tougher for me.
Due to the difficulty with my IBS symptoms, I ended up losing a significant amount of weight. I visited two different gastroenterologists with the hopes that they could assign me a new diet to help me gain some of my weight back and alleviate some of my symptoms. I wasn’t happy with either of them because they each advised me to get a colonoscopy based on my father’s diagnosis of colon cancer in his 60s.
What angered me about their suggestion was that my father and I had led completely different lifestyles. My father lived a sedentary lifestyle, mostly eating things like baloney and white bread – a low-fiber and high-fat diet. Unrelated, he unfortunately developed multiple sclerosis (MS) in his 30s. I, on the other hand, was active all my life and also worked exceptionally hard at eating well and generally taking good care of myself.
That said, what hung over me was the knowledge that my father likely had undiagnosed IBS and that a lot of his GI symptoms, according to my mother, were similar to things I experienced over the years.
I ended up visiting a specialist, who was working with my gastroenterologist at the time, who had me schedule a colonoscopy and endoscopy (a procedure that uses a tube with a small camera to look at the upper part of the digestive system) as well as a CT scan (which uses X-rays and a computer to look at soft tissue) of my abdomen and pelvis to rule out the possibility of colon cancer.
Instead of feeling a sense of relief, however, I left her office feeling frustrated and upset. I didn’t want to undergo a colonoscopy, because it seemed like an exceptionally invasive procedure, and I certainly didn’t want to go through with the colon prep. I feared getting really sick from the colon prep process – which required drinking a prescribed liquid chased by an entire glass of water, the result of which is spending hours in the bathroom as your system cleanses itself.
Despite my doctor assuring me I would most likely have no issues, other than some discomfort from the colonoscopy, I strongly felt that I just needed some dietary modifications or another quick fix that would put my mind at ease.
However, a few days after that visit, I realized that I was fighting my internal fears and concerns over having a colonoscopy. My mother had gone through it several years ago and told me it was the worst thing she ever had to do (and she gave birth to three children!). My brother also recently underwent his and said the prep was horrible and he didn’t enjoy the experience at all.
As someone who is already underweight, fasting and taking laxatives in order to have this test seemed like a very bad idea. I talked excessively about how the specialist didn’t hear me and was misdiagnosing me.
Yet when I gave some thought to it, no matter how I felt inside about the test, I knew that as a mother to a 2-year-old, I had to make the decision to face my fears and have this test done.
Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at my same age definitely shook me. I didn’t think someone as strong and bold as Boseman could be taken out by something like that. It reminded me that I had a duty to get this test done based on my family history and to take what the doctors were recommending as valuable and important advice.
Although I had pushed the test out a few months, I decided to move it up. I decided that I’d frankly worry more the longer I had to wait and that waiting could potentially put me in worse health if anything was going on. And the sooner I could know what was going on with my health, the better I would be as a mother to my daughter.
In September, I did it! And it was not nearly as bad as I thought. Honestly, I was surprised at how painless and easy the test was for me. The colon prep was no walk in the park, and drinking the prep solution – which leads to going to the bathroom all night long – is no one’s idea of a good time. But contrary to all the fears I had about not being able to handle it, I showed up lightly sedated on the day of the test and woke up in the recovery area just fine, with a hearty appetite and no serious flags from my GI doctor.
I’m so grateful not only for the positive outcome but also because I faced a very strong fear of getting this test done. I now feel encouraged to let others know the value in moving forward with getting their colonoscopy done.
It’s recommended that adults age 45 and older should get regular screenings for colon cancer. However, if you have a family history of colon cancer or feel that your IBS is becoming unmanageable, talk to your doctor about whether you need to get screened sooner.