• The Challenge of Proximity Apps For COVID-19 Contact Tracing

    Around the world, a diverse and growing chorus is calling for the use of smartphone proximity technology to fight COVID-19. In particular, public health experts and others argue that smartphones could provide a solution to an urgent need for rapid, widespread contact tracing—that is, tracking who infected people come in contact with as they move through the world. Proponents of this approach point out that many people already own smartphones, which are frequently used to track users’ movements and interactions in the physical world. But it is not a given that smartphone tracking will solve this problem, and the risks it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties are considerable.

  • Bluetooth Signals from Your Smartphone Could Automate COVID-19 Contact Tracing While Preserving Privacy

    Imagine you’ve been diagnosed as Covid-19 positive. Health officials begin contact tracing to contain infections, asking you to identify people with whom you’ve been in close contact. The obvious people come to mind — your family, your coworkers. But what about the woman ahead of you in line last week at the pharmacy, or the man bagging your groceries? Or any of the other strangers you may have come close to in the past 14 days? Researchers are developing a system that augments “manual” contact tracing by public health officials, while preserving the privacy of all individuals. The system enables smartphones to transmit “chirps” to nearby devices could notify people if they have been near an infected person.

  • New Website Will Help Steer the U.S. Away from Fossil Fuels

    A new website, Model Laws for Deep Decarbonization in the United States, was launched on Tuesday to help accelerate a sustainable U.S. transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. It will provide policy makers at the federal, state and local levels with the legal tools needed to transition away from fossil fuels.

  • Deepfakes 2.0: The New Era of “Truth Decay”

    Deepfake technology has exploded in the last few years. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence (AI) “to generate, alter or manipulate digital content in a manner that is not easily perceptible by humans.” The goal is to create digital video and audio that appears “real.” Brig. Gen. R. Patrick Huston and Lt. Col. M. Eric Bahm write that a picture used to be worth a thousand words – and a video worth a million – but deepfake technology means that “seeing” is no longer “believing.”  “From fake evidence to election interference, deepfakes threaten local and global stability,” they write.

  • Studies: Hand Sanitizers Kill COVID-19 Virus, E-Consults Appropriate

    In a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Swiss and German researchers found that alcohol-based hand sanitizers recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) are effective in killing the novel coronavirus. The authors noted that while 30 seconds is the recommended time to rub hand sanitizers into the skin and was the time used in this study, most people don’t use them for that long. And a study yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine with important COVID-19 ramifications found that 70.2 percent of 6,512 electronic consultations (e-consults) made by 1,096 referring clinicians to 121 specialists were appropriate. While e-consults can increase patient access to specialists, minimize travel, reduce the time between referral and specialist feedback, and lower unnecessary in-person clinic visits—which is essential during the COVID-19 pandemic—data on their appropriateness and utility have been limited.

  • Head Lice Drug Ivermectin Being Studied as Possible Coronavirus Treatment

    An antiparasitic drug sometimes used to treat head lice has undergone preliminary studies for use in the fight against the coronavirus — and has shown promising results, according to reports. Yaron Steinbuch writes in the New York Post that while recent reports have focused on the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine as a possible miracle treatment, experts have expressed cautious optimism that ivermectin also could be used for COVID-19, ABC News reported. Ivermectin — which was developed in the 1970s and 1980s — was first used to treat tiny roundworms called nematodes in cattle, then for river blindness in humans, and most recently to rid people of head lice, ABC News reported. The drug’s antiparasitic prowess has landed it on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. And recently, a team of Australian scientists has studied ivermectin in vitro in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Coronavirus Cases: Mathematical Modeling Draws More Accurate Picture

    Mathematical modeling can take what information is reported about the coronavirus, including the clearly underreported numbers of cases, factor in knowns like the density and age distribution of the population in an area, and compute a more realistic picture of the virus’ infection rate, numbers that will enable better prevention and preparation, modelers say. “Actual pandemic preparedness depends on true cases in the population whether or not they have been identified,” says one researcher. “With better numbers we can better assess how long the virus will persist and how bad it will get. Without these numbers, how can health care systems and workers prepare for what is needed?”

  • The Coronavirus Crisis: A Catalyst for Entrepreneurship

    Throughout human history, crises have been pivotal in developing our societies. Pandemics have helped advance health-care systems, wars have fueled technological innovations and the global financial crisis helped advance tech companies like Uber and Airbnb. The present coronavirus pandemic will arguably not be an exception; entrepreneurs can be expected to rise to the challenge. Businesses play a key role both in helping society get through an economic crisis and in creating innovations that shape society after a crisis. So one key question is: how will the ongoing crisis influence future society? While it’s hard to predict the future, we can develop an understanding of what is ahead by analyzing current trends. It’s clear the post-pandemic future will be different. What’s happening during the crisis will have a lasting impact on society. Current signs of entrepreneurial initiative and goodwill give us some cause for optimism. In the words of Stanford economist Paul Romer: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

  • Quantum Computers Will Break the Internet, but Only If We Let Them

    Tomorrow’s quantum computers are expected to be millions of times faster than the device you’re using right now. Whenever these powerful computers take hold, it will be like going from a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise. Hackers may soon be able to expose all digital communications by using advanced quantum computers. A new form of cryptography would stop them, but it needs to be put into place now.

  • Lasers to Detect Weapons-Grade Uranium from Afar

    It’s hard enough to identify nuclear materials when you can directly scan a suspicious suitcase or shipping container. But if you can’t get close? A technique for detecting enriched uranium with lasers could help regulators sniff out illicit nuclear activities from as far as a couple of miles away.

  • Putin’s Long War Against American Science

    A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses. The Putin regime mandates vaccination at home, but has launched a broad and sophisticated disinformation campaign in an effort to lower vaccine rates in Western countries, with two goals in mind: discredit Western science and medicine, and weaken Western societies by facilitating the re-emergence of diseases such as measles, long thought to have been eradicated. The COPVID-19 epidemic has not escaped the notice of the Kremlin’s disinformation and propaganda specialists. “As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information,” William Broad writes. “Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.”

  • Next potential shortage: Drugs needed to run ventilators

    As hospitals scour the country for scarce ventilators to treat critically ill patients stricken by the new coronavirus, pharmacists are beginning to sound an alarm that could become just as urgent: Drugs that go hand in hand with ventilators are running low even as demand is surging.
    Michael Ganio, of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, told Michael Rezendes and Linda A. Johnson of the Associated Press that demand for the drugs at greater New York hospitals has spiked as much as 600 percent over the last month, even though hospitals have stopped using them for elective surgery.
    “These ventilators will be rendered useless without an adequate supply of the medications,” Society CEO Paul Abramowitz said in an April 1 letter to Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force.
    Nationwide, demand for the drugs surged 73 percent in March, according Dan Kistner, a pharmaceuticals expert at Vizient, Inc., which negotiates drug prices for hospitals throughout the country. Supplies, according to Vizient data, have not kept pace.

  • Bolstering Internet Security

    An innovative protection against website counterfeiting developed by Princeton researchers went live on the internet two months ago, on 19 February, boosting security for hundreds of millions of websites. The rollout was the culmination of over two years of close collaboration between research groups at Princeton and Let’s Encrypt, the world’s largest certificate authority serving 200 million websites.

  • Using Innovation, Technology for Drone Ideation Projectd

    Last fall, students in UAB professor Ramaraju Rudraraju’s software engineering class were tasked with a project to take part in ideation for practical uses of drones in farming environments. Through the project, they created a program to map out a farm and various flight patterns and controls for a drone. 

  • Sandia Stimulates Marketplace Recovery with Free Technology Licenses

    Sandia National Laboratories has announced a new, fast-track licensing program to rapidly deploy technology to a marketplace reeling from the effects of COVID-19. The move is designed to support businesses facing widespread, often technical challenges resulting from the pandemic.