Source: Streetwise Reports 10/18/2024

Aero Energy Ltd. (AERO:TSXV; AAUGF:OTC; UU3:FRA) has announced significant advancements at its Murmac and Sun Dog uranium projects in Northern Saskatchewan, with the first drill program revealing high-grade uranium potential. Situated near Uranium City on the Athabasca Basin's northern margin, the projects aim to capitalize on basement-hosted uranium deposits similar to high-grade discoveries in the region.

The initial drill campaign completed 16 holes, targeting 12 key areas, with 12 holes yielding anomalous radioactivity. A major highlight is the new high-grade uranium discovery in drill hole M24-017, which intersected 8.4 meters of mineralization at 0.3% U3O8, including assays peaking at 13.8% U3O8 at just 64 meters below surface. The results confirm Aero's exploration model, which focuses on basement-hosted deposits within graphitic structures, a common feature in Athabasca Basin uranium deposits like Arrow and Triple R.

"From the launch of the company in January, we took a very diligent yet aggressive approach to discovery," stated Galen McNamara, CEO of Aero Energy. "The combination of historical data and the results from the first drill program serve as evidence that basement-hosted mineralization akin to the large deposits beneath and adjacent to the Athabasca Basin is present in the area."

The Murmac project spans 25,607 acres and holds a production legacy of approximately 70 million pounds of U3O8. Similarly, the 48,443-acre Sun Dog property hosts the historic Gunnar uranium mine, which once held the title of the world's largest uranium producer. Past exploration focused on fault-hosted mineralization, missing the basement-hosted uranium potential that Aero's recent findings have validated.

Recent exploration efforts included a VTEM Plus survey, flown over 3,350 kilometers, identifying graphite-rich rocks that support Aero's exploration thesis. Additionally, two new occurrences of strong radioactivity were identified at surface-level scout locations: Target A15 showed 60,793 counts per second, and Target P4 displayed 13,533 counts per second. Summer 2024 drilling included 1,550 meters at Murmac and 1,600 meters at Sun Dog, highlighting shallow, high-grade potential in both areas.

In parallel, Aero Energy has announced a CA$2.5 million non-brokered private placement to support further exploration. The proceeds from flow-through units will fund work programs across Murmac, Sun Dog, and the Strike property, with the remaining funds allocated to general working capital.

Why Uranium?

The uranium sector has recently experienced strong growth, largely driven by increasing global demand and efforts to diversify from Russian supply chains. On September 30, The New York Times discussed the resurgence in Western uranium production, highlighting that "uranium mines are ramping up across the West, spurred by rising demand for electricity and federal efforts to cut Russia out of the supply chain." Aero Energy's recent discoveries and forthcoming winter drilling plans at Murmac and Sun Dog reflect this trend, with CEO Galen McNamara remarking, "The combination of historical data and the results from the first drill program serve as evidence that basement-hosted mineralization . . . is present in the area," suggesting strong potential for the Canadian uranium market to contribute to non-Russian nuclear fuel supplies.

Jeff Clark of The Gold Advisor highlighted his continued confidence in the company by stating, "I remain overweight the stock."

On October 9, Reuters reported that demand from U.S. buyers has been on the rise, as "a strong rise in demand from its U.S. customers" pushed Orano's recent plans to expand uranium enrichment in the United States and France. This shift underscores Aero Energy's recent investments in Northern Saskatchewan, where the company has identified high-grade uranium mineralization in both the Murmac and Sun Dog projects, aiming to meet future supply demands with a focus on basement-hosted deposits.

As Forbes reported on October 11, the uranium market experienced renewed momentum after Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted at the possibility of a ban on uranium exports to Western nations. This suggestion "jolted the uranium market," which had been declining after peaking earlier in the year. The price of uranium rebounded to US$83.50 per pound, reflecting rising concerns about potential supply disruptions. Citi analysts noted that “Russia supplies close to 12% of U3O8, 25% of UF6, and 35% of EUP to international markets,” underscoring the challenges that Western nations, particularly the U.S. and Europe, could face in replacing these critical materials. This market dynamic positions uranium companies operating outside of Russia, like those in the Athabasca Basin, to benefit from supply gaps and heightened demand.

MSN reported on October 13 that the UK's nuclear power capacity is set to decrease dramatically in the coming years, with the planned closure of four out of five remaining nuclear plants by 2028. This reduction in capacity is expected to increase pressure on global uranium supplies as demand for nuclear energy continues to rise amid efforts to meet climate goals. The ongoing shift toward low-carbon energy sources, coupled with the planned closures, could create further supply constraints and drive demand for uranium from alternative sources.

Aero's Catalysts

According to the company's October 2024 investor presentation, the ongoing development at Murmac and Sun Dog highlights Aero Energy's strategy to enhance shareholder value by targeting high-grade uranium deposits in underexplored regions. Aero has leveraged recent technology investments, including VTEM Plus aerial surveys, which identified graphite-rich formations favorable for uranium. The exploration efforts build on the CA$7.6 million previously invested by project partners Fortune Bay and Standard Uranium, which has contributed to refining the drill targets. As Aero works with its partners to maximize the impact of this winter's drilling program, the company's strategic location on the north rim of the Athabasca Basin positions it well to expand these discoveries and attract continued investor interest.

The recently announced CA$2.5 million private placement will further strengthen Aero's financial capacity to carry out its targeted drill campaigns and exploration work.

Analyzing Aero

Jeff Clark of The Gold Advisor, in his October 17 update, noted that Aero Energy has "identified more than 70 kilometers of strike to test for high-grade basement-hosted uranium," emphasizing the company's significant exploration potential in a region known for some of the world's richest uranium deposits.

Clark further commented on Aero Energy's recent results, underscoring the importance of drill hole M24-017, which intersected 8.4 meters of uranium mineralization, grading 0.3% U3O8, with assays reaching as high as 13.8% U3O8. He stated, "While not a discovery hole, per se, this hole underscores the company's thesis that these two projects are prospective for the same type of uranium mineralization as Arrow and Triple R." This observation reinforces Aero Energy's exploration model, which targets basement-hosted uranium deposits similar to those found at other significant Athabasca Basin discoveries. [OWNERSHIP_CHART-11173]

Additionally, Clark expressed optimism regarding Aero Energy's current valuation and future prospects, recommending it as a strong buy at current levels. He highlighted his continued confidence in the company by stating, "I remain overweight the stock," suggesting that Aero Energy presents a compelling opportunity for speculative investors in the uranium exploration space.

The recently announced CA$2.5 million private placement was also acknowledged by Clark as a necessary step to fund further exploration activities. While he expressed some caution about potential dilution, he affirmed his overall support for the financing, noting that "its projects are very much worthy of follow-up."

Ownership and Share Structure

According to Refinitiv, management and insiders own 3.11% of Aero Energy. Of those, CEO Galen McNamara has the most at 2.97%. Institutions owns 4.79% with MMCAP Asset Management holding 3.89%. The rest is retail.

Aero has 92.3 million free float shares and a market cap of CA$4.5 million. The 52 week range is CA$0.040–$0.26.

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Important Disclosures:

1) James Guttman wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.

2) This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

( Companies Mentioned: AERO:TSXV;AAUGF:OTC;UU3:FRA, )

Source: Streetwise Reports 10/22/2024

Canter Resources Corp. (CRC:CSE; CNRCF:OTC; 601:FRA) has completed its acquisition of the Railroad Valley lithium-boron claims (RV project). The RV project claim block shares a common border with land controlled by 3 Proton Lithium (3PL), a private critical mineral explorer in Railroad Valley. Canter intends to complete follow-up sampling at the project in the fourth quarter of 2024, 164 kilometers from their exploration base in Tonopah, Nevada.

In the company news release, Joness Lang, CEO of Canter Resources, commented on the acquisition, stating, "We are excited to have expanded our lithium-boron exploration footprint in Nevada with this strategic acquisition in a highly prospective, yet underexplored area. While our primary focus remains on advancing our flagship Columbus project, we see value in adding low-cost, high-potential projects that strengthen our portfolio and align with our long-term growth strategy."

Lithium-Boron Market Trends and Opportunities

Visual Capitalist reported on September 29 that cobalt, a critical mineral used in battery production, had "gained significant attention in recent years due to its wide range of commercial, industrial, and military applications." The growing demand for cobalt in the electric vehicle (EV) sector was highlighted, with "the EV sector accounting for 40% of the global cobalt market," reinforcing its importance in the global transition to electrification. Additionally, 87% of China's cobalt consumption was "dedicated to the lithium-ion battery industry."

On October 1, Ahead of the Herd emphasized a favorable environment for risk assets, noting, "The combination of interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, resilient economic growth, and the un-inversion of the yield curve" as contributing factors. The S&P/TSX Global Mining Index gained 14% since September 6, marking its biggest jump of the year, with central banks cutting interest rates and the U.S. signaling more battery metal funding. Ahead of the Herd also stated that "majors, mid-tiers, and juniors all looked ripe for a rebound" in this risk-tolerant environment.

On October 8, Forbes reported that "a 50% rise in the price of a downtrodden lithium producer has boosted investor hopes that a revival in the battery metal is possible" after two difficult years of oversupply and low prices. Lithium was "once the hottest metal in the commodity sector" and had begun showing "signs of recovery as investor interest picks up again." Despite the downturn, the long-term outlook for lithium remained strong, with Forbes emphasizing its essential role "for the future of electric vehicles and battery technology."

According to Barry Dawes of Martin Place Securities that same day, "the lithium market is showing strong signs of upturn," with the possibility of "lithium shortages post-2027," highlighting the sector's future growth potential.

Canter's Catalysts Driving Growth

As outlined in their investor presentation, Canter Resources' Railroad Valley acquisition aligns with the company's strategy of expanding its critical minerals portfolio at a low cost while leveraging geological similarities to proven lithium-producing regions. The Railroad Valley project holds promise due to its favorable geological features, such as volcanic calderas and closed-basin characteristics, which are known to enhance lithium and boron concentration.

According to the company's investor presentation, this acquisition bolsters Canter's portfolio as it continues to focus on the Columbus project. The upcoming follow-up sampling and the planned Q4 2024 exploration at the Railroad Valley site further demonstrate the company's commitment to expanding its exploration activities. Canter's continued exploration efforts are expected to provide the data necessary to identify lithium-boron deposits across its portfolio, enhancing long-term growth potential.

Analysts On Canter

*According to Technical Analyst Clive Maund, who issued an opinion on October 16, Canter Resources Corp. was viewed as an "Immediate Strong Buy." Maund pointed out that the company's stock was priced at "some 8% of its price at its late 2023 peak," making it a highly favorable entry point. He emphasized that despite the severe bear market in lithium, Canter had made "considerable progress" on its projects, which positioned the company to benefit as lithium prices stabilized. Maund highlighted that Canter's Columbus Basin Project, located in a region with favorable geology, "looks set to provide a 'kicker' for the stock," especially following positive Phase II drilling results.

On October 15, Jeff Clark from The Gold Advisor also shared a positive assessment of Canter Resources. Clark noted that the company had reported "significant findings from its Phase II Geoprobe drilling program" at the Columbus Project, including the highest boron concentration to date and consistent lithium values. He highlighted Canter's potential to make a major discovery at Columbus, particularly due to the structural similarities between this project and other successful lithium-boron operations in the region. Clark added that Canter's "low-cost shallow drilling" had laid the foundation for a deeper and more extensive exploration phase. He affirmed that Canter's market cap of CA$3.85M represented an "incredible bargain" considering the company's potential.

In What is Chen Buying? What is Chen Selling?, published on October 16, analyst Chen Lin provided a positive outlook on Canter Resources' drilling results. He highlighted that Phase II drilling at the Columbus Lithium-Boron Project returned "the highest dissolved boron concentration to date," which further underscored the project's potential. Lin emphasized the promising geochemical similarities between Canter's Columbus Basin and other major lithium-boron-producing regions, stating that these results "bolster the company’s hypothesis" and position Canter as a key player in the critical minerals market. [OWNERSHIP_CHART-10988]

Ownership and Share Structure

According to the company, managers and insiders own about 9.6% of Canter Resources, and strategic investors (including the founding group and Michael Gentile & Advisors) own about 12%.

The investors with the largest stake are all insiders. They are CEO and Director Joness Lang with 3.38%, Director and Strategic Adviser Warwick Smith with 2.14%, Director and Technical Adviser Kenneth Cunningham with 1.95%, Chief Financial Officer Alnesh Mohan with 0.97%, and Director and Technical Adviser Eric Saderholm with 0.58%, and Gentile, who owns about 4% personally.

Four institutions or funds, including Euro Pacific Asset Management, collectively hold 3%. Retail investors own the remaining.

The Canadian explorer has 51.29 million outstanding shares, 46.41 million free float traded shares with a CA$4.11 million market cap.

Over the past 52 weeks, Canter has traded between CA$0.07 and CA$0.99 per share.

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Important Disclosures:

1. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Canter Resources Corp.
2. James Guttman wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.
3. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

* Disclosure for the quote from the Clive Maund article published on October 16, 2024

1. For the quoted article (published on October 16, 2024), the Company has paid Street Smart, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports, US$2,500.
2. Author Certification and Compensation: [Clive Maund of clivemaund.com] is being compensated as an independent contractor by Street Smart, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports, for writing the article quoted. Maund received his UK Technical Analysts’ Diploma in 1989. The recommendations and opinions expressed in the article accurately reflect the personal, independent, and objective views of the author regarding any and all of the designated securities discussed. No part of the compensation received by the author was, is, or will be directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendations or views expressed

Clivemaund.com Disclosures

The quoted article represents the opinion and analysis of Mr. Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stock market analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks cannot be only be construed as a recommendation or solicitation to buy and sell securities.

( Companies Mentioned: CRC:CSE; CNRCF:OTC; 601:FRA, )

Source: Streetwise Reports 10/21/2024

Aftermath Silver Ltd.'s (AAG:TSX.V; AAGFF:OTCQX; FLM1:FRA) largest shareholder, Eric Sprott, through his corporation 2176423 Ontario Ltd., will increase his equity position in the Canadian silver explorer by participating in an exclusive non-brokered private placement, according to a news release. Sprott will subscribe for the entire amount, up to 22,222,222 units, to be sold at CA$0.45 apiece for total gross proceeds of up to CA$10 million (CA$10M).

*"His backing provides strong validation for the company's strategy and enhances its credibility among both institutional and retail investors," wrote John Newell of Newell & Associates in a Sept. 9 note. "Sprott's involvement is a significant endorsement, indicating confidence in the company's ability to deliver value."

Prior to this financing, Sprott owned 21.22% of Aftermath, according to Reuters. With this transaction, he will become a "control person" of the silver junior, defined by the TSX Venture Exchange as someone holding enough securities of a corporation to materially affect control of it. Consequently, Aftermath's shareholders will vote on whether to approve Sprott as a control person, noted the news release.

Each unit in the Sprott financing will consist of one common share in the capital of Aftermath and one-half of a transferable purchase warrant. With each warrant, the shareholder may acquire one additional Aftermath common share at CA$0.70 apiece, for a period of 36 months from the date the warrant was issued.

In other news, Aftermath generated CA$1,795,453 in cash from 6,535,487 of its outstanding common share purchase warrants being exercised since June 1, 2024, it announced in a separate release.

The company plans to use the net proceeds of both the Sprott financing and the exercised warrants on exploration work to include geological, metallurgical, and engineering studies and a drill program at the Berenguela project and for general working capital purposes. Berenguela is a silver-copper-manganese project in southern Peru, into which Aftermath has the option to earn 100% over six years, per an agreement with the owner SSR Mining Inc. (SSRM:NASDAQ). The agreement went into effect about four years ago, on Sept. 30, 2020.

High Silver Recoveries

Aftermath also just announced on Oct. 16 that recent metallurgical studies on two composite samples of mineralization from the Berenguela project yielded high silver recoveries: 96% from one, 89% from the other.

Testing also showed that manganese and the other metals did not interfere with the standard leach process, according to the release. Further, the requirement for cyanide in the process was demonstrated to be less than 1 kilogram per silver ounce, indicating it is not a significant cost or technical problem.

Kappes, Cassiday & Associates in Nevada will complete the in-progress metallurgical work and flow sheet details using the other 14 composite samples from Berenguela that Aftermath provided.

"The next stage of our metallurgical test work is advancing and includes preliminary process and sizing studies for plant design purposes," Aftermath Executive Chairman Michael Williams said in the release.

Strong Projects, People, and Plan

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Aftermath Silver is an exploration company working to create shareholder value through the discovery, acquisition, and development of quality silver projects in favorable mining jurisdictions. It currently has three assets in Latin America with growth and development potential.

"These projects are not only located in mineral-rich regions but also have significant potential to rapidly define resources and deliver strong economic returns," Newell wrote.

Berenguela, 6 kilometers (6 km) northeast of the town of Santa Lucia and spanning 6,594 hectares (6,594 ha), is Aftermath's earn-in and flagship project. It has a Measured and Indicated resource estimate, published by Aftermath in March 2023, of 101,200,000 ounces (101.2 Moz) of 78 grams per ton silver, 2,450,000 tons (2.45 Mt) of 6.1% manganese, 589,000,000 pounds (589 Mlb) of 0.67% copper and 299.3 Mlb of 0.34% zinc.

"His backing provides strong validation for the company's strategy and enhances its credibility among both institutional and retail investors," wrote John Newell of Newell & Associates in a Sept. 9 note. "Sprott's involvement is a significant endorsement, indicating confidence in the company's ability to deliver value."

The company now is advancing Berenguela toward a preliminary economic assessment (PEA), demonstrating it can potentially produce silver doré, copper metal and as a co-product, commercial, battery-grade high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM). Recent metallurgical test work yielded 99.9% pure HPMSM, or MnSO4, a result that exceeds common industry specifications for batteries, the company said.

"We have demonstrated that we can potentially produce a battery-grade manganese sulfate product, and the recoveries of the silver and manganese to date are high," noted Williams in one of the latest news releases.

Aftermath owns 100% of Challacollo and Cachinal, two low-sulfidation epithermal silver-gold projects, each with an existing resource and derisked by past work. Challacollo spans about 19,000 ha in Chile's Region 1, or Grande Norte. Cachinal is a 4,867-ha property in northern Chile's Paleocene Precious Metal Belt, about 16 km north of Austral Gold Limited's (AGD:ASX) Guanaco gold-silver mine.

With its projects, Aftermath is pursuing a clear strategy, Newell pointed out, which is advancing them via exploration and development efforts toward a PEA and a feasibility study with the goal of building a robust silver mine.

"This focused approach provides investors with a clear roadmap to potential returns while mitigating the risks often associated with early-stage mining ventures," added Newell.

He also mentioned Aftermath's leadership team and noted the members' breadth of cumulative experience and knowledge in the mining industry, in exploration, project development, and capital raising, and their past successes.

Silver is "Wildly Undervalued"

Silver: Now is the time to invest in the silver market, experts say, because it's is undervalued and about to soar.

All of the data are pointing to the same conclusion, that silver is about to have "an upward revision," according to Investing Haven in an Oct. 16 article. The 50-year silver price chart is looking "insanely bullish" and the 20-year silver price chart is looking "very bullish." The silver adjusted for Consumer Price Index metric indicates that silver is "wildly undervalued," and the increasing imbalance in supply and demand of the metal supports this.

In addition, silver's hidden indicator, the silver miners to silver junior miners ratio, is breaking out after some years of consolidation, Investing Haven noted. This is indicating that risk is on and is confirming "strong bullish momentum is about to hit the silver market."

Silver juniors offer the greatest leverage to increasing commodity prices and the highest potential return, more so than silver senior/major and midtier miners, Ahead of the Herd's Richard Mills pointed out in a recent newsletter issue. Investing in a junior with an excellent project in a safe jurisdiction and led by a management team that can raise money "can reap huge rewards," he wrote. "Five, 10, even 20 times your money isn't uncommon."

The Silver Investor's Peter Krauth, in a recent presentation, discussed the ongoing silver supply deficit, Money Metals reported. By the end of this year, Krauth said, the undersupply will reach 759 Moz, an amount equivalent to about three-fourths of one year's supply. Silver demand for use in photovoltaic panels alone in 2024 will be about 232 Moz, nearly three times the 80 Moz needed in 2020, according to The Silver Institute. Growth of the artificial intelligence industry will boost demand for silver for use in energy storage, biotech, nanotechnology, transportation, and more.

Delegates from around the world who attended the London Bullion Market Association's annual meeting earlier this month predicted that by late October 2025, silver will have climbed 40% higher and reached US$45 per ounce (US$45/oz), reported Saxo's Head of Commodity Strategy Ole Hansen.

Based on the technical and historical indicators, Krauth thinks the silver price could actually reach triple-triple digits or US$300/oz, he said in an Oct. 8 video. "I don't believe it will stay there, but I do think that it could be in our future."

High-purity manganese: This commodity consists of highly refined, finished products, including high-purity manganese sulfate monohydrate (HPMSM), a focus of Aftermath at Berenguela, and high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM), according to a Euro Manganese article.

These raw materials are essential to most lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and other energy storage applications. They increasingly are being used as a primary ingredient in the batteries, largely because the result is a product with better energy density. As such, high-purity manganese is now being added to lithium-iron-phosphate battery chemistry, in amounts as high as 60%, and being added to nickel-cobalt lithium ion batteries. Thus, demand for high-purity manganese is on the rise.

"Most emerging cathodes have a much higher manganese content than the average cathode today, which is good news for manganese miners," Ben Campbell, manager of battery research at E Source, told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Manganese-containing battery chemistries are expected to dominate the battery market for the next two decades, noted Euro Manganese. Citing data from CPM Group, the article indicated that demand for high-purity manganese is forecasted to grow more than 1,000% between 2021 and 2031, to 1.1 Mt from 90,000 tons (90 Kt). To 2050, demand will continue to rise, another 309% to 4.5 Mt.

The future supply of HPMSM and HPEMM looks problematic. This is because most of the battery-grade manganese supply comes from China, 97% of it last year as an example. With the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act incentivizing their region's carmakers to reduce their reliance on China, they will need to establish new supply chains, domestic or in allied countries. However, existing high-purity manganese production and project expansions will not meet the growing demand. Additional sources of supply will need to come online.

"Industry participants are expecting a deficit in battery-grade manganese by the end of the decade," S&P Global wrote.

CPM Group also forecasts an undersupply, noted Euro Manganese, of about 475 Kt of manganese equivalent by 2031. Looking another six years out, the deficit will increase to an estimated 1 Mt if demand keeps growing as anticipated and no additional mining projects materialize.

The Catalysts

Near-term catalysts for Aftermath pertain to its progress in advancing the Berenguela project, according to the company's Investor Presentation. Metallurgical testing and process design for an operation are continuing. Additional results of both are anticipated in the near term.

Also, Aftermath has started preliminary engineering work for an upcoming preliminary economic assessment it expects to complete next year.

Buy-Rated Stock, Good Entry Point

*Aftermath Silver warrants serious consideration by investors wanting to take advantage of the burgeoning worldwide demand for silver and other critical metals, Newell wrote. The company is a compelling investment opportunity because of its focus on silver-rich regions, its high-quality projects, its clear growth strategy, savvy leadership, and solid shareholder support.

Further, Aftermath's stock is at a favorable entry point, having corrected from its former high in 2021 and subsequently stabilized and formed a solid base.

The silver explorer, therefore, is a Buy, Newell wrote. [OWNERSHIP_CHART-6840]

Ownership and Share Structure

According to Refinitiv, five strategic entities own 22.45%, or 52.62 million (52.62M) shares, of Aftermath Silver. Ahead of the announced private placement mentioned above, Eric Sprott's company, 2176423 Ontario Ltd., owns 21.22% or 49.75M shares.

Four Aftermath insiders are the other strategic investors. They are Executive Chairman and Director Michael Williams who owns 0.85% or 2M shares, President, CEO and Director Ralph Rushton who holds 0.2% or 0.46M shares, Director David Terry who has 0.13% or 0.31M shares and Director Keenan Hohol who owns 0.04% or 0.11M shares.

As for institutional ownership, seven entities together own 2.33% or 5.47M shares. The Top 3 are FPS Vermoegensverwaltung GmbH with 0.79% or 1.85M shares, AIPM Azur International Portfolio Management AG with 0.55% or 1.33M shares and Sprott Asset Management LP with 0.45% or 1.06M shares.

The remaining 75.22% of Aftermath is in retail.

The company has 255.07M outstanding shares and 181.77M free float traded shares.

Its market cap is CA$101.03M, and its 52-week range is CA$0.165−$0.56 per share.

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Important Disclosures:

1. Doresa Banning wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor.
2. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

* Disclosure for the quote from the John Newell article published on September 5, 2024

1. For the quoted article (published on September 5, 2024), the Company has paid Street Smart, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports, US$1,575.
2. Author Certification and Compensation: [John Newell of John Newell and Associates] was retained and compensated as an independent contractor by Street Smart for writing this article. Mr. Newell holds a Chartered Investment Management (CIM) designation (2015) and a U.S. Portfolio Manager designation (2015). The recommendations and opinions expressed in this content reflect the personal, independent, and objective views of the author regarding any and all of the companies discussed. No part of the compensation received by the author was, is, or will be directly or indirectly tied to the specific recommendations or views expressed.

John Newell Disclaimer

As always it is important to note that investing in precious metals like silver carries risks, and market conditions can change violently with shock and awe tactics, that we have seen over the past 20 years. Before making any investment decisions, it's advisable consult with a financial advisor if needed. Also the practice of conducting thorough research and to consider your investment goals and risk tolerance.

( Companies Mentioned: AAG:TSX.V;AAGFF:OTCQX;FLM1:FRA, )

Source: Streetwise Reports 10/22/2024

The growth of artificial intelligence, the need for more computer data centers, the eventual adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), and the need for more net-zero power means a renaissance in nuclear power is underway.

Just last month, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT:NASDAQ) announced a deal with Constellation Energy Group (CEG:NYSE) to restart and buy all of the power from one of the shut-down reactors at its infamous Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the Biden administration also announced a plan to restart the Palisades plant in Michigan.

"Biden has called for a tripling of U.S. nuclear power capacity to fuel energy demand that is accelerating in part due to expansion of power-hungry technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing," Valerie Volcovici wrote for Reuters on Oct. 8.

The administration also wants to develop small nuclear reactors (SMRs) for certain applications.

All of this is putting the metal needed to power nuclear energy, uranium, front and center. Prices for the element have started rising, with nuclear fuel trading at US$83.30 per pound last Thursday, a level not seen since 2007, according to a report by Daily Finland on Friday.

Uranium prices are expected to move higher by the end of this quarter, when Trading Economics' global macro models and analyses forecast uranium to trade at US$84.15 per pound, Nuclear Newswire reported on Oct. 3. In another year, the site estimates that the metal will trade at US$91.80 per pound.

The Catalyst: Surging Demand

The engine driving the prices is a "fundamental global shortage" of uranium driven by surging demand, said Andre Leibenberg, chief executive officer of Yellow Cake, which is focused on providing exposure to uranium's spot price.

The demand is stemming not only from a growing recognition of nuclear power's role in the future energy mix, but also from its critical importance in supporting the AI boom and the development of data centers, he wrote in a company update last week, according to Mining Weekly.

According to the report, Liebenberg noted that the primary mine supply of 140 million pounds was significantly trailing behind global demand of more than 180 million pounds a year.

In the European Union, a "lack of clarity" about Russian uranium imports is holding back investment in new enrichment plants, according to Reuters.

Russia supplied more than 25% of European and American enriched uranium before the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, the report said.

Since then, "the U.S. implemented a ban on imports of enriched uranium from Russia in August, with some exemptions, but in Europe, different countries have taken different approaches," muddying the waters.

Complicating matters is a hint in September that Russian President Vladimir Putin might embargo exports of the vital element to the west.

Citi, in a note to clients, said utilities have been stockpiling Russian uranium, but an embargo would make it "hard to replace" supplies of the metal in the next two years.

"Russia supplies close to 12% of U3O8 (known as yellow cake), 25% of UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) and 35% of EUP (enriched uranium product) to international markets," the bank said, according to Forbes. "While the largest share of these supplies goes to China and in supplying nuclear reactors that were built by Russia's Rosatom, we believe that at-risk supplies are exports to the U.S. or Western Europe."

The consequences of what could happen without more nuclear power can be seen in the U.K., where the number of reactors is shrinking. Four of five of them are expected to close in the next couple of years, which could "stretch the grid to the limit."

"As Britain's reactor fleet shrivels, the amount of nuclear capacity will fall from six gigawatts (GW) today to just 1.2 GW by 2028 or soon after," Jonathan Leake and Matt Oliver wrote for The Telegraph last week. "Along with rising demand from power-hungry data centers and technologies of the future, it will make it even harder to keep the lights on when wind and solar generation is low."

Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)

SMRs are another possible solution for some medium-sized energy needs. They have been operational for dozens of years in submarines and other long-distance ocean-going craft.

"They can be manufactured in factories and then rapidly erected on-site," Dominic Frisby wrote for his newsletter, The Flying Frisby, on Oct. 13. They are scalable, and that flexibility "aids manufacture, transportation, and installation while reducing construction time and costs."

A 440-megawatt (MW) SMR would produce about 3.5 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year, enough for 1.2 million homes, Frisby noted.

SMRs produce electricity that can easily be adjusted to meet the constant, everyday needs of the grid (baseload), and they can also ramp up or down to follow changes in demand throughout the day, the author wrote. They spin in sync with the grid, so they help keep everything stable.

"When they're running, they act like a steady hand, providing momentum that makes it easier to manage sudden changes in electricity supply or demand," he wrote.

'Bucket Loads of Power' Needed

All of this equates for a bright future for the metal, he said.

"Guess what? AI requires bucket loads of power," Frisby wrote. "That's why Microsoft recently agreed to pay Constellation Energy, the new owner of America's infamous nuclear power station, Three Mile Island, a sizeable premium for its energy. There is cheaper wind and solar power to be had in Pennsylvania, but it isn't as reliable as nuclear 24 hours a day. It's not just AI. The widespread political desire to rid ourselves of fossil fuels means the world needs electricity, and fast."

Chris Temple, publisher of The National Investor, recently noted that with the Three Mile Island deal, "uranium/nuclear power is BACK!"

"I've watched as the news has continued to point to uranium being in the early innings of this new bull market," Temple wrote. "Yet the markets have been yawning . . . until now."

What follows are several uranium explorers and producers that could benefit from this upswing for investors looking to take advantage.

Baselode Energy Corp.

Baselode Energy Corp. (FIND:TSX.V; BSENF:OTCQB) controls 100% of about 273,000 hectares for exploration in the Athabasca Basin area in northern Saskatchewan, Canada.[OWNERSHIP_CHART-10321]

The company said it discovered the ACKIO near-surface, high-grade uranium deposit in September 2021. ACKIO measures greater than 375 meters along strike, greater than 150 meters wide, and is comprised of at least 11 separate zones. Mineralization starts as shallow as 28 meters beneath the surface and continues down to about 300 meters depth beneath the surface, with the bulk of mineralization occurring in the upper 120 meters, Baselode said. ACKIO remains open to the west and south and along the Athabasca sandstone unconformity to the east and south.

Earlier this month, the company reported positive uranium assay results from three drill holes of its 2024 drill program at ACKIO.

Notably, drill hole AK24-119 intersected 0.28% U3O8 over 21.0 meters, including a high-grade section of 1.55% U3O8 over 1.5 meters at a depth of 141 meters. While drill hole AK24-118 returned 0.59% U3O8 over 8.5 meters, including 1.25% U3O8 over 1.5 meters at a depth of 153 meters.

"These results strengthen our confidence in ACKIO," Chief Executive Officer James Sykes said in a release. "It's remarkable that, just over three years after discovering ACKIO, we're still achieving better-than-expected grades and widths."

Baselode expects further assay results from the remaining 40 drill holes to be released after quality review and approval.

David Talbot, Managing Director at Red Cloud Securities, noted in a September 17 report that drilling at ACKIO "continued to expand the mineralized footprint at Pods 1, 6, and 7," highlighting that "thirteen holes reported composite intervals of anomalous radioactivity between 11m and 42m in thickness."

In his report, Talbot rated the stock as a Buy and further projected the potential for "8-10-12 million pounds of U3O8 at a grade of ~0.3% U3O8," which aligns with typical grades found in the southeastern part of the Athabasca Basin.

According to Refinitiv, Baselode has institutions holding 23.26% with Alps Advisors holding the bulk of it with 17.94%, followed by Vident Investment Advisory LLC at 2.97%. Management and Insiders hold 1.59%. The rest is retail.

The company has a market cap of CA$20.05 million, with 131.51 free float shares. It trades in the 52-week range between CA$0.10 and CA$0.61.

Uranium Energy Corp.

According to its website, Uranium Energy Corp. (UEC:NYSE AMERICAN) is America's "largest and fastest growing supplier of uranium."[OWNERSHIP_CHART-402]

The company said it is advancing the next generation of low-cost, environmentally friendly in-situ recovery (ISR) mining uranium projects in the United States and high-grade conventional projects in Canada. It has two production-ready ISR hub and spoke platforms in South Texas and Wyoming.

Additionally, Uranium Energy Corp. said it has diversified uranium holdings with one of the largest physical uranium portfolios of U.S. warehoused U3O8; a major equity stake in Uranium Royalty Corp., the only royalty company in the sector; and a Western Hemisphere pipeline of resource stage uranium projects.

Most recently, the company announced it was expanding its U.S. uranium production capacity by acquiring Rio Tinto Plc.'s Sweetwater Plant and a portfolio of Wyoming uranium assets.

On September 25, Temple of The National Investor noted that UEC was "upgraded back to Buy" following recent uranium market news. He pointed to UEC's acquisition of the Wyoming uranium assets as a catalyst, emphasizing that uranium is "in the early innings of this new bull market."

Jeff Clark of The Gold Advisor, in his September 26 update, called the acquisition a "significant move," noting that it consolidated a large portfolio of uranium assets under UEC's control, positioning the company for rapid growth. He also highlighted the company's strategic advantage with "53,000 additional acres for exploration," reinforcing UEC's potential to ramp up production.

According to Reuters, Uranium Energy has a market cap of US$3.48 billion and 411.41 million shares outstanding. It trades in a 52-week range of US$4.06 and US$8.66.

About 2% of UE is help by management and insiders, Reuters noted. The largest portion, 77.58%, is held by institutional investors. The rest is in retail.

Terra Clean Energy Corp.

Formerly Tisdale Clean Energy Corp., Terra Clean Energy Corp. (TCEC:CSE; TCEFF:OTC; T1KC:FSE), a Canadian-based uranium exploration and development company, is currently developing the South Falcon East uranium project, which holds a 6.96-million-pound inferred uranium resource within the Fraser Lakes Zone B uranium/thorium deposit, located in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan.[OWNERSHIP_CHART-10935]

Representing a portion of Skyharbour Resources Ltd.'s existing South Falcon Project, Terra Clean Energy's project covers approximately 12,464 hectares and lies 18 kilometers outside the Athabasca Basin, approximately 50 kilometers east of the Key Lake Mine.

Recently, the company announced a comprehensive exploration program set for Winter 2025 at its South Falcon East Uranium Project. The work will focus on extending the mineralized footprint at the Fraser Lakes B Uranium Deposit and includes about 2,000 meters of infill and step-out drilling designed to verify existing mineralized zones and identify additional targets.

In a release, Chief Executive Officer Alex Klenman described the initiative as "a unique setup for a Canadian microcap, offering multiple paths to significant value creation." This US$1.5 million project will involve TerraLogic Exploration Inc., operating out of SkyHarbour's McGowan Lake Camp with helicopter support.

According to Reuters, management and insiders hold 4.62% of Terra Clean Energy. Of those, Alex Klenman holds the most, with 4.37%.

Strategic Investors hold 12.03%, with Planet Ventures Inc holding the most at 7.40%. The rest is retail.

Terra Clean Energy has a market cap of CA$2.98 million and a 52-week range of CA$0.05 to CA$0.22.

North Shore Uranium Ltd.

North Shore Uranium Ltd. (NSU:TSX) said it is working to become a major force in exploration for economic uranium deposits at the eastern margin of the Athabasca Basin.[OWNERSHIP_CHART-10945]

The company said it is running exploration programs at its Falcon and West Bear properties and evaluating opportunities to complement its portfolio of uranium properties.

Falcon consists of 15 mineral claims, the company said. Four of them comprise 12,791 hectares and are 100%-owned by the company. The remaining 11 claims totaling 2,908 hectares are subject to an option agreement with Skyharbour Resources Ltd. Under the terms of the option agreement, North Shore has the option to earn up to 100% interest in the 11 claims by completing certain payments.

Earlier this month, the company announced details of its target generation efforts at its Falcon uranium project at the eastern margin of Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin. The company said it has identified 36 uranium targets across three zones.

"We have a great pipeline of targets to choose from for our next drill program at Falcon," said President and Chief Executive Officer Brooke Clements. "Our Zone 2 has attracted the interest of uranium explorers in the past, and we believe there is potential to make a significant uranium discovery using new data and interpretation."

Earlier this month, North Shore announced it had received a Crown Land Work permit for the full 55,700-hectare Falcon project. Issued by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, it authorizes the company to conduct mineral exploration activities, including prospecting and ground geophysics, trail and drill site clearing, line cutting, the drilling of up to 75 exploration drill holes, and the storage of drill core. The permit expires in July 2027.

Insiders and founding investors own approximately 45% of the issued and outstanding shares. Clements himself owns 3.6% or 1.33M shares, Director Doris Meyer has 2.11% or 0.78M shares, and Director James Arthur holds 1.58% or 0.58M shares. According to North Shore, 14.92M shares (40.5%) held by six founding investors are subject to a voluntary pooling agreement that restricts the disposition of these shares before October 19, 2026.

Most of the rest is with retail, as the institutional holdings are minor.

North Shore has 36.84M outstanding shares and currently has a market cap of CA$1.47 million. It has traded in the past 52 weeks between CA$0.04 and CA$0.30 per share.

Skyharbour Resources Ltd.

Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (SYH:TSX.V; SYHBF:OTCQX; SC1P:FSE) has an extensive portfolio of uranium exploration projects in Canada's Athabasca Basin, with 29 projects, 10 of which are drill-ready, covering over 1.4 million acres of mineral claims. In addition to being a high-grade uranium exploration company, Skyharbour utilizes a prospect generator strategy by bringing in partner companies to advance its secondary assets.[OWNERSHIP_CHART-6026]

In an updated research note on July 24, Analyst Sid Rajeev of Fundamental Research Corp. wrote that Skyharbour "owns one of the largest portfolios among uranium juniors in the Athabasca Basin."

"Given the highly vulnerable uranium supply chain, we anticipate continued consolidation within the sector," wrote Rajeev, who reiterated the firm's Buy rating and adjusted its fair value estimate from CA$1.16 to CA$1.21 per share. "Additionally, the rapidly growing demand for energy from the AI industry is likely to accelerate the adoption of nuclear power, which should, in turn, spotlight uranium juniors in the coming months."

Skyharbour acquired from Denison Mines, a large strategic shareholder of the company, a 100% interest in the Moore Uranium Project, which is located 15 kilometers east of Denison's Wheeler River project and 39 kilometers south of Cameco's McArthur River uranium mine. Moore is an advanced-stage uranium exploration property with high-grade uranium mineralization at the Maverick Zone, including highlight drill results of 6.0% U3O8 over 5.9 meters, including 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5 meters at a vertical depth of 265 meters.

Adjacent to the Moore Uranium Project is Skyharbour's Russell Lake Uranium Project optioned from Rio Tinto, which hosts historical high-grade drill intercepts over a large property area with robust exploration upside potential. The 73,294-ha Russell Lake Uranium Property is strategically located in the central core of the Eastern Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan. Skyharbour has recently discovered high-grade uranium mineralization in a new zone at Russell and is carrying out an additional 7-8,000-meter drill campaign across both Russell and Moore.

Management, insiders, and close business associates own approximately 5% of Skyharbour.

According to Reuters, President and CEO Trimble owns 1.6%, and Director David Cates owns 0.70%.

Institutional, corporate, and strategic investors own approximately 55% of the company. Denison Mines owns 6.3%, Rio Tinto owns 2.0%, Extract Advisors LLC owns 9%, Alps Advisors Inc. owns 9.91%, Mirae Asset Global Investments (U.S.A) L.L.C. owns 6.29%, Sprott Asset Management L.P. owns 1.5%, and Incrementum AG owns 1.18%, Reuters reported.

There are 182.53 million shares outstanding with 178 million free float traded shares, while the company has a market cap of CA$89.44 million and trades in a 52-week range of CA$0.31 and CA$0.64.

ATHA Energy Corp.

Atha Energy Corp. (SASK:TSX.V; SASKF:OTCMKTS) is a Canadian mineral company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, and development of uranium assets with a portfolio including three 100%-owned post-discovery uranium projects (the Angilak Project located in Nunavut, and CMB Discoveries in Labrador hosting historical resource estimates of 43.3 million pounds and 14.5 million pounds U3O8 respectively, and the newly discovered basement-hosted GMZ high-grade uranium discovery located in the Athabasca Basin).[OWNERSHIP_CHART-11007]

In addition, the company said it holds the largest cumulative prospective exploration land package (more than 8.5 million acres) in two of the world's most prominent basins for uranium discoveries. ATHA also holds a 10% carried interest in key Athabasca Basin exploration projects operated by NexGen Energy Ltd. and IsoEnergy Ltd.

Technical Analyst Maund considers Atha Energy to be "THE top play in the uranium sector" and has an Immediate Strong Buy rating on it, he wrote in the previously mentioned Oct. 17 report.

The company's 3-, 13- and 26-month charts indicate its stock price had been in a bear market since trading began until September, when it had an upwave or preliminary breakout. This, along with other indicators, including positive accumulation-distribution convergence and high volume, suggest another upleg is expected soon, he said.

"Given the outlook for the uranium price and what Atha Energy has going for it, its stock is astoundingly cheap after its persistent downtrend this year," Maund wrote.

According to Refinitiv, 10 management and insiders own 16.44% of Atha Energy. The Top 5 are Timothy Young with 6.32%, Matthew Mason with 5.8%, Atha Chairman Michael Castanho with 1.16%, and Atha Director Sean Kallir with 0.9%.

Seven institutional investors together hold 9.38%. The Top 3 are Alps Advisors Inc. with 6.26%, Sprott Asset Management LP with 1.3%, and Vident Investment Advisory LLC with 0.8%.

The remaining 74.18% of Atha is in retail.

According to the company, it has 277.9M shares outstanding, 14M options, 4M restricted stock units/performance rights, and 10.2M warrants.

Reuters reports Atha's market cap is CA$208.42 million, and its 52-week range is CA$0.46−$1.42 per share.

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Important Disclosures:

1. Skyharbour Resources Ltd. and Terra Clean Energy Corp. are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports and pay SWR a monthly sponsorship fee between US$4,000 and US$5,000. In addition, Terra Clean Energy has a consulting relationship with Street Smart an affiliate of Streetwise Reports. Street Smart Clients pay a monthly consulting fee between US$8,000 and US$20,000.
2. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of North Shore Uranium Ltd., Uranium Energy Corp., and Terra Clean Energy.
3. Steve Sobek wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.
4. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

( Companies Mentioned: SASK:TSX.V; SASKF:OTCMKTS, FIND:TSX.V; BSENF:OTCQB, NSU:TSX, SYH:TSX.V; SYHBF:OTCQX; SC1P:FSE, TCEC:CSE; TCEFF:OTC; T1KC:FSE, UEC:NYSE AMERICAN, )

Source: Streetwise Reports 10/24/2024

Skyharbour Resources Ltd. (SYH:TSX.V; SYHBF:OTCQX; SC1P:FSE) announced that it has completed its earn-in requirements for a 51% interest at its co-flagship Russell Lake Uranium Project in the central core of Canada's Eastern Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan.

The company and Rio Tinto have formed a joint venture (JV) to further explore the property, with Skyharbour holding 51% ownership interest and Rio Tinto holding 49%.

This summer, Skyharbour announced that in the first phase of drilling it had found what was historically the best uranium intercept mineralization at the project when hole RSL24-02 at the recently identified Fork Target returned a 2.5-meter-wide intercept of 0.721% U3O8 at a relatively shallow depth of 338.1 meters, including 2.99% U3O8 over 0.5 meters at 339.6 meters.

The second phase of drilling included three holes totaling 1,649 meters, with emphasis "at the MZE (M-Zone Extension) target, approximately 10 km northeast of the Fork target, identified prospective faulted graphitic gneiss accompanied by anomalous sandstone and basement geochemistry," Skyharbour said.

"The discovery of multi-percent, high-grade, sandstone-hosted uranium mineralization at a new target is a major breakthrough in the discovery process at Russell — something that hasn't been seen before at the project with the potential to quickly grow with more drilling," President and Chief Executive Officer Jordan Trimble said at the time.

ANT Survey, Upcoming Drilling Program

The company also announced on Thursday that it had completed an Ambient Noise Tomography (ANT) survey in preparation for further drilling at the Russell Lake Project, set to commence in the fall. The survey used Fleet Space Technologies' Exosphere technology to acquire 3D passive seismic velocity data over the highly prospective Grayling and Fork target areas, where previous drilling has intersected high-grade uranium mineralization.

"The ANT technology has been successfully employed in mapping significant sandstone and basement structures and associated alteration zones related to hydrothermal fluids pathways in the Athabasca Basin," the company said.

Results from the survey will be used to further refine drill targets for the upcoming drilling program. Skyharbour is fully funded and permitted for the follow-up fall drill campaign consisting of approximately 7,000 metres of drilling at its main Russell and Moore Projects, with 2,500 meters of drilling at Moore and 4,500 meters of drilling at Russell.

A Great Neighborhood

Russell Lake is a large, advanced-stage uranium exploration property totaling 73,294 hectares strategically located between Cameco's Key Lake and McArthur River projects and Denison's Wheeler River Project to the west, and Skyharbour's Moore project to the east.

"Skyharbour's acquisition of a majority interest in Russell Lake creates a large, nearly contiguous block of highly prospective uranium claims totaling 108,999 hectares between the Russell Lake and the Moore uranium projects," the company said.

Most of the historical exploration at Russell Lake was conducted before 2010, prior to the discovery of several major deposits in/around the Athabasca Basin, Skyharbour said.

Notable exploration targets on the property include the Grayling Zone, the M-Zone Extension target, the Little Man Lake target, the Christie Lake target, the Fox Lake Trail target and the newly identified Fork Zone target.

"More than 35 kilometers of largely untested prospective conductors in areas of low magnetic intensity also exist on the property," the company noted.

In an updated research note in July, Analyst Sid Rajeev of Fundamental Research Corp. wrote that Skyharbour "owns one of the largest portfolios among uranium juniors in the Athabasca Basin."

"Given the highly vulnerable uranium supply chain, we anticipate continued consolidation within the sector," wrote Rajeev, who rated the stock a Buy with a fair value estimate of CA$1.21 per share. "Additionally, the rapidly growing demand for energy from the AI (artificial intelligence) industry is likely to accelerate the adoption of nuclear power, which should, in turn, spotlight uranium juniors in the coming months."

The Catalyst: Uranium is 'BACK!'

The growth of AI, new data centers, electric vehicle (EV) adoption, and the need for more net-zero power means more nuclear energy and the uranium needed to fuel it.

Uranium prices are expected to move higher by the end of this quarter, when Trading Economics' global macro models and analyses forecast uranium to trade at US$84.15 per pound, Nuclear Newswire reported on Oct. 3. In another year, the site estimates that the metal will trade at US$91.80 per pound.

Just last month, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT:NASDAQ) announced a deal with Constellation Energy Group (CEG:NYSE) to restart and buy all of the power from one of the shut-down reactors at its infamous Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the Biden administration also announced a plan to restart the Palisades plant in Michigan.

Chris Temple, publisher of The National Investor, recently noted that with the Three Mile Island deal, "uranium/nuclear power is BACK!"[OWNERSHIP_CHART-6026]

"I've watched as the news has continued to point to uranium being in the early innings of this new bull market," Temple wrote. "Yet the markets have been yawning . . . until now."

Ownership and Share Structure

Management, insiders, and close business associates own approximately 5% of Skyharbour.

According to Reuters, President and CEO Trimble owns 1.6%, and Director David Cates owns 0.70%.

Institutional, corporate, and strategic investors own approximately 55% of the company. Denison Mines owns 6.3%, Rio Tinto owns 2.0%, Extract Advisors LLC owns 9%, Alps Advisors Inc. owns 9.91%, Mirae Asset Global Investments (U.S.A) L.L.C. owns 6.29%, Sprott Asset Management L.P. owns 1.5%, and Incrementum AG owns 1.18%, Reuters reported.

There are 182.53 million shares outstanding with 178 million free float traded shares, while the company has a market cap of CA$88.53 million and trades in a 52-week range of CA$0.31 and CA$0.64.

Sign up for our FREE newsletter at: www.streetwisereports.com/get-news

Important Disclosures:

1. Skyharbour Resources Ltd. is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports and pays SWR a monthly sponsorship fee between US$4,000 and US$5,000.
2. Steve Sobek wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.
3. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

( Companies Mentioned: SYH:TSX.V; SYHBF:OTCQX; SC1P:FSE, )

"Dispersion" (detail). Acrylic ink and paint on canvas. (Courtesy of Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle); Credit:

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's "The Evanesced" was inspired by the #SayHerName movement against police violence, as well as Los Angeles's Grim Sleeper serial killer. Hinkle depicts black women in the nude, twisting and writhing, as though they're sinking back into the canvas. Or are they reemerging from it?

Deputy Director of the California African American Museum Naima Keith says Hinkle's exhibit looks at the "historical present," the way in which history still affects us today, harkening back to slavery and Jim Crow. Keith says the main issue Hinkle is addressing is the invisibility of black women, especially those who are abused or in danger. 

Hinkle was particularly inspired by the South LA serial killer "The Grim Sleeper." He is accused of murdering over one hundred women from the 1980's onward, until being captured in 2007. Many of his victims were women of color according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

"He had been killing prostitutes and runaways and drug addicted women," says Keith, noting that some saw these deaths as occupational hazards.

Most of Hinkle's subjects in the paintings and sketches in "The Evanesced" are clearly nude. This was a deliberate choice to showcase femininity, according to Keith. She says:

She’s talking about being women... There’s love, there’s joy, there’s pain. All things we experience as all women... But [nudity], I think, allows us to focus on the female form, not necessarily get caught up on what they are wearing or what they’re doing.

In the artwork, viewers can see that every face, body, and hair style is completely unique to each sketch or painting. Keith says this helps the viewer appreciate the diversity amongst women of color. She says:

You have women that are smiling. You have women that are looking at you- you know- lovingly, shyly. Not every one, not every image in the show is about negativity, disappearance, or sadness. There is a bit of celebration. There’s interaction between multiple women. That’s what makes the body of work so interesting: it’s not just seeing women of color through one lens. There’s the possibility of seeing them through, like I said, disappearance, and also the freedom to have a wide range of emotions.

There is one painting that continues to draw Naima Keith back to it. It is called "Uproot 2017" and it features a feminine figure with three exposed breasts. She says this painting speaks to her about motherhood and the connection women have with their changing bodies. Keith says:

I asked Kenyatta why she depicts women with multiple [extra] breasts and we had a conversation about being moms. Kenyatta and I are both mothers of young children... As moms, we just kinda talked about how things aren't what they used to be, in terms of where they used to be. Like I said, becoming mothers, you have this different relationship with your body in relation to someone else.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle's "The Evanesced" runs at the California African American Museum through June 25, 2017.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Drew Arriola Sands, left, sings in the South Gate band Trap Girl at La Conxa, 2017.; Credit: Amina Cruz

Growing up, Drew Arriola-Sands' music was "too weird for the weird kids." Her first band couldn't even get a backyard gig, but since Sands transitioned in 2013, her current band, Trap Girl, have been at the center of an exploding queer hardcore scene in Los Angeles. 

NOTE: Trans Pride L.A. is taking place this weekend, Saturday June 17, at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. To hear a preview of the event with organizer Gina Bigham, listen to the extra audio on this post.

Sands is 28 now, but she's always been drawn to glamorous women with big hair. Her mirror is adorned with pictures of Ronnie Spector, Dolly Parton, and Jayne Mansfield. Wig idols, she calls them. Sands has a large collection of wigs, and even makes her own, but it all started 20 years ago.

"When I was a little kid, my mom always had short black hair," Sands remembers. "And then one day, getting ready for school, she walked out of the bathroom with a long, thick, black braid with a ribbon on it, and it freaked me out, because I never saw her with long hair. So I was like, 'That’s weird! What is it?'" She was eight years old. For weeks to come, Sands would lock herself in the bathroom and stare at the extension braid in it's clear, Avon box until her mother threw it away without warning. The seed had been planted, though.

Her love of singing came at an early age too. As a child, Sands would stand up on a chair while watching baseball with her father to sing the national anthem. Her mother would scold her for being loud and tell her that she could sing at a baseball game when she was older. At 11, her father put her in little league.

We look at a picture of young Drew in a baseball jersey. Sands was a chubby little kid, biting down a smile, and burying her hand in her mitt. "I was a 'catcher' even then," laughs Sands.

"I was told I was gay before I even knew I was gay, because people saw I was feminine, did things a little different, spoke a little different, a little more sensitive," says Sands. Bullying was a consistent part of her childhood, with no one incident standing out because there was always "80 more horrible ones," she says. But she found ways to cope through her hobbies.

Her father said if she wasn't going to play a sport, she had to play an instrument. The first instrument she started with in earnest was the guitar, before picking up bass and more. "Nirvana was still the biggest band in the world. Everyone at my junior high who played guitar learned how to play 'Rape Me' or 'Smells like Teen Spirit' as their first song" says Sands. The first song sands learned on guitar was Nirvana's "About a Girl," and the first album she bought was Hole's "Live Through This."

"One of my first jobs, actually, was making burnt cd’s for a guy who sold them at the alley, and he made me copy Trina cd’s, ten at a time. She had songs on there like 'Nasty Bitch,' things like that, and I just loved it! But it was like a guilty pleasure, 'cause I was still a rock kid."  - Drew Arriola-Sands

By her early twenties, she started her first real band, The Glitter Path; Sands describes it as something like Daniel Johnston, the schizophrenic outsider musician, mixed with Patsy Cline - extremely emotional, "lying across the road, ready to die type of music." It didn't fit in in the "very straight, very cis, surf rock-indie" backyard scene, says Sands. She can't remember the band playing more than two or three shows, anywhere, but she says she doesn't hold any grudges.

The Glitter Path's "Wear a Wig"

We look at another photo of Sands from her Glitter Path days. She points out the increasing number of women’s accessories she was wearing at the time. She was starting to feel a change coming.

"I was in a relationship in 2013 with an artist, but I was male presenting, and I had these feelings of identity and gender, and I expressed them to him, and he accepted them," Sands says,  "but didn’t know how to deal with me and I didn’t know how to deal with myself." Sands boyfriend broke up with her, and she reevaluated her emotional state. "My mental health was not going to get better if I did not come out [as a trans person]," she decided.

She had a much easier time dating after transitioning, and one chance hook-up set Sands down a new musical road.

"So this guy I was hooking up with at the time would play the Damned in the room while we were hooking up. I had a guitar in the room, and he didn’t know I played music and said, 'Do you play guitar?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Well, you should start a band, like the Damned, and play guitar. It’d be good, looking the way you do, and wear ball gowns.'” - Drew Arriola-Sands

Sands started Trap Girl, not as guitarist, but as lead singer, in 2014.

The early shows were backyard gigs in South Central. Songs like “Dead Men Don’t Rape” went over well, but Sands wasn’t out as a trans performer yet. Maybe people could read between the lines though, with a name like Trap Girl. Sands offers a few definitions for Trap Girls/Trap Queens (though she has never settled on just one).

• A woman who helps out a "trap lord," or drug dealer
• A very convincing transvestite
• A girl trapped in a man's body

Throughout 2015, Trap Girl built their following Downtown and on the Eastside, with Sands finally out as a trans artist.

Trap Girl live at Xicana PUNK Night

"I started this band alone," explains Sands. "I didn’t know any queer people, I didn’t know any trans people, I didn’t know who was gonna help this band. Who was gonna give us a shot? So, I was ready to defend this band, even though there was no one defend it from."

Rather, Trap Girl were embraced and found sisterhood in bands like Sister Mantos and Yaawn. In 2016, Sands took it a step further and organized the first annual Transgress Fest (at the Santa Ana LGBT Center), for trans performers. "We had people as young as twelve to people as old as sixty in the audience," she says. "We had a huge turnout. I never expected that."

Transgress Fest is coming back in November. In the meantime, Trap Girl are getting ready to release their second EP, "The Black Market." The title track grapples with the question of whether or not a trans person needs surgery.

"Being a woman doesn’t mean you have to look like a woman. I didn’t know any trans people at all before I transitioned, so automatically, my idea was to think that I needed to present as feminine to be accepted as a trans person, but little did I know, that that’s the last thing you need to be a trans person. Not all people can pass, and that’s ok." - Drew Arriola-Sands

Sands says the takeaway from "The Black Market" is not to risk your life with black market cosmetic procedures. "These girls are killing themselves to achieve their looks," says Sands. "They’re getting it offline [sic], off Craigslist. You know, they go to someone’s basement and get their ass injected with cement, and then they go home and get a blood clot in their lungs, and they die." "The Black Market" EP is due for release this summer.

Trap Girl is singer Drew Arriola-Sands, bassist Ibette Ortiz, drummer Jorge Reveles, and guitarist Estevan Moreno.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: John Rabe/KPCC

Off-Ramp fan, KPCC member (!), and Tom Petty and Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench III joined John in his old Mercedes with his large, but portable Casio.

Tench has lived in the hills of Tarzana for decades, in a perfectly good house, but in the 100-degree heat, John outfitted his car with condenser mikes to record a farewell ode to Off-Ramp, Tench's "Like the Sun."

The full band version of Benmont Tench III's "Like the Sun"

"Like the Sun" helped Tench get back in the songwriting groove a decade ago after he burnt out on being professional songwriter in Nashville. He based the lyrics on tours of Los Angeles given to him by a friend, and takes the listener (with his Southern accent) from a restaurant called Michoacan to a hill top tent city. Tench also told John how he and his wife Alice explore Los Angeles.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Stones Throw DJ Peanut Butter Wolf spinning.; Credit: Photo by Maris Kaplan via Flickr Creative Commons

For the final Off-Ramp recommendation, we scoured the internet far and wide for options that really speak to Angeleno culture and the show's mission of spreading LA love far and wide. However, upon thoughtful reflection, we've decided the show has always been about getting out and trying fun, new things and learning something. Every engaged community member getting out in Southern California adds to the cultural wealth of the city and so this weekend, let's get out and play/shake it fast and loose.

LA has multiple cheap or free events this weekend to get you out into the city, meeting new people, and that will have you considering shaking your groove-thang on a sliding scale, from gingerly to furiously.

1. Dance DTLA

During summer, The Music Center celebrates multicultural dance with alternating lessons and performances, each Friday. Friday the 30th will feature a DJ set curated by local label Stones Throw's golden boy Peanut Butter Wolf. The night will include sets by Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Steve, Vex Ruffin, and Jimi Hey playing the 80's and 90's hits that inspired their music careers. The performances will include Funk, Soul, Disco, New Wave, and Rap reimaginings. The event is entirely free and begins at 9pm at 200 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles, 90012.

2. Grand performances: First peoples, New voices.

As part of their free summer concert series, Grand Performances has curated a line-up of fantastic Hip-Hop performers, emboldened with an indigenous perspective. The MCs are encouraging Hip-Hop fans to come experience "raw lyrics, urgent poetry, and iconic dance" by a selection of performers representing native Southern California groups, spreading their culture and passion. The event runs 8pm-10:30pm on Saturday at 350 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, 90071.

3. House Party LA + DoLA: The Biggest Dollar Party Ever!

Event group House Party LA has outdone themselves on this Saturday's event. Yes, there will be great performers: Tiger, Suga Shay, Gianna Lee, and DJ Damage. Yes, admission is $1, or $5 without a facebook RSVP. But here is the real draw: slices of pizza are just $1. Cheap fun, music, and cheap pizza? That is the selling point to end all selling points. Unless they were giving out free cars and puppies... which we can't rule out just yet, you had best to go and investigate for yourself. The event starts at 9pm and will run until 2am at the Regent, located at 448 S Main St, Los Angeles, 90013.

A fond farewell to all the Off-Ramp recommendation readers and takers. It's been a pleasure.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

L-R: Three Southern California retro fanatics, John Rabe, Chris Nichols, and Charles Phoenix; Credit: John Rabe/KPCC

Is it possible that the two titans of retro Southern California - Charles Phoenix and Charles Nichols - have never been on Off-Ramp at the same time? But maybe that brings up a larger question. Is it even possible for them to exist in the same place, at the same time, or would their meeting cause a cosmic singularity, an undarnable rending of the time-space continuum?

The answers are, stupidly, yes; and thankfully, yes.

Over the 11 years of Off-Ramp, "God Bless Americana" author Charles Phoenix and Los Angeles Magazine's Chris Nichols have played a large part in bringing interesting and endangered places to our listeners. From Pomona to Chatsworth to Bellflower to Anaheim, both men have made careers of highlighting and preserving things that in their day were seen as expendable, flavor-of-the-month, mass marketed creations. Like programmatic architecture (buildings that look like what they're selling or making, i.e. the Donut Hole in La Puente, the Idle Hour - a giant wine cask - in NoHo).

Yet, with hindsight, we've been able to see them as archetypal and important touchstones of our region.

For their final appearances on the show, they got in the Mercedes and shared their love of getting lost in Southern California.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Brad and George Takei, the new typical American married couple.; Credit: John Rabe/Grant Wood/Michael Uhlenkott

UPDATE: “Allegiance” will be performed Feb. 21-April 1, 2018, at the Aratani Theater at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center in downtown L.A.'s Little Tokyo.

ORIGINAL STORY: In an intimate interview, George Takei tells Off-Ramp host John Rabe about crafting the Japanese-American internment camp history into compelling Broadway musical theater. "Allegiance," with Takei, Lea Salonga and Telly Leung, played at the Longacre Theater.

George Takei and his husband Brad were putting their house in mothballs when I arrived for our interview in August. They'd already been spending a lot of time in New York because of George's recurring role on "The Howard Stern Show," but now, with the Broadway opening of "Allegiance" just a couple months away, they were preparing to move for as long as the musical brings in the crowds.

While Brad went off to deal with the mundane domestic tasks around the move, I sat with George in their living room to talk about turning one of America's most shameful episodes — the internment of some 120,000 loyal Japanese-Americans during World War II — into a musical that could make it on the Broadway stage.

George, you just sent an email to your fans with the subject line: "I've Waited 7 Years to Send You this Email. Seven years!" Inside, you wrote: "Few things are as difficult and complex as taking a show to ‪Broadway‬. It's both thrilling and terrifying." What was terrifying?

"The terrifying part is, you've poured your passion, your energy, your resources ...  you make all that investment in that project, and then you're hoping the seats are going to be filled.That 'what if' is terrifying. But in San Diego, we had a sold-out run and broke their 77-year record. But now we're going to Broadway, and that same fear is there. Will they come? What will the critics say? Because it's life or death."

It took a long time just to get a Broadway theater.

"It took a long time to get a theater.You think there are a lot of Broadway theaters, but there are even more productions that want those chunks of New York real estate. So we thought we'd get in line. But then the other discovery we made is that the theater owners have relationships with grizzled old producers who have brought them a vast fortune with enormous hits, and they can cut in line. They have a track record. And so, 'will we ever get a theater' became a big question. But we have this time now — let's use it creatively, productively."

So, Takei says, the team tweaked the show, removing parts that didn't work didn't advance the story, inserting numbers that worked better and kept the story moving. They doubled down on social media, building and proving demand in the show.

"We have a Shubert theater (the Longacre), and Bob Wankel is head guy there, and I remember pouring my heart out, telling the story of my parents, hoping that touches. And he was understanding, but I understood his problem, too. Everybody is trying to get a theater and he has to make a good business decision and was initially skeptical. An internment camp musical? But music has the power to make an anguished painful situation even more moving, even more powerful. It hits you in the heart."

Highlights from "Allegiance" at the Old Globe in San Diego

This is your Broadway debut, right? Are you petrified?

"Yes, yes. I've done a lot of stage work, and I've done a lot of public speaking, but it's Broadway, and I'm a debutante... at 78 years old! And it's the critics, too. The New York Times, Ben Brantley. That's who I'm going to be facing, and so it's both exciting and absolutely filling me with ecstasy, but what makes it ecstatic is the fear."

For much more of our interview with George Takei, listen to the audio by clicking the arrow in the player at the top of the page ... and hear George Takei and John Rabe's duet of "Tiny Bubbles."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Full Text:

The Maya of Central America are thought to have been a kinder, gentler civilization, especially compared to the Aztecs of Mexico. At the peak of Mayan culture some 1,500 years ago, warfare seemed ritualistic, designed to extort ransom for captive royalty or to subjugate rival dynasties, with limited impact on the surrounding population. Only later, archeologists thought, did increasing drought and climate change lead to total warfare -- cities and dynasties were wiped off the map in so-called termination events -- and the collapse of the lowland Maya civilization around 1,000 A.D. (or C.E., current era). New evidence unearthed by National Science Foundation-funded researchers call all this into question, suggesting that the Maya engaged in scorched-earth military campaigns -- a strategy that aims to destroy anything of use, including cropland -- even at the height of their civilization, a time of prosperity and artistic sophistication. The finding also indicates that this increase in warfare, possibly associated with climate change and resource scarcity, was not the cause of the disintegration of the lowland Maya civilization.

Image credit: Francisco Estrada-Belli/Tulane

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What an animal eats is a fundamental aspect of its biology, but surprisingly, the evolution of diet had not been studied across the animal kingdom until now. Scientists at the University of Arizona report several unexpected findings from taking a deep dive into the evolutionary history of more than one million animal species and going back 800 million years, when the first animals appeared on our planet. The study revealed several surprising key insights: Many species living today that are carnivorous, meaning they eat other animals, can trace this diet back to a common ancestor more than 800 million years ago; A plant-based, or herbivorous, diet is not the evolutionary driver for new species that it was believed to be; Closely related animals tend to share the same dietary category -- plant-eating, meat-eating, or both. This finding implies that switching between dietary lifestyles is not something that happens easily and often over the course of evolution.

Image credit: Daniel Stolte/UANews

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The molecular mechanism used by many bacteria to kill neighboring cells has redundancy built into its genetic makeup, which could allow for the mechanism to be expressed in different environments, say researchers at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their new study provides insights into the molecular mechanisms of competition among bacteria. "Many organisms, including humans, acquire bacteria from their environment," said Tim Miyashiro, a biochemist and molecular biologist at Penn State and the leader of the research team. "These bacteria can contribute to functions within the host organism, like how our gut bacteria help us digest food. We're interested in the interactions among bacteria cells, and between bacteria and their hosts, to better understand these mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships." Cells of the bioluminescent bacteria Vibrio fisheri take up residence in the light organ of newly hatched bobtail squid. At night, the bacteria produce a blue glow that researchers believe obscures a squid's silhouette and helps protect it from predators. The light organ has pockets, or crypts, in the squid's skin that provide nutrients and a safe environment for the bacteria. "When the squid hatches, it doesn't yet have any bacteria in its light organ," said Miyashiro. "But bacteria in the environment quickly colonize the squid's light organ." Some of these different bacteria strains can coexist, but others can't. "Microbial symbioses are essentially universal in animals, and are crucial to the health and development of both partners," says Irwin Forseth, a program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Integrative Organismal Systems, which funded the research. "The results from this study highlight the role small genetic changes can play in microbe interactions. Increased understanding will allow us to better predict organisms' performance in changing environments."

Image credit: Andrew Cecere

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Scientists have recovered the first genetic data from an extinct bird in the Caribbean, thanks to the remarkably preserved bones of a Creighton's caracara in a flooded sinkhole on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Studies of ancient DNA from tropical birds have faced two formidable obstacles. Organic material quickly degrades when exposed to heat, light and oxygen. And birds' lightweight, hollow bones break easily, accelerating the decay of the DNA within. But the dark, oxygen-free depths of a 100-foot blue hole known as Sawmill Sink provided ideal preservation conditions for the bones of Caracara creightoni, a species of large carrion-eating falcon that disappeared soon after humans arrived in the Bahamas about 1,000 years ago. Florida Museum of Natural History researcher Jessica Oswald and her colleagues extracted and sequenced genetic material from the 2,500-year-old C. creightoni femur. Because ancient DNA is often fragmented or missing, the team had modest expectations for what they would find –- maybe one or two genes. But instead, the bone yielded 98.7% of the bird's mitochondrial genome, the DNA most living things inherit from their mothers. The mitochondrial genome showed that C. creightoni is closely related to the two remaining caracara species alive today: the crested caracara and the southern caracara. The three species last shared a common ancestor between 1.2 and 0.4 million years ago. "This project enhanced our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary implications of extinction, forged strong international partnerships, and trained the next generation of researchers," says Jessica Robin, a program director in National Science Foundation's Office of International Science and Engineering, which funded the study.

Image credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace

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Mollie, a financial service provider in Europe, has introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone, enabling businesses to accept contactless payments via the Mollie app.

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Mbank has partnered with Al Etihad Payments Company (AEP), a Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) subsidiary, to introduce the Aani Instant Payment Platform on its mobile application.

The NA-Digest is an electronic newsletter for the numerical analysis and scientific software community. The NA-Digest is one of world's first examples of social networking. The Digest is one of the forces that makes our community a living, viable community.... read more >>

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Source: Streetwise Reports 11/05/2024

Dolly Varden Silver Corp. (DV:TSX.V; DOLLF:OTCQX) released results from five drill holes from its completed 2024 drilling program at its Kitsault Valley project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

In total, the program drilled 69 holes for 31,726 meters — 41 holes totaling more than 15,000 meters at the Dolly Varden area and 28 holes totaling more than 16,000 meters at Homestake Ridge.

Highlights of Monday's release include one hole from the Homestake Silver Deposit that found 12.23 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au) and 84 g/t silver (Ag) over 34.93 meters with high-grade breccia veins that included 166 g/t Au and 675 g/t Ag over 0.97 meters.

"The identification of a gold-rich, wide and high-grade area within the Homestake Silver Deposit is highly encouraging," said Chief Executive Officer Shawn Khunkhun. "Our geological team is encouraged by overlapping mineralizing phases of silver and gold-rich veins and breccias; the deposit remains open for expansion."

Technical Analyst Clive Maund, writing on Sunday, called Dolly Varden "one of the best pure silver companies around."

The stock's "breakout at end of last month/early this month was on big volume means it was genuine," Maund wrote.

The stock is at a "classic buy spot, although we should remain aware that it could zigzag a little lower over the short-term, but that said it looks like a strong buy here."

Highlights From Results

Highlights from the Homestake Silver Deposit include:

• Hole HR24-432: Mineralized envelope including veins: 8.85 g/t Au and 5 g/t Ag over 48.23 meters, including an internal zone of stronger breccia vein intervals grading 29.24 g/t Au and 16 g/t Ag over 13.94 meters, including one breccia vein grading 701 g/t Au and 184 g/t Ag over 0.54 meters.
• Hole HR24-435: Mineralized envelope including veins: 4.64 g/t Au and 38 g/t Ag over 100.80 meters, including an internal interval of stronger breccia vein mineralization grading 12.23 g/t Au and 84 g/t Ag over 34.93 meters. High-grade breccia veins include 166 g/t Au and 675 g/t Ag over 0.97 meters.
• Hole HR24-442: Vein breccia zone: 4.58 g/t Au over 9.95 meters, including 14.96 g/t Au over 1.69 meters.

"Results from the five holes in this release suggest that the plunge of mineralization at Homestake Silver has a similar orientation as the Homestake Main Deposit, located 300 meters to the northwest," the company said in a release. "The average grades within these core areas are higher, on a precious metal silver equivalent basis, than the average grade of the silver deposits at the Dolly Varden property further south, due to the increased gold content at the Homestake Ridge Deposits."

Technical Analyst Clive Maund, writing on Sunday, called Dolly Varden "one of the best pure silver companies around."

Drill holes HR24-442 and HR24-445 are step-outs and encountered the mineralized and altered structural corridor of Homestake Silver, the company said. Drill hole HR24-442 intersected a mineralized vein breccia stockwork zone grading 4.58 g/t Au over 9.95 meters, including individual breccias with stronger pyrite mineralization grading 14.96 g/t Au over 1.69 meters.

The Homestake Ridge deposits are interpreted as structurally controlled, multi-phase epithermal vein stockwork and vein breccia system hosted in Jurassic Hazelton volcanic rocks, Dolly Varden noted. Mineralization consists of pyrite plus galena and sphalerite with visible gold in a breccia matrix within a silica breccia vein system.

"The northwest orientation of the main Homestake structural trend appears to have numerous subparallel internal structures that are interpreted to form the controls for higher grade gold and silver shoots within a broader mineralized envelope at the Homestake Silver deposit," the company said. "The main structural corridor dips steeply to the northeast at Homestake Main and rolls to vertical or steeply southwest at Homestake Silver."

Analyst's Response: 'Boom'

Jeff Valks, Senior Analyst for The Gold Advisor newsletter, reacted to the results with the word "BOOM."

"Dolly Varden Silver reports more high-grade drill results from its 2024 exploration program at the Homestake Silver Deposit in British Columbia's Golden Triangle," he wrote on Monday. "Results from five drill holes have confirmed significant gold and silver mineralization in an area targeted within the plunge of a previously undrilled high-grade zone, signaling potential expansion opportunities."

Jeff Valks, Senior Analyst for The Gold Advisor newsletter, reacted to the results with the word "BOOM."

We look forward to the remaining results." Vaks wrote. "In the meantime, the stock is flat as I write but is up over 35% year-to-date. It's not too late to buy, it's down from its recent spike, and as (editor) Jeff (Clark) has said, this is a core holding for the silver bull market. Use a stink bid if you're looking for shares. Both Jeff and I hold long positions."

Analyst Marcus Giannini of Haywood Capital Markets noted in a recent research note that Dolly Varden continues to "push the margins of known high-grade mineralization" at the project.

Gianini gave the stock a Buy rating with a CA$2.40 per share target price. "We continue to view Dolly's high-grade endowment as an increasingly attractive target for larger North American-focused precious metal producers," he noted.

The Catalyst: Analysts Point to Patience

While it has chased the record highs gold has been setting this year, silver recently broke through US$35 per ounce, reflecting a year-to-date gain of about 47%. It has since settled but held to the "crucial US$32.50 level," according to Christopher Lewis of FX Empire on Monday.

"Keep in mind that this is a market that is extraordinarily volatile and, of course, will continue to be noisy over the next couple of days as we get election results in the United States," Lewis wrote. "And of course, we also get the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Thursday, both of which could cause chaos."

Lewis said he thinks the "least likely path is lower."

"I still favor an upside move, but I recognize that we are definitely in a little bit of a holding pattern," he wrote. "Having said that, if we do see momentum to the upside, then there's really not a whole lot here that could keep this market from trying to challenge the (US$)35 level again, obviously, a large round psychologically significant figure, but we'll just have to wait and see how that plays out."

The most conductive element in nature, silver is used to coat electrical contacts in computers, phones, cars, and appliances. It's also an important element in solar technology.

Mordor Intelligence noted that the white metal is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 5% between 2024 and 2029.

Newsletter editor Brien Lundin encouraged investors not to get discouraged, as any price drop-off is temporary, he said. He expects the silver price to soar when the U.S. Federal Reserve doubles down on its efforts to get interest rates much lower, he wrote on Oct. 23. [OWNERSHIP_CHART-5439]

Based on silver's charts, Ron Struthers of Struthers Resource Stock Report also predicted a major run-up in the silver price.

"Back in April or early May, I highlighted the breakout from a cup and handle formation and [that] that would lead to a major upside move. This is now confirmed," he wrote on Oct. 23.

Ownership and Share Structure

According to the company's latest corporate presentation, 50% of its stock is held by institutional investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Sprott Asset Management LP, U.S. Global Investors Inc., and Delbrook.

About 41% is with strategic investors, including 17% with Fury Gold Mines, 14% with Hecla, and Eric Sprott owns 10% himself.

The rest, 9%, is with retail and high-net-worth investors.

The company has 301.16 million outstanding shares. Its market cap is CA$380.72 million, and its 52-week trading range is CA$0.62–1.46 per share.

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Important Disclosures:

1. Dolly Varden Silver Corp. is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports and pays SWR a monthly sponsorship fee between US$4,000 and US$5,000.
2. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Dolly Varden Silver Corp.
3. Steve Sobek wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee.
4. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

For additional disclosures, please click here.

( Companies Mentioned: DV:TSX.V; DOLLF:OTCQX, )

Source: Streetwise Reports 11/07/2024

Dakota Gold Corp. (DC:NYSE American) announced drill results from the first 17 holes of its ongoing infill drilling program to expand the maiden resource at its Richmond Hill Gold Project in the historic Homestake District of South Dakota.

An updated S-K 1300 resource estimate is planned for Q1 2025 and a S-K 1300 Initial Assessment with cashflow analysis is planned for Q2 2025, the company said in a release. The expanded resource is expected to include an additional 88 new drill holes totaling 17,000 meters.

"The highlight of this morning's release was (hole) RH24C-099, which was drilled in the Twin Tunnels Zone and returned 1.15 g/t Au (grams per tonne gold) over 51.7 meters from 132.9 meters," wrote Canaccord Genuity Capital Markets Analyst Peter Bell in an updated research note on Monday. "The results this morning were consistent with the current resource at Richmond Hill, with many cases reporting higher-than-average grades."

Bell said the firm was encouraged by the results, "which we believe provide support for expansion in future resource estimates. With infill and step out drilling at Richmond Hill being just one of three ongoing drill programs currently underway at Dakota, underscoring the company's emphasis on exploration and expansion."

Drilling Is 'Adding Ounces'

The maiden S-K 1300 resource, announced in April, outlined an Indicated Resource of 51.83 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.80 g/t Au for 1.33 million ounces (Moz) and Inferred Resource of 58.06 Mt at 0.61 g/t Au for 1.13 Moz., the company said.

The initial infill drill results release released Monday encountered further gold mineralization from the central portion of the Richmond Hill resource area consistent with results reported in the maiden resource, Dakota said. The drilling was conducted in areas where the original resource block model contained gaps to support the company's belief that the initial resource could be significantly expanded with additional infill drilling.

Highlights of the results include:

• Hole RH24C-077: 0.76 g/t Au over 24.4 meters
• Hole RH24C-083: 0.70 g/t Au over 13.8 meters
• Hole RH24C-085: 1.10 g/t Au over 17.9 meters
• Hole RH24C-088A: 0.96 g/t Au over 41.5 meters
• Hole RH24C-099: 1.15 g/t Au over 51.7 meters

Dakota said the resource remained open in all directions and could be improved with more drilling, metallurgical work, and incorporation of silver into the resource.

"We are very pleased to see that initial results from our infill drill program are adding ounces to our current S-K 1300 resource," said Dakota Vice President of Exploration James Berry. "The results to date show grades and widths consistent with drill holes in the original block model and support an expansion of gold mineralization, including shallow oxide mineralization. We look forward to continuing our infill program on the other zones identified in our Initial assessment for follow-up drilling."

'Vastly Unexplored' District

The historic Homestake Mine produced 41 Moz Au and 9 Moz silver (Ag) over 126 years. The company has 48,000 acres of holdings surrounding the original mine, which was first discovered in 1876 and consolidated by George Hearst.

Areas surrounding "super-giant deposits" like Homestake are believed to contain significant additional gold resources, wrote John Newell wrote.

Areas surrounding "super-giant deposits" like Homestake are believed to contain significant additional gold resources, wrote John Newell of John Newell & Associates this week for a Streetwise Reports piece on the legacy of the famous mine.

"Super-giant deposits are characterized by clusters of geologically similar deposits within several hundred square kilometers, defining profoundly mineralized regions," Newell wrote. "It is believed that at least twice that amount of gold exists in the neighborhood of these super giants. If that is true, then there are at least 100 Moz of gold left to be found in this vastly underexplored precious metal district of South Dakota."

This proximity to a super-giant "suggests a high potential for similar deposits," Newell wrote. "Being in the shadow of many old mines increases the probability of finding significant mineral resources."

The Catalyst: Gold Continues Bull Market

After hitting a record high of US$2,790.15 per ounce on Thursday, spot gold was up 0.1% to US$2,737.35 on Monday afternoon, according to Reuters.

Investors were keeping a close on Tuesday's presidential election in the U.S. and the Federal Reserve's meeting later this week, Anjana Anil reported.

"A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last month found worries that the U.S. could see a repeat of the unrest that followed Trump's 2020 election defeat, when his false claim that his loss was the result of fraud prompted hundreds to storm the U.S. Capitol," Anil wrote.

Gold's rise has "resulted in big returns for the investors who bought in earlier this year," Angelica Leicht reported for CBS News last month. "For example, the investors who purchased gold in March when it hit US$2,160 per ounce have seen their gold values increase by nearly 27% in the time since. That's a huge uptick in value in a matter of months, especially on an asset that's known more for long-term growth."

Recently polled London Bullion Market Association members indicated they believe the gold price could reach US$2,940/oz during 2025, reported Stockhead on Oct. 28.

"Combined with expectations of lower global interest rates, this further enhances gold's attractiveness as an investment," the article noted.[OWNERSHIP_CHART-7442]

As for gold equities, the S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index (SPCDNX) confirmed a multidecade bull run for junior, intermediate, and senior mining stocks when it closed above 1,000 recently, Stewart Thomson with 321Gold wrote. The index is a key indicator of the health of the general gold, silver, and mining stocks market.

Ownership and Share Structure

According to the company, approximately 25% of its shares are with management and insiders.

Out of management, Co-chairman, Director, President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Quartermain holds the most shares at 8.4%, while COO Jerry Aberle holds 4.8%, the company said.

About 26% of the shares are with institutional investors, according to Yahoo Finance and Edgar filings. Top institutional holders include Fourth Sail Capital with 5.3%, Van Eck Associates with 4.1%, Blackrock Institutional Trust Co. with 3.7%, The Vanguard Group Inc. with about 3.2%, Fidelity Management and Research Co. LLC with 2.7%, and CI Global Asset Management with 2.6%.

About 16.5% is with strategic investors, including Orion Mine Finance, which owns about 9.9%, and Barrick Gold Corp., which owns about 2.5%. The rest is retail.

Dakota Gold has a market cap of US$212.61 million, with 93.66 million shares outstanding. It trades in a 52-week range of US$3.25 and US$1.84.

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2. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Dakota Gold Corp.
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4. This article does not constitute investment advice and is not a solicitation for any investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her personal financial adviser and perform their own comprehensive investment research. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company.

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Gay and bisexual men in England, Scotland, and Wales can now donate blood, plasma and platelets under certain circumstances without having to wait three months, the National Health Service announced this week.; Credit: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Gay and bisexual men in England, Scotland, and Wales can now donate blood, plasma and platelets under certain circumstances, the National Health Service announced this week in a momentous shift in policy for most of the U.K.

Beginning Monday, gay men in sexually active, monogamous relationships for at least three months can donate for the first time. The move reverses a policy that limited donor eligibility on perceived risks of contracting HIV/AIDs and other sexually transmitted infections.

The new rules come as the U.K. and other countries around the world report urgent, pandemic-induced blood supply issues.

Donor eligibility will now be based on each person's individual circumstances surrounding health, travel and sexual behaviors regardless of gender, according to the NHS. Potential donors will no longer be asked if they are a man who has had sex with another man, but they will be asked about recent sexual activity.

Anyone who has had the same sexual partner for the last three months can donate, the NHS said.

"Patient safety is at the heart of everything we do. This change is about switching around how we assess the risk of exposure to a sexual infection, so it is more tailored to the individual," said Ella Poppitt, Chief Nurse for blood donation at NHS Blood and Transplant, in a statement. "We screen all donations for evidence of significant infections, which goes hand-in-hand with donor selection to maintain the safety of blood sent to hospitals."

People who engage in anal sex with a new partner or multiple people or who have recently used PrEP or PEP (medication used to prevent HIV infection) will have to wait three months to donate - regardless of their gender.

Why did the U.K. make this change?

The NHS moved to alter its blood donation eligibility rules following a review by the FAIR (For the Assessment of Individualised Risk) steering group. The panel determined an individualized, gender-neutral approach to determining who can donate blood, platelets, and plasma is fairer and still maintains the safety of the U.K.'s blood supply.

The findings were accepted in full by the government last December.

Researchers will continue to monitor the impact of the donor selection changes for the next 12 months to determine if more changes are needed, NHS said.

What is the policy in the U.S.?

Despite efforts by advocates to change regulations in the U.S, the ability for gay and bisexual men to donate blood is still restricted.

A ban on gay and bisexual blood donors has been in effect since the early 1980s when fears about HIV/AIDS were widespread.

The Food and Drug Administration's current policy states a man who has sex with another man in the previous three months can't donate. Federal rules previously made such donors wait 12 months before giving blood, but due to low blood supplies during the pandemic the federal government changed the policy in April.

The Red Cross said they are participating in a pilot study funded by the FDA using behavior-based health history questionnaires, similar to those used in the U.K.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A teen gets a dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami on May 18. Nearly 7 million U.S. teens and pre-teens (ages 12 through 17) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, so far, the CDC says.; Credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

It's been a little more than a month since adolescents as young as 12 became eligible in the United States to receive the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19, and nearly all reports have been positive: The vaccine is very effective in this age group, and the vast majority of kids experience mild side effects, if any — the same sore arm or mild flu-like symptoms seen among adults who get the shot.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that everyone 12-years-old and older get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the rollout is well underway: According to the CDC, nearly 7 million U.S. teens and pre-teens (ages 12 through 17) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, so far.

Still, soon after the FDA authorized the use of Pfizer's vaccine in young people, federal agencies began receiving reports of mild chest pain or other signs of possible heart inflammation (known as myocarditis) in a very small percentage of recently vaccinated teens.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing Friday that there have been more than 300 cases of heart inflammation reported among more than 20 million teens and young adults who have received one of the vaccines made by Moderna or Pfizer. She said that in the "vast majority" of cases, the inflammation went away.

An expert advisory committee to the health agency is expected to review the cases in more depth at a meeting Friday.

So, in the meantime, should parents of teens hesitate to have their kids vaccinated against COVID-19? Vaccine experts and the American Academy of Pediatrics say no, don't hesitate. It's good for doctors and patients to be aware that there might be a connection between the mRNA vaccines and heart inflammation, and to report to their pediatrician anything they see in that first week after vaccination. But it is also important, the CDC notes, to recognize that even if this does turn out to be an extremely rare side effect of the vaccine, "most patients who received care responded well to medicine and rest and quickly felt better." And the serious risks of COVID -19 — even for young healthy people — outweigh the risks of any possible side effects from the vaccine. Here are some questions you may have, and what's known:

What exactly is myocarditis?

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, also being investigated, is an inflammation of the sac around the heart.

Long before the pandemic, thousands of cases of myocarditis were diagnosed in the U.S. and around the world each year, often triggered by the body's immune response to infections. SARS-CoV-2 can trigger it, and so can cold viruses, and staph and strep and HIV. Other causes include toxins and allergies.

Symptoms include chest pain and shortness of breath. It's often mild enough to go unnoticed, but a full-blown case in adults can cause arrhythmias and heart failure that require careful treatment with multiple medications, and several months of strict rest. In a case study of seven teenagers who got myocarditis following vaccination published last week in the journal Pediatrics, all seven got better after routine treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Pediatric cardiologist Dr. Stuart Berger of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, says vaccine-related myocarditis in teens is not all that worrisome. "Although they appear with some symptoms of chest pain, and maybe some findings on EKGs, all of the cases we've seen have been on the mild end of the spectrum," he says.

So, what's the concern?

Several hundred reports about the inflammation have been filed with the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS); that's a repository of reports sent in by health professionals and patients about any health events they spot in the hours or days after vaccinations. Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine. The database is just meant as a starting point for further investigation and not proof of cause and effect. But as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel noted this week, "when millions of people are vaccinated within a short period, the total number of these reported events can look big."

That said, anecdotes reported by doctors in medical journals and reports to VAERS suggest that both of the mRNA vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. — the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — might slightly increase the incidence of myocarditis in young people. In 2003, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated the background incidence of myocarditis to be 1.13 cases in 100,000 children per year.

Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of a Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee says there likely is a causal link between the heart inflammation some doctors are seeing in these teens and the second dose of vaccine. "I think it's real," he says, but hastens to add that the effect is exceedingly small – based on the data collected so far, maybe one in 50,000 vaccinees between the ages of 16 and 39. "And the good news is at least so far it looks to be transient and self-resolving."

Still, maybe I should wait to get my teen vaccinated and see how this plays out?

Uhm, no, according to several vaccine experts contacted by NPR. And this is where a little math comes in handy.

"Take a stadium full of 100,000 people between the ages of 16 and 39, which is the subset that appears to be at greater risk," Offit says. "Vaccinate all of them, and two might get myocarditis." But if you don't vaccinate any of the 100,000, he estimates that about 1,300 would eventually get COVID-19. And those numbers are likely to increase this winter.

About one in 1,000 children who get COVID-19 have gone on to develop a condition called MIS-C (multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children), says Offit, and most of those kids have had some level of myocarditis. In addition, the new coronavirus has directly caused myocarditis in some children and adults. Which of the two stadiums in Offit's metaphor would have more cases of myocarditis — the vaccinated children or unvaccinated kids — is not known precisely. But Offit says he suspects it would be the unvaccinated group. And there's no doubt that 1,000 unvaccinated children would suffer more COVID-19-related illnesses. "A choice not to get a vaccine is not a choice to avoid myocarditis," he says. "It's a choice to take a different risk — and I would argue a more serious one" — of developing a bad case of COVID-19 or long-COVID or COVID-caused myocarditis.

Are the experts advising their own kids in this age group to get vaccinated?

Yes. "I understand people having concerns," says Dr. Judith Guzman-Cottrill. She's a parent and professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the Oregon Health and Science University, as well as the senior author on a small study that came out this month in the journal Pediatrics. In the report, Guzman-Cottrill and her colleagues analyzed the cases of seven boys around the country who developed myocarditis within four days of receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

She and her family recently faced the vaccination decision for her own 13-year-old daughter — and said a whole-hearted yes to the shot.

Guzman-Cottrill suspects there may turn out to be a slightly increased risk of heart inflammation from vaccination in young people, but she and her co-authors note in the Pediatrics report that a direct cause-and-effect connection — even in these seven cases — has yet to be established. And she's impressed that despite the millions of doses that have so far been delivered to teens, no clear and serious post-vaccination problems have shown up. "The emergency departments and urgent care clinics are not filled with teenagers complaining of chest pain," she says.

She's treated unvaccinated teens who developed severe myocarditis from an infection with the COVID-19 virus, and others who developed COVID-19 pneumonia and respiratory failure. Seeing those teens struggle — teens who lacked the powerful immune protection the vaccine provides — was enough for her to suggest vaccination to her daughter, who got her second vaccination earlier this week.

"She saw it as a pathway back to a normal post pandemic life," Guzman-Cottrill says.

And that's where public health comes in. "We really need a highly vaccinated student body when kids return to the classroom this fall," says Guzman-Cottrill, "so we don't see surges in COVID-19 cases."

Joanne Silberner, a former health policy correspondent for NPR, is a freelance journalist living in Seattle.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The pandemic has taken a massive toll on people's mental health. But a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms what many of us are seeing and feeling in our own lives: The impact has been particularly devastating for parents and unpaid caregivers of adults.

Two-thirds of survey respondents who identified as unpaid caregivers said they experienced mental health challenges during the pandemic, such as symptoms of anxiety or depression, or suicidal thoughts.

Only one-third of people with no caregiving responsibilities reported the same symptoms.

Of the more than 10,000 survey respondents, more than 40% identified as being unpaid caregivers.

"What is striking here is just how widespread unpaid caregiving responsibilities are in the population and how much of a burden and a toll these responsibilities" are having, says Shantha Rajaratnam, a co-author of the study and a psychologist at the Turner Institute of Brain and Mental Health at Monash University in Australia.

The study also found that people who care for both children under 18 and adults — many of them part of the sandwich generation — are faring the worst, with 85% of this group experiencing adverse mental health symptoms.

"It's an extremely important study," says psychologist Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, professor emeritus at Stanford University who has researched family caregivers and their challenges.

The study is the first to document the problems caregivers have experienced during COVID-19, she notes, and underscores "the importance of paying attention to caregiver issues, caregiver mental health" and the need for education and resources to better support them.

The contrast between caregivers and others is stark

The study, part of ongoing research by The COVID-19 Outbreak Public Evaluation (COPE) Initiative, is based on surveys conducted in December 2020 and February-March 2021.

More than half of those who identified as caregivers said they had experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression, or of disorders like PTSD related to the stress and trauma of COVID-19.

A significant number of caregivers said they had contemplated suicide. Nearly 40% reported having passive suicidal thoughts, meaning "wishing that they had gone to bed and didn't wake up," says study co-author Mark Czeisler, a graduate student at Monash University and a research trainee at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

And more than 30% had seriously considered taking their own life — about five times the number of noncaregivers, the study found.

Across the board, mental health impacts have been more severe for people who care for both children and adults. Half of this group said it had seriously considered suicide in the past month.

The pandemic worsened the challenges caregivers face

Even before the pandemic, being an unpaid caregiver was stressful and associated with a higher risk of mental health issues, says Gallagher-Thompson. The COVID-19 pandemic has made things even harder.

For instance, the pandemic has taken away many formal and informal sources of support for caregivers.

That was the case for Dr. Nicole Christian-Brathwaite. She's a Boston-based child psychiatrist and lives with her husband, her mother, her husband's father and two sons, who are 4 and 6.

Before the pandemic, her father-in-law, who has dementia, went to a day program for seniors with cognitive decline. Her mother, a survivor of breast and lung cancers, went to physical therapy twice a week, doctor appointments and met with friends.

When the pandemic hit, they lost those services and social support — at the same time Christian-Brathwaite and her husband began working from home while taking care of their sons and parents.

Life at home became much more complicated. Her sons developed behavioral problems with the transitions and stresses of the pandemic. Her mother struggled with chronic pain, and was hospitalized during the pandemic. And there were days when her father-in-law was confused, disoriented or aggressive.

"Many days I was walking around on edge waiting for something to happen because our entire setup was so very fragile and vulnerable," says Christian-Brathwaite. "It's been exhausting."

And her mental health has suffered. "I certainly was dealing with insomnia," she says. "I was short tempered. I was more irritable. I didn't have the same tolerance for things."

More support needed to help caregivers cope

The new study highlights the extent to which unpaid caregivers have struggled during the pandemic, says Gallagher-Thompson.

"There are some serious issues here that shouldn't be ignored," she says.

And yet caregivers are often ignored by the health system, which is set up to focus only on patients.

"Family members are rarely asked, 'How does this affect you? What is difficult? How can we help you? How can we support you in being able to carry out your role, your tasks, your responsibilities?'" Gallagher-Thompson says.

As the new study shows, support can make a big difference — respondents who could rely on others for help with caregiving had a lower incidence of mental health symptoms.

So it's important to educate and support caregivers. For example, physicians can start by screening their patients' caregivers for mental health symptoms and provide more resources to those who need it, says Gallagher-Thompson.

Christian-Brathwaite hopes the new study will help physicians recognize that family caregivers are just as important to consider while treating patients.

"We really need to take a step back and look at the village that's around them because our patients can't be successful without having the support from family," she says.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Reconstructions from the Daynès Studio in Paris depict a male Neanderthal (right) face to face with a human, Homo sapiens.; Credit: /Science Source

It's something that many of us reckon with: the sense that we're not quite as sharp as we once were.

I recently turned 42. Having lost my grandfather to Alzheimer's, and with my mom suffering from a similar neurodegenerative disease, I'm very aware of what pathologies might lurk beneath my cranium.

In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, the most important interventions for upholding brain function are preventive — those that help maintain our most marvelous, mysterious organ.

Based on the science, I take fish oil and broil salmon. I exercise. I try to challenge my cortex to the unfamiliar.

As I wrote my recent book, A History of the Human Brain, which recounts the evolutionary tale of how our brain got here, I began to realize that so many of the same influences that shaped our brain evolution in the first place reflect the very measures we use to preserve our cognitive function today.

Being social, and highly communicative. Exploring creative pursuits. Eating a varied, omnivorous diet low in processed foods. Being physically active.

These traits and behaviors help retrace our past, and, I believe, were instrumental in why we remain on the planet today.

And they all were, at least in part, enabled by our brain.

Social smart alecks finish first

The human saga is riddled with extinctions.

By "human," I don't just mean Homo sapiens, the species we belong to, but any member of the genus Homo. We've gotten used to being the only human species on Earth, but in our not so distant past — probably a few hundred thousand years ago – there were at least nine of us running around.

There was Homo habilis, or the "handy man." And Homo erectus, the first "pitcher." The Denisovans roamed Asia, while the more well-known Neanderthals spread throughout Europe.

But with the exception of Homo sapiens, they're all gone. And there's a good chance it was our fault.

Humans were never the fastest lot on the African plains, and far from the strongest. Cheetahs, leopards and lions held those distinctions. In our lineage, natural selection instead favored wits and wiliness.

Plenty of us became cat food, but those with a slight cognitive edge — especially Homo sapiens — lived on. In our ilk, smarts overcame strength and speed in enabling survival.

Ecology, climate, location and just sheer luck would've played important roles in who persisted or perished as well, as they do for most living beings. But the evolutionary pressure for more complex mental abilities would lead to a massive expansion in our brain's size and neurocircuitry that is surely the paramount reason we dominate the planet like no other species ever has.

Much of this "success," if you can call it that, was due to our social lives.

Primates are communal creatures. Our close monkey and ape cousins are incredibly interactive, grooming each other for hours a day to maintain bonds and relationships. Throw in a few hoots and hollers and you have a pretty complex community of communicating simians.

An active social life is now a known preserver of brain function.

Research shows that social isolation worsens cognitive decline (not to mention mental health, as many of us experienced this past year). Larger social networks and regular social activities are associated with mental preservation and slowed dementia progression.

Entwined in this new social life was an evolutionary pressure that favored innovation. Our eventual ability to generate completely novel thoughts and ideas, and to share those ideas, came to define our genus.

As we hunted and foraged together, and honed stones into hand axes, there was a collective creativity at work that gave us better weapons and tools that enabled more effective food sourcing, and, later, butchering and fire. Effectively sharing these innovations with our peers allowed information to spread faster than ever before - a seed for the larger communities and civilizations to come.

Challenging ourselves to new pursuits and mastering new skills can not only impress peers and ingratiate us to our group, but literally help preserve our brain. New hobbies. New conversations. Learning the banjo. Even playing certain video games and simply driving a new route home from work each day, as neuroscientist David Eagleman does, can keep our function high.

Whether it's honing ancient stone or taking up Sudoku, any pursuit novel and mentally challenging may help keep the neural circuits firing.

We really are what we eat

All the while, as we hunted and crafted in new and communal ways, we had to eat. And we did so with an uniquely adventurous palette.

Homo sapiens is among the most omnivorous species on the planet. Within reason we eat just about anything. Whether it's leaves, meat, fungus, or fruit, we don't discriminate. At some point, one of us even thought it might be a good idea to try the glistening, grey blobs that are oysters - and shellfish are, it turns out, among the healthiest foods for our brain.

The varied human diet is an integral part of our story. As was the near constant physicality required to source it.

On multiple occasions over the past 1 to 2 million years climate changes dried out the African landscape, forcing our ancestors out of the lush forest onto the dangerous, wide-open grasslands. As evolution pressured us to create and commune to help us survive, a diverse diet also supported our eventual global takeover.

Our arboreal past left us forever craving the dangling fruits of the forest, a supreme source of high-calorie sugars that ensured survival. Back then we didn't live long enough to suffer from Type 2 diabetes: if you encountered sweets, you ate them. And today we're stuck with a taste for cookies and candy that, given our longer lifespans, can take its toll on the body and brain.

But humans were just as amenable to dining on the bulbs, rhizomes and tubers of the savanna, especially once fire came along. We eventually became adept scavengers of meat and marrow, the spoils left behind by the big cats, who preferred more nutritive organ meat.

As our whittling improved we developed spears, and learned to trap and hunt the beasts of the plains ourselves. There is also evidence that we learned to access shellfish beds along the African coast and incorporate brain-healthy seafood into our diet.

Studying the health effects of the modern diet is tricky. Dietary studies are notoriously dubious, and often involve countless lifestyle variables that are hard to untangle.

Take blueberries. Multiple studies have linked their consumption with improved brain health. But, presumably, the berry-prone among us are also more likely to eat healthy all around, exercise, and make it to level 5 on their meditation app.

Which is why so many researchers, nutritionists, and nutritional psychiatrists now focus on dietary patterns, like those akin to Mediterranean culinary customs, rather than specific ingredients. Adhering to a Mediterranean diet is linked with preserved cognition; and multiple randomized-controlled trials suggest doing so can lower depression risk.

A similar diversity in our ancestral diet helped early humans endure an ever-shifting climate and times of scarcity. We evolved to subsist and thrive on a wide range of foods, in part because our clever brains allowed us access to them. In turn, a similarly-varied diet (minus submitting to our innate sugar craving of course) is among the best strategies to maintain brain health.

All of our hunting, and foraging, and running away from predators would have required intense physical exertion. This was certainly not unique to humans, but we can't ignore the fact that regular exercise is another effective means of preserving brain health.

Being active improves performance on mental tasks, and may help us better form memories. Long before the Peletons sold out, our brains relied on both mental and physical activity.

But overwhelmingly the evidence points to embracing a collection of lifestyle factors to keep our brain healthy, none of which existed in a Darwinian vacuum.

Finding food was as social an endeavor as it was mental and physical. Our creative brains harnessed information; gossiping, innovating, and cooking our spoils around the campfire.

Researchers are beginning to piece together the complex pathology behind the inevitable decline of the human brain, and despite a parade of failed clinical trials in dementia, there should be promising treatments ahead.

Until then, in thinking about preserving the conscious experience of our world and relationships — and living our longest, happiest lives — look to our past.

Bret Stetka is a writer based in New York and an editorial director at Medscape. His work has appeared in Wired, Scientific American, and on The Atlantic.com. His new book, A History of the Human Brain, is out from Timber/Workman Press. He's also on Twitter: @BretStetka.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The dangerous Delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading so quickly in the United States that it's likely the mutant strain will become predominant in the U.S. within weeks, according to a new analysis.

The variant, first identified in India, is the most contagious yet and, among those not yet vaccinated, may trigger serious illness in more people than other variants do, say scientists tracking the spread of infection.

The Delta variant apparently already accounts for at least 14% of all new infections, according to the research analysis posted online Monday of more than 242,000 infections nationwide over the last six months.

Another reason to get vaccinated

"It definitely is of concern," says William Lee, the vice president of science at Helix, which is under contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help track the variants.

"Just the fact that it's so transmissible means that it's it's dangerous," Lee says, "and so I think you'll see outbreaks of Delta around the country and more people will get sick from it."

Helix launched the study when researchers spotted a drop in the prevalence of the Alpha variant, a contagious strain first spotted in the U.K. that had quickly become the dominant variant in that country and the U.S.

The researchers discovered the drop in relative frequency of the Alpha variant in their spot checks of strains circulating in the U.S. was due to a rapid increase in two other variants: the Gamma variant, first spotted in Brazil, and the Delta variant. The Gamma variant may be slightly better than the original strain at outmaneuvering the vaccines, researchers say.

"It looks like both of them are going to slowly push out Alpha," says Lee, whose study has not yet been peer-reviewed but has been posted on a pre-print server.

How Delta could prompt another U.S. COVID-19 surge

All the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. appear, in general, to provide powerful protection against all the variants, including Delta. But the rapid spread of the variants is still raising concern because of the large number of people who remain unvaccinated.

"There still are big portions of the country where the rates of vaccination are quite low," notes Dr. Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "And, in fact, the Helix paper shows that this Delta variant is increasing in frequency — the speed at which it's increasing in frequency is greatest in those areas where vaccination rates are lowest."

The Delta variant could trigger yet another moderate surge of infections through many parts of the U.S. because of these pockets of unvaccinated people, according to a recent set of projections from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, which is helping the CDC plot the future course of the pandemic.

The projections indicate that infections could start to rise again as soon as some time in July, especially if the vaccination campaign continues to stall.

"For the most part, it's a moderate resurgence," says Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who is helping coordinate the hub.

"We're not having massive epidemics at a national level, but we have this kind of continuation of the virus just sticking around and keeping us on our toes," Lessler says. "And in specific places there could be substantial epidemics still."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, leads some of the Biden administration's efforts to expand Medicaid access.; Credit: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

The Biden administration is quietly engineering a series of expansions to Medicaid that may bolster protections for millions of low-income Americans and bring more people into the program.

Biden's efforts — which have been largely overshadowed by other economic and health initiatives — represent an abrupt reversal of the Trump administration's moves to scale back the safety-net program.

The changes could further boost Medicaid enrollment — which the pandemic has already pushed to a record 80.5 million. Some of the expansion is funded by the COVID-19 relief bill that passed in March, including coverage for new mothers.

Others who could also gain coverage under Biden are inmates and undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the administration is opening the door to new Medicaid-funded services such as food and housing that the government insurance plan hasn't traditionally offered.

"There is a paradigm change underway," said Jennifer Langer Jacobs, Medicaid director in New Jersey, one of a growing number of states trying to expand home-based Medicaid services to keep enrollees out of nursing homes and other institutions.

"We've had discussions at the federal level in the last 90 days that are completely different from where we've ever been before," Langer Jacobs said.

Taken together, the Medicaid moves represent some of the most substantive shifts in federal health policy undertaken by the new administration.

"They are taking very bold action," said Rutgers University political scientist Frank Thompson, an expert on Medicaid history, noting in particular the administration's swift reversal of Trump policies. "There really isn't a precedent."

The Biden administration seems unlikely to achieve what remains the holy grail for Medicaid advocates: getting 12 holdout states, including Texas and Florida, to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income working-age adults through the Affordable Care Act.

And while some of the recent expansions – including for new mothers -- were funded by close to $20 billion in new Medicaid funding in the COVID relief bill Biden signed in March, much of that new money will stop in a few years unless Congress appropriates additional money.

The White House strategy has risks. Medicaid, which swelled after enactment of the 2010 health law, has expanded further during the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, pushing enrollment to a record 80.5 million, including those served by the related Children's Health Insurance Program. That's up from 70 million before the COVID crisis began.

The programs now cost taxpayers more than $600 billion a year. And although the federal government will cover most of the cost of the Biden-backed expansions, surging Medicaid spending is a growing burden on state budgets.

The costs of expansion are a frequent target of conservative critics, including Trump officials like Seema Verma, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, who frequently argued for enrollment restrictions and derided Medicaid as low-quality coverage.

But even less partisan experts warn that Medicaid, which was created to provide medical care to low-income Americans, can't make up for all the inadequacies in government housing, food and education programs.

"Focusing on the social drivers of health ... is critically important in improving the health and well-being of Medicaid beneficiaries. But that doesn't mean that Medicaid can or should be responsible for paying for all of those services," said Matt Salo, head of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, noting that the program's financing "is simply not capable of sustaining those investments."

Restoring federal support

However, after four years of Trump administration efforts to scale back coverage, Biden and his appointees appear intent on not only restoring federal support for Medicaid, but also boosting the program's reach.

"I think what we learned during the repeal-and-replace debate is just how much people in this country care about the Medicaid program and how it's a lifeline to millions," Biden's new Medicare and Medicaid administrator, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, told KHN, calling the program a "backbone to our country."

The Biden administration has already withdrawn permission the Trump administration had granted Arkansas and New Hampshire to place work requirements on some Medicaid enrollees.

In April, Biden blocked a multibillion-dollar Trump administration initiative to prop up Texas hospitals that care for uninsured patients, a policy that many critics said effectively discouraged Texas from expanding Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation.

The moves have drawn criticism from Republicans, some of whom accuse the new administration of trampling states' rights to run their Medicaid programs as they choose.

"Biden is reasserting a larger federal role and not deferring to states," said Josh Archambault, a senior fellow at the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability.

But Biden's early initiatives have been widely hailed by patient advocates, public health experts and state officials in many blue states.

"It's a breath of fresh air," said Kim Bimestefer, head of Colorado's Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.

Chuck Ingoglia, head of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, said: "To be in an environment where people are talking about expanding health care access has made an enormous difference."

Mounting evidence shows that expanded Medicaid coverage improves enrollees' health, as surveys and mortality data in recent years have identified greater health improvements in states that expanded Medicaid through the 2010 health law versus states that did not.

Broadening eligibility

In addition to removing Medicaid restrictions imposed by Trump administration officials, the Biden administration has backed a series of expansions to broaden eligibility and add services enrollees can receive.

Biden supported a provision in the COVID relief bill that gives states the option to extend Medicaid to new mothers for up to a year after they give birth. Many experts say such coverage could help reduce the U.S. maternal mortality rate, which is far higher than rates in other wealthy nations.

Several states, including Illinois and New Jersey, had sought permission from the Trump administration for such expanded coverage, but their requests languished.

The COVID relief bill — which passed without Republican support — also provides additional Medicaid money to states to set up mobile crisis services for people facing mental health or substance use emergencies, further broadening Medicaid's reach.

And states will get billions more to expand so-called home and community-based services such as help with cooking, bathing and other basic activities that can prevent Medicaid enrollees from having to be admitted to expensive nursing homes or other institutions.

Perhaps the most far-reaching Medicaid expansions being considered by the Biden administration would push the government health plan into covering services not traditionally considered health care, such as housing.

This reflects an emerging consensus among health policy experts that investments in some non-medical services can ultimately save Medicaid money by keeping patients out of the hospital.

In recent years, Medicaid officials in red and blue states — including Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland and Washington — have begun exploring ways to provide rental assistance to select Medicaid enrollees to prevent medical complications linked to homelessness.

The Trump administration took steps to support similar efforts, clearing Medicare Advantage health plans to offer some enrollees non-medical benefits such as food, housing aid and assistance with utilities.

But state officials across the country said the new administration has signaled more support for both expanding current home-based services and adding new ones.

That has made a big difference, said Kate McEvoy, who directs Connecticut's Medicaid program. "There was a lot of discussion in the Trump administration," she said, "but not the capital to do it."

Other states are looking to the new administration to back efforts to expand Medicaid to inmates with mental health conditions and drug addiction so they can connect more easily to treatment once released.

Kentucky health secretary Eric Friedlander said he is hopeful federal officials will sign off on his state's initiative.

Still other states, such as California, say they are getting a more receptive audience in Washington for proposals to expand coverage to immigrants who are in the country without authorization, a step public health experts say can help improve community health and slow the spread of communicable diseases.

"Covering all Californians is critical to our mission," said Jacey Cooper, director of California's Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. "We really feel like the new administration is helping us ensure that everyone has access."

The Trump administration moved to restrict even authorized immigrants' access to the health care safety net, including the "public charge" rule that allowed immigration authorities to deny green cards to applicants if they used public programs such as Medicaid. In March, Biden abandoned that rule.

KHN correspondent Julie Rovner contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A COVID-19 vaccination clinic last month in Auburn, Maine. A drop in life expectancy in the U.S. stems largely from the coronavirus pandemic, a new study says.; Credit: Robert F. Bukaty/AP

A new study estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the declines were most pronounced among minority groups, including Black and Hispanic people.

In 2018, average life expectancy in the U.S. was about 79 years (78.7). It declined to about 77 years (76.9) by the end of 2020, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal.

"We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It's a horrific decrease in life expectancy," said Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and an author of the study released on Wednesday. (The study is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and includes simulated estimates for 2020.)

Beyond the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus, other factors play into the decreased longevity, including "disruptions in health care, disruptions in chronic disease management, and behavioral health crisis, where people struggling with addiction disorders or depression might not have gotten the help that they needed," Woolf said.

The lack of access to care and other pandemic-related disruptions hit some Americans much harder than others. And it's been well documented that the death rate for Black Americans was twice as high compared with white Americans.

The disparity is reflected in the new longevity estimates. "African Americans saw their life expectancy decrease by 3.3 years and Hispanic Americans saw their life expectancy decrease by 3.9 years," Woolf noted.

"These are massive numbers," Woolf said, that reflect the systemic inequalities that long predate the pandemic.

"It is impossible to look at these findings and not see a reflection of the systemic racism in the U.S.," Lesley Curtis, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, told NPR.

"This study further destroys the myth that the United States is the healthiest place in the world to live," Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (an NPR funder), said in an email.

He said wide differences in life expectancy rates were evident before COVID-19. "For example, life expectancy in Princeton, NJ—a predominantly White community—is 14 years higher than Trenton, NJ, a predominantly Black and Latino city only 14 miles away," Besser said.

Life expectancy in the U.S. had already been declining — albeit slowly — in the years leading up to the pandemic. And the U.S. has been losing ground compared with other wealthy countries, said Magali Barbieri of the University of California, Berkeley, in an editorial published alongside the new study.

The study estimates that the decline in life expectancy was .22 years (or about one-fifth of a year) in a group of 16 peer countries (including Austria, Finland, France, Israel, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) compared with the nearly two-year decline in the United States.

"The U.S. disadvantage in mortality compared with other high income democracies in 2020 is neither new nor sudden," Barbieri wrote. It appears the pandemic has magnified existing vulnerabilities in U.S. society, she added.

"The range of factors that play into this include income inequality, the social safety net, as well as racial inequality and access to health care," Duke's Curtis said.

So, what's the prognosis going forward in the United States? "I think life expectancy will rebound," Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth said.

But it's unlikely that the U.S. is on course to reverse the trend entirely.

"The U.S. has some of the best hospitals and some of the greatest scientists. But other countries do far better in getting quality medical care to their population," Woolf said. "We have big gaps in getting care to people who need it most, when they need it most."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Rose Wong for NPR/KHN

Claire Lang-Ree was in a lab coat taking a college chemistry class remotely in the kitchen of her Colorado Springs, Colo., home, when a profound pain twisted into her lower abdomen. She called her mom, Jen Lang-Ree, a nurse practitioner who worried it was appendicitis and found a nearby hospital in the family's health insurance network.

After a long wait in the emergency room of Penrose Hospital, Claire received morphine and an anti-nausea medication delivered through an IV. She also underwent a CT scan of her abdomen and a series of tests.

Hospital staffers ruled out appendicitis and surmised Claire was suffering from a ruptured ovarian cyst, which can be a harmless part of the menstrual cycle but can also be problematic and painful. After a few days — and a chemistry exam taken through gritted teeth — the pain went away.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Claire Lang-Ree, a 21-year-old Stanford University student who was living in Colorado for a few months while taking classes remotely. She's insured by Anthem Blue Cross through her mom's work as a pediatric nurse practitioner in Northern California.

Total Bill: $18,735.93, including two $722.50 fees for a nurse to "push" drugs into her IV, a process that takes seconds. Anthem's negotiated charges were $6,999 for the total treatment. Anthem paid $5,578.30, and the Lang-Rees owed $1,270.45 to the hospital, plus additional bills for radiologists and other care. (Claire also anted up a $150 copay at the ER.)

Service Provider: Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, part of the regional health care network Centura Health.

What Gives: As hospitals disaggregate charges for services once included in an ER visit, a hospitalization or a surgical procedure, there has been a proliferation of newfangled fees to increase billing. In the health field, this is called "unbundling." It's analogous to the airlines now charging extra for each checked bag or for an exit row seat. Over time, in the medical industry, this has led to separate fees for ever-smaller components of care. A charge to put medicine into a patient's IV line — a "push fee" — is one of them.

Though the biggest charge on Claire's bill, $9,885.73, was for a CT scan, in many ways Claire and her mom found the push fees most galling. (Note to readers: Scans are frequently many times more expensive when ordered in an ER than in other settings.)

"That was so ridiculous," says Claire, who adds she had previously taken the anti-nausea drug they gave her; it's available in tablet form for the price of a cup of coffee, no IV necessary. "It works really well. Why wasn't that an option?"

In Colorado, the average charge for the code corresponding to Claire's first IV push has nearly tripled since 2014, and the dollars hospitals actually get for the procedure has doubled. In Colorado Springs specifically, the cost for IV pushes rose even more sharply than it did statewide.

A typical nurse in Colorado Springs makes about $35 an hour. At that rate, it would take nearly 21 hours to earn the amount of money Penrose charged for a push of plunger that likely took seconds or at most minutes.

The hospital's charge for just one "IV push" was more than Claire's portion of the monthly rent in the home she shared with roommates. In the end, Anthem did not pay the push fees in its negotiated payment. But claims data shows that in 2020 Penrose typically received upward of $1,000 for the first IV push. And patients who didn't have an insurer to dismiss such charges would be stuck with them. Colorado hospitals on average received $723 for the same code, according to the claims database.

"It's insane the variation that we see in prices, and there's no rhyme or reason," says Cari Frank with the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, a Colorado nonprofit that runs a statewide health care claims database. "It's just that they've been able to negotiate those prices with the insurance company and the insurance company has decided to pay it."

To put the total cost in context, Penrose initially charged more money for Claire's visit than the typical Colorado hospital would have charged for helping someone give birth, according to data published by the Colorado Division of Insurance.

Even with the negotiated rate, "it was only $1,000 less than an average payment for having a baby," Frank says.

In an email statement, Centura said it "conducted a thorough review and determined all charges were accurate" and went on to explain that "an Emergency Room (ER) must be prepared for anything and everything that comes through the doors," requiring highly trained staff, plus equipment and supplies. "All of this adds up to large operating costs and can translate into patient responsibility."

As researchers have found, little stands in the way of hospitals charging through the roof, especially in a place like an emergency room, where a patient has few choices. A report from National Nurses United found that hospital markups have more than doubled since 1999, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an email, Anthem called the trend of increasing hospital prices "alarming" and "unsustainable."

But Ge Bai, an associate professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University, says when patients see big bills it isn't only the hospital's doing — a lot depends on the insurer, too. For one, the negotiated price depends on the negotiating power of the payer, in this case, Anthem.

"Most insurance companies don't have comparable negotiating or bargaining power with the hospital," said Bai. Prices in a state like Michigan, where Bai said the UAW union covers a big proportion of Michigan patients, will look very different from those in Colorado.

Also, insurers are not the wallet defenders patients might assume them to be.

"In many cases, insurance companies don't negotiate as aggressively as they can, because they earn profit from the percentage of the claims," she says. The more expensive the actual payment is, the more money they get to extract.

Though Anthem negotiated away the push fees, it paid the hospital 30% more than the average Level IV emergency department visit in Colorado that year, and it paid quadruple what Medicare would allow for her CT scan.

Resolution: Claire and her mom decided to fight the bill, writing letters to the hospital and searching for information on what the procedures should have cost. The cost of the IV pushes and CT scan infuriated them — the hospital wanted more than double for a CT than what top-rated hospitals typically charged in 2019.

But the threat of collections wore them out and ultimately they paid their assigned share of the bill — $1,420.45, which was mostly coinsurance.

"Eventually it got to the point where I was like, 'I don't really want to go to collections, because this might ruin my credit score,'" says Claire, who didn't want to graduate from college with dinged credit.

Bai and Frank say the state of Maryland can provide a useful benchmark for medical bills, since it sets the prices that hospitals can charge for each procedure. Data provided by the Maryland Health Care Commission shows that Anthem and Claire paid seven times what she likely would have paid for the CT scan there, and nearly 10 times what they likely would have paid for the emergency department Level IV visit. In Maryland, intravenous pushes typically cost about $200 apiece in 2019. A typical Maryland hospital would have received only about $1,350 from a visit like Claire's, and the Lang-Rees would have been on the hook for about $270.

Claire's pain has come back a few times, but never as bad as that night in Colorado. She has avoided reentering an emergency room since then. After visiting multiple specialists back home in California, she learned she might have had a condition called ovarian torsion.

The Takeaway: Even at an in-network facility and with good insurance, patients can get hurt financially by visiting the ER. A few helpful documents can help guide the way to fighting such charges. The first is an itemized bill.

"I just think it's wrong in the U.S. to charge so much," says Jen Lang-Ree. "It's just a little side passion of mine to look at those and make sure I'm not being scammed."

Bai, of Johns Hopkins, suggests asking for an itemized explanation of benefits from the insurance company, too. That will show what the hospital actually received for each procedure.

Find out if the hospital massively overcharged. The Medicare price lookup tool can be useful for getting a benchmark. And publicly available data on health claims in Colorado and at least 17 other states can help, too.

Vincent Plymell with the Colorado Division of Insurance encourages patients to reach out if something on a bill looks sketchy. "Even if it's not a plan we regulate," he wrote in an email, departments such as his "can always arm the consumer with info."

Finally, make scrutinizing such charges fun. Claire and Jen made bill-fighting their mother-daughter hobby for the winter. They recommend pretzel chips and cocktails to boost the mood.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Moderna says recently completed studies have found its vaccine to have a neutralizing effect against all COVID-19 variants tested, including the delta variant.; Credit: Fred Tanneau/AFP via Getty Images

Studies have found that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is effective against several variants of concern, including the delta variant, the biotech company announced.

Moderna said Tuesday that recently completed studies have found the vaccine to have a neutralizing effect against all COVID-19 variants tested, including the beta, delta, eta and kappa variants.

While still highly effective against the delta variant, the study showed the vaccine was less effective against it and certain other variants than against the original strain of the virus.

The antibody response against the delta variant was about two times weaker than against the ancestral strain of the virus.

The news echoes other findings that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are highly effective against the delta variant. A study published this month in Nature found that Pfizer's vaccine was able to neutralize variants including delta, though at somewhat reduced strength.

"These new data are encouraging and reinforce our belief that the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine should remain protective against newly detected variants," Stéphane Bancel, Moderna's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "These findings highlight the importance of continuing to vaccinate populations with an effective primary series vaccine."

The company also said it is developing a booster candidate: a 50-50 mix of its currently authorized COVID-19 vaccine and another messenger RNA vaccine it has developed.

The delta variant is spreading fast

The delta variant is the fast-moving form of the coronavirus that is now found in 96 countries, including the United States.

Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said the delta variant is "currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate COVID-19," noting that the proportion of infections being caused by the variant is doubling every two weeks.

The delta variant is now infecting at least 1 out of every 5 people who get the virus in the United States. In some sections of the country, the variant is already far more common, particularly in parts of the Midwest and West. At its current pace, the delta variant is expected to be the dominant virus in the U.S. within weeks.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease expert at the World Health Organization, called the delta variant "incredibly transmissible."

"These viruses are becoming more fit. The virus is evolving, and this is natural," she told NPR's Morning Edition. "It's more transmissible than the alpha variant, so we need to just do all we can to prevent as many infections as we can and do what we can do to reduce the spread."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Advocates for expanding Medicaid in Kansas staged a protest outside the entrance to the statehouse parking garage in Topeka in May 2019. Today, twelve states have still not expanded Medicaid. The biggest are Texas, Florida, and Georgia, but there are a few outside the South, including Wyoming and Kansas.; Credit: John Hanna/AP

There are more than 2 million people across the United States who have no option when it comes to health insurance. They're in what's known as the "coverage gap" — they don't qualify for Medicaid in their state, and make too little money to be eligible for subsidized health plans on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.

Briana Wright is one of those people. She's 27, lives near Jackson, Miss., works at McDonalds, and doesn't have health insurance. So to figure out her options when she recently learned she needed to have surgery to remove her gallbladder, she called Health Help Mississippi, a nonprofit that helps people enroll in health insurances.

Because she lives in Mississippi, "I wasn't going to be eligible for Medicaid — because I don't have children [and] I'm not pregnant," she tells NPR. When she had her income checked for Healthcare.gov, it was just shy of the federal poverty line — the minimum to qualify for subsidies. "It was $74 [short]. I was like, oh wow," she says.

Wright's inability to get a subsidized policy on Healthcare.gov is related to how the Affordable Care Act was originally designed. People needing insurance who were above the poverty line were supposed to be funneled via the federal and state insurance exchanges to private policies — with federal subsidies to help make those policies affordable. People who were under the poverty line were to be funneled to a newly-expanded version of Medicaid — the public health insurance program that is jointly funded by states and the federal government. But the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion essentially optional in 2012, and many Republican-led states declined to expand. Today, there are 12 holdout states that have not expanded Medicaid, and Mississippi is one of them.

So, Wright is still uninsured. Her gallbladder is causing her pain, but she can't afford the surgery without shuffling household bills, and risking leaving something else unpaid. "I'm stressed out about it. I don't know what I'm going to do," she says. "I'm going to just have to pay it out of pocket or get on some payment plan until it all gets paid for."

Hoping to finally find a fix for Wright and the millions like her who are in Medicaid limbo, several teams of Democratic lawmakers have recently been hashing out several options — hoping to build on the momentum of the latest Supreme Court confirmation that the ACA is here to stay.

OPTION 1: Sweet-talk the 12 holdout states

The COVID-19 relief bill passed in March included financial enticements for these 12 states to expand Medicaid. Essentially, the federal government will cover 90% of the costs of the newly eligible population, and an additional 5% of the costs of those already enrolled.

It's a good financial deal. An analysis by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the net benefit for these states would be $9.6 billion. But, so far — publicly, at least — no states have indicated they intend to take the federal government up on its offer.

"If that is not getting states to move, then that suggests that the deep root of their hesitation is not about financial constraint," says Jamila Michener, a professor of government at Cornell University and author of the book Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid Federalism And Unequal Politics.

Instead, Michener says, the reluctance among some Republican-led legislatures and governors to expand Medicaid may be a combination of partisan resistance to President Obama's signature health law, and not believing "this kind of government intervention for these groups of people is appropriate."

What's Next: When asked about progress on this front in an April press briefing, Biden's press secretary Jen Psaki said "the President is certainly supportive of — and an advocate for — states expanding Medicaid," but did not answer a follow up about whether the White House was directly reaching out to governors regarding this option.

OPTION 2: Create a federal public option to fill the gap

Some have advocated for circumventing these holdout states and creating a new, standalone federal Medicaid program that people who fall into this coverage gap could join. It would be kind of like a tailored public option just for this group.

This idea was included in Biden's 2022 budget, which says, in part: "In States that have not expanded Medicaid, the President has proposed extending coverage to millions of people by providing premium-free, Medicaid-like coverage through a Federal public option, paired with financial incentives to ensure States maintain their existing expansions."

But it wouldn't be simple. "That can be quite complex — to implement a federal program that's targeted to just these 2.2 million people across a handful of states," says Robin Rudowitz, co-director of the Medicaid program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, who wrote a recent analysis of the policy options.

It also may be a heavy lift, politically, says Michener. "Anything that expanded the footprint of the federal government and its role in subsidizing health care would be especially challenging," she says.

What's next: This idea was raised as a possible solution in a letter last month from Georgia's Democratic senators to Senate leaders, and Sen. Raphael Warnock said this week he plans to introduce legislation soon.

OPTION 3: Get around stubborn states by letting cities expand Medicaid

Instead of centralizing the approach, this next idea goes even more local. The COVER Now Act, introduced by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, would empower local jurisdictions to expand Medicaid. So, if you live in Austin, Texas, maybe you could get Medicaid, even if someone in Lubbock still couldn't.

The political and logistical challenges would be tough, policy analysts say. Logistically, such a plan would require counties and cities to create new infrastructure to run a Medicaid program, Rudowitz notes, and the federal government would have to oversee how well these new local programs complied with all of Medicaid's rules.

"It does not seem feasible politically," Michener says. "The legislators who would have to vote to make this possible would be ceding quite a bit of power to localities." It also might amplify geographic equity concerns, she says. People's access to health insurance would not just "be arbitrarily based on what state you live in — which is the current state of affairs — It's also going to be arbitrary based on what county you live in, based on what city you live in."

What's next: Doggett introduced the bill earlier this month. There's no guarantee it would get a vote on the House floor and — even if it did — it wouldn't survive a likely filibuster in the evenly divided Senate.

OPTION 4: Change the ACA to open up the exchanges

A fourth idea, Rudowitz says, is to change the law to remove the minimum cutoff for the private health insurance exchanges, since "right now, individuals who are below poverty are not eligible for subsidies in the marketplace." With this option, states wouldn't be paying any of the costs, since the federal government pays premium subsidies, Rudowitz says, but "there are issues around beneficiary protections, benefits, out-of-pocket costs."

What's next: This idea hasn't yet been included in any current congressional bills.

Will any of these ideas come to fruition?

Even with a variety of ideas on the table, "there's no slam dunk option, it's a tough policy issue," Rudowitz says. All of these would be complicated to pull off.

It's possible Democrats will include one of these ideas in a reconciliation bill that could pass without the threat of a Republican filibuster. But that bill has yet to be written, and what will be included is anyone's guess.

Even so, Michener says she's glad the discussion of the Medicaid coverage gap is happening, because it's sensitizing the public, as well as people in power, to the problem and potentially changing the political dynamic down the line. "Even in policy areas where you don't have any kind of guaranteed victory, it is often worth fighting the fight," she says. "Politics is a long game."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

People rest while riding a Los Angeles Metro Rail train amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 1, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.; Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Despite the racial reckoning going on in America right now, and despite the fact that attitudes towards race, inclusion and representation are different now than they were 30 years ago, new research from UC Berkeley shows that a large majority of American metro areas are more segregated now than they were in 1990. The new report from Berkeley’s Institute covers a number of topic areas, but among the key findings were from the national segregation report component of the project, which found Los Angeles to be the sixth-most segregated metro area with more than 200,000 people.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll talk with the lead researcher on the new report and a local historian to talk about how we see the findings of the report play out in Southern California.

Guests:

Stephen Menendian, assistant director and director of research at the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, which works to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society in order to create transformative change; he tweets @SMenendian

Eric Avila, professor of history, urban planning, and Chicano/a studies at UCLA

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.