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Time 2020-06-22 22:02:42

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Vietnam has reported no coronavirus deaths and, for more than two months, no local infections (with a total for this year of just 349) despite having a population of 97 million and a border shared with China. VOA News takes a closer look:It is hard for outsiders to verify official data, though health experts say Vietnam headed off a full-blown calamity because of its drastic and early action. The government was hyper-aware of the threat to hospital and quarantine capacity... Vietnam saw the disease as a threat early on, treating its first patient in January and proceeding to contact trace and restrict movement. Timing was critical because of the virus' ability to spread exponentially. The Ho Chi Minh City government said, for instance, that for every 300 people infected, 84,000 people had to quarantine. It is likely that Vietnam did not have to cover up mass infections and deaths because it acted before the virus could reach that point... In addition to national coordination, targeted testing and isolation, Vietnam can decree measures regardless of public debate, like tapping a national security network to monitor the physical and virtual space... On one hand, Vietnam used fines and takedown orders to curb the spread of false information about the virus, as have other nations. On the other hand, the controls continue a history of censorship of information that the Southeast Asian government considers unfavorable. Social media allowed some false information to spread in Vietnam, but also greatly heightened people's awareness of the virus and what they should do, concluded a study by 11 authors published in April in Sustainability, a science journal. Vietnam's success, they said, came from "mobilizing citizens' awareness of disease prevention without spreading panic, via fostering genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals." Some examples from the article:Standing vice chairman of the People's Committee, Le Thanh Liem, urged local authorities and other relevant agencies to visit every house to find out if anyone had come from other countries since March 8 and test and quarantine anyone at risk at home or quarantine areas.Those entering a cafe have a good chance of meeting a security guard who sprays their hands with disinfectant.If getting on a bus, they will be told to put on a mask and sit one row apart from others. The Washington Post reports:After a top NASA official improperly contacted a senior Boeing executive about a bid to win a contract potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the company attempted to amend its proposal past the deadline for doing so, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That raised alarm bells inside the space agency, where officials were concerned that Boeing was attempting to take advantage of inside information. Ultimately, the matter was referred to NASA's inspector general office, and NASA's leadership last month forced Doug Loverro to resign from his position as the associate administrator of NASA's human spaceflight directorate. Boeing did not win one of the lucrative contracts to build a system capable of landing astronauts on the moon. But the inspector general investigation could be another headache for a company under fire for having an unusually cozy relationship with federal regulators, especially if it identifies wrongdoing on the part of Boeing senior executives... "It's one thing to have a mistake that violated the Integrity in Procurement Act," according to a congressional aide with knowledge of the matter. "It's another if the company took that information and acted on it." An anonymous reader quotes CBS News:Researchers, armchair astronauts and even brides and grooms looking for an out-of-this-world wedding experience will be able to celebrate, collect data or simply enjoy the view from an altitude of 100,000 feet in a balloon-borne pressurized cabin, complete with a bar and a restroom, a space startup announced Thursday. "Spaceship Neptune," operated by a company called Space Perspective from leased facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, will carry eight passengers at a time on six-hour flights [with a crew member]. The passenger cabin, lifted by a huge hydrogen-filled balloon, will climb at a sedate 12 miles per hour to an altitude of about 30 miles high. That will be followed by a slow descent to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean where a recovery ship will be standing by to secure the cabin and crew. Test flights carrying scientific research payloads are expected to begin in 2021. The first flights carrying passengers are expected within the next three-and-a-half years or so, with piloted test flights before that. While the company initially will operate out of the Florida spaceport, the system could be launched from multiple sites around the world, with Hawaii and Alaska near-term possibilities. They're expecting to charge around $125,000 per passenger, according to the article about half the price of higher sub-orbital flight on a Virgin Galactic rocket-powered spaceplane. Though Spaceship Neptune's customers will not experience weightlessness, their CEO is still promising "opportunities for civilian astronauts to experience this planet Earth from the edge of space, a privilege previously available to only a few." And they're also touting "really great" live air-to-ground communication which they think would be great for corporate events. An anonymous reader quotes The Washington Post:In the global race for a coronavirus vaccine, more than 100 labs, universities and drug companies have started off on experimental missions. But just 11 candidate vaccines, according to the World Health Organization, have reached the stage of clinical testing. The WHO says that only Oxford University's vaccine has reached what is known as Phase 3, the final and largest-scale trial... "There is quite a strong probability that the vaccine will work," said Walter Ricciardi, the World Health Organization's Italian government adviser. But the vaccine is far from a sure thing, according to experts. It might not work, or it might give immunity to only some of those who are injected. Even once a vaccine makes it to market, it remains unknown whether it will offer long-term protection, or only for a year or two. The world will ultimately need more than one vaccine anyway, as demand will soar beyond what any one company could produce. "The expectation is that we will have a protective vaccine. Probably more than one," said Antonio Cassone, the former head of the infectious-disease department at Italy's national health institute. "But nobody will know at that time how long the protection will last. We don't know the antibody duration. This will be yet another jump into the unknown." A Chinese biotech firm has reported encouraging results in early-stage clinical trials and is also among the front-runners to crack the vaccine code. The article adds that Oxford's vaccine "proved effective and safe with rhesus monkeys during the earliest stage of experimentation." destinyland writes: Most studies aim for deep decarbonization of electric power systems by 2050," argues a new study from the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. But they've produced a new report "the first to show we can get there in half that time with the latest renewable energy and battery cost data." "Plummeting costs for wind and solar energy have dramatically changed the prospects for rapid, cost-effective expansion of renewable energy," announces UC Berkeley's School of Public Policy. Even with no policy changes, they predict that by 2035 America will have achieved 55% clean energy usage (due to increases in solar and wind power) while experiencing a 10% reduction in electricity costs. But under their 90% Clean (carbon-free) scenario, "all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new fossil fuel plants are built," meaning the country "avoids over $1.2 trillion in health and environmental costs, including 85,000 avoided premature deaths, through 2050." During normal periods of generation and demand, wind, solar, and batteries provide 70% of annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear provide 20%. During periods of very high demand and/or very low renewable generation, existing natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear plants combined with battery storage cost-effectively compensate for mismatches between demand and wind/solar generation. Generation from natural gas plants constitutes about 10% of total annual electricity generation, which is about 70% lower than their generation in 2019. "Without robust policy reforms," their announcement adds, "most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs would not be realized." Slashdot reader shirappu writes: For eight years now, the Mars Rover Curiosity has been exploring the surface of Mars. Even now, it's still exploring, and still getting upgrades. According to Tech Crunch, NASA is now looking to interested volunteers to help upgrade the rover's terrain-scanning AI systems by annotating image data of the planet itself. "The problem is that while there are lots of ready-made data sets of images with faces, cats and cars labeled, there aren't many of the Martian surface annotated with different terrain types..." notes TechCrunch. "Improvements to the AI might let the rover tell not just where it can drive, but the likelihood of losing traction and other factors that could influence individual wheel placement." shirappu continues:Volunteers go through a short tutorial after which they can label images to help the rover better understand the terrain on which it drives. The system is expected to be used in future planet rover robots, and the project marks an interesting example of open crowd-sourcing to improve machine learning systems, and how it is impacting technology even on other planets. Click this link for the AI4Mars site link where people can volunteer. The World Health Organization has now halted research on whether hydroxychloroquine could be an effective treatment for COVID-19, reports NBC News, after multiple studies showed the drug "has no impact on the coronavirus." But now that America's Food and Drug Administration has revoked permission for using it to treat coronavirus patients, CNN reports that the U.S. government "is stuck with 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine."The government started stockpiling donated hydroxychloroquine in late March, after President Trump touted it as "very encouraging" and "very powerful" and a "game-changer." But Monday, the FDA revoked its emergency use authorization to use the drug to treat Covid-19, saying there was "no reason to believe" the drug was effective against the virus, and that it increased the risk of side effects, including heart problems... [M]any infectious disease experts, including those who've studied the drug for coronavirus, say there was never any evidence that the drug worked for the virus. And some of America's states are now also stuck with millions of hydroxychloroquine pills which they're no longer allowed to use to treat COVID-19, reports The Columbus Dispatch:The state of Ohio purchased more than 2 million hydroxychloroquine pills for $602,629 on April 9, Melanie Amato, spokeswoman for the Department of Health, said via email. [And an additional 2 million were donated by an Ohio-based drugmaker...] The FDA change leaves the Ohio Department of Health with more than 4 million pills, which Amato said have a shelf life of about 18 to 24 months... [T]he state can give the drug only to facilities licensed to maintain dangerous prescription drugs... Utah purchased $800,000 worth of the drug and Oklahoma spent $2 million on it... A spokeswoman for Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, a Glenford Republican, called the state Health Department's purchase of hydroxychloroquine "a waste of money." New submitter UnsungBraveHeart shares a report from Reuters: Scientists in Italy have found traces of the new coronavirus in wastewater collected from Milan and Turin in December 2019 -- suggesting COVID-19 was already circulating in northern Italy before China reported the first cases. The Italian National Institute of Health looked at 40 sewage samples collected from wastewater treatment plants in northern Italy between October 2019 and February 2020. An analysis released on Thursday said samples taken in Milan and Turin on Dec. 18 showed the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Scientists said the detection of traces of the virus before the end of 2019 was consistent with evidence in other countries that COVID-19 may have been circulating before China reported the first cases on Dec. 31. A study in May by French scientists found that a Paris man was infected with COVID-19 as early as Dec. 27, nearly a month before France confirmed its first cases. Planetary scientist Lynnae Quick decided to explore whether -- hypothetically -- ocean planets, similar to Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, are common in the Milky Way galaxy. "Through a mathematical analysis of several dozen exoplanets, including planets in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system, Quick and her colleagues learned something significant: More than a quarter of the exoplanets they studied could be ocean worlds, with a majority possibly harboring oceans beneath layers of surface ice, similar to Europa and Enceladus," reports Phys.Org. "Additionally, many of these planets could be releasing more energy than Europa and Enceladus." From the report: To look for possible ocean worlds, Quick's team selected 53 exoplanets with sizes most similar to Earth, though they could have up to eight times more mass. Scientists assume planets of this size are more solid than gaseous and, thus, more likely to support liquid water on or below their surfaces. At least 30 more planets that fit these parameters have been discovered since Quick and her colleagues began their study in 2017, but they were not included in the analysis, which was published on June 18 in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. With their Earth-size planets identified, Quick and her team sought to determine how much energy each one could be generating and releasing as heat. The team considered two primary sources of heat. The first, radiogenic heat, is generated over billions of years by the slow decay of radioactive materials in a planet's mantle and crust. That rate of decay depends on a planet's age and the mass of its mantle. Other scientists already had determined these relationships for Earth-size planets. So, Quick and her team applied the decay rate to their list of 53 planets, assuming each one is the same age as its star and that its mantle takes up the same proportion of the planet's volume as Earth's mantle does. Next, the researchers calculated heat produced by something else: tidal force, which is energy generated from the gravitational tugging when one object orbits another. Planets in stretched out, or elliptical, orbits shift the distance between themselves and their stars as they circle them. This leads to changes in the gravitational force between the two objects and causes the planet to stretch, thereby generating heat. Eventually, the heat is lost to space through the surface. One exit route for the heat is through volcanoes or cryovolcanoes. Another route is through tectonics, which is a geological process responsible for the movement of the outermost rocky or icy layer of a planet or moon. Whichever way the heat is discharged, knowing how much of it a planet pushes out is important because it could make or break habitability. For instance, too much volcanic activity can turn a livable world into a molten nightmare. But too little activity can shut down the release of gases that make up an atmosphere, leaving a cold, barren surface. Just the right amount supports a livable, wet planet like Earth, or a possibly livable moon like Europa. Some have suggested that some of these planets could be watery, and Quick's estimates support this idea. According to her team's calculations, TRAPPIST-1 e, f, g and h could be ocean worlds, which would put them among the 14 ocean worlds the scientists identified in this study. The researchers predicted that these exoplanets have oceans by considering the surface temperatures of each one. This information is revealed by the amount of stellar radiation each planet reflects into space. Quick's team also took into account each planet's density and the estimated amount of internal heating it generates compared to Earth. Behold the hot, energetic Universe. A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays. From a report: The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos - instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded. Feasting black holes, exploding stars, and searingly hot gas. The data comes from the eRosita instrument mounted on Spektr-RG. This orbiting telescope was launched in July last year and despatched to an observing position some 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) from Earth. Once commissioned and declared fully operational in December, it was left to slowly rotate and scan the depths of space. eRosita's first all-sky data-set, represented in the image at the top of this page, was completed only last week. It records over a million sources of X-rays. "That's actually pretty much the same number as had been detected in the whole history of X-ray astronomy going back 60 years. We've basically doubled the known sources in just six months," said Kirpal Nandra, who heads the high-energy astrophysics group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany."The data is truly stunning and I think what we're doing here will revolutionise X-ray astronomy," he told BBC News. CERN has taken a major step towards building a 100-kilometre circular super-collider to push the frontier of high-energy physics. From a report: The decision was unanimously endorsed by the CERN Council on 19 June, following the plan's approval by an independent panel in March. Europe's preeminent particle-physics organization will need global help to fund the project, which is expected to cost at least $23.5 billion and would be a follow-up to the lab's famed Large Hadron Collider. The new machine would collide electrons with their antimatter partners, positrons, by the middle of the century. The design -- to be built in an underground tunnel near CERN's location in Geneva, Switzerland -- will enable physicists to study the properties of the Higgs boson and, later, to host an even more powerful machine that will collide protons and last well into the second half of the century. The approval is not yet a final go-ahead. But it means CERN can now put substantial effort into designing a collider and researching its feasibility, while pushing to the backburner research and development efforts for alternative designs for LHC follow-ups, such as a linear eletron-positron collider or one that would accelerate muons. "I think it's a historic day for CERN and particle physics, in Europe and beyond," CERN director-general Fabiola Gianotti told the council after the vote. The global coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, with Thursday's 150,000 new cases the highest in a single day, World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. From a report: "Almost half of the cases reported were from the Americas," he told a virtual briefing. "The world is in a new and dangerous phase ... the virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible." sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: With their ability to soak up carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, the world's great forests are often referred to as the planet's lungs. But Anastassia Makarieva, a theorist at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia, says they are its beating heart, too. They recycle vast amounts of moisture into the air and, in the process, also whip up winds that pump that water around the world. The first part of that idea -- forests as rainmakers -- originated with other scientists and is increasingly appreciated by water resource managers in a world of rampant deforestation. But the second part, a theory Makarieva calls the biotic pump, is far more controversial. When the NBA restarts its season next month, it may pipe in crowd noise from the NBA 2K video game to help simulate fans in the arena. Another proposal is to have players use Oura's smart rings to predict the onset of COVID-19 related symptoms. Engadget reports: According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the specifics were laid out in an informational memo dubbed "Life inside the Bubble," that described testing plans, quarantine protocols and more. The part that's specifically interesting to us -- other than players only lounges with NBA 2K and bracelets that beep if people are within six feet of each other for too long -- is its proposed use of Oura's smart rings. Earlier this month, study results from West Virginia University's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute suggested that physiological data from the rings, combined in its digital platform with information obtained from wearers via in-app surveys, can "forecast and predict the onset of COVID-19 related symptoms" three days in advance, with 90 percent accuracy. According to The Athletic, use of the rings will be optional, and there's no word on what other data will be used to track possible symptoms. ESPN reporter Zach Lowe tweeted that if players wear the rings, team personnel will not have access unless it detects an "illness probability score" that triggers a medical review. The player's union hasn't announced it's fully on board with the restart just yet but plans appear to be in motion, and it's possible that if you're watching games played in mostly-empty arenas with video game crowd noise, some of the NBA players spectating will have very familiar-looking jewelry on. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered all Californians to wear face coverings while in public or high-risk settings, including when shopping, taking public transit or seeking medical care, following growing concerns that an increase in coronavirus cases has been caused by residents failing to voluntarily take that precaution. From a report: Newsom's order comes a week after Orange County rescinded a requirement for residents to wear masks and as other counties across California are debating whether to join other local jurisdictions in mandating face coverings. The Newsom administration did not address how the new requirement will be enforced or if Californians who violate the order will be subject to citations or other penalties. "Simply put, we are seeing too many people with faces uncovered -- putting at risk the real progress we have made in fighting the disease," Newsom said in a statement. "California's strategy to restart the economy and get people back to work will only be successful if people act safely and follow health recommendations. That means wearing a face covering, washing your hands and practicing physical distancing." Until now, state public health officials had only recommended that Californians wear the face coverings which, if worn by someone with the virus, have been shown to decease chances of spreading it to others. Looks like someone has already voted from this IP. If you would like to vote please login and try again. "Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance, science fiction..."-- Art Spiegelman

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