Residents of Brussels have been told to stay at home, leaving the city’s streets empty.Credit: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty The coronavirus pandemic has brought chaos to lives and economies around the world. But efforts to curb the spread of the virus might mean that the planet itself is moving a little less. Researchers who study
Month: March 2020
“Bacteria always find new ways to manipulate their environment to protect themselves,” says Harshitha Kotian, a PhD candidate at the Indian Institute of Science. Like many physics students, Kotian once thought research on bacteria and antibiotics should be left to the biologists and chemists. Now she’s part of an interdisciplinary research team that recently uncovered
The plan is to transfer 23 units and 1,840 Air Force billets within the next three to six months WASHINGTON — The Department of the Air Force has identified 23 U.S. Air Force organizations with space-related missions that will transfer to the Space Force. The goal is to transfer 23 Air Force units and 1,840
An illustration of how the turbine could look. Iberdrola Spanish utility Iberdrola is heading a consortium aiming to develop a large-scale floating offshore wind turbine in the North Sea, as the sector looks to drive up the size of technology and push down costs. In an announcement Monday, the firm said the turbine would be
Researchers in the US and China reported Monday they have developed an artificial intelligence tool that is able to accurately predict which newly infected patients with the novel coronavirus go on to develop severe lung disease. Once deployed, the algorithm could assist doctors in making choices about where to prioritize care in resource-stretched health care
Myelin is the protective covering or sheath that protects nerve cells, and is composed of fatty acids and protein. Medical scientists and researchers have always considered myelin as metabolically inert. However, a recent study by researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas Houston surprisingly found that it is dynamic. This
The impending shortage of ventilators for U.S. hospitals is likely already a crisis, but will become even more dire as the number grows of patients with COVID-19 that are suffering from severe symptoms and require hospitalization. That’s why a simple piece of hardware newly approved by the FDA for emergency use — and available free
The elongated bristlemouth (Sigmops elongatus) is abundant in the oceans’ twilight zone.Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Paul Caiger The twilight zone contains the largest and least exploited fish stocks of the world’s oceans. Spanning from just below 200 metres to 1,000 metres deep, it is an interface between the well-studied marine life in the sunlit zone
The International Space Station is your orbiting laboratory, and the science being conducted there will help us push farther into deep space, while providing benefits back on Earth. Microgravity unlocks new worlds of discovery. See what we’re learning: https://go.nasa.gov/2fKxty8
Long haul: the new quantum memory could allow quantum cryptography systems to work over longer optical fibres. (Courtesy: iStock/MorePixels) A new type of quantum memory that could extend the range of quantum encryption systems has been unveiled by physicists at Harvard University in the US. It offers a secure way of allowing an intermediate to
WASHINGTON — A startup that seeks to create refueling facilities in orbit for satellites has received a government grant to develop one essential technology for that system. San Francisco-based Orbit Fab received an award from America’s Seed Fund, a grant program run the National Science Foundation’s (NSF), the company announced March 31. The company plans
I rarely get exasperated from reading environmental business media, but a quote last week in a Bloomberg article about sustainability and the U.S. economic crisis got me headed in that direction. The quote came from Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a research group whose founders, self-described environmentalists, have made a career out of
French startup Qarnot has raised a $6.5 million (€6 million) funding round. The company manufactures heaters and boilers with a special trick — they pack computers as computers tend to generate a lot of heat. Qarnot then lets companies leverage that computing power by running tasks on those unusual servers. Banque des Territoires, Caisse des Dépôts,
London City Airport closed on 25 March owing to travel restrictions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.Credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty When the US Congress passed a US$2-trillion economic-stimulus plan on 27 March, $25 billion in economic aid for passenger airlines was just a small piece of it. But for environmentalists and their allies in Washington DC, it
WASHINGTON — NASA announced March 30 it will fund the development of a cluster of six cubesats that will fly in formation above geostationary orbit to study solar storms. NASA said it selected for development the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission as a “mission of opportunity” for its heliophysics program. The mission, with
Sen. Ted Cruz told CNBC on Monday he and eight other GOP senators recently ripped into the Saudi ambassador in a conference call over the oil price war with Russia that has threatened to put American producers out of business. “We quite frankly unloaded on her,” Cruz said of the call during an interview with
Forward thinker: physicist Philip Anderson made a vital contribution to our understanding of how electrons move in solids. (Courtesy: P W Anderson via Wikimedia Commons) The US condensed-matter physicist Philip Warren Anderson died yesterday aged 96. One of the most celebrated condensed-matter physicists of his generation, Anderson’s theoretical research into the electronic structure of magnetic
Facebook has diverted from its policy of not fact-checking politicians in order to prevent the spread of potentially harmful coronavirus misinformation from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Facebook made the decisive choice to remove a video shared by Bolsonaro on Sunday where he claimed that “hydroxychloroquine is working in all places.” That’s despite the drug still
You are about to take the stage to speak in front of a large audience. As you wait, your heart starts to pound, your breathing quickens, your blood pressure rises and your palms sweat. These physiological responses are evolutionarily conserved mechanisms to prepare your body to fight against imminent dangers, or to run away quickly.
Satellite jamming and spoofing incidents will only increase, says CSIS analyst Todd Harrison WASHINGTON — Only a handful of countries — notably the United States’ military rivals China and Russia — are developing space weapons that could physically take down U.S. military satellites. But many nations and non-state actors increasingly are able to interfere with
If you’ve looked into designing a business, you’ve most likely come across a business model canvas. Made up of nine components — customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, resources, activities, partnerships and costs — it’s a wonderful, easy tool to describe what happens within a business. But it has certain limitations. Osterwalder
Smartphones are one of the most used gadgets for everyone. Given how many surfaces and body parts a smartphone touches within a day, it also makes a smartphone the most exposed gadget to germs and viruses. Given the spread of the novel coronavirus or the COVID-19 disease, there have been concerns about smartphones being exposed
Confluence, Atlassian’s content-centric collaboration tool for teams, is making it easier for new users to get started with the launch of an updated template gallery and 75 new templates. They incorporate what the company has learned from its customers and partners since it first launched the service back in 2004. About a year ago, Atlassian
Apollo 12 launched from Cape Kennedy on Nov. 14, 1969, into a cloudy, rain-swept sky. Launch controllers lost telemetry contact at 36 seconds, and again at 52 seconds, when the Saturn V launch vehicle was struck by lightning. In addition to continuing Apollo’s lunar exploration tasks, Charles Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon deployed the
Everything’s cold when you’re handling an Arctic Ocean ice core about 500 kilometres from the North Pole: your feet, your fingers, your face. The air temperature here can be as low as −35 °C. At that point, every part of me wants to go back inside the RV Polarstern — a German icebreaker and my research
Nanoscience PhD student Haley Harrison is catching up on writing, analysis and quality time with her five-year-old daughter – not necessarily in that order. (Courtesy: Haley Harrison) I am a third-year doctoral candidate in nanoscience at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, US, and my research focuses primarily on nanoscale surface modification. On most of
WASHINGTON — Limited budgets will force NASA to delay implementation of one major recommendation from an Earth science decadal survey for a smaller class of missions. The latest Earth science decadal survey, published in early 2018, recommended a series of missions to study the planet from space. One on those programs was a new line
A picture taken on March 26, 2020, shows a car driving on a road next to the King Abdullah Financial City in the Saudi capital Riyadh, after the Kingdom began implementing an 11-hour nationwide curfew, on the day of an emergency G20 videoconference, to discuss a response to the COVID-19 crisis. (Photo by FAYEZ NURELDINE
An empty Leicester Square in central London on March 24, 2020 in London. British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced strict lockdown measures urging people to stay at home and only leave the house for basic food shopping, exercise once a day and essential travel to and from work. Ollie Millington British tech start-ups are lobbying
Simple wire loops intended to catch herbivores for meat also trap elephants, lions, hyenas and other wildlife. Credit: Alamy Conservation biology 30 March 2020 Simple snares aimed at catching African game for the table take a huge toll on carnivores, too. Wire snares are widely used to poach African wild herbivores for meat — but
In the advent of a new global pandemic, COVID-19, roboticist and founding editor of Science Robotics, Guang-Zhong Yang, has expressed how robots could help in combating the spread of infectious diseases after being serviced by a robot during his 14-day self-quarantine. In an editorial featured in Science Robotics, lead experts in robotics agree that the outbreak of the
WASHINGTON — With the coronavirus pandemic limiting options for personnel to gather in mission control centers to operate spacecraft, some companies are turning to virtual approaches to maintain their spacecraft. The European Space Agency announced March 24 it was putting four of its science missions into a “temporary standby” mode to reduce the number of
Amid what is being called a global pandemic, possibly the last question on people’s minds is how coronavirus could affect the fight to stop climate change. But as the deadly COVID-19 virus spreads across the globe at lightning speed — infecting more than 140,000 people worldwide to date — it is a question that we
Of the shelf: 3D drawing of the MVM control unit. The base plate is 152×170 mm. (Courtesy: C Galbiati et al) Members of the DarkSide experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy have temporarily put their hunt for dark matter on hold in an attempt to stem the deadly tide of COVID-19. The
New York University is among the many academic, private and public institutions doing what it can to address the need for personal protective equipment (PPE) among healthcare workers across the world. The school worked quickly to develop an open source face shield design, and is now offering that design freely to any and all in
Michelle Cipicchio (right) trains two lab technicians at the Broad Institute to extract viral RNA from patient samples.Credit: Scott Sassone/Broad Institute Working around the clock, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts can run about 2,000 COVID-19 tests per day. In places where testing is still scarce — which is
Source selections for national security space launch, ground based strategic deterrent remain on track WASHINGTON — Big-ticket contracts for space launch services and for the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile are scheduled to be awarded this year, and that is still the plan, senior officials said. With thousands of program managers and contracting
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (C-L) meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (C-R) at Irqah Palace in the capital Riyadh on February 20, 2020. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS | POOL | AFP via Getty Images The U.S. has called on OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia to put a stop to its ongoing oil price
The United States Space Force launched its first national security mission Thursday, sending an ultra-secure military communication satellite into orbit even as the coronavirus pandemic paralyzes much of the country. The Lockheed Martin Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 4:18 pm (Friday, 01:48 am IST) aboard an
Geologists in Australia recently published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported the discovery of the first known ancestor in the family tree where we and most animals belong. It is a worm-like animal and is the oldest known bilaterian, an organism having both a front and a back
One of the newer companies attempting to join the rarified group of private space launch startups actually flying payloads to orbit has redirected its entire UK-based manufacturing capacity towards COVID-19 response. Skyrora, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is answering the call of the UK government and the NHS to manufacturers to do what they
A man with COVID-19 is treated at an intensive care unit in Rome.Credit: Antonio Masiello/Getty Fresh findings about SARS CoV-2 and the disease it causes: 27 March — Viral proteins point to potential treatments A list of the human proteins affected by the SaRS CoV-2 virus offers a guide to potential treatments for infected people.
Suman Shrestha is a PhD student in medical physics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UT Health Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas. This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to
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The U.S. Army Satellite Operations Brigade is increasing WGS satcom capacity to the hospital ship. WASHINGTON — U.S. Space Command units that operate communications satellites are providing additional bandwidth to the USNS Mercy hospital ship that arrived in Los Angeles March 27. The USNS Mercy, operated by the Military Sealift Command, will offer non-coronavirus medical
A couple of years ago, luxury retailer Nordstrom collected data from its customers to get a better sense of their actions and sentiments about circularity, shopping and its impact on the environment. Seventy percent of those surveyed said they would drop off items for resale or donation, and 35 percent said they worried about the
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry saw a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report.
The demand for ventilators for a rapidly growing number of patients inflicted with the coronavirus around the world is at least ten times what is available at hospitals. Chinese ventilator makers such as Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co. had been busy with the surge of orders from around the world as countries demand machines in their
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