Infineon’s new 62-mm module package for its CoolSiC MOSFET 1200-V module family opens up new application opportunities for silicon carbide.
Infineon’s new 62-mm module package for its CoolSiC MOSFET 1200-V module family opens up new application opportunities for silicon carbide.
The 256-channel digital x-ray readout IC for flat panel detectors delivers clearer images for clinicians, while reducing a patient’s exposure to radiation.
Microchip’s smallest maXTouch touch controllers offer weatherproof operation and glove-touch detection in multi-function displays, touch pads, and smart surfaces in automotive applications.
NEW RESOURCES
State of the Planet, Columbia University: New Website Maps and Models the Science of Peace. “A new website … centering on recent research on sustainably peaceful societies has just been launched at The Earth Institute at Columbia University. The website presents an interactive introduction to the findings and outputs of the work of a multidisciplinary team of scholars that began studying peaceful societies in 2014. It showcases a global map of peaceful societies, findings from hundreds of empirical studies, and peace tech visualizations and simulations from the Sustaining Peace Project at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4), which seeks to advocate for more a more comprehensive understanding of how peace is sustained with local stakeholders, policymakers, and academics.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
TechCrunch: YouTube’s latest experiment is a TikTok rival focused on 15-second videos. “Users in the new YouTube experiment will see an option to ‘create a video’ in the mobile upload flow, the company says. Similar to TikTok, the user can then tap and hold the record button to record their clip. They can then tap again or release the button to stop recording. This process is repeated until they’ve created 15 seconds worth of video footage. YouTube will combine the clips and upload it as one single video when the recording completes. In other words, just like TikTok.”
The Verge: Twitter promises to fine-tune its 5G coronavirus labeling after unrelated tweets were flagged. “Twitter says it’s working on improving how it labels tweets with problematic 5G or coronavirus content, after users reported their tweets were being mislabeled with a COVID-19 fact-check.”
USEFUL STUFF
MakeTechEasier: Virtual Assistants for Linux You Can Use on Your Desktop . “You have most likely heard about virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and even Google Assistant. It isn’t common, however, to hear about virtual assistants for Linux. That doesn’t mean Linux doesn’t have anything to offer, however. Here, we’ll take a look at two virtual assistants that are available for Linux.”
Irish Examiner: New website helps people with dyslexia improve reading. “Computer science student Kevin Cogan created the platform so it can be adapted to suit an individual’s needs. The software can be downloaded as a Google Chrome extension so that dyslex.ie can be used across all sites and online scripts.” Not entirely free; there is a premium version that unlocks all features, but according to the article it starts at a modest €2 a month (about $2.25 USD.)
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Archinect: Paul Revere Williams archive acquired by USC School of Architecture and Getty Research Institute. “The architectural archives of prolific 20th century architect Paul Revere Williams, long thought to have been lost to fire during the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, have been jointly acquired by the University of Southern California School of Architecture and the Getty Research Institute (GRI). Rather than being lost, however, according to an announcement published by the Getty Research Institute, the archive had been ‘meticulously cared for by Karen Elyse Hudson, Williams’ granddaughter, who has published extensively on his work.'”
MSN News: Democratic Senators Ask Zuckerberg to Act on White Supremacy. “Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg faces demands from Senate Democrats for answers about hate groups on the platform at the same time a growing number of companies are pulling advertising from its sites over harmful content. In a letter to Zuckerberg Tuesday, three Democratic senators question what they call the company’s ‘lack of action to prevent white supremacist groups from using the platform as a recruitment and organizational tool’ despite Facebook’s stated policies on hate speech.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
TorrentFreak: Court Excoriates ‘Copyright Troll’ Lawyer and Adds $100,000 in Sanctions. “Copyright lawyer Richard Liebowitz has, once again, been sanctioned by a New York federal court. In a scathing order, the court sums up the attorney’s ‘deplorable record’ which includes violating court orders and lying under oath. For his most recent wrongdoings, Liebowitz must pay over $100,000 in sanctions and also risks his right to practice in the district.”
National Accord Newspaper: Ethiopia experiences Internet blackout after musician Haacaaluu shot dead. “A blanket shutdown of the Internet in Ethiopia is being reported by Access Now, an organisation defending the digital rights of users at risk around the world. This came hours after prominent and outspoken Oromo musician Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was shot dead in Addis Abeba, the country’s capital. There have also been reports – via social media – of people taking to the streets demanding justice.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
EurekAlert: New open-source software aims to reduce cybersickness in VR use. “Cybersickness, or motion sickness during the use of virtual reality, can be a major roadblock to the development and adoption of augmented and virtual reality technology. Now researchers at UTSA have built GingerVR, the first open-source Unity software tool kit that allows developers to use proven techniques and innovative solutions against cybersickness in future extended reality environments.” Good afternoon, Internet…
Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!
The 256-channel digital x-ray readout IC for flat panel detectors delivers clearer images for clinicians, while reducing a patient’s exposure to radiation.
Microchip’s smallest maXTouch touch controllers offer weatherproof operation and glove-touch detection in multi-function displays, touch pads, and smart surfaces in automotive applications.
Advanced techniques using microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and advanced digital signal processing are used to reduce automotive in-cabin noise, enabling background-noise reduction, clear voice communication between passengers, and emergency and high-fidelity hands-free voice calling.
Advanced techniques using microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and advanced digital signal processing are used to reduce automotive in-cabin noise, enabling background-noise reduction, clear voice communication between passengers, and emergency and high-fidelity hands-free voice calling.
There is a variety of presence-detection solutions, including occupancy-density indication and absolute social-distancing measurement for social distancing in retail spaces that range in complexity and cost.
Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Wear a mask if you go out. Please be careful. I love you.
NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH
NextGov: VA Launches Digital COVID-19 Screening App for Patients and Employees. “The app—accessible online, by texting ‘SCREEN’ to 53079 or by scanning a QR code—asks six questions to gauge an individual’s exposure to and likelihood of having contracted COVID-19. Upon arrival at a VA facility, staff will meet people at the entrance, take a look at the results of the survey and either allow them to enter or direct them to a separate area for additional screening.”
Engineering and Technology: Covid-19 dashboard forecasts local ‘pressure points’ across UK. “Researchers from Oxford University’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science have created an online tool which combines data from multiple sources and identifies likely Covid-19 ‘pressure points’.”
Purdue University: How have people responded to COVID-19 restrictions around the world?. “Public camera footage of how people have responded so far to COVID-19 social distancing guidelines in spaces such as tourist spots and busy street corners could help inform new policies as the pandemic progresses. But that footage is scattered all over the internet. Purdue University engineers built a website that pools together live footage and images from approximately 30,000 network cameras in more than 100 countries, making data easier to analyze.”
EurekAlert: The MIT Press and UC Berkeley launch Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 journal. “The MIT Press announced today the launch of Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19), an open access, rapid-review overlay journal that will accelerate peer review of COVID-19-related research and deliver real-time, verified scientific information that policymakers and health leaders can use.”
NEW RESOURCES – LEGAL / SECURITY / PRIVACY / FINANCIAL
ABA Journal: Small businesses have COVID-19 questions, and the legal profession is working to answer them . “Through its Lowcountry COVID-19 Small Business/Non-Profit Legal Clinic, Charleston Legal Access works with Am Law 100 firms Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough and Jackson Lewis as well as fellow nonprofit Lowcountry Local First to provide free legal advice to local businesses with 25 or fewer employees during 45-minute telephone or video calls. They also assist other nonprofit organizations. The clinic is one of eight launched and supported by the Lawyers for Good Government Foundation, a nonprofit network of more than 125,000 legal advocates, throughout the country starting in New York City and extending as far as Washington state. It provides the clinic framework, client intake form templates and an online database, which is used to assign client matters to volunteer attorneys and track the outcome of those matters.”
NEW RESOURCES – STATE-SPECIFIC
News Channel 20: IDPH map shows COVID-19 risk by county. “As the number of COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country are seeing substantial increases, there is now a new tool in Illinois to keep track of the pandemic in your area. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is offering an even closer look at the COVID-19 risks in each Illinois county.”
USEFUL STUFF
Science Blog: Still Confused About Masks? Here’s The Science Behind How Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus. “Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization now recommend cloth masks for the general public, but earlier in the pandemic, both organizations recommended just the opposite. These shifting guidelines may have sowed confusion among the public about the utility of masks. But health experts say the evidence is clear that masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the more people wearing masks, the better. We talked to UC San Francisco epidemiologist George Rutherford, MD, and infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong, MD, about the CDC’s reversal on mask-wearing, the current science on how masks work, and what to consider when choosing a mask.”
FACT CHECKS
12 News: Verify: Contrary to social media claims, there’s no evidence Arizona is ‘double-counting’ positive tests for coronavirus. “You may have noticed more than a few social media skeptics about Arizona’s soaring coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. They just don’t trust the numbers. We verified whether the state Department of Health Services, the repository of the data, is ‘double-counting’ positive coronavirus tests. On Sunday, Arizona posted a single-day record high of 3,857 cases. Before Gov. Doug Ducey reopened the state six weeks ago, 1 in 20 tests was positive. Today, 1 in every 5 tests are returning as positive, according to DHS.”
CNET: 11 coronavirus health myths, fact checked. “Well before the coronavirus was named a pandemic by the World Health Organization, people started sharing all sorts of questionable advice on how to protect yourself from getting infected, ranging from misguided (like making your own hand sanitizer) to outright dangerous (like injecting bleach into your body). It’s reached the point where Facebook has moved to ban any ads promoting fake coronavirus cures. In an effort to get the facts straight, we’re going to bust these common coronavirus myths that have taken over our feeds.”
SOCIETAL IMPACT
BBC: Coronavirus: UK economy hit worse than first thought. “The UK economy shrank more than first thought between January and March, contracting 2.2% in the joint largest fall since 1979, official figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised down its previous estimate of a 2% contraction, with all the main economic sectors dropping.”
Phys .org: Post-COVID, more in West see China as major power: study. “The coronavirus pandemic has led a growing number of Westerners to see China as a top power, with the lead of the United States slipping, a study said Tuesday. A survey of French, German and US opinion released by the German Marshall Fund of the United States found significant increases in perceptions of Chinese influence since the outbreak of COVID-19—in which Beijing has alternately been portrayed as a culprit and an aid provider.”
MSN Money: Banks Have No Idea Who’s Creditworthy Anymore. “Lenders that are having a tough time spotting risky loan applicants are approving fewer borrowers for credit cards, auto loans and other consumer debt. They are also hunting for new data sets that could indicate who is in financial trouble and how much they need to set aside to cover soured loans. The Federal Reserve last week said the biggest U.S. banks could be saddled with as much as $700 billion in loan losses in a prolonged downturn.”
GOVERNMENT
NJ .com: N.J. restaurants NOT reopening for indoor dining this week after ‘knucklehead’ crowds at bars ruin it for everyone. “New Jersey will not reopen indoor dining this week as planned in the first major reversal of the state’s Phase 2 coronavirus reopening plan, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday. Indoor dining was scheduled to resume Thursday along with several other big reopening steps including Atlantic City casinos, amusement parks, boardwalk rides and arcades ahead of the busy July 4th weekend. The canceled reopening also includes wedding venues and banquet halls. But the reopening of casinos remains scheduled for Thursday.”
NBC News: European Union bars travelers from U.S. citing coronavirus concerns. “Most travelers from the United States will be barred from entering the European Union after it reopens its borders Wednesday because the coronavirus is still far too prevalent in the U.S., European officials announced Tuesday.”
EDUCATION
NPR: U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall. “The nation’s pediatricians have come out with a strong statement in favor of bringing children back to the classroom this fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidance ‘strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.'”
HEALTH
BBC: Covid-19: China pushes traditional remedies amid outbreak. “As scientists race to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, Beijing has been championing traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a way to treat the disease. A recent white paper released by the Chinese government claimed that 92% of the country’s Covid-19 cases were treated in some way with it.”
New York Times: ‘They Want to Kill Me’: Many Covid Patients Have Terrifying Delirium. “Kim Victory was paralyzed on a bed and being burned alive. Just in time, someone rescued her, but suddenly, she was turned into an ice sculpture on a fancy cruise ship buffet. Next, she was a subject of an experiment in a lab in Japan. Then she was being attacked by cats. Nightmarish visions like these plagued Ms. Victory during her hospitalization this spring for severe respiratory failure caused by the coronavirus. They made her so agitated that one night, she pulled out her ventilator breathing tube; another time, she fell off a chair and landed on the floor of the intensive care unit.”
CNBC: CDC says U.S. has ‘way too much virus’ to control pandemic as cases surge across country. “The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.”
BBC: Coronavirus overwhelms Afghanistan’s war-ravaged hospitals. “Doctors say the already weak healthcare system in the war-torn country is struggling to cope with the pressure of Covid-19. Concerns have been raised about the supply of oxygen and other resources to government hospitals. A doctor in Kabul described patients’ families having to ‘fight for oxygen’ when cylinders arrived, before bringing it to the intensive care unit themselves.”
Bloomberg: Virus Testing Shortfalls Cause Lines to Build in Hard-Hit States. “The U.S. is again grappling with a shortfall of testing that has hobbled the nation since the pandemic’s early weeks, and now threatens to further undermine containment efforts at a crucial moment. In new hot spots like Arizona, Texas and Florida, where Covid-19 is rapidly spreading, lines for testing extend outside of urgent-care offices and other sites. Two high-school football stadiums in Houston regularly hit capacity by mid-morning and have to turn people away.”
Washington Post: Millions track the pandemic on Johns Hopkins’s dashboard. Those who built it say some miss the real story.. “Since launching in January, the university’s Coronavirus Resource Center has exploded in scope and popularity, garnering millions of page views and popping up in news coverage and daily conversation. Through numbers, the tracker has told the story of what the virus is doing while the story is still unfolding, offering a nearly real-time picture of its silent march across the globe. But even as data has jumped to the forefront of international discussions about the virus, the Johns Hopkins team wrestles with doubts about whether the numbers can truly capture the scope of the pandemic, and whether the public and policymakers are failing to absorb the big picture. They know what they are producing is not a high-resolution snapshot of the pandemic but a constantly shifting Etch a Sketch of the trail of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.”
OUTBREAKS
CNET: Coronavirus cases hit 10 million as outbreaks surge in the US, Brazil and India. “The daily number of coronavirus cases continues to rise across the globe, with the World Health Organization on Sunday reporting the highest number of recorded cases in a 24-hour period. The increase saw the pandemic reach another grim milestone as the total number of confirmed cases crossed 10 million with 500,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 database. Over 5 million are listed as recovered.”
Los Angeles Times: L.A. County issues dire warning amid ‘alarming increases’ in coronavirus cases. “Los Angeles County health officials issued a dire warning Monday that conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic are deteriorating rapidly and the highly contagious virus is spreading swiftly in the nation’s most populous county. They said they are now faced with one of their biggest fears: that the reopening of L.A. County would coincide with sudden jumps in disease transmission that have the potential to overwhelm public and private hospitals.”
Huffington Post: Officials Trace More Than 100 Coronavirus Cases To Michigan Bar. “At least 107 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been linked to a bar in Michigan. Some 95 people who visited Harper’s Restaurant & Brewpub in East Lansing June 12-20 have now tested positive for COVID-19, Ingham County Health Department announced Monday.” Initial reporting put the number at about 85.
San Antonio Express-News: Bexar County coronavirus cases soar above 10,000. “With San Antonio’s coronavirus crisis at a critical stage, topping more than 10,000 cases Sunday, local officials are asking the state to send medical professionals to staff a 250-bed field hospital in Freeman Coliseum that would accommodate an expected flood of new patients.”
TECHNOLOGY
Daily Herald Business Ledger: Pandemic internet aid is ending, but digital divide remains. “Earlier this year, to help students and teachers finish the disrupted school year online, Charter, Comcast, AT&T and others began providing free internet. They also pledged not to cut off service or charge late fees to customers struggling financially because of the pandemic. Now, several of those programs are set to end in the coming weeks — a looming expiration that, if left unaddressed, threatens to unravel a precarious thread of the social safety net at a particularly difficult time for many American families.”
Fortune: Google gets mixed reviews for its coronavirus aid initiative. “A Google program announced with big fanfare three months ago to help businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic is being criticized for the inconsistent amounts of aid it has provided to recipients and its limited financial impact.”
CNET: Coronavirus, BLM protest conspiracy theories collide on Facebook and Twitter. “A pandemic, societal protests and a contentious election have created an especially challenging environment for Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Content moderators and fact-checkers are struggling to prevent the spread of obvious misinformation while giving users space to voice their opinions. The problem has gotten knottier for the online platforms as false claims about both the health crisis and Floyd’s killing collide, making content moderation decisions — taxing in the best of situations — even tougher.”
CanIndia News: Google tests tool to show COVID-19’s impact at community level. “Google on Monday said it is piloting a new feature in partnership with local news publishers to understand how COVID-19 is impacting different communities. The company said it would test the News feature in a few geographic areas in the US and Canada in the COVID-19 special section of the app, where users can view community reopening timelines, plus updates around business and school openings.”
EurekAlert: Researchers use machine learning to build COVID-19 predictions. ” As parts of the U.S. tentatively reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s long-term health continues to depend on tracking the virus and predicting where it might surge next. Finding the right computer models can be tricky, but two researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York believe they have an innovative way to solve those problems, and they are sharing their work online. Using data collected from around the world by Johns Hopkins University, Arti Ramesh and Anand Seetharam — both assistant professors in the Department of Computer Science — have built several prediction models that take advantage of artificial intelligence. Assisting the research is PhD student Raushan Raj.”
RESEARCH
Scientific American: Hospitals Experiment with COVID-19 Treatments, Balancing Hope and Evidence. “Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist, was standing with a group of physicians outside the doors of the intensive care unit at Plainview Hospital on Long Island, N.Y., in late February. Layered in protective gowns, masks, and gloves and standing six feet apart to maintain social distancing, the doctors swapped stories about their COVID-19 patients.”
ScienceBlog: New Approach To Extend Shelf Life For N95 Mask. “A Purdue University team has come up with an approach to extend the shelf life for an N95 mask, which is one of the pieces of personal protective equipment being used by health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Purdue innovators developed a technique that focuses on the elastic band that attaches to the front of the mask.”
Washington Post: This coronavirus mutation has taken over the world. Scientists are trying to understand why.. “When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before. But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different.”
CNET: Here’s the truth about the new swine flu with ‘pandemic potential’. “The coronavirus pandemic isn’t even close to being over and, if you read the latest headlines, there’s a potential new pandemic right around the corner. This one’s caused by influenza — the virus that causes the ‘flu’ — and the culprit was discovered circulating in pigs in China. But, the headlines are overdoing it a little. Let’s set the record straight.”
STAT News: Researchers report nearly 300 cases of inflammatory syndrome tied to Covid-19 in kids. “Two U.S. research groups have reported finding nearly 300 cases of an alarming apparent side effect of Covid-19 in children, a condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C. While researchers have previously reported on the condition, the papers mark the first attempt to measure how frequently the side effect occurs and how it affects children who develop it.”
OH THAT’S SO NICE
New York Times: With Flights Banned, Son Sails Solo Across Atlantic to Reach Father, 90. “Days after Argentina canceled all international passenger flights to shield the country from the new coronavirus, Juan Manuel Ballestero began his journey home the only way possible: He stepped aboard his small sailboat for what turned out to be an 85-day odyssey across the Atlantic. The 47-year-old sailor could have stayed put on the tiny Portuguese island of Porto Santo, to ride out the era of lockdowns and social distancing in a scenic place largely spared by the virus. But the idea of spending what he thought could be ‘the end of the world’ away from his family, especially his father who was soon to turn 90, was unbearable.”
CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL
BBC: How hackers extorted $1.14m from University of California, San Francisco. “A leading medical-research institution working on a cure for Covid-19 has admitted it paid hackers a $1.14m (£910,000) ransom after a covert negotiation witnessed by BBC News.”
Vox: How Trump gave insurance companies free rein to sell bad health plans. “Amid a raging pandemic and skyrocketing unemployment, those subpar plans are making a comeback. The US uninsured rate has begun ticking up again recently, and it’s poised to soar this year. As millions of Americans cope with the coronavirus crisis and lose their jobs and employer-sponsored health insurance, experts expect that many may undertake the same journey that Lawley did — and end up victims of misleading marketing, weak health insurance, and the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.”
OPINION
New York Times: Remote School Is a Nightmare. Few in Power Care.. “With expanded unemployment benefits set to expire at the end of July, many parents will have no choice but to return to work by September. Even for parents who can work from home, home schooling is often a crushing burden that’s destroying careers, mental health and family relationships. And online school has had dismal results, especially for poor, black and Hispanic students.”
POLITICS
Politico: A Sun Belt time bomb threatens Trump’s reelection. “Republican governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas followed Trump’s lead by quickly reopening their states while taking a lax approach to social distancing and mask-wearing. Now each of them is seeing skyrocketing coronavirus caseloads and rising hospitalizations, and Republican leaders are in retreat. It’s hard to overstate the gravity of the situation for Trump: Lose any one of the three states, and his reelection is all but doomed.”
New York Times: Jacksonville, Trump’s New Convention Site, Will Now Require Face Masks. “Republicans moved their national convention to Florida to avoid social distancing measures and masks, but officials in Jacksonville are mandating new precautions as coronavirus infections surge.”
Politico: Behind the Trump team’s U-turn, mounting fears about a mission-accomplished message. “The vice president worried that a weeks-long public hiatus by his coronavirus task force had created an information void that contributed to a sharp rise in confirmed cases across the southern and western United States. With a televised briefing on Friday, organized at Pence’s direction on a day’s notice, the group revealed an undercurrent of fear behind the scenes of the federal government as the virus mounted its resurgence. Over the weekend, Pence stepped up his urgency. Other Trump officials and allies issued stark new warnings as case counts soared in some of the nation’s largest states. And the machinery that had lined up behind President Donald Trump’s mission-accomplished message suddenly started to fade away.”
Argus Leader: South Dakota health experts warn Mount Rushmore fireworks could cause coronavirus spike. “The July 3 fireworks, which President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend, will be the first at Mount Rushmore National Monument in a decade and comes three months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Health professionals in South Dakota are concerned the lack of mitigation efforts expected at the event could cause the coronavirus to spread in the communities surrounding Mount Rushmore and in communities where attendees live following the event.”
CoronaBuzz is brought to you by ResearchBuzz. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment, send resource suggestions, or tag @buzz_corona on Twitter. Thanks!
There is a variety of presence-detection solutions, including occupancy-density indication and absolute social-distancing measurement for social distancing in retail spaces that range in complexity and cost.
NEW RESOURCES
The Westerly Sun: New website offers expert answers to renewable energy questions. “Have a question about renewable energy? You can now ask it on a new, free website called Ask the Experts. Created by the Coastal Resources Center of the University of Rhode Island, the site is a source for the latest information about offshore wind energy. Merry Ellen Hawkins, a 2020 Energy Fellow at URI’s Coastal Resources Center, has been working on the project since January.” Not much here yet, but the answers that are here are substantive.
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
CNET: Messaging app Viber cuts all ties with Facebook. “Viber, a messaging app with over 1 billion users, is cutting all ties with Facebook, the company said Thursday. According to Viber, the decision comes in the wake of ‘Facebook’s data violations and failure to combat violent rhetoric.'”
Search Engine Journal: Google Explains How YouTube Search Works. “As part of a larger effort to explain how YouTube works, Google published a new resource to answer commonly asked questions about YouTube search results. Google created a whole new website, called How YouTube Works, which offers an in-depth look at all components of the YouTube platform.”
BetaNews: Ubuntu-based Linux Mint 20 ‘Ulyana’ is here. “Earlier this month, we told you about Linux Mint 20 BETA . Code-named ‘Ulyana,’ it was a very controversial release, as the developers decided to cancel the 32-bit version. Unfortunately, the devs also shocked the world by revealing their intention to remove Snapd starting with version 20 of the operating system. Don’t forget, all of this follows the unpopular decision by the developers to pull both GIMP and VLC from Mint too.”
USEFUL STUFF
Digital Inspiration: How to Add Options in Google Forms Questions from Google Sheets. “As with everything else in the world of Google Forms and Google Sheets, we can easily automate the process of adding question choices in Google Forms in bulk with the help of, you guessed it right, Google Apps Script.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
New York Times: ‘PizzaGate’ Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era. “Four years ago, ahead of the 2016 presidential election, the baseless notion that Hillary Clinton and Democratic elites were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria spread across the internet, illustrating how a crackpot idea with no truth to it could blossom on social media — and how dangerous it could be…. In the years afterward, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube managed to largely suppress PizzaGate. But now, just months before the next presidential election, the conspiracy theory is making a comeback on these platforms — and on new ones such as TikTok — underlining the limits of their efforts to stamp out dangerous speech online and how little has changed despite rising public frustration.”
ArtsHub: $5.5 Million for National Film and Sound Archive. This is Australia. “Perenially starved, fighting a tsunami of content, forced to choose between acquisition and accessibility, the NFSA is always starved for cash. Today Minister Fletcher made a funding announcement as part of a flurry of activity at the cultural end of his portfolio. The NFSA will receive $5.5 million over the next four years. Sounds like junk money but it is claimed to be enough to ‘achieve the digitisation of all audio and video magnetic tape by 2025’.”
Reuters: Google removes misleading ads in voting-related searches. “Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said on Monday that it had removed search ads that charged users searching for voting information large fees for voter registration or harvested their personal data.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
BBC: India bans TikTok, WeChat and dozens more Chinese apps. “India’s government has banned TikTok and dozens more Chinese-made apps it says are a danger to the country. In a statement, it said the apps were ‘prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order’. In total, 59 apps were banned – among them popular messaging app WeChat. It follows escalating tensions along the disputed border between the two powers.”
Task & Purpose: Navy to sailors: Please stop buying LSD online . “The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has a message for America’s sailors: Please, for the love of Poseidon and the Seven Seas, stop buying hallucinogens in the dark corners of the Internet. NCIS last week issued a warning to sailors to the risks of acquiring LSD on the so-called ‘dark web,’ the network of often-illicit sites accessible through specialized browsers that offer users ‘perceived anonymity.'”
InfoSecurity: Online Learning Platform Exposes Data on One Million Students. “Researchers from the firm claimed that the Elasticsearch database belonging to provider OneClass was left completely unsecured. The trove contained over 27GB of data, amounting to 8.9 million records, including many students’ full names, email addresses, schools/universities, phone numbers, account details and school enrollment details.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
ScienceBlog: How Conspiracy Theories Emerge – And How Their Storylines Fall Apart. “A new study by UCLA professors offers a new way to understand how unfounded conspiracy theories emerge online. The research, which combines sophisticated artificial intelligence and a deep knowledge of how folklore is structured, explains how unrelated facts and false information can connect into a narrative framework that would quickly fall apart if some of those elements are taken out of the mix.” Good morning, Internet…
Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!
There is a variety of presence-detection solutions, including occupancy-density indication and absolute social-distancing measurement for social distancing in retail spaces that range in complexity and cost.
NEW RESOURCES
PR Newswire: First Street Foundation releases new data disclosing the flood risk of every home in the contiguous U.S. (PRESS RELEASE). “The nonprofit research and technology group First Street Foundation has publicly released flood risk data for more than 142 million homes and properties across the country. The data, based on decades of peer-reviewed research, assigns every property in the contiguous United States a “Flood Factor
,” or score from 1 to 10, based on its cumulative risk of flooding over a thirty-year mortgage. People can look up a property’s Flood Factor and learn more about its past, present, and future flood risk at FloodFactor.com, the Foundation’s new online visualization tool, launching today.” When I was playing with this, I found that it would work for a couple of lookups and then start giving me 404 errors as I was putting in a new address. If I reopened the link in an incognito window it worked fine again for a couple of lookups.
Ahram Online: Virtual Cannes Market: Arab Cinema Centre and Telescope Film launch database of Arab films. “Within the Virtual Cannes Market’s events, and aiming to expand the scope of the Arab cinema’s exposure internationally, Telescope Film announced the launch of Arab Cinema Centre’s microsite. Arab Films and Where to Find Them! is the opening motto for the new microsite, as it serves as a comprehensive English-language guide to Arab cinema.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Google Blog: Now sending: Business Messages via Google Maps and Search. “Today we’re expanding Business Messages in Maps and Search to support all kinds of businesses, and giving them the ability to integrate Business Messages directly with their customer service platforms. Business Messages provides brands a comprehensive messaging solution across Android devices, and through Maps on iOS.”
Neowin: Google Meet to add 49-user tiled layout, background blur, and more for education users. “Google is announcing a few new features for Meet that will roll out later this year, which are mainly geared towards G Suite education customers. The new features include added capabilities for admins and moderators, the ability to replace or blur backgrounds, larger tiled view to accommodate more participants in a video call, and more.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
BBC: How Facebook scammers target people at risk of suicide. “A BBC investigation has uncovered dozens of Facebook pages claiming to sell a deadly poison to people who are contemplating suicide. It’s the work of scammers – but how do they operate?”
WSET: Virginia Humanities announces $235,800 to support museums, historical societies. “Virginia Humanities announced $235,800 in recent grants to nonprofit organizations in support of public humanities programs for audiences throughout the state. Virginia Humanities has awarded grants to museums, historical societies, and other cultural non-profits across the state since 1974.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
BuzzFeed News: Almost 17,000 Protesters Had No Idea A Tech Company Was Tracing Their Location. “On the weekend of May 29, thousands of people marched, sang, grieved, and chanted, demanding an end to police brutality and the defunding of police departments in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. They marched en masse in cities like Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, empowered by their number and the assumed anonymity of the crowd. And they did so completely unaware that a tech company was using location data harvested from their cellphones to predict their race, age, and gender and where they lived.”
Technical .ly: Volunteer data scrapers helped Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity preserve client court records. “As the first state to implement the Clean Slate Law in 2018, Pennsylvania committed to sealing millions of criminal records. The law was enacted to remove educational and vocational disadvantages for people with eligible records, including those associated with certain misdemeanors and people found not guilty in court. While the law cleared barriers to housing, education and employment for individuals across the state, it indirectly created new technological barriers for Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity (PLSE).”
RESEARCH & OPINION
CNET: Why tech made racial injustice worse, and how to fix it. “As part of CNET’s Now What series, we explore the impact of tech on race relations with Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of the book Race After Technology. Benjamin is a sociologist focused on technology and she brings a unique perspective on the impact of technology on race relations.”
DigitalNC: Moving Forward With Equitable Metadata: Changing Exclusive Terminology. “To continue the steps taken to promote equal representation throughout DigitalNC’s collections, as initially brought up in the recent blog post We Can Do Better: Making Our Metadata More Equitable, the NCDHC staff is becoming more committed to inclusivity through changing exclusive terminology. For this update, we’re specifically looking at the gendered and presumptive terms used in the title and description metadata categories of our visual collections. These changes, while perhaps small in effort, are a big step towards reimaging how we can be better stewards of history, especially to those individuals who are brought into our collections without an identity.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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Infineon has released a 12-channel sensing and balancing IC for battery management systems (BMS) in hybrid and electric vehicles.
TI’s BQ25790 and BQ25792 highly integrated buck-boost battery chargers offer 50% greater power density and three times faster charging for USB Type-C, USB PC, and wireless dual input charging.
NEW RESOURCES
The Bump: There’s Now a Britannica Website for All Your Parenting Questions. “Britannica for Parents is a new website offering information, resources and advice from trusted experts in the field of child development and early education. The site aims to help parents make good decisions about how to raise curious young learners and provide guidance in helping their children navigate the digital landscape.”
CBS 19: Teachers create new website to share anti-racist resources. “Three teachers from Cale Elementary School in Albemarle County worked together to create a new website with anti-racist resources to share with other teachers and people in the community. Chiaka Chuks, Jasmine Azimi, and Rachel Caldwell collaborated on the project in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” Not endless amounts of content yet, but a solid start.
Brown University: New Online Exhibit: Transient Matter. “Transient Matter brings the realities, perils, and the humanity of migrations and border-crossings to the Haffenreffer Museum through an exhibition of things discarded by migrants who crossed the Aegean to reach Greece, artwork created by migrants in camps and detention centers once there, and photographs and videos produced by the curators.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Google Blog: A redesigned Google Photos, built for your life’s memories. “Google Photos has become more than just an app to manage your photos, it’s become the home for your life’s memories. And that’s why today, we’re launching a redesigned Google Photos, focused on your memories, to help you find and relive your most treasured moments.”
CNET: Google’s new AR update adds depth without needing lidar like Apple’s iPad. “This week’s AR news has been focused on Apple’s augmented reality updates to iOS 14, many of which lean on the depth-scanning hardware only on the recent iPad Pro. Google announced its own AR news this week, too, and you won’t need specialized hardware to use its depth-sensing tools.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
Evening Express: Aberdeen University shows off its assets with online #BestMuseumBum battle. “Staff Aberdeen University have polished their bums for an online museum battle. Started by Yorkshire Museum, today’s curator is calling on museums to showcase the best bums and bottoms from their collection. Starting the campaign was an image of a Roman marble statuette depicting ‘an athlete at the peak of fitness’.”
CNBC: The Facebook ad boycotts have entered the big leagues. Now what? . “In the last week, a steady stream of companies came out in support of the ”#StopHateForProfit” campaign, promising to pause advertising spend on Facebook to encourage the company to amp up efforts against hate speech and disinformation. With major advertisers like Verizon joining the campaign Thursday and Unilever, Coca-Cola and Honda saying they would pull advertising on Friday, Facebook is now facing a snowball effect of advertisers abandoning the site.”
Wired: How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer’s Inbox. “TWO WEEKS AGO, longtime software engineer Kenton Varda got an email that wasn’t meant for him. It was from AT&T Mexico to a customer named Jorge, whose most recent phone bill was attached. You’ve probably gotten an email intended for someone else at least once. But then Varda got another AT&T Mexico bill for Gloria. And then a third for Humberto, who is overdue on paying more than 6,200 pesos, about $275. To Varda, the incident wasn’t a surprise.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Vice: Discord Just Shut Down the Biggest ‘Boogaloo’ Server for Inciting Violence. “Discord, a platform popular with gamers, has shut down one of the largest servers used by followers of the anti-government ‘boogaloo’ movement after it was exposed in a VICE News article.”
Ubergizmo: Hackers Are Now Hiding Credit Card Skimmers In Image Metadata On The Web. “Physical credit card skimmers aren’t new and while they can be disguised, it is relatively easy to spot it if you know what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, it seems that credit card skimmers have gone virtual where according to a report from Malwarebytes, it appears that hackers are now hiding these virtual skimmers inside the metadata of images on compromised online storefronts.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
New York Times: In Vintage TV Ads, a Curious Fountain of Hope (and Cheese). “Search YouTube with the word ‘commercials’ and the decade of your choosing, and you will find hundreds of compilations, including transfers of old broadcasts with everything but the advertisements and the breaking news updates edited out. I put on these compilations as background noise when I’m doing chores or eating dinner. It allows me to make believe that I live in a world I never got to inhabit but is still familiar, a time that seems simpler by virtue of the fact that it isn’t actively making me miserable.”
CNN: The hard truth about the Facebook ad boycott: Nothing matters but Zuckerberg. “As each new company lends its weight to the boycott, the economic pressure is growing on Facebook to change — somehow. The campaign carries echoes of a similar advertiser rebellion against YouTube in 2017…. Despite some similarities, Facebook is less susceptible to outside pressure than most businesses, experts say. It’s led by a CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who exercises complete voting control over the company and can’t be removed by shareholders. And that could vastly complicate the campaign to hit Facebook where it hurts.” Good morning, Internet…
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NEW RESOURCES
Standard-Examiner: Everyday Heroes: Bountiful resident wants to memorialize every soldier who died during WWII, looking for help. “[Don] Milne, 59, of Bountiful, recently launched a nonprofit called ‘Stories Behind the Stars,’ an ambitious project that aims to compile short histories of all of the 400,000 plus American soldiers who died during WWII. The histories would be searchable, by name, from an online database Milne is creating. He says he’s also developing a smartphone app that would link to the database and allow people to scan names from war memorials and headstones, then instantly be taken to a particular soldier’s biography. A self-described ‘history buff,’ particularly of WWII, Milne has been blogging and writing military bios for fallen soldiers of the war pretty much every day for that past three years. So far, he’s written about 1,200 profiles, piecing the stories together mainly through sources he’s found online.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Reuters: Google to pay some publishers for content; others dubious. “Alphabet’s Google on Thursday took a step towards resolving its spat with publishers, saying it would pay some media groups in Australia, Brazil and Germany for high-quality content and expects to do more deals, but others were sceptical.” Shocked. Really.
NDTV: Google to Start Offering Loans to Merchants in India, Rolls Out ‘Nearby Stores’ Spot Nationwide. “Google is set to start offering loans to merchants in India through the Google Pay for Business app. The search giant said on Thursday that it is working with partner financial institutions to help small businesses in the country impacted due to the coronavirus outbreak. In addition to offering loans, Google announced a national rollout of ‘Nearby Stores’ Spot on Google Pay to help businesses get discovered by customers in their locality. The feature was launched earlier this year in cities including Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
The Verge: Are TikTok activists actually shutting down Trump’s online merch stores? An investigation. “Some critics of President Donald Trump have spent the last few days trying to lock up Trump-branded merchandise by leaving thousands of products from his online stores in shopping carts. But while the attack has become a kind of resistance meme, reminiscent of recent pranks on the president’s Tulsa rally, it’s far less clear whether the hoax actually prevented Trump’s stores from selling merchandise.”
CNET: Before the cats came: The web of 1995 leaves me nostalgic for simpler times. “My web circa 1995 will always be three sites: Suck, Argon Zark and the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S Project. Put up by two Rice University students to document their experiments to determine the properties of Twinkies, the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S Project was text heavy, with cheesy graphics and tiny photos. Ugly, but full of smarts, character and innocent charm. And a quarter of a century later, the homespun site still makes me , even if the only way to see it is in the Internet Archive.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Arab News: Egypt court jails belly dancer for ‘debauchery’ in social media crackdown. “A high-profile Egyptian belly-dancer, Sama el-Masry, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 300,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,500) on Saturday for inciting debauchery and immorality as part of a crackdown on social media postings. El-Masry was arrested in April during an investigation into videos and photos on social media, including the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, that the public prosecution described as sexually suggestive.”
NBC News: Spyware hidden in Chinese tax software was probably planted by a nation-state, say experts. “Earlier this year, a multinational technology vendor doing business in China was instructed by its Chinese bank to install software to pay local taxes. The tax software was legitimate, but embedded inside it was a nasty surprise, according to a new report by a private security firm: A sophisticated piece of malware that gave attackers complete access to the company’s network.”
Ubergizmo: US Senators Propose A Bill To End ‘Warrant-Proof’ Encryption. “In the past, companies would have to fight requests from law enforcement agencies whenever they are asked to hand over information about their customers. These days, it has gotten a lot easier in the sense that tech companies are handing the encryption keys over to their customers.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Twitter Blog: Using data from the conversation on Twitter to help detect wildfires. “This wildfire season, Mayday.ai is set to combine data from the unfolding conversation on Twitter with its proprietary incident detection system, which is based on satellite sensors, an array of 35,000 traffic cameras, and IP911 to power a comprehensive detection and a highly targeted notification tracker. Mayday.ai has developed a comprehensive dispatch platform and a mobile app which will provide first responders and civilians unprecedented access to real-time incident information — and has so far had much success in detecting wildfires using its proprietary platform and is being used as a template for other disasters in Mayday’s roadmap.”
ReliefWeb: Innovation in post-disaster data collection: From the Caribbean to the world. “Responding and rebuilding first requires data on what has been damaged or destroyed, and where. In the past, data collection was a laborious paper-based process that took months or years. After Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused massive destruction in the region in 2017, UNDP and partners launched a new tool to do such assessments in a matter of days. (UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Multi-County Office partnered with WFP, UNICEF, PAHO/WHO and UN Women.) The tool is a mobile app called HBDA, or Household and Building Damage Assessment. It works on a smartphone or tablet.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.
NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH
University of Colorado Boulder: COVID-19 Airborne Transmission Tool Available. “Many of us face a constant barrage of decisions during this global pandemic: How dangerous is it to ride the bus? To teach and/or attend class? What’s my risk in a public demonstration? University of Colorado Boulder atmospheric chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez has released a pilot tool that may help us answer some of these questions, or at least provide some informed guidance.”
Diagnostic Imaging: RSNA Launches Own Open COVID-19 Medical Images Database. “The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) launched what could likely become the largest open international database of COVID-19 images. Known as RICORD (RSNA International COVID-19 Open Radiology Database), and created in concert with the RSNA COVID-19 Task Force, it already has received expressed interest to participate from more than 200 institutions globally. With accompanying clinical information and expert annotations, RSNA leaders say the intent is for radiologists to use the significant de-identified data compilation for research and educational efforts that will save lives.”
New Indian Express: CCMB’s web app gives peek into one thousand plus coronavirus genomes. “As India crossed the milestone of sequencing 1,000 genomes of SARS-CoV-2, Hyderabad-based Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has come out with an interactive web app named Genome Evolution Analysis Resource for COVID-19 (GEAR-19). GEAR-2019 gives an interesting peek into the outcome of efforts put in by scientists and researchers from 33 contributing laboratories across the country, for sequencing 1,031 genomes of SARS-CoV-2.”
NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT
University of Toronto News: U of T librarian creates online resource to fight COVID-19 misinformation . “In the midst of the pandemic, experts are raising alarms about another public health threat: an ‘infodemic’ of online medical misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19. In an effort to fight the spread of faulty facts, Vincci Lui, a librarian at the University of Toronto’s Gerstein Science Information Centre, has put together a new online library resource for the U of T community: ‘How can I spot misinformation about the coronavirus and COVID-19?'”
UPDATES
NBC News: China declares new outbreak contained after massive testing effort. “Two weeks ago the Chinese capital went into ‘wartime emergency mode,’ renewing fears about a potential second coronavirus spike. Now, according to health officials, the outbreak is contained and the daily increase in cases has now mostly fallen to single digits.”
ABC News: US tops 2.5 million confirmed cases. “Over 9.8 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks. The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 2.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 125,039 deaths.”
FACT CHECKS
Poynter: How Faktograf worked across borders to stem COVID-19 misinformation in southeastern Europe. “Misinformation doesn’t care about borders, especially in southeastern Europe, where trust in the media tends to be low and news avoidance is sky-high. False news can spread quickly via popular messenger apps like Viber and WhatsApp. That has been the key takeaway from Faktograf’s COVID-19 experience. The Zagreb-based fact-checking organization knows that mis- and disinformation are as much of a problem in nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia as they are in Croatia. Tackling the issue in one country isn’t enough.”
SOCIETAL IMPACT
AP: Nurses, doctors feel strain as virus races through Arizona. “They saw the ominous photos: Crowded hospitals, exhausted nurses, bodies piling up in morgues. It was far away, in New York, northern Italy and other distant places. Now, after three months of anxiously waiting and preparing, Arizona nurses and doctors are on the front lines as the coronavirus rips through the state, making it one of the world’s hot spots. The trickle of a few virus patients in March became a steady stream two weeks after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ended a stay-home order in mid-May and allowed most businesses to reopen, and is now a scourge with no end in sight.”
Fast Company: Masks, gloves, and other coronavirus waste are starting to fill up our oceans. “It’s not news that our trash eventually finds its way to the ocean. Because oceans are downstream, litter will eventually find a pathway into our bodies of water if it’s not discarded properly—and often even if it is. But as the COVID-19 crisis slowly generates a new kind of waste, made up of disposable masks and other PPE items, it’s posing new problems for the Earth’s oceans. The flood of PPE could cause immediate danger to wildlife and long-term plastic pollution that threatens to contaminate food supplies.”
Route Fifty: Don’t Bet on a Quick Recovery. “Mary Daly is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (She does not sit on the Fed panel that sets the country’s interest rates, but will next year.) As a labor economist and a policy maker, she has been vocal about using the tools of government to address financial inequality, and about the ‘diversity crisis’ in economics. We discussed this unusual recession, the limits of monetary policy, and representation at the Fed. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.”
New York Times: The Post-Coronavirus Cruise? Not Ready to Sail. “W. Bradford Gary spent 10 days trapped inside a cruise ship cabin off the coast of Brazil in March while health authorities in several countries scrambled to figure out what to do with a vessel full of older people who had potentially been exposed to the coronavirus. But when faced with the question of whether he’d ever cruise again, he doesn’t hesitate. ‘We are very anxious to get back on board,’ he said, and he believes he’s not alone: ‘There are people like us who want to do this.'”
The Guardian: UK theatres sweat on whether make-or-break panto season can go ahead. “The UK’s beleaguered theatres have warned that panto season could be cancelled, leading to catastrophic losses in revenue, unless the government is able to reassure people that live performances will continue in the winter.”
New York Times: Going Up? Not So Fast: Strict New Rules to Govern Elevator Culture. “Small, crowded, enclosed spaces are petri dishes for the coronavirus. But in urban office buildings, elevators are a necessity, so companies are wrestling with how to make them safer.”
Under the Ancient Oaks: Online Pagan Rituals: We’re Learning As We Go. “The last public ritual I attended was Denton CUUPS’ Anthesteria celebration on January 25. That’s five months and counting, with no end in sight. I haven’t gone this long between major group rituals since 2003. But the work of ritual goes on, pandemic or no pandemic. We still have Gods to honor and holy days to celebrate. Plus we’re 21st century Pagans – if we can’t be together, we can gather online. I’ve done video rituals for the Spring Equinox, Beltane, and the Summer Solstice. I’m learning the ins and outs of online rituals, and that’s what I want to discuss in this post.”
Washington Post: Almost one-third of black Americans know someone who died of covid-19, survey shows. “Nearly 1 in 3 black Americans know someone personally who has died of covid-19, far exceeding their white counterparts, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that underscores the coronavirus pandemic’s profoundly disparate impact. The nationwide survey finds that 31 percent of black adults say they know someone firsthand who has been killed by the virus, compared with 17 percent of adults who are Hispanic and 9 percent who are white.”
BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS
MikeShouts: adidas Collaborates With Carbon To Produce 3D Printed Face Shields For U.S. Healthcare Workers. “The German sporting equipment maker has collaborated with 3D printing specialist, Carbon, Inc., to make face shields using the same material co-created for adidas’ 4D midsoles. The material is Elastomeric Polyurethane, a highly elastic, tear resistant material that can be sanitized and reused which should help eliminate waste.”
GOVERNMENT
CBS News: Federal officials allowed distribution of COVID-19 antibody tests after they knew many were flawed. “Federal officials failed to immediately stop the distribution of many COVID-19 antibody tests they knew were flawed, leading to inaccurate data about the spread of the virus. Congress is now investigating why the FDA did not review the tests it allowed to be distributed widely throughout the U.S.”
Salt Lake Tribune: Utah businesses can get a ‘seal of approval’ if they commit to these steps to fight COVID-19. “The Salt Lake Chamber has launched its latest strategy for making customers feel safer as they venture out to Utah businesses during the pandemic. Unveiled to the public Thursday in collaboration with the Utah Department of Health, the chamber’s Stay Safe to Stay Open campaign offers business owners a publicly visible ‘seal of approval’ if they pledge to stick with the latest health guidelines.”
AP: Governors face competing voices as reported virus cases rise. “With reported coronavirus cases rising rapidly in many states, governors are getting lots of advice on what they should do. Unions want to be sure workers are protected on the job. Many business owners say they can’t afford another forced shutdown. Public health officials urge them to make mask-wearing a statewide requirement. At the same, governors are facing blowback on the right over business restrictions and mask regulations.”
ProPublica: A Company Run by a White House “Volunteer” With No Experience in Medical Supplies Got $2.4 Million From the Feds for Medical Supplies . “A $2.4 million deal to supply the Bureau of Prisons with surgical gowns was the second multimillion dollar contract for coronavirus supplies that went to somebody who did work for the White House but had little relevant experience.”
CNBC: Washington state stops counties from moving to full reopening as coronavirus cases rise. “Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced on Saturday that the state would halt some of its counties from moving into the next phase of reopening as the coronavirus shows signs of accelerating.”
INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS
The Hindu: Kerala Dialogue | Counterforces will emerge post COVID-19 pandemic: Noam Chomsky. “Academician and author Noam Chomsky said on Friday that power-wielding people who are benefiting from U.S. President Donald Trump’s malice are working hard to ensure that the world that comes emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic will be structurally like the one that caused it.”
CBS News: Texas governor says “If I could go back and redo anything, I would slow down the reopening of bars”. “As the number of people hospitalized in Texas from the coronavirus surpassed 5,000 on Friday, Governor Greg Abbott said he should not have rushed ahead with reopening bars. The news comes as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, said Friday that Texas is one of the two states with the largest increase in positive coronavirus cases as the country reported the highest single-day increase in new cases.”
EDUCATION
New York Times: Many Students Will Be in Classrooms Only Part of the Week This Fall. “Some American school districts are beginning to announce hybrid schedules that include a mix of online and in-school learning, presenting a difficult challenge for working parents.”
HEALTH
Poynter: We are likely a couple of weeks away from a surge in COVID-19 deaths. “For more than a month, health officials have warned us that if we do not stop spreading the virus, we will pay a price in July. COVID-19 illness cases are way up in the United States but deaths are down. But deaths lag behind new cases by a few weeks, so we can expect these record-breaking new cases will show up in deaths in July. The bill is coming due. We knew when the country loosened up around Memorial Day that cases would go up. Now, we are on the cusp of July 4, and we are also spreading the virus like crazy. If we don’t collectively act to protect each other, health experts are warning we could see a July that marks an exponential growth in cases. Not just a little rise — an explosive increase.”
Bloomberg: Trump’s Tulsa Rally Drew People From Dozens of Virus Hot Spots in U.S.. “Mobile-phone location data from people who attended President Donald Trump’s rally in Oklahoma show that most came from outside Tulsa, hailing from at least 44 counties spread across 12 states. Covid-19 is on the rise in 33 of them.”
Washington Post: Young people urged to take virus more seriously as pandemic worsens in U.S.. “While the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it can be devastating to younger victims as well, health professionals said. Younger coronavirus patients are a widening percentage of total coronavirus hospitalizations, with those in the 18 to 49 age group growing from about 27 percent of hospitalizations the week ending March 7 to 35 percent this past week, CDC figures show.”
New York Times: How the World Missed Covid-19’s Silent Spread. “Symptomless transmission makes the coronavirus far harder to fight. But health officials dismissed the risk for months, pushing misleading and contradictory claims in the face of mounting evidence.”
ABC 7: CDC adds pregnant women to list of people at higher risk of severe coronavirus illness. “The nation’s top public health agency on Thursday revamped its list of which Americans are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 illness, adding pregnant women and removing age alone as a factor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also changed the list of underlying conditions that make someone more susceptible to suffering and death. Sickle cell disease joined the list, for example. And the threshold for risky levels of obesity was lowered.”
OUTBREAKS
New York Post: NY student sparks COVID-19 cluster after returning from Florida. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday called on state investigators to probe a COVID-19 cluster in Westchester, believed to be caused by a student who returned from coronavirus hotspot Florida — and then attended a graduation ceremony in posh Chappaqua.”
Washington Post: How Arizona ‘lost control of the epidemic’. “Arizona has emerged as an epicenter of the early summer coronavirus crisis as the outbreak has expanded, flaring across new parts of the country and, notably, infecting more young people. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is recording as many as 2,000 cases a day, ‘eclipsing the New York City boroughs even on their worst days,’ warned a Wednesday brief by disease trackers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which observed, ‘Arizona has lost control of the epidemic.'”
CNN: Patrons are asked to self-quarantine after about 85 people who visited a Michigan bar get Covid-19. “People who visited a bar in East Lansing, Michigan, are being asked to self-quarantine because roughly 85 people contracted Covid-19 after visiting the establishment this month, a health official says. That number is up from the 34 reported Wednesday and is expected to rise, Ingham County Health officer Linda S. Vail told CNN.”
TECHNOLOGY
NPR: Parts Of Myanmar Unaware Of COVID-19 Due To Internet Ban, Rights Advocates Say. “An Internet shutdown that began a year ago in parts of Myanmar is keeping some villages unaware of the coronavirus pandemic, humanitarian groups say. Restrictions on mobile Internet were put in place in eight townships in the state of Rakhine – and one in nearby Chin state — in June of last year amid fighting between the country’s military and an ethnic minority, the Rakhine, and their Arakan Army.”
ZDNet: Middle East: Web-chat services unblocked but big tech projects take a hit in COVID crisis. “Businesses and societies around the world have been hit hard by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. But what has been the specific impact on tech use and adoption in a region as diverse as the Middle East?”
RESEARCH
Route Fifty: How Did Americans Spend Their Stimulus Payments? New Data Offers Clues.. “More than two-thirds of people living in households where someone has received or expects a cash payment under a federal coronavirus relief program have used the money mostly for expenses—particularly costs like housing, utilities and food, according to new survey data.”
ZDNet: Surveilling the virus: unprecedented amounts of genetic data and smart software are tracking how COVID-19 metamorphoses around the world. “The world has been obsessed with surveillance of a particular kind for six months: watching people to see who’s sick. There is another form of surveillance that is just as important but less well understood, and that is the attempt to track how the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself is metamorphosing as it spreads around the world.”
Reuters: Special Report: As world approaches 10 million coronavirus cases, doctors see hope in new treatments. “Doctors say they’ve learned enough about the highly contagious virus to solve some key problems for many patients. The changes could be translating into more saved lives, although there is little conclusive data. Nearly 30 doctors around the world, from New Orleans to London to Dubai, told Reuters they feel more prepared should cases surge again in the fall.”
STAT News: When Covid-19 hits the brain, it can cause strokes, psychosis and a dementia-like syndrome, new survey shows . “A new survey reveals a wide range of serious psychiatric and neurological complications tied to Covid-19 — including stroke, psychosis, and a dementia-like syndrome. The study underscores how aggressively the coronavirus can attack beyond the lungs, and the risk the disease can pose to younger adults.”
CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL
New York Times: Russian Criminal Group Finds New Target: Americans Working at Home. “A Russian ransomware group whose leaders were indicted by the Justice Department in December is retaliating against the U.S. government, many of America’s largest companies and a major news organization, identifying employees working from home during the pandemic and attempting to get inside their networks with malware intended to cripple their operations.”
WRAL: Lt. Gov. Forest to sue Cooper over coronavirus shutdown orders. “Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said Thursday that he plans to sue Gov. Roy Cooper over alleged violations of the state Emergency Management Act during the coronavirus pandemic. ‘The governor has repeatedly ignored the law, enacting mandates that selectively target the businesses and citizens of North Carolina without concurrence from a majority of the Council of State,’ Forest said in a statement.”
OPINION
Washington Post: Making men feel manly in masks is, unfortunately, a public-health challenge of our time. “It’s weird, the things that will break you sometimes. The world is a giant toilet right now, but you’re still paddling as best you can, and then something random and minuscule causes you to throw up your hands and say, ‘I give up — flush us all!’ For me this week that thing was Dick Cheney launching the hashtag #RealMenWearMasks.”
POLITICS
AP: What to wear: Feds’ mixed messages on masks sow confusion. “First there was the don’t-do-it phase. Then the nice-but-not-for-me dissonance. Followed by the local-rules-don’t-apply exceptions. Topped off by Trump’s stated suspicion that some people wear masks just to troll him. It has all added up to a murky message about one of the critical tools in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. And the politicization of the to-wear-or-not-to-wear debate is clear in recent public polling.”
Washington Post: Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump’s Tulsa rally, according to video and a person familiar with the set-up. “In the hours before his rally in Tulsa, President Trump’s campaign directed the removal of thousands of ‘Do Not Sit Here, Please!’ stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event.”
Texas Monthly: The COVID-Related Death of a Local Republican Official Points to the Risks of an In-Person Texas GOP Convention. “On June 6, Bill Baker, a longtime GOP activist, attended the Kaufman County Republican Party convention, at a church in the town of Talty, thirty minutes outside Dallas. There, a handful of party faithful gathered in preparation for the statewide party convention in Houston next month. Figures like Baker make the Texas GOP run at its most fundamental level. He had been a party activist for twenty years, he wrote on his Facebook page in March, seven of which he had served as the chairman of the Kaufman County GOP. This year’s county convention was one of many local and state conventions he had been to over the years, but it would also be his last. On June 11, Baker was admitted to the hospital. He had contracted COVID-19. On June 25, while being intubated, he had a heart attack and died. He was 75.”
Washington Post: With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections. “The White House has blocked Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from some appearances that he has requested to do in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter. White House aides have argued that television interviewers often try to goad Fauci into criticizing the president or the administration’s approach, and that Fauci is not always good about ‘staying on message,’ in the words of a senior administration official. Aides did allow Fauci to appear on CNN recently for a town hall, the official said.”
Washington Post: The data is in: Fox News may have kept millions from taking the coronavirus threat seriously. “Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight — yes, data-driven evidence — behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread. Dangerously duped.”
Politico: Trump’s dilemma: How to prevent super-spreading churches. “One month after President Donald Trump ordered the nation’s governors to immediately reopen churches, his administration is facing a difficult dilemma. Clusters of Covid-19 cases are surfacing in counties across the U.S. where in-person religious services have resumed, triggering questions about whether his administration should reassess its campaign to treat houses of worship the same as other essential businesses, or leave them alone and risk additional transmission of the deadly coronavirus — including in communities that are largely supportive of the president.”
AP: Virus whistleblower alleges retribution has only intensified. “A government whistleblower ousted from a leading role in battling COVID-19 alleged Thursday that the Trump administration has intensified its campaign to punish him for revealing shortcomings in the U.S. response. Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said in an amended complaint filed with a federal watchdog agency that he has been relegated to a lesser role in his new assignment at the National Institutes of Health, unable to lend his full expertise to the battle against COVID-19.”
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