The truth about how you can catch coronavirus, who is most vulnerable and what you can do to avoid infection
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Track the spread of coronavirus around the world using these live maps
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A quantum internet could be used to send un-hackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss.
Now, Harvard and MIT researchers have found a way to correct for signal loss with a prototype quantum node that can catch, store and entangle bits of quantum information. The research is the missing link towards a practical quantum internet and a major step forward in the development of long-distance quantum networks.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.seas.harvard.edu
No matter if you enjoy taking or just watching images of space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made their entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like.
You can type in the term you want to search for and browse through the database of stunning images of outer space. Additionally, there are also images of astronauts, rocket launches, events at NASA and other interesting stuff. What’s also interesting is that almost every image comes with the EXIF data, which could be useful for astrophotography enthusiasts.
NASA recently launched a GIPHY account full of awesome animated gifs. It’s also great that photography is an important part of their missions, and so it was even before “pics or it didn’t happen” became the rule. The vast media library they have now published is available to everyone, free of charge and free of copyright. Therefore, you can take a peek at the fascinating mysteries of space, check out what it’s like inside NASA’s premises, or download the images to make something awesome from them. Either way, you will enjoy it!
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.physics-astronomy.com
Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday.
Zhang Xinmin, an official at China’s science and technology ministry, said favipiravir, developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients. “It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang told reporters on Tuesday.
Patients who were given the medicine in Shenzhen turned negative for the virus after a median of four days after becoming positive, compared with a median of 11 days for those who were not treated with the drug, public broadcaster NHK said.
In addition, X-rays confirmed improvements in lung condition in about 91% of the patients who were treated with favipiravir, compared to 62% or those without the drug.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.theguardian.com
Knowledge is power—and when it comes to the coronavirus, it can also save lives.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.fastcompany.com
A nest is “a disordered stick bomb,” resilient in ways that humans have hardly begun to understand, much less emulate.
The term “bird’s nest” has come to describe a messy hairdo, tangled fishing line and other unspeakably knotty conundrums. But that does birds an injustice. Their tiny brains, dense with neurons, produce marvels that have long captured scientific interest as naturally selected engineering solutions — yet nests are still not well understood.
One effort to disentangle the structural dynamics of the nest is underway in the sunny yellow lab — the Mechanical Biomimetics and Open Design Lab — of Hunter King, an experimental soft-matter physicist at the University of Akron in Ohio.
“We hypothesize that a bird nest might effectively be a disordered stick bomb, with just enough stored energy to keep it rigid,” Dr. King said. He is the principal investigator of an ongoing study, with a preliminary review paper, “Mechanics of randomly packed filaments — The ‘bird nest’ as meta-material,” recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.nytimes.com
A psychological theory could kickstart improvements in the way robots are able to walk, thanks to a University of Manchester study.
The study – a unique collaboration between a clinical psychologist, robotics engineers and a robotics entrepreneur is published in the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems. It analyzed what happens when standard algorithms driving a self-balancing robot – made from simple Lego – were replaced with those based on ‘perceptual control theory’.
The theory was encoded into the little droid, allowing it to control what it sensed so that it moved around more effectively, just as humans and other animals can. Though the robot moves on two wheels, it is an ‘inverted pendulum’, which requires nimble balancing in a similar way to how our bodies are kept upright when we walk. So, the better the robot can balance, the better prepared it will be for walking like a human.
In the study, the more lifelike robot balanced more accurately, more promptly and more efficiently than its rivals by assessing its environment at least 100 times a second. It also moved to a new location, even when disturbed by sideways nudges, more effectively than its competitors.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.manchester.ac.uk
To date, teaching a robot to perform a task has usually involved either direct coding, trial-and-error tests or handholding the machine. Soon, though, you might just have to perform that task like you would any other day. MIT scientists have developed a system, Planning with Uncertain Specifications (PUnS), that helps bots learn complicated tasks when they’d otherwise stumble, such as setting the dinner table. Instead of the usual method where the robot receives rewards for performing the right actions, PUnS has the bot hold "beliefs" over a variety of specifications and use a language (linear temporal logic) that lets it reason about what it has to do right now and in the future.
To nudge the robot toward the right outcome, the team set criteria that helps the robot satisfy its overall beliefs. The criteria can satisfy the formulas with the highest probability, the greatest number of formulas or even those with the least chance of failure. A designer could optimize a robot for safety if it’s working with hazardous materials, or consistent quality if it’s a factory model.
MIT’s system is much more effective than traditional approaches in early testing. A PUnS-based robot only made six mistakes in 20,000 attempts at setting the table, even when the researchers threw in complications like hiding a fork — the automaton just finished the rest of the tasks and came back to the fork when it popped up. In that way, it demonstrated a human-like ability to set a clear overall goal and improvise.
The developers ultimately want the system to not only learn by watching, but react to feedback. You could give it verbal corrections or a critique of its performance, for instance. That will involve much more work, but it hints at a future where your household robots could adapt to new duties by watching you set an example.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.engadget.com
The world’s hardest-hit countries are trying a variety of measures to stop the spread of the virus. Here’s how they’re doing.
Milan, Italy. Daegu, South Korea. Qom, Iran. Many of the world’s largest coronavirus outbreaks took root in and around well-traveled cities, but they have since grown to encompass entire countries.
Cases have spread across Italy’s north and down to Rome, leading to a lockdown of the entire country. Iran’s capital, where leaders dismissed the virus just two weeks ago, has seen thousands infected. And cases continue to surge across Europe.
The outbreaks are not all heading in the same direction. South Korea has managed to slow growth of new cases for now, through intensive testing and monitoring of infections. Italy, Iran and the United States are still reporting large numbers of new cases every day.
Official case totals are an imperfect method of judging the world’s outbreaks. Every country has more cases than it has been able to detect through lab tests. And a shortage of testing kits in some countries, like Indonesia and the United States, along with a lack of public disclosure in others, like Egypt, means official reports are probably masking large outbreaks.
Here’s the extent of some of the largest outbreaks in the world and information on how these countries are trying to slow the spread of the virus.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.nytimes.com
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