The basics of neuromorphic electronics

 An introduction to why neuromorphic electronics offer large potential advantages in speed, weight, area, and power for neural processing.

source http://www.electronicproducts.com/Templates/Default.aspx?id=123873

Friday CoronaBuzz, April 24, 2020: 35 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Friday CoronaBuzz, April 24, 2020: 35 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH

Berkeley Haas: Open-source smartphone database offers a new tool for tracking coronavirus exposure. “The Covid-19 Exposure Indices, created by Berkeley Haas Asst. Prof. Victor Couture and researchers from Yale, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with location data company PlaceIQ, is aimed at academic investigators studying the spread of the pandemic. The data sets allow researchers to visualize how people can potentially be exposed to those infected with the virus, based on cell-phone movements to and from businesses and other locations where a great deal of the exposure happens.”

Vancouver Sun: Vancouver radiologists and UBC students build database of COVID-19-affected lung images. “Most COVID-19 patients experience mild symptoms and recover within a week or two without treatment. But for those with moderate to even fatal cases, there is still a lot unknown about how the virus progresses. Two Vancouver radiologists are working with researchers and students at the University of B.C. to sort thousands of CT scans and chest x-ray images from COVID-19 patients that all show opaque patches on lungs that look like ground-up glass.”

NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT

CNET: The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine sing-along is coming to YouTube this weekend. “On Saturday, The Beatles’ YouTube channel is hosting a sing-along watch party for the 1968 animated movie, Yellow Submarine. Viewers of the psychedelic film can follow the lyrics to songs like All You Need Is Love and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds featured in the movie.”

Thrillist: The Best Boston Art Experiences You Can Enjoy From Home. “What is this, Week 47? And If you’re anything like us, your daily screen time has gone up approximately 786% since the staying-in started. And yet, not all streaming is made alike. For every half-baked sitcom reunion, there’s a local virtual art experience that reminds you why Boston is the cultural epicenter of New England. From online museum tours to virtual film screenings to archival dance performances, here’s a rundown of some local content to feed your soul.”

CNN Press Room: The ABC’s of COVID-19: A CNN/Sesame Street Town Hall for Kids and Parents. “CNN and Sesame Street will join together for a very special Town Hall this Saturday morning to help children and parents deal with issues surrounding Coronavirus. The special, The ABC’s of COVID-19, will be hosted by CNN Chief Medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CNN anchor Erica Hill, along with America’s favorite feathered friend Big Bird on Saturday, April 25 at 9am, ET on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español. The 90-minute special will provide information and tools for families, and answer the big questions both parents and kids have about the coronavirus pandemic.”

NEW RESOURCES – OTHER

WKBW: New website helps you send thank you videos to workers across the country. “Four friends Noah Friedman, Sahil Bhaiwala, and Williamsville natives Ben and Ariella Sharf created this website to help spread more hope and uplifting messages. In just three weeks and 500 videos later, the company has become the digital version of a thank you card.”

KVIA: Nearly 500,000 jobs available in Texas; new state tool helps you find them. “Unemployment rates are surging nationwide. Many businesses have closed while the country works to fight against the spread of coronavirus. With so many doors closed, it can be difficult to find available jobs. A new tool in Texas hopes to change that.”

KXAN: New website tells you where to go for to-go cocktails in your area. (This appears to be for the entire state of Texas.) “All you do is enter a zip code, and it populates a map of all the places in and around the zip code that offer cocktails and other adult drinks to-go. You can set filters up, like what kind of liquor you’d like to enjoy or how big of a radius you want to search in, and restaurants that match the criteria will pop up.”

USEFUL STUFF

Washington Post: How to start regrowing green onions and other vegetables on your windowsill. “The isolation imposed by the coronavirus has awakened a latent homesteading spirit within many of us. The proliferation of sourdough was an early indication that people were seeking, even in small ways, self-sustainability, as grocery-store shelves were often frustratingly bare. Now, there’s a wave of people attempting farming on a (very) small scale. The latest trend to sprout up on social media: images of green onions, presumably purchased at the store, their roots submerged in water glasses and tucked onto sunny windowsills, where their owners hope they will grow.”

UPDATES

NBC News: Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s oldest brother dies from coronavirus. “The Globe identified Warren’s brother as Donald Reed Herring and said he died Tuesday at age 86 in Norman, Oklahoma, about three weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus. He had been hospitalized in February for pneumonia and was moved to a rehabilitation center, the report said, citing information provided by his family. In mid-April, he was moved to intensive care but was never put on a ventilator.”

NBC News: Lysol manufacturer warns against internal use after Trump comments. ” The manufacturer for Lysol, a disinfectant spray and cleaning product, issued a statement warning against any internal use after President Donald Trump suggested that people could get an ‘injection’ of ‘the disinfectant that knocks (coronavirus) out in a minute.'”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

Slate: When Cathy Met the Coronavirus. “The most salient criticism of Cathy has always been the charge that she perpetuated negative stereotypes about women, although more recent feminist reconsiderations of the character have recognized that it was more complicated than that. This is all pretty academic considering we’re talking about a person who only sometimes has a nose—but either way, during the coronavirus crisis, Cathy’s struggles read as so much less gendered than before.”

Slate: Somehow the Pandemic Hasn’t Stopped Sumo Wrestling. “On March 22, 35-year-old professional sumo wrestler Hakuho Sho gripped 34-year-old Kakuryu Rikisaburo in a powerful bear hug, glided across the floor, and launched his opponent outside of the ring. That final bout, which lasted less than 30 seconds, won Hakuho his 44th top-division championship. No roar of the crowd accompanied his achievement, however, because the seats were empty. The 15-day tournament in Osaka, Japan, did not have an audience because of the Japan Sumo Association’s coronavirus precautions.”

New York Times: How School Districts are Outsmarting a Microbe. “Confronting the unprecedented challenge of lengthy school closures because of coronavirus, the nation’s roughly 13,000 public school districts are scrambling to cope. Almost no district was truly ready to plunge into remote learning full time and with no end in sight. There is no one-size-fits-all remedy and no must-have suite of digital learning tools. Leaders have largely had to find their own way, spurring a hodgepodge of local innovations. As the struggle continues, a few overarching lessons learned — about equity, expectations and communication — are now helping schools navigate this crisis on the fly.”

New York Times: My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?. “There used to be enough extra money every year that I could close for 10 days in July to repaint and retile and rewire, but it has become increasingly impossible to leave even a few days of revenue on the table or to justify the expense of hiring a professional cleaning service for this deep clean that I am perfectly capable of doing myself, so I stayed late and did it after service. The sludge of egg yolk seeped through the coverall, through my clothes to my skin, matted my hair and speckled my goggles as my shock registered: It has always been hard, but when did it get this hard?” A long, gut-wrenching read. Also worth it.

WBUR: What It’s Like To Deliver Groceries For Instacart During An Outbreak. “Twenty-six bottles of hand sanitizer. A hundred cases of water. Six 30-packs of toilet paper. These are just a few of orders that Theresa Woodford has received from Instacart customers during the past few weeks. And although these requests are about as likely to be fulfilled as Woodford snapping her fingers to manifest a cure for the coronavirus, she booked the orders because … what choice has she got?”

INSTITUTION / CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

BBC: Coronavirus: Social restrictions ‘to remain for rest of year’. “The UK will have to live with some disruptive social measures for at least the rest of the year, the government’s chief medical adviser has said. Prof Chris Whitty said it was ‘wholly unrealistic’ to expect life would suddenly return to normal soon.”

CNET: Nextdoor app teams up with Walmart to make it easier to help your neighbors get groceries. “The Nextdoor app is partnering with Walmart on a program called Neighbors Helping Neighbors. The effort is meant to make it easier for neighbors to help each other grab groceries or other household and medical items from Walmart during the spread of COVID-19. Nextdoor users will be able to request assistance through the app and on Nextdoor.com, and those able to head to the stores can offer to help.”

New York Times: Protecting Workers From Coronavirus: OSHA Leaves It to Employers. “The agency, part of the Labor Department, announced last week that there would be few inspections of workplaces aside from those in high-risk activities like health care and emergency response. Instead, it called on employers to investigate coronavirus-related issues on their own, even in hot spots such as the food supply chain.”

RESEARCH

BBC: Coronavirus: First patients injected in UK vaccine trial. “The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford. Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study. Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.”

Phys .org: TED group backs pandemic response effort. “The big-ideas TED Conference said Thursday it was allocating prize funding this year to a project aimed at tackling pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak and related health initiatives. The organizers said the ‘Audacious Project’ fund aimed at supporting innovation to deal with global problems would provided unspecified grants from the multimillion-dollar pool.”

Phys .org: Mathematical curves predict evolution in COVID-19 spread. “Efforts to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic are now the top priority of governments across the globe. As they make these life-saving decisions, it is particularly crucial for policymakers to accurately predict how the spread of the virus will change over time. Through research published in EPJ Plus, Ignazio Ciufolini at the University of Salento, and Antonio Paolozzi at Sapienza University of Rome, identify a clear mathematical trend in the evolution of daily new cases and death numbers in China, and use the same curve to predict how a similar slowdown will unfold in Italy.”

Carnegie Mellon University: Self-reported COVID-19 Symptoms Show Promise for Disease Forecasts. “Self-reported descriptions of COVID-19-related symptoms, which Carnegie Mellon University researchers are gathering nationwide with the help of Facebook and Google, correlate well with test-confirmed cases of the disease, suggesting self-reports might soon help the researchers in forecasting COVID-19 activity. Ryan Tibshirani, co-leader of Carnegie Mellon’s Delphi COVID-19 Response Team, said millions of responses to CMU surveys by Facebook and Google users are providing the team with real-time estimates of disease activity at the county level for much of the United States.”

Defense One: Army Research Shows How Do-It-Yourself Facemasks Can Be as Safe as N95s. “Shortages of facemasks have many people making their own — not just grocery shoppers and Pentagon staff, but even medical professionals in coronavirus-wracked hospitals. Scientists with the Army Research Lab, working with a Massachusetts hospital, have figured out the best easy-to-find materials for making homemade masks: a layer of absorbent cloth combined with a water-repelling fabric, preferably one treated with Scotchgard.”

University of Rochester: Can Twitter anticipate attacks against Asians and Asian Americans?. “University of Rochester computer scientists are gleaning a wealth of information from Twitter users to document the social impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic. For example, a new study by the research group of Jiebo Luo, a professor of computer science, and posted to the scholarly website ArXiv, finds that the increased use of terms like ‘Chinese virus’ and ‘Wuhan virus’ on the social media platform correlated strongly with a rise in media reports of attacks on Chinese and other Asians.”

STAT: New data on Gilead’s remdesivir, released by accident, show no benefit for coronavirus patients. Company still sees reason for hope . “The antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to speed the improvement of patients with Covid-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a ‘potential benefit.’ A summary of the study results was inadvertently posted to the website of the World Health Organization and seen by STAT on Thursday, but then removed.”

The Verge: Researchers want social media companies to preserve coronavirus misinformation data. “A group of scholars and nonprofit organizations have asked web platforms to keep track of the content they’re removing during the coronavirus pandemic so they can make it available to researchers studying how online information affects public health. The signatories — including Access Now, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and EU DisinfoLab — sent an open letter to social media and content sharing services, urging them to preserve data even as they remove misinformation.”

Safety+Health Magazine: Study identifies three effective methods to sanitize N95 respirators for reuse. “Three methods to decontaminate N95 filtering facepiece respirators for reuse are being recommended by the National Institutes of Health after researchers at the agency successfully tested their effectiveness and the repeat functional integrity of the respirator after each sanitization.”

New York Times: Covid-19 Arrived in Seattle. Where It Went From There Stunned the Scientists.. “As the coronavirus outbreak consumed the city of Wuhan in China, new cases of the virus began to spread out like sparks flung from a fire. Some landed thousands of miles away. By the middle of January, one had popped up in Chicago, another one near Phoenix. Two others came down in the Los Angeles area. Thanks to a little luck and a lot of containment, those flashes of the virus appear to have been snuffed out before they had a chance to take hold. But on Jan. 15, at the international airport south of Seattle, a 35-year-old man returned from a visit to his family in the Wuhan region. He grabbed his luggage and booked a ride-share to his home north of the city.”

FUNNY

Uproxx: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Will Be Back This Weekend With Another Mystery ‘At Home’ Episode. “Like the first episode, SNL is playing things very close to its chest. There’s no official word on musical guests or who will be delivering the opening monologue, but that just adds to the spontaneity of the episodes as castmembers are forced to come up with apartment-bound material while everyone works remotely. We’ve all been on a Zoom call. Now imagine trying to turn one into an elaborate comedy sketch.”

POLITICS AND SECURITY

Politico: DHS warns of increase in coronavirus-inspired violence. “Domestic terrorists and violent extremists are mobilizing in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and the threat could get more severe ‘until the virus is contained and the normal routine of U.S. societal life resumes,’ according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence note sent to law enforcement officials around the country.”

Associated Press: Doctors struggle to stay true to science but not cross Trump. “It’s becoming a kind of daily ritual: President Donald Trump and a phalanx of doctors file into the White House briefing room each evening to discuss the coronavirus, producing a display of rhetorical contortions as the medical officials try to stay true to the science without crossing the president. The result can be a bewildering scene for Americans trying to understand how best to protect themselves from the virus.”

Politico: Officials probe the threat of a coronavirus bioweapon. “The Pentagon and the intelligence community are more forcefully investigating the possibility that adversaries could use the novel coronavirus as a bioweapon, according to defense and intelligence officials, in a shift that reflects the national security apparatus’ evolving understanding of the virus and its risks.”

Washington Post: Nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly from NIH, WHO, Gates Foundation and others are dumped online. “Unknown activists have posted nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly belonging to the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and other groups working to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism and terrorist groups. While SITE was unable to verify whether the email addresses and passwords were authentic, the group said the information was released Sunday and Monday and almost immediately used to foment attempts at hacking and harassment by far-right extremists. An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, said he was able to verify that the WHO email addresses and passwords were real.”

New York Times: Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say. “The officials interviewed for this article work in six different agencies. They included both career civil servants and political appointees, and some have spent many years analyzing China. Their broader warnings about China’s spread of disinformation are supported by recent findings from outside bipartisan research groups, including the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Center for a New American Security, which is expected to release a report on the topic next month.”

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!

April 24, 2020 at 06:29PM
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Thursday CoronaBuzz, April 23, 2020: 42 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Thursday CoronaBuzz, April 23, 2020: 42 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH

Georgia Tech Research Horizons: Interactive Tool Helps People See Why Staying Home Matters During a Pandemic. “The beauty of VERA is that users do not need a background in complex mathematical equations or computer programming to explore it. A high school student interested in finding out what it looks like to “flatten the curve” can log in to VERA and investigate. A parent handling middle school science lessons from home can log in to VERA and demonstrate the reason that it is important that they do lessons from home during the COVID-19 outbreak. For example, a user can input 16 people as the ‘average contacts per day per person’ and see a simulation of the possible outcomes. Then, the user can lower the number of “average contacts per day per person” to 12, a reduction in social contact but not a substantial one. Upon running the simulation again, users see a marked difference in ‘peak cases’ of 7,000 rather than 8,000, and healthcare capacity being exceeded after 20 days, rather than the original 15. Users can continue to adjust these numbers to see the impact of social distancing transform possible health outcomes before their eyes.” Using the tool does require registration as a beta users, but information required is minimal and it’s free.

National Institutes of Health: Expert U.S. panel develops NIH treatment guidelines for COVID-19. “A panel of U.S. physicians, statisticians, and other experts has developed treatment guidelines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). These guidelines, intended for healthcare providers, are based on published and preliminary data and the clinical expertise of the panelists, many of whom are frontline clinicians caring for patients during the rapidly evolving pandemic.”

NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT

Penn State News: New website helps K-12 teachers tackle remote learning. “The K-12 Media Repository provides a comprehensive list of links to educational resources that provide information on varied topics related to online education. The posts are organized into categories such as individual grade levels (K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12), early childhood education, family literacy, special education, and technology tools for teaching.”

TimeOut: You can now virtually tour these Miami museums for free. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned while social-distancing is that we don’t visit Miami’s cultural institutions enough. Right now, we miss the days we almost went to PAMM, or drove by the Bass but wound up at Sweet Liberty instead. We’re lucky our cherished local museums don’t hold grudges and continue to welcome us back, albeit virtually, to entertain and educate us while we’re home. Ready to explore? Just follow the links below.”

Variety: Cannes Lions Goes Digital with ‘Lions Live’. “The platform will run throughout June under the theme ‘Creativity Matters,’ and activity will coincide with the original dates of the Lions, June 22-26. The initiative will be free to use for all…. Lions Live will include masterclasses and ‘hangouts’ with creative industry legends, as well as lectures from speakers previously confirmed for the festival, and professional classes and learning modules.”

CrunchyRoll: Sailor Moon Official YouTube Channel to Stream First Three TV Series in 1990s for Free. “The official website for the two-part film Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie announced today that the first three original Sailor Moon TV anime series in the 1990s will be streamed on the Sailor Moon franchise’s official YouTube channel for free from this Friday, April 24. This is part of the promotional project for the theatrical release of the film’s first part that will open in Japan on September 11, 2020. Ten episodes from a total of the 127 episodes from the three series will be added each week.”

NEW RESOURCES – OTHER

CBS Sacramento: Gov. Newsom Launches New Website, Initiative ‘Californians For All’ For People Who Want To Volunteer. “California is trying to make it easier for people who are healthy to volunteer during the coronavirus pandemic. Urging people to help those affected by the virus, Governor Newsom on Tuesday, along with the state’s Chief Service Officer, Josh Fryday, announced a new initiative and accompanying website called ‘Californians For All.'”

FarmingUK: Coronavirus: Database helps small-scale farmers deliver to public. “Hundreds of small-scale farmers across the UK have joined a new initiative to help connect the public with food producers who many be suffering as a result of Covid-19. Farms to Feed Us, a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers, aims to help link consumers with farmers and food producers during the pandemic. The ambition of the initiative is to provide an online database highlighting the location of farms and where they can deliver.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: Lonely? Need to talk? Chat confidentially with these apps for free. “The premise is intriguing. We all need to talk sometimes, but you might not always be comfortable opening up to a friend or loved one about certain topics. And professional therapy might not be an option right now. So why not chat with a stranger, who can lend a sympathetic ear and help you talk things through? Recently, I told you about HearMe, a free app that matches up folks who need to talk with empathic ‘listeners.’ More recently, I’ve run across another app called Lyf that seems helpful as well.”

UPDATES

San Francisco Chronicle: First known U.S. coronavirus death occurred on Feb. 6 in Santa Clara County. “A person who died at home in Santa Clara County on Feb. 6 was infected with the coronavirus at the time of death, a stunning discovery that makes that individual the first recorded COVID-19 fatality in the United States, according to autopsy results released by public health officials late Tuesday. That death — three weeks before the first fatality was reported in the U.S., in Washington state on Feb. 28 — adds to increasing evidence that the virus was in the country far earlier than once thought.”

Search Engine Land: Google testing Question Hub in US for COVID related queries. “Back in 2018 Google began testing a way for searchers to submit questions to Google manually. It launched in Google India in 2019 as Question Hub, as a way for searchers to let Google know when they haven’t been able to find the content they are searching for. Now this is being tested in U.S. based Google searches as a way for Google to identifying content gaps for COVID-related queries, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.”

PC Magazine: Got a Zoom-Bombing Problem? Zoom Will Soon Let You Report Attacks in Real Time. “Did your Zoom meeting just get hijacked? Well, you’ll soon be able to report the incident directly to the company. The video conferencing service is adding a new ‘report a user to Zoom’ button, which is scheduled to roll out on Sunday, April 26 in a software update.”

ARTnet News: Following Coronavirus Closures, Museums in Germany, Austria Plan Reopenings. “Per a report in the Art Newspaper, small museums in the German state of Brandenburg were the first to reopen their doors to the public today, albeit with strict security precautions, including the widespread use of disinfectant and the use of credit cards in place of cash. Thuringia has announced a reopening date of April 28 for its cultural institutions, though the German Association of Museums stated institutions in the country’s larger metropolitan centers may not reopen until May.”

Politico: Trump administration reverses prisoner coronavirus release policy, advocates say. “Prison officials indicated earlier this month that inmates who had served less than half their sentences could still be considered for early release to limit the spread of infection behind bars. However, inmates in various prisons who had been put into prerelease quarantine almost two weeks ago were advised Monday by authorities that the policy had changed, lawyers and associates said. Officials would not waive a requirement that prisoners must have completed 50 percent their sentence to be eligible for early release during the pandemic, the inmates were told.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

NOLA: ‘It’s disturbing’: Coronavirus kills black residents at dramatic rates across Louisiana . “Nearly 57% of the 1,405 people who have lost their lives to the coronavirus in Louisiana are black, while African-Americans make up only 33% of the state’s population. As of Tuesday, more than 52 out of every 100,000 black residents of the state had been killed by COVID-19, about 2.65 times as high as the rate at which those of other races had succumbed.”

MIT Technology Review: Many covid-19 survivors will be left traumatized by their ICU experience. “For those who make it out the other side, their stay in intensive care is likely to be one of the most traumatic things they will ever experience. Being able to breathe is something we take for granted. But patients who have such difficulty breathing that they need to be intubated (which involves having a tube inserted into their mouth and down their airway) often believe they are going to die at some point during their stay in intensive care. Anecdotally, ICU doctors say patients with covid-19 tend to need a particularly large amount of sedation, which damages muscles and nerves, especially in the lungs. That damage can be permanent—which can in turn undermine the patient’s mental health.”

Poynter: In a pandemic, many photojournalists face an impossible choice: Stay safe or get out there to pay the bills?. “Covering the coronavirus is scary. Journalists can make phone calls and send emails and FaceTime sources, but at some point, they have to do what reporters have done forever — get out of the office and go where the story is. But that’s also where the danger is. And no one exposes themselves to that danger more than photojournalists.”

Poynter: Students are suing universities over COVID-19 campus shutdowns. “This is happening enough that it soon will be a trend. Michigan State University students filed a lawsuit demanding reimbursement for tuition, housing and fees because the school closed its doors and transitioned classes into virtual teaching. The same New York law firm that filed the Michigan State lawsuit also sued on behalf of students at Purdue University.”

New York Times: A Closed Border Can’t Stop This Elderly Couple: ‘Love Is the Best Thing in the World’. I dare you to read this and not get all mushy. “She brings the coffee and the table, he the chairs and the schnapps. Then they sit down on either side of the border, a yard or two apart. And that is how two octogenarian lovers have kept their romance alive despite the closure of the border that falls between his home in the very north of Germany and hers in the very south of Denmark. Every day since the police shut the border to contain the virus, Karsten Tüchsen Hansen, an 89-year-old retired farmer, and Inga Rasmussen, an 85-year-old former caterer, have met at the Mollehusvej border crossing to chat, joke and drink, while maintaining a modicum of social distance.”

Huffington Post: Pawning During A Pandemic. “Many businesses in Nevada are shut down. But the state deemed pawn shops essential during the pandemic, like several other states across the country, because they are federally regulated financial institutions. And business is booming, according to some pawnshop owners in Nevada.”

The Atlantic: Would You Sacrifice Your Privacy to Get Out of Quarantine?. “As general counsel of the NSA in the 1990s, Stewart Baker advocated for limiting the government’s intelligence-gathering powers in the name of civil liberties. Then the 9/11 attacks happened, and Baker concluded that the limits he’d supported contributed to the security lapse. So he began pushing the case for surveillance—first while serving as a member of the George W. Bush administration, then by writing op-eds, hosting podcasts, and sparring with opponents who believe that his proposals endanger fundamental rights. As the country struggles to contain the coronavirus, he thinks that many Americans will experience a conversion like his, becoming more willing to make sacrifices to their privacy.”

Axios: Another pandemic woe: Zoom fatigue. “The rapid trajectory of videoconferencing service Zoom has entered a new phase: What started as a social lifeline during the pandemic, and then became an object of privacy and security concerns, has now become a grind. Why it matters: Zoom is wearing a lot of us down, and as our era of enforced online work and socializing drags on, we’re all going to have to learn how to better conserve our physical and psychological energy. There are several reasons why videoconferencing is so exhausting.”

Reuters: Beneath the Sickened City. “A Reuters reporter and photographer spent several hours traveling under [New York City] to talk to those with nowhere else to go. Afraid of the coronavirus in the shelters, many are sleeping on ghost trains and on platforms abandoned by almost everyone else during the lockdown.”

INSTITUTION / CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

New York Times: Spectrum Employees Are Getting Sick Amid Debate Over Working From Home. “More than 230 workers at Charter Communications, the cable and internet giant known as Spectrum, have tested positive for Covid-19, as employees question how many of them must work in the office.”

ProPublica: NYC Mayor and Health Officials Misled Public About Plans to Move COVID-19 Patients Into Nursing Home, Advocates Say. “New York City public health officials are moving patients suffering from COVID-19 into beds within a nursing home on Roosevelt Island that cares for hundreds of residents with a wide range of severe medical conditions, including dementia and other age-related ailments­­, paralysis, traumatic brain injury and profound developmental disabilities. The move comes after Mayor Bill de Blasio and city officials made a series of inaccurate and contradictory statements about their intention to use the facility to house COVID-19 patients and about their ability to protect the medically vulnerable residents of the Coler Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center.”

Neowin: Minecraft creators partner up with UNDP to spread awareness about COVID-19. “Microsoft has announced that video game developer Mojang will be partnering with the United Nations Development Programme and its partner Heart17 to promote health and safety information concerning the novel coronavirus. The campaign aims to spread information concerning COVID-19 using the game’s social media pages. According to this newly announced initiative, over the next few weeks, all Minecraft social media channels will be dedicated to promoting advice pertaining to COVID-19 in line with the official recommendations provided by the World Health Organisation.”

TechCrunch: Coronavirus-related Facebook support groups reach 4.5M in US as misinformation and conspiracies spread. “Facebook has already come under fire for hosting groups organizing anti-quarantine protests in response to government lockdowns amid the coronavirus outbreak, and those promoting fake coronavirus cures and misinformation. Now it’s trying to figure out what to do with the growing number of COVID-19 community groups on its platform worldwide. In hopes of better educating group admins, the company today began its first-ever digital event for those running COVID-19 groups. The event, ‘Community Connect: Navigating COVID-19,’ takes place April 21-23 depending on timezone, and focuses on best practices for COVID-19 groups.”

Washington Post: Pentagon plans to dispatch Blue Angels and Thunderbirds in coronavirus tribute. “The Pentagon is planning a multicity tour of the U.S. military’s top flight demonstration teams to “champion national unity” amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to senior U.S. officials and a memo obtained by The Washington Post. The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds, the demonstration squadrons for the Navy and Air Force, will fly over some cities together and others separately, according to the memo. The flyovers will take place in the next several weeks ‘to thank first responders, essential personnel, and military service members as we collectively battle the spread of COVID-19.'”

RESEARCH

Financial Times: Coronavirus death toll in UK twice as high as official figure. I don’t usually include FT stories because they have a pretty unforgiving paywall, but this one is marked Free to Read. “The coronavirus pandemic has already caused as many as 41,000 deaths in the UK, according to a Financial Times analysis of the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. The estimate is more than double the official figure of 17,337 released by ministers on Tuesday, which is updated daily and only counts those who have died in hospitals after testing positive for the virus.”

Washington Post: In two states, a vast testing gap shows what it means to have no national strategy. “When it comes to battling the spread of the novel coronavirus, Kentucky and Rhode Island might look similar on paper. They’ve done comparable numbers of diagnostic tests and lost similar numbers of residents to the disease. But there’s one key difference. Kentucky has more than four times Rhode Island’s population, meaning it has tested 0.7 percent of its residents, compared with Rhode Island’s 3.7 percent, the highest per capita testing level in the United States. The difference suggests Rhode Island probably has a better sense of the virus’s spread throughout the state, making it better prepared to curb it.”

USC News: Early antibody testing suggests COVID-19 infections in L.A. County greatly exceed documented cases. “Based on the results of the first round of testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus. Adjusting this estimate for the statistical margin of error implies about 2.8% to 5.6% of the county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus — which translates to approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county who have been infected. That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the county at the time of the study in early April.”

CNET: New ventilator gets us ready for a second or third wave of coronavirus. “The hospital ventilator sits at an intersection: It’s complicated, expensive and scarce. The Spiro Wave ventilator from an ad hoc team of makers, inventors and health care experts seeks to address these logistical problems by moving ventilators to a different place. Developed by New York based consortium Emergency Ventilator Response, the Spiro Wave is what it looks like: a robot that operates a balloon-style manual resuscitator by mounting it in a frame with software, sensors and actuators.”

ACLU: New Model Shows Reducing Jail Population will Lower COVID-19 Death Toll for All of Us. “The ACLU partnered with epidemiologists, mathematicians and statisticians to create a first-of-its-kind epidemiological model that shows that as many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 — double the government estimate — if we continue to ignore incarcerated people in our public health response. But we have the power to change this grim outcome. We can save as many as 23,000 people in jail and 76,000 in the broader community if we stop arrests for all but the most serious offenses and double the rate of release for those already detained.”

Vox: A disturbing new study suggests Sean Hannity’s show helped spread the coronavirus. “The paper — from economists Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott — focused on Fox news programming in February and early March. At the time, Hannity’s show was downplaying or ignoring the virus, while fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson was warning viewers about the disease’s risks. Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death.”

Washington Post: States rushing to reopen are likely making a deadly error, coronavirus models and experts warn. “As several states — including South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida — rush to reopen businesses, the sudden relaxation of restrictions will supply new targets for the coronavirus that has kept the United States largely closed down, according to experts, math models and the basic rules that govern infectious diseases. ‘The math is unfortunately pretty simple. It’s not a matter of whether infections will increase but by how much,’ said Jeffrey Shaman, a leading epidemiologist at Columbia University.”

POLITICS AND SECURITY

USA Today: Delaware medical supplier says FEMA seized 400,000 N95 masks, now he’s out millions of dollars. “As pleas for protective masks continue amid the coronavirus pandemic, a Delaware supplier of medical equipment is disputing the legality of what he said were federal seizures of hundreds of thousands of N95 respirators. George Gianforcaro, owner of the small, Newark, Delaware-based Indutex USA, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not pay him when it took possession of two imported shipments of masks bound for customers across the United States.”

Yahoo News: Birx says Georgia residents ‘can be very creative’ about getting tattoos and haircuts while social distancing. “Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the leading medical experts on President Trump’s coronavirus task force, tried to reconcile the controversial order by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopening some businesses across the state with the task force recommendations that call for continued social distancing. Among the businesses that Kemp, a Republican and a strong supporter of President Trump, plans to allow to reopen on Friday are hair and nail salons and tattoo parlors.” Don’t you want to get a tattoo from someone who’s six feet away from you and holding the tattoo gun or whatever it is on a stick?

New York Times: The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests. “An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.”

Politico: Southern governors create a Covid-19 coalition and experts fear a ‘perfect storm’. “Republican governors across the Southeast are teaming up to reopen the region’s economy, even as they lack the testing to know how rapidly the coronavirus is spreading. One health expert called the political decision a ‘perfect storm’ for the virus to reassert itself. The newly formed coalition includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, a part of the country that has underfunded health systems, as well as high rates of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses that amplify the deadliness of the coronavirus.”

Wall Street Journal: Health Chief’s Early Missteps Set Back Coronavirus Response. “On Jan. 29, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told President Trump the coronavirus epidemic was under control. The U.S. government had never mounted a better interagency response to a crisis, Mr. Azar told the president in a meeting held eight days after the U.S. announced its first case, according to administration officials. At the time, the administration’s focus was on containing the virus. When other officials asked about diagnostic testing, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, began to answer. Mr. Azar cut him off, telling the president it was ‘the fastest we’ve ever created a test,’ the officials recalled, and that more than one million tests would be available within weeks. That didn’t happen.”

Reuters: Special Report: HHS chief Azar had aide, former dog breeder, steer pandemic task force. “As is now widely known, two agencies [Alex] Azar oversaw as HHS secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, wouldn’t come up with viable tests for five and half weeks, even as other countries and the World Health Organization had already prepared their own. Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years.”

Politico: State report: Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation narratives echo one another. “China, Iran and Russia are using the coronavirus crisis to launch a propaganda and disinformation onslaught against the United States, the State Department warns in a new report. The three governments are pushing a host of matching messages: that the novel coronavirus is an American bioweapon, that the U.S. is scoring political points off the crisis, that the virus didn’t come from China, that U.S. troops spread it, that America’s sanctions are killing Iranians, that China’s response was great while the U.S.’ was negligent, that all three governments are managing the crisis well, and that the U.S. economy can’t bear the toll of the virus.”

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April 23, 2020 at 06:12PM
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Wednesday CoronaBuzz, April 22, 2020: 37 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Wednesday CoronaBuzz, April 22, 2020: 37 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Wash your hands and stay at home as much as you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH

Boston Globe: Database: Coronavirus cases by nursing home. “The state on Monday released a list of coronavirus cases by nursing homes, rest homes, and skilled nursing facilities with at least two cases to date (staff and residents). Data for assisted living residences are not currently being provided by the state.”

FierceBiotech: Life science companies combine to form COVID-19 research database. “A group of major CRO, life science, data analytics, publishing and healthcare companies joined forces to release a pro bono research database to build up and integrate a central hub on the latest data out for COVID-19. On the technical side, it’s a secure repository of HIPAA-compliant, de-identified and limited patient-level data sets that will be ‘made available to public health and policy researchers to extract insights to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic,’ according to the group.”

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): WIPO Launches New Search Facility For PATENTSCOPE Database to Support COVID-19 Innovation Efforts. “The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today launched a new search functionality for its global patent database, PATENTSCOPE, to facilitate the location and retrieval of information contained in published patent documents that may be useful for innovators developing new technologies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The WIPO COVID-19 search facility of PATENTSCOPE will provide scientists, engineers, public health policymakers, industry actors and members of the general public with an easily accessible source of intelligence for improving the detection, prevention, and treatment of diseases such as the novel coronavirus.”

AWS (Amazon): AWS launches machine learning enabled search capabilities for COVID-19 dataset. “As the world grapples with COVID-19, researchers and scientists are united in an effort to understand the disease and find ways to detect and treat infections as quickly as possible. Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched CORD-19 Search, a new search website powered by machine learning that can help researchers quickly and easily search tens of thousands of research papers and documents using natural language questions.”

NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT

University of Arkansas: Arkansas Doctors, Gov. Hutchinson and U of A Professors to Teach on COVID-19. “The University of Arkansas Honors College will present a daily online forum titled Pandemic, which will bring together medical professionals, faculty experts and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson to provide context on the global health crisis. Pandemic, to be offered May 11-22, is one of the first college courses in the nation to focus on COVID-19 and will examine the crisis from multiple perspectives, from public health to supply chain management and economic impacts. Honors students across the state may enroll in the course, and anyone who is interested may sit in.”

NEW RESOURCES – OTHER

The Yeshiva World: KavodAcharon. Com : A New Website Giving Victims Of COVID-19 The Kavod They Deserve. “We created KavodAcharon.com so that the friends and families of the niftarim can post personal stories, recollections and words of nechama. In this way, the niftarim will receive the kavod acharon they deserved but were denied due to the terrible situation, and the families will be able to read the divrei chizuk and words of comfort we could not offer in person.”

USEFUL STUFF

BetaNews: 10 top tips to help you use Zoom safely. “Zoom’s privacy and security issues have been in the headlines for a number of weeks now, causing concern for lots of users. But many people have no option but to use the software after it has been selected by the company they work for. If you find that you have to use Zoom, there are steps you can take to ensure your experience is as safe as possible. Security firm Kaspersky has offered up a series of tips to boost your security and privacy on the platform.”

Digital Trends: Where to donate your stimulus check to help people affected by coronavirus. “Millions of Americans have received stimulus checks from the IRS as part of the government’s relief program for the economic fallout caused by COVID-19, also known as coronavirus. If you got your stimulus money but don’t feel like you need it, there’s never been a better time to donate your stimulus check to charity.”

Thrillist: The Best Atlanta Art Experiences You Can Enjoy From Home. “Quarantine life has given us the chance to run through shows that we never would have time for and try food from local restaurants that we’ve never visited, but it’s also presented an opportunity to stimulate our creativity and escape the monotony of staying indoors. As 20th-century writer Thomas Merton once wrote, ‘Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.’ At times like this, we need inspiration, and these museums, galleries, and arts establishments in Atlanta are virtually supplying it.”

UPDATES

Native News Online: Navajo Nation Covid-19 Cases Increase By 124; 1,321 Total Cases – Death Toll At 45. “The Navajo Nation released an update last Monday evening that show an increase of 124 new COVID-19 cases since Saturday, which brings the total to 1,321 confirmed cases. The overall number of positive cases includes cases on the Navajo Nation and nearby border towns.”

CNET: Google makes it free for sellers to list items on its shopping platform. “Google on Tuesday said it’s opening up its shopping platform to make it free for sellers to list their products on the company’s search engine. Previously, search results for the shopping section of the site came from advertisers bidding on specific search terms, like workout gear or rice cookers. Now, sellers will be able to list products on the shopping tab of the search engine even if they’re not advertisers.”

NPR: NIH Panel Recommends Against Drug Combination Trump Has Promoted For COVID-19. “A panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.”

Neowin: WhatsApp works with WHO to launch a new sticker pack. “WhatsApp has announced that it has collaborated with the World Health Organization to develop a new sticker pack called ‘Together at Home’. The new stickers are designed to be funny and educational. The stickers were also called universal by WhatsApp because they’re available in ten languages and break through other barriers such as the age barrier. The two entities hope the stickers will encourage people to stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

CNET: Amazon workers reportedly plan nationwide protest tied to coronavirus. “Amazon warehouse workers across the US are reportedly planning to ‘call out sick’ this week as part of a protest demanding more protections amid the coronavirus pandemic. More than 300 workers from at least 50 Amazon facilities plan to take part, according to CNBC.”

BBC: Coronavirus: World risks ‘biblical’ famines due to pandemic – UN. “The world is at risk of widespread famines ‘of biblical proportions’ caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the UN has warned. David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said urgent action was needed to avoid a catastrophe. A report estimates that the number suffering from hunger could almost double from 135m to more than 250m.”

CNET: Coronavirus just lopped 10% off the value of your car. “Automotive News reported Monday dealers find themselves in an odd situation where retail prices are off by just 1%, while wholesale values are down between 10% and 12%. Yes, the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, likely sucked at least 10% of your car’s value away, according to data from Cox Automotive.”

CNN: Doctors and nurses are using VR to learn skills to treat coronavirus patients. “As hospitals worldwide face severe shortages of health professionals, people are being called off the sidelines to help COVID-19 patients — even those with little to no experience in treating infectious diseases. To train thousands of doctors and nurses with expertise in other areas such as knee surgery or neurology — and retired practitioners reentering the medical field — some hospitals are implementing an unlikely method: virtual reality simulations.”

New York Times: This Pandemic Exposes the Downsides of Cheap Uber Rides. “Many of us have benefited from the convenience of services like Uber and Instacart. But now in an economic and health crisis, their workers are highly vulnerable, and no one has their backs. Here’s how this happened, and who is to blame. Short version: Blame everyone, including ourselves.”

Poynter: Following respirators and personal protective equipment, dialysis supplies are running short due to the coronavirus. “Kidney specialists now estimate that 20% to 40% of patients in intensive care suffered kidney failure and needed emergency dialysis. Outside of New York, the growing demand for kidney treatments is becoming a major burden on hospitals in emerging hot spots like Boston, Chicago, New Orleans and Detroit. Baxter, a medical products company and one of the biggest suppliers of dialysis materials, said it is running plants at full capacity and has seen demand increase fivefold because of COVID-19 care.”

Pew: Speeders Take Over Empty Roads — With Fatal Consequences. “Daily vehicle traffic dropped by two-thirds nationally from March 1 through April 10, according to StreetLight Data, a San Francisco-based traffic analytics company. And while many states, such as California and Ohio, have seen a reduction in overall crashes during the pandemic compared with last year, some are reporting a jump in traffic fatalities that they say is linked to speeding or reckless driving.”

Route Fifty: Fearing Coronavirus, Many Rural Black Women Avoid Hospitals to Give Birth at Home. “Pregnant women in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi have been calling nonstop to CHOICES Midwifery Practice in Memphis, but the center is booked. The callers are terrified that they or their babies will contract the novel coronavirus if they deliver in hospitals. Some women live in rural areas far from hospitals and obstetrics units. The center’s clients are primarily black and other women of color. ”

INSTITUTION / CORPORATE / GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

CNET: Ferrari banks on coronavirus testing and phones to restart production. “The scheme starts with blood tests for workers, which works with a smartphone app. The blood tests will give workers a green light to return to work and show there’s no trace of illness. If the blood test flags a disease, workers will then receive a COVID-19 test. All the while, the app tracks those registered and lets other workers know if they’ve come in contact with anyone diagnosed with COVID-19. It should help isolate cases and quarantine those quickly and effectively.”

WISN: Wisconsin Republicans sue governor over stay-at-home order. “Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature are asking the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court to block an order from Gov. Tony Evers’ administration extending a stay-at-home order until May 27.” Note that research has already linked seven cases of coronavirus to Wisconsin’s election day..

The Register: House of Commons agrees to allow Zoom app in Parliament, British MPs will still have to dress smartly. “The House of Commons today approved so-called ‘hybrid sessions’ – MPs participating in Parliament in person and via video conferencing – marking arguably the biggest change in British parliamentary procedure in centuries.”

RESEARCH

Associated Press: More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study. “A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday.”

Washington Post: Most rate Trump’s coronavirus response negatively and expect crowds will be unsafe until summer, Post-U. Md. poll finds. “Most Americans expect no immediate easing of the health risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic, despite calls by President Trump and others to begin reopening the economy quickly. A majority say it could be June or later before it will be safe for larger gatherings to take place again, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. Most Americans — 54 percent — give the president negative marks for his handling of the outbreak in this country and offer mixed reviews for the federal government as a whole. By contrast, 72 percent of Americans give positive ratings to the governors of their states for the way they have dealt with the crisis, with workers also rating their employers positively.”

EurekAlert: Expansion of world’s cities creating ‘new ecological niches’ for infectious diseases. “An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Lincoln, UK, and York University, Canada, investigated how the global trend towards urbanisation has contributed to the rise in the total number of disease outbreaks per decade since the 1980s. Their study, a major literature review published in the academic journal Urban Studies, shows that urban expansion at the periphery of cities – sometimes called ‘extended urbanisation’- is fundamentally altering the spatial relationships which shape how millions of people live and interact with each other and with nature. In doing so, it is creating ‘new ecological niches’ for the spread of infectious diseases, the researchers warn.”

EurekAlert: US Army doctors invent COVID-19 isolation chamber to protect hospital staff. ” Army doctors working at hospitals within the Defense Health Agency have prototyped an isolation chamber that can be placed over the head and chest of patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The Agency has asked the FDA for an emergency use authorization, paving the way for rapid implementation to help protect health care providers on the front lines of the pandemic.”

Washington Post: CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus this winter will likely be worse. “Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more deadly because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.”

San Diego State University: Study: Nearly 5,000 COVID-19 Deaths Avoided in First Three Weeks of California’s Order. “Primarily, the team estimated that California’s order reduced the number of COVID-19 cases by nearly 200,000 and deaths by about 4,800 during the first three weeks after the order was enacted. Results from the study provide strong evidence that the order generated substantial public health benefits via reduced coronavirus-related mortality.”

Reuters: Coronavirus very likely of animal origin, no sign of lab manipulation: WHO. “The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that all available evidence suggests the novel coronavirus originated in animals in China late last year and was not manipulated or produced in a laboratory.”

FUNNY

File under funny-not-funny, then file under funny because I laughed. Slate: America’s Funniest Work Videos. “With so many Americans working from home due to the coronavirus, lots of us are on far more video calls than we ever were before, and it’s pretty evident that we don’t have video etiquette mastered yet. Here are some of my favorite stories I’ve heard recently on video calls gone very wrong.”

Mashable: 17 of the best Zoom memes that’ll make you laugh while working from home. “There’s nothing quite so 2020 as Zoom memes. Sure, we’re all stuck inside and on endless video calls but, hey, at least we’re getting some internet content out of it! To be fair, Zoom memes are good mostly because it’s so much of reality these days. There are whole Facebook groups dedicated to the genre and we at Mashable even went out of our way to gift you great backgrounds. Without further ado, here are 17 of our favorites.”

POLITICS AND SECURITY

The New York Times: Trump (the Company) Asks Trump (the Administration) for Rent Relief. “President Trump’s signature hotel in the nation’s capital wants a break on its rent. The landlord determining the fate of the request is Mr. Trump’s own administration. Trump International Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, had been a favored gathering place for lobbyists, foreign dignitaries and others hoping to score points with the president. But like most hotels, it is now nearly empty and looking to cut costs because of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Politico: White House still scrambling to cover virus treatment for the uninsured. “The White House pledged over two weeks ago to cover coronavirus treatment for uninsured Americans — but the administration still doesn’t have a plan for how to do it. Trump officials are still grappling with key questions about how exactly to implement the treatment fund, including how to determine if a patient qualifies for the new federal dollars, an administration source said. Adding to the challenge, they’re still figuring out how to divvy up funding that hospitals and physicians say is desperately needed.”

Salon: States smuggle COVID-19 medical supplies to avoid federal seizures as House probes Jared Kushner. “Governors have long complained that the Trump administration has left them to bid against each other on the open market for critical supplies for health workers. However, numerous officials recently claimed that the federal government had seized supplies ordered by the states. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, told CNN that the state bought 500 ventilators before they were ‘swept up’ by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said the Trump administration ‘confiscated’ its order of 3 million masks.”

Associated Press: Senate approves $500B virus aid deal; sends to House. “A nearly $500 billion coronavirus aid package flew through the Senate on Tuesday after Congress and the White House reached a deal to replenish a small business payroll fund and provided new money for hospitals and testing. It now goes to the House. Passage was swift and unanimous, despite opposition from conservative Republicans, and President Donald Trump tweeted his support pledging to sign it into law.”

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!

April 22, 2020 at 04:15PM
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Diodes claims first DisplayPort 2.0 active switch

Diodes’ PI3DPX8121 active switch with multiplexer and ReDriver is compatible with both DisplayPort 1.4 and 2.0 for 10 Gbits/s speed.

source http://www.electronicproducts.com/Digital_ICs/Diodes_claims_first_DisplayPort_2_0_active_switch.aspx

Diodes claims first DisplayPort 2.0 active switch

Diodes’ PI3DPX8121 active switch with multiplexer and ReDriver is compatible with both DisplayPort 1.4 and 2.0 for 10 Gbits/s speed.

from Electronic Products Technology Center Articles https://ift.tt/2yBkESg

Snap-in aluminum capacitors save space

Vishay’s snap-in aluminum capacitors deliver 20% higher ripple current in a 20% smaller case size.

from Electronic Products Technology Center Articles https://ift.tt/2RWsb4B