The New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and Fox News all agree that business in the doomsday bunker market is booming during the pandemic. Why? For one, the ultra-rich want to beef up their safety measures. Just think, they already enjoy private jets, helicopters, and yacht escapes out of town. They have exclusive access to elite boutique medicine. Some have even invested in panic rooms. Really, it only makes sense for them to spend more money on something outlandish like a doomsday bunker.

Curiously, in 2017, the New Yorker documented that the wealthiest demographic — regardless of whether they lived in the Silicon Valley or the Big Apple — were already purchasing doomsday bunkers as real estate. These were luxury bunkers with customized amenities fit for the affluent tastes of executives, hedge-fund managers, venture capitalists, professional sports athletes, and celebrities. Even LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffmann chimed in, explaining that “saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.’”

By 2018, Bloomberg showcased New Zealand as prime hunting ground for sequestering “[a]t the first of an apocalypse — nuclear war, a killer germ, [or] a French Revolution-style uprising targeting the 1 percent.” Less than two years later, that killer bug finally hit the planet in the form of COVID-19.

Of course, doomsday prepping isn’t totally exclusive to the wealthiest parts of society. Also contributing to the uptick in doomsday shelter construction, according to Business Insider, are homesteaders, farmers, and others who don’t mind off-grid living. However, a survey on The Hustle still reveals that 43 percent of preppers earn at least $100,000 a year, and that 67 percent are homeowners. Doomsday stockpiling requires some disposable income, after all.

So who are the main doomsday bunker manufacturers to keep in mind? They include Fortitude Ranch, Rising S Company, Atlas Survival Shelters, Vivos, and Survival Condo Project.

By late March this year, Fortitude Ranch had sold all of its Colorado location’s units (about 100) and was almost sold out of its West Virginia location. Who were their prime customers? “Most of our members are not traditional preppers, but business professionals, retired military, and law enforcement, people who recognize the need to get out of the city and suburbs,” explains Drew Miller, Fortitude Ranch’s founder.

Rising S Company CEO Clyde Scott, meanwhile, told CNBC that their business has increased fourfold since last year. Rising S Company’s co-owner and general manager, Gary Lynch, also told the Los Angeles Times that buyer demographics often shift. Young conservatives and middle-aged women do become customers, but their most common client is the self-made business owner. Still, it is interesting to see, he continues to say, that the “coronavirus has ‘convinced people on the fence’ to take the plunge and spend the $60 to $100k+ for an entry-level bunker.” They likewise have clientele outside the USA.

The post Doomsday Bunker Sales Spike in Wake of COVID-19 Pandemic first appeared on Dornob.

So far, existing electronic skins are run via batteries and near-field communication. The Caltech team sought to disrupt the industry by creating a version that could operate wirelessly through some form of continuous self-power.

E-skins are made of soft, flexible rubber, taking the form of small patches that are placed adhesively onto the top layer of skin. And what’s always present on the epidermis? Human sweat, of course! Because sweat is one of the body’s own natural waste products, The Caltech team figured it would make for a wonderful source of power.

No surprise then that the researchers innovatively devised a method to use lactate to power the e-skin’s fuel cells. If lactate sounds familiar, Scientific American explains that’s because our muscles are famously known to have lactic acid build up in them whenever we’re active. When we give them a chance to rest after heavy exercise, the lactic acid is broken down by the body into lactate and hydrogen ions. As a human waste by-product, it’s secreted in various ways, one of which is through sweat.

“One of the major challenges with these kinds of wearable devices is on the power side,” says Assistant Professor Wei Gao of Caltech’s Mechanical Engineering Department, who led the research on the new e-skin. “Many people are using batteries, but that’s not very sustainable. Some people have tried using solar cells or harvesting the power of human motion, but we wanted to know, ‘can we get sufficient energy from sweat to power the wearables?’ and the answer is yes.”

How are the Caltech e-skin’s fuel cells designed to use sweat lactate? First, the e-skin absorbs the lactate present in sweat. That lactate is then combined through a chemical reaction with atmospheric oxygen to produce water and a by-product called pyruvate, with the reaction itself acting as the energy converter that powers the fuel cells. And as The Engineer elaborates, “as they operate, the biofuel cells generate enough electricity to power sensors and Bluetooth, allowing the e-skin to transmit readings from its sensors wirelessly.”

Interestingly, The Next Web reveals that the e-skin was tested in two experimental formats. The first involved electronic skins placed on a trio of cyclists pedaling in the laboratory on exercise bikes. As the devices’ reservoirs filled up with cyclists’ sweat, physiological biometric readings on the athletes were transmitted to computers.

But the research wasn’t just about powering electronic skins through sweat, TNW adds. Rather, during the second segment of the research, an e-skin was wirelessly connected to a robotic arm. When the sweaty cyclist moved his arm through various gestures, the robotic arm likewise followed suit in grasping a nearby object. This breakthrough could mean a future where sweat-powered wearables activate tomorrow’s robotic devices.

“We want this system to be a platform,” Gao hinted about future technological and robotics applications. “In addition to being a wearable biosensor, this can be a human–machine interface. The vital signs and molecular information collected using this platform could be used to design and optimize next-generation prosthetics.”

The research was recently published as an article in Science Robotics entitled “Biofuel-powered soft electronic skin for multiplexed and wireless sensing for human-machine interfaces.” According to the official Caltech website, Gao’s work usually revolves around the research and development of novel bioelectronic devices with practical biomedical applications. His work furthers the understanding of complex biological systems, clinical assessments that include health monitoring for early diagnosis and timely intervention, rapid delivery of pharmaceuticals, micro-robotics, nanomedicine, and even precision surgery.

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FluSense is welcomed as a useful health surveillance tool. In a UMass-Amherst press release, co-author Tauhidur Rahman explained that “this may allow us to predict flu trends in a much more accurate manner.” Rahman is a UMass-Amherst Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences. He also advises Forsad Al Hossain, the PhD student and lead author of the FluSense study that has been recently published through the Association for Computing Machinery.

Why is this invention important now? In recent months, signs of coughing have taken on a new significance as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the globe. With this UMass-Amherst detector, coughs and other symptoms associated with the flu or flu-like ailments can be monitored much more closely.

How does FluSense work? The published study describes the device as employing an analytic array that consists of a microphone, thermal camera, Raspberry Pi, and “neural computing engine.” This neural computing engine gathers information on speech and cough sounds, then analyzes the data together with “changes in crowd density” in real-time.

Most unique about FluSense is the way it takes advantage of edge computing technology, which has continued to gain popularity as millions of devices connect through the Internet of Things, or IoT. Hewlett Packard describes edge computing as “a distributed, open IT architecture that features decentralized processing power, enabling mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In edge computing, data is processed by the device itself or by a local computer or server, rather than being transmitted to a data center.”

In other words, FluSense computes, analyzes, and stores its data in real-time, right where it is collected instead of thousands of miles of away at some central database. And as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) notes, there are a number of benefits to that. For one, edge computing minimizes the risks of latency, data loss, or redundancy, which translates to improved information security and reliability. It also helps with computational efficiency, acceleration, and optimization of data processing. Finally, with no need for costly bandwidth, decentralized tech optimizes data flow and maximizes operational costs.

When speaking on FluSense’s internal components, Al Hossain further revealed that his team was “trying to bring machine-learning systems to the edge. All of the processing happens right here. These systems are becoming cheaper and more powerful.”

According to Healthcare IT News, several FluSense detectors were tested from December 2018 to July 2019. They “were encased in a rectangular box about the size of a large dictionary,” then placed in a number of clinic waiting rooms at UMass University Health Services. From data compiled that included “more than 350,000 thermal images and 21 million non-speech audio samples,” FluSense “accurately predict[ed] daily illness rates at the university clinic.”

“I’ve been interested in non-speech body sounds for a long time,” Rahman explained. “I thought if we could capture coughing or sneezing sounds from public spaces where a lot of people naturally congregate, we could utilize this information as a new source of data for predicting epidemiologic trends.”

Because the device is portable, FluSense’s data can be collected in many different settings, not just the healthcare environments of physician offices’ waiting rooms, clinics, and hospitals, but also in large public spaces. In this way, FluSense can be leveraged to “expand the arsenal of health surveillance tools used to forecast seasonal flu” and other outbreaks or pandemics, cites Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

Andrew Lover, a UMass-Amherst Infectious Disease Epidemiologist and Assistant Professor, added that the team “[has] the initial validation that the coughing indeed has a correlation with influenza-related illness. Now we want to validate it beyond this specific hospital setting and show that we can generalize across locations.”

The UMass-Amherst press release shared that future studies with FluSense will likely be seeing how it performs in other public arenas and even more challenging geographic locations.

The post New Portable AI Device Tracks Flu and Pandemic Data from Coughing Sounds first appeared on Dornob.

New data from the American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) and Wakefield Research reveals that nearly three-quarters, or 74 percent, of American office professionals now work from home because of stay-at-home regulations. That number includes 80 percent of the country’s working men and 67 percent of working women.

Furniture Today likewise summarized the AHFA findings, noting that “nearly half, or 49 percent, of Americans working from home are under a workplace mandate, while 16 percent are following a company recommendation and 13 percent are following a state level mandate. Another three percent are working at home on their own accord, and three percent already worked from home before the outbreak.”

Interestingly, when asked what activities were partaken of at home, AHFA findings showed that 67 percent of respondents preferred watching TV or streaming movies, 59 percent enjoyed quality time with family, and 48 percent cooked or baked. Also, “48 percent of Americans are doing more household chores, 44 percent are working more, 38 percent are playing more games, 38 percent are reading more, 37 percent are sleeping more, and 18 percent are gardening more.”

Time spent homebound is making denizens more conscious of their decor choices, and that’s led to a huge sales surge in the home furnishings sector. Apartment Therapy’s editor-in-chief Laura Schocker explained on Fox Business News that “we’re seeing a surge in interest from our readers about how to carve out work-from-home spaces. They’re looking for advice on creating work areas that foster productivity while also feeling attractive and sustainable, especially since no one knows how long this situation will last.”

The AHFA findings also coincide with a separate survey conducted by Second Measure, which found that of those now working from home, “many have been purchasing office supplies,” to the tune of 65 percent. Consumers were also investing in electronics (phone, tablet, etc.) at a 29-percent increase, followed next by 26 percent on home office furnishings (desk, chair, other furniture), computer monitors at 22 percent, and printers at 19 percent.

Even more eye-opening is the fact that Second Measure data charts showed that both Office Depot’s and Staples’ “[g]rowth began to climb in March, rising over 10 percentage points at each company throughout the month. This shift to positive growth leaves Office Depot up 3 percent and Staples up 4 percent year-over-year as of March 29…[Plus,] at Staples, a rising share of purchases are being made online.”

AHFA findings also semi-reflected data compiled by international internet advertising company Criteo. The company’s analytics on coronavirus shopping trends, published in the second week of April 2020, revealed that the “top eight key product categories that are seeing some of the biggest jumps include webcams, sleepwear and loungewear, shaving and grooming gear, small animal supplies, baking items, gaming equipment, outdoor furniture for yards, patios, and gardens, and exercise bands.”

This was similar to another set of Criteo’s data analytics published in the first week of April, which showed webcams and gaming “take off” as homebound consumers were “combat[ting] feelings of isolation and boredom associated with social distancing…[by] spending on products that help them stay connected and entertained.”

But there’s more to this uptick in furniture sales than that. As calls to shelter-in-place spread across the country, several companies have provided their employees with stipends to assist the transition into the work-from-home environment. For instance, Shopify offered workers a “one-time remote allowance” of $1,000. Similarly, Spotify offered their telecommuting employees “$250 for a monitor and $250 for a chair or desk.”

The news is comforting for those in the furniture industry, particularly since some brands like Pier 1 and Art Van Furniture have not performed well for their stakeholders.

In mid-February, Forbes covered Pier 1 Imports’ anticipated bankruptcy filing as it put itself up for sale and sought to close out 450 of its stores. The company had “struggled for the better part of the past five years, with too many stores, a tired (and inconsistent) merchandising and marketing plan, an underdeveloped e-commerce business, and enough changes in management to make printing corporate-letterhead stationery a fruitless endeavor.”

Then, in late February 2020, Furniture Today disclosed Art Van Furniture’s impending bankruptcy filing. Art Van was a family-owned furniture enterprise that had been in business for over 60 years. It was sold to a private equity firm in 2017, but the new owners were simply not able to keep it up.

Forbes described the company as a former “powerhouse” that liquidated “in just three years.” Its undoing? Being too dependent on China, the top furniture exporter to the US. As the US-China trade war waged on, competitors eventually surpassed Art Van, especially online mainstays Amazon and Wayfair. The piece goes on to explain that “in 2017, e-commerce was a relatively small factor in the furniture business. Today, it is roughly 20 percent of the market. Art Van tried, unsuccessfully, to quickly ramp up its e-commerce business.

Wayfair, meanwhile, is flourishing. Before the pandemic forced nationwide shutdowns, “only about 14 percent of total furniture sales in the US were made online,” states CNBC. Wayfair, however, was already an e-commerce stalwart by the time COVID-19 came around. Why? It began as an online furniture store back in 2002. It’s only natural for them to know exactly how to serve consumers stuck indoors itching to beautify their homes with decor improvements for ease, comfort, and ambiance. That brick-and-mortar competitors got sidelined by the lockdowns only helped them even more.

Wayfair’s big secret? Its “e-commerce model is uniquely suited to serving customers’ very real needs at this challenging time.” Wayfair’s online platform is convenient and user-friendly for those who “have been looking online for a more comfortable chair or a standing desk…[And still] other consumers are using the extra time they are spending at home to decorate,” according to Fortune.

With Wayfair remaining open online, unlike brick-and-mortar stores, the company “has benefitted from fulfilling those needs.” The online furniture company “expects to meet or exceed its previous outlook for revenue growth during the first quarter of fiscal 2020.”

“The fact that Wayfair is seeing an increase in sales makes sense,” Emory University Assistant Professor of Marketing Dan McCarthy told CNBC. “Wayfair had no physical stores, while its competitors do, which those competitors could not sell through.”

Improvements Wayfair has made, in light of COVID-19, include introduction of “no-contact delivery, where signatures are no longer required for boxes, and [instructing drivers] to wash or sanitize their hands between deliveries. It said it has started taking daily temperature checks at some of its distribution facilities.”

It remains to be seen whether all these positive gains in the furniture sector will persist as the pandemic and the concurrent search for a vaccine continue.

The post Furniture Sales Surge as Consumers Shelter in Place in the Wake of COVID-19 first appeared on Dornob.

The US has struggled to supply hospitals and other patient-care facilities with an adequate number of tests since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. As little as one month ago, testing was restricted to high-risk travelers who had recently returned from journeys to and from China.

Unfortunately, too many people were allowed to spread the disease back then, making the situation much worse and forcing healthcare facilities to start testing a much larger chunk of the public. And even though calls for testing expanded, the pivot created a major logistical challenge. As US Surgeon General Jerome Adams explained on Fox News, “it’s important for people to know…..the CDC was never designed to provide hundreds of millions of tests. It was designed to respond to outbreaks.”

Interestingly, The Atlantic highlighted another key factor affecting the detection of COVID-19, that of the “new coronavirus-testing crisis. Its main cause is not the federal government, nor state public-health labs, but the private companies that now dominate the country’s testing capacity. Testing backlogs have ballooned, slowing efficient patient care and delivering a heavily lagged view of the outbreak to decision makers.”

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), similarly urges, “We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. All countries should be able to test all suspected cases. They cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded; they should know where the cases are.”

COVID-19’s appearance has upended the status quo of the healthcare landscape, requiring numerous changes in protocol. One of the measures passed to speed things along through the crisis was the invocation of emergency use authorization (EUA), detailed on the FDA’s website. On top of that, section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) permits the FDA Commissioner to “allow unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] threat agents when there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”

As Dr. Anthony Fauci, director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force, stated to NPR, “in the beginning, it was a slow start. But right now that the commercial firms have gotten involved, we really have caught up. And we will be — we’re seeing a much more improved system with regard to the availability and the implementation of testing.”

Abbott explains that their new test “runs on Abbott’s ID NOW TM platform—a lightweight box (6.6 pounds and the size of a small toaster) that can sit in a variety of locations,” adding that “because of its small size, it can be used in more non-traditional places where people can have their results in a matter of minutes, bringing an alternate testing technology to combat the novel coronavirus. We’re ramping up production to deliver 50,000 ID NOW COVID-19 tests per day, beginning next week, to the U.S. healthcare system.”

Quickly identifying COVID-19 cases helps immensely in the administration of quick treatment, and it’s the only real way to curb the spread of the disease sooner rather than later. In fact, according to the American Heart Association, testing of any communicable disease is of paramount concern. Why? “It’s crucial, of course, to help treat, isolate, or hospitalize people who are infected. Testing also is important in the bigger public health picture on mitigation efforts, helping investigators characterize the prevalence, spread, and contagiousness of the disease.”

How does the Abbott Laboratories portable detector work? First, a sample specimen is drawn from a patient. Abbott Laboratories has not disclosed on its website what type of specimen is drawn, but it’s believed to come via swabs from the nasal passages or back of the throat, or even respiratory specimens, as the CDC says. The drawn sample is then fed into the detector, where a chemical is combined with it to determine the genetic material of any viruses present and compare them to those found in a large database. If any fragments of the novel coronavirus’s genome are present, the test will yield a positive result in about five to 13 minutes.

With this faster testing system now in play, mitigation measures can be hastened to contain the pandemic. Not only will lives be saved, but the data from all these tests will better inform both public health authorities and government officials of COVID-19’s prevalence and the ways it’s evolving.

The post FDA Approves Portable 5-Minute Coronavirus Test by Abbott Laboratories first appeared on Dornob.

Historically, robots were invented to take on tasks that were repetitive, menial, and even hazardous. They were designed to make life easier and safer for humans, particularly in industrial applications. Now, almost a century after their invention, a recent issue of the Science Robotics journal featured a poignant article entitled “Combating COVID-19—The role of robotics in managing public health and infectious diseases.” It’s the work of a collaborative team of researchers including Henrik Christensen, director of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Contextual Robotics Institute, as well as Marcia McNutt, president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. The researchers agree that robots are suited for the healthcare industry because “combating infectious diseases involves an environment that is unsuitable for human workers but is suitable to robots…..now, the impact of COVID-19 may drive further research in robotics to address risks of infectious diseases.”

Essentially, the researchers believe that “COVID-19 may become the tipping point” that catapults medical robotics into more widespread use, particularly in times of pandemic.They can, for instance, be deployed to assist with “disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring vital signs, and assisting border controls,” — in other words, with decontamination, logistical delivery, and certain clinical tasks, not to mention reconnaissance and monitoring in certain fields of operation to ensure that all workers are complying with protocols.

Decontamination is especially challenging on human workers. The researchers emphasized that “opportunities lie in intelligent navigation and detection of high-risk, high-touch areas, combined with other preventative measures. New generations of large, small, micro, and swarm robots that are able to continuously work and clean (i.e., not only removing dust, but also truly sanitizing/sterilizing all surfaces) could be developed.”

Other vital areas that stand to benefit from robotic assistance are those of telemedicine and telepresence. That is, “the deployment of social robots can present unique opportunities for continued social interactions and adherence to treatment regimes without fear of spreading more disease.” Besides, robots can take the form of artificial intelligence avatars who can virtually assist people at select digital kiosks.

In fact, Indiana’s Tribune-Star publication shared that the Rural Health Innovation Collaborative (RHIC) Simulation Center at Union Hospital recently repurposed their digital avatar robots to assist with the spike in registration and admission of new patients while simultaneously functioning “as a safe go-between for patients, families, and staff.” More specifically, “the double-robotics telepresence means questions get asked and answered remotely.” Each of the 12 total robots “are stationed in different parts of the hospital…and are being used primarily for registration and triage areas of the emergency department.” In so doing, patients, family members, and hospital staff can communicate with one another through the telepresence avatars without running the risk of exposing themselves to COVID-19.

And, in still another example from IEEE Spectrum, the nurse-helping robot Moxi helps maximize efficiency by tackling repetitive chores that would otherwise take up precious man-hours. With this labor being redistributed to Moxi, her human counterparts don’t have to waste any energy grabbing supplies and restocking supply rooms. Instead, they’re free and available to handle other more challenging tasks that require the human touch.

As Input Magazine adds, “By letting Moxi do the bulk of these administrative chores, nurses can have more time to spend on the crucial business of patient care.” And since’s she’s also equipped with self-cleaning and self-disinfecting abilities, it’s safe to say her deployment would be very welcome right about now.

The post Robots are Changing the Fight Against Coronavirus first appeared on Dornob.

A browse through Copper.org reveals that the Copper Age preceded the Bronze Age and that “copper was the first metal to be hammered into bowls, around 4000 BC.” Meanwhile, the American Journal of Infection Control has emphasized that copper’s antimicrobial, germicidal, and “anti-infective” characteristics have been known since the Victorian era. Understandably, the 19th century saw copper coating on many hospital surfaces, remaining popular until stainless steel came to the fore during the 20th century. But now that COVID-19 has reached pandemic proportions, the pendulum might just swing back towards copper once more.

The infectious disease COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. It can be spread when an infected person sneezes and coughs, releasing tiny droplets that harbor the virus. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have reiterated the importance of washing one’s hands and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.

Researchers with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the CDC, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Princeton University jointly discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen’s stability permits it to survive on certain surfaces, as published on the New England Journal of Medicine. The reason? Coronaviruses are resilient enough to survive on metal, glass, and plastic, as documented by the Journal of Hospital Infection. Additionally, the NIH has revealed that SARS-CoV-2 can survive up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two or three days on plastic and stainless-steel surfaces. But perhaps the most encouraging news from the study was the finding that copper surfaces tended to degrade the novel coronavirus in about four hours.

Copper’s ability to disrupt COVID-19 should not be too far of a leap, given previous publication by the likes of the Health Environments Research and Design Journal that the material had also been proven to eliminate E. coli, influenza A, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and norovirus germs.

Fast Company has also reported that “when influenzas, bacteria like E. coli, superbugs like MRSA, or even coronaviruses land on most hard surfaces, they can live for up to four to five days. But when they land on copper, and copper alloys like brass, they begin to die within minutes and are undetectable within hours…..No wonder that in India, people have been drinking out of copper cups for millennia.”

What is it about copper that makes it effective as an antimicrobial material? Insider points to the stuff’s effectiveness in disrupting the membranes that house a microbe’s DNA or RNA. In the case of the novel coronavirus, it destroys its RNA so that it cannot replicate itself in a host cell and thereby won’t be able to cause infection.

It is also believed that copper’s ability to act in place of other metals helps in its disrupting the normal biochemical pathways of the virus. As Dr. Michael D. L. Johnson of the University of Arizona College of Medicine explains, “by blocking the function of the protein, you block the function of the pathway,” thereby stopping it from continuing its infectious routes and cascades.

Imagine, then, a future with copper prevalent in public areas like offices, restaurants, schools, stores, and even in mail packaging. Picture your home having copper finishes, too, and not just amongst the kitchen and dinnerware.

Back in 2007, the United States Department of Defense’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) had already wanted copper alloys fitted into hospitals, especially intensive care units, as cited on BMC Proceedings. Their data showed that a “coppered” hospital room registered 97-percent reductions in pathogens, lowering both hospital-acquired infections and patient mortality significantly.

Of course, copper oxidizes over time to create a green patina, as seen on the Statue of Liberty. But even in its oxidized state, the metal still poses a threat to pathogens. A solution may be to utilize copper alloys that won’t oxidize and change hues. Still, these alloys must contain more than 67-percent copper to truly be effective, as described by medical researcher Phyllis J. Kuhn in 1983. More tests still need to be run to see if oxidized copper will be as effective as its unoxidized counterpart against the novel coronavirus and any other future pandemic-level pathogen. Other challenges will be the sourcing of copper to fulfill a large future demand.

In any case, because the COVID-19 virus can linger on several other types of surfaces, the importance of proper hygiene is paramount, especially as it applies to the cleaning of everything in your home to help minimize the risk of pathogen transmission.

The post Could Copper Combat COVID-19? first appeared on Dornob.

The design duo joins Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and Carme Pigem to respectively become the fourth and fifth women among 48 laureates to have won the illustrious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Hadid took the prize on her own in 2004, while Sejima shared the 2010 prize with Ryue Nishizawa and Pigem shared the 2017 prize with both Rafael Aranda and Ramon Vilalta. Interestingly, NPR news observes that awarding the 2020 prize to McNamara and Farrell reflects the field’s growing population of women architects, although the Chicago Tribune points out there are “struggles women architects still face in a male-dominated profession, including lesser pay and fewer opportunities for advancement than their male counterparts.”

People magazine, meanwhile, showcased McNamara and Farrell’s teamwork and mutual appreciation for each other’s strengths. McNamara says of Farrell in the article that “Yvonne has an enormous sense of humanity and integrity, and she has the talent to bring that right into the center of our work.”

Farrell likewise complimented her business partner, noting that “Shelley is unbelievably tenacious. I would say fearless as well. Shelly is an architect in every molecule of her existence. She will not let things be, other than the very best.”

Leveraging the traditions of brutalist architecture, the pair employs massive rigidity, block-like appearances, and raw geometric concrete at an immense scale in the university buildings they’re renowned for designing. The Guardian has, for instance, noted that McNamara and Farrell “have a preference for weighty materials, such as concrete and stone, often sculpted in massive volumes [to] give their buildings a tough, primal quality.” Of course, they also work in other touches to offset the harshness, like “airy atria, broad meandering staircases, views between floors, [and] places to perch and loiter, celebrating the ‘free gifts’ that architecture can provide to the public beyond merely fulfilling a client’s brief.”

McNamara and Farrell are also deeply committed to extending a building’s aesthetic to encompass its location’s cultural ethics. The Guardian notes that the duo pays attention to “the spaces in between,” which accounts for their architecture being designed “as a kind of ‘scaffolding’ on which lives and events can be played out.” It is no wonder that, as Architectural Record cited, the Pritzker Prize jury selected McNamara and Farrell because of “their deep understanding of ‘spirit of place.’” The jury also emphasized that Grafton Architects, “without grand or frivolous gestures, have managed to create buildings that are monumental institutional presences when appropriate, but even so they are zoned and detailed in such a way as to produce more intimate spaces that create community within.”

The two met as fellow architecture students at University College Dublin during the 1970s. In 1978, they opened Grafton Architects with three other partners who eventually moved onto other things, gaining prominence in the early 1990s when they designed some buildings for the city’s Trinity College and Temple Bar Square.

By 2003, the pair ventured into designing architecture outside of Ireland, even winning an international competition to design the Universita Luigi Bocconi economics building in Milan, which was completed five years later. Many in international architecture circles praised the design, granting it the distinction of World Building of the Year at the 2008 inaugural World Architecture Festival and solidifying Grafton Architects’ place among the world’s premiere designers of university campus buildings. What followed after Italy were projects with universities in Peru, France, and several more in the United Kingdom. In the British Isles, McNamara and Farrell updated the University of Limerick’s university president’s campus residence, freshened up a multi-use building at Kingston-upon-Thames’ Kingston University, and most recently have begun work on a London School of Economics building, which The Guardian says will be completed next year.

In 2018, McNamara and Farrell were asked to curate the 16th edition of the Venice Bienniale, which they did with the theme “Freespace.” They also used the opportunity to articulate their ethos, explaining that “in creating our manifesto for the Bienniale, we wrote down a litany of our shared values. That came very easily, because architecture is not just ideas; it’s translating ideas into very physical realities.” The McNamara-Farrell “Freespace” manifesto, as Architectural Record cited, “highlights the generous, democratic quality of architecture to provide ‘spatial gifts for those who use it’ and to leverage resources that they call ‘nature’s free gifts’ — sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials.”

Besides being architects, both McNamara and Farrell are also architecture professors, teaching the youth about their profession and often highlighting the joys of the design work they do. When asked why they were so interested in designing architecture for universities, McNamara explained that both Farrell and herself were “passionately interested in education. The university should be a place where knowledge is tended like a garden. And we’re the guardians of knowledge.”

“Teaching for us has always been a parallel reality,” Farrell added on Irish Central. “And it’s a way of trying to distill our experience and gift it to other generations coming along so that they actually play a role in the growing of that culture. So it’s a two-way thing, we learn from students, and hopefully students learn from us.”

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Thanks to some insights learned from studying the behavior of kingsnakes, a team from Johns Hopkins University’s Terradynamics Lab, spearheaded by Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Chen Li, has just broken ground in this area. The team’s cutting-edge research was published in both the Journal of Experimental Biology and Royal Society Open Science.

“We look to these creepy creatures for movement inspiration because they’re already so adept at stably scaling obstacles in their day-to-day lives,” explains Li. “Hopefully our robot can learn how to bob and weave across surfaces just like snakes.”

Kingsnakes in particular were selected for a number of reasons. Firstly, they’re nonvenomous to humans, meaning they wouldn’t be able to harm any of the researchers. Second, they’re a docile species commonly kept as pets, making them much easier to handle and acquire that other kinds of snakes. Kingsnakes are also very versatile, having proven highly adaptable to varied landscapes including deserts, forests, and even lush tropic regions. They can traverse dry grasslands and the wet terrain of riverbanks and swamps. Even burrowing in the ground is natural for them. They can likewise anchor, brace, and grip with just as much dexterity as they slither and sidewind, whether the obstacles are smooth and small or rough and large.

To better understand kingsnake movement, Li and his team devised a set of experiments, each with a different set of parameters. These varying conditions centered around adjusted “step height and surface friction” to document how the kingsnakes “contorted their bodies in response” to different kinds of obstacles.

The team’s findings revealed that the snakes controlled their body movements by “partition[ing] their bodies into three movement sections.” On the top and bottom steps, the front and rear section of the snake’s body tended to undulate horizontally like a wave. The middle section stayed rigid during this time, “hovering just so to bridge the height of the step. The wriggling portions, they noticed, provided stability to keep the snake from tipping over,” reports HUB Johns Hopkins University.

They also found that the kingsnake combined both “body lateral undulation and cantilevering to stably traverse large steps.” This means that every time it moved, the front part of its body would extend and lengthen, the back part would shorten, and the middle section would stay about the same as the snake was suspended between the two steps. It was the wriggling portions that gave the reptile enough stability to keep from tipping over.

When the researchers varied the friction and the height of the steps, the kingsnakes adjusted their movements accordingly. Steps that were taller and more slippery prompted them to decelerate and undulate their front and back partitions less for better stability.

Based on these observations, the team then developed their first snake robot design as a model bio-mimicking the locomotion concepts they learned. Unfortunately, this prototype was only able to climb a small distance before destabilizing and toppling over. For that exact reason, the next incarnation of the bot was given a suspension system (similar to that of an automobile) that would allow each one of its body segments to compress onto a step’s surface, thereby improving balance across steps. Of course, the one downside of this improvement is its inherent need for more electricity.

Li admits that “the animal is still far more superior, but these results are promising for the field of robots that can travel across large obstacles.”

Overall, the research team was able to create a robot snake that could effectively scale a height that was more than a third of its body length. It also surpassed the performance of previous robots in its ability to traverse large steps, completing the task more nimbly and with greater speed.

The team believes that kingsnakes have proven invaluable in advancing locomotion concepts and their application in robotic design. Li feels the snakes also show promise for further breakthroughs when exploring inaccessible terrain in disaster response, adding that “they’re the masters of movement, and there’s much we can learn from them.”

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The latest publication of the American Chemical Society’s ACS Omega journal offers some valuable help via a possible innovation from Purdue University. There, a team of researchers led by Biomedical Engineering Professor Jacqueline Linnes has recently devised a diagnostic tool small enough to fit in one’s hand to test for coronavirus.

So far, the prototype device is only capable of detecting the MERS-CoV coronavirus strain. But its detection capability is both accurate and sensitive — even for incredibly small concentrations of the virus. Naturally, this provides hope for creating a similar diagnostic test for COVID-19. The challenge, though, will be in how to manufacture the COVID-19-specific detector not just at the university laboratory scale, but on one large enough to meet all people’s needs in the midst of the current global pandemic.

Linnes’ research has focused on designing portable devices that can quickly diagnose a range of various diseases, especially infectious and virulent ones, like whooping cough and cholera. Conventional diagnostic devices often require lengthy timespans (a few weeks to a couple of months) before results are known. But Linnes has sought to cut down on that time with small paper-based gadgets made from glass fiber or cellulose.

As Purdue University has documented, “paper-based devices [have made] for faster diagnostics, because paper-like materials, such as glass fiber and cellulose, are robust and known to function as a pump…..carry[ing] samples, such as blood or water, without all the external equipment required within a lab….. [and] reading a paper strip is easy and low cost.”

Linnes’ diagnostic tools are distinctive for their efficiency. For instance, they can indicate whether a test sample is positive for a disease in much the same fashion as a pregnancy test. These fast-acting devices can even be reliably used in the comfort of one’s home, with results available in under an hour rather than the typical lengthy weeks’ time.

Linnes adds that “because this device has a more complex shape, a process hasn’t been developed to make it available on a commercial scale. However, many processes in electronics and paper manufacturing could be translated to scaling up this device.”

“This paper device isn’t dependent on a particular virus or sequence. To detect COVID-19, we would just need an assay design specific to that sequence, which could come from a nasal or throat swap sample. Just like with MERS-CoV, a user could load the assay with liquid into the paper platform, fold the device, and let it run.”

Linnes’ MERS-CoV diagnostic invention has already been filed for intellectual property (IP) patent protection through Purdue University’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). In other words, this MERS-CoV diagnostic tool is available for license. The various types of licensing agreements Purdue University’s OTC has are outlined at this link here.

Through this licensing process, Linnes’ prototype device can be modified to meet a broader set of needs. As described on ACS Omega, the diagnostic tool “has shown versatility in the ability to detect multiple types of pathogens…this proof-of-concept…shows promise for detecting many other pathogens beyond MERS-CoV,” and with any luck, can swiftly be cross-applied to COVID-19.

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Back in 1903, Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, first suggested that the now-famous Meteor Crater in Arizona was produced by a meteorite. By the 1960s, asteroid impact avoidance plans were already entering popular culture. Original Star Trek fans, for instance, will recall the “Paradise Syndrome” episode, wherein an ancient civilization of ‘preservers’ saved worlds from impacts by constructing an asteroid deflector.

Because actual science and engineering often strives to actualize ideas presented in science fiction, it’s no surprise that the scientific timeline on planetary defense mechanisms against near-Earth objects also began with the 1964 book Islands in Space, which addressed the need to develop techniques to deflect, capture, or land “planetoids” to avert impact. Three years later, in 1967, MIT students in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics designed Project Icarus, whose mission was to prevent a hypothetical impact by asteroid 1556 Icarus. Project Icarus later inspired the 1979 film Meteor, which itself was the precursor to the 1998 films Armageddon and Deep Impact.

But it was in fact the 1980 discovery of the planet’s prehistoric K-T boundary containing iridium, an element that’s rare on Earth but abundant in asteroids and comets, that brought the harsh reality of asteroid impact into focus. The reason? The particular asteroid that had created the boundary, a thin geologic layer found in much of the world’s sediment, is believed to be the one that drove the dinosaurs to extinction 66 million years ago. The Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan Peninsula is deduced to be the impact site of that same asteroid.

Our planet has since been observed to be surrounded by thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs). These asteroids and comets that orbit about Earth all have the potential to hit it. To avert such a collision, impact avoidance plans have become commonplace in scientific communities.

In the tradition of the original Project Icarus, another set of MIT researchers has now set out to develop an impact avoidance system. According to their study published in the journal Acta Astronautica, by taking note of an asteroid’s mass and momentum, and especially its proximity to Earth’s gravitational keyhole (the region of space where Earth’s gravity could alter the asteroid’s trajectory) to ascertain the amount of warning time, a decision map for a successful mission to fend off collision can be constructed.

The MIT team’s hypothetical deflection methods will be applied to the NEOs Bennu and 99942 Apophis. Bennu is an asteroid that a NASA mission is currently targeting, with a goal of bringing a piece back for detailed analysis. Apophis is an asteroid named after the Egyptian deity of chaos. Its close encounter with the Earth will take place in 2029, traveling a whopping 67,000 miles per hour past the planet. While MIT News states that it will “will sling by Earth without incident in both 2029 and 2036,” it is nonetheless “never too early to consider strategies for deflecting an asteroid if one were ever on a crash course with our home planet.”

MIT’s new decision map utilizes “a framework for deciding which type of mission would be most successful in deflecting an incoming asteroid.” Through it, a couple of courses of action are possible. One is launching a projectile to alter the NEO’s course, and another is sending a scout out to get accurate measurements for the projectile. Alternatively, scientists could send two scouts out to not only get measurements, but nudge the object and change its trajectory.

Whatever the case may be, there’s no denying that this new simulation tool is out-of-this-world useful.

Images courtesy of MIT

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Swedish central bank Sveriges Riksbank has explained that in recent years there’s been a general decline in the use of Swedish banknotes and coins, with many people preferring to pay via mobile payment system Swish, which was introduced in 2012 by six of Sweden’s large banks, after which it quickly became the payment method of choice not just for individuals but also small businesses looking to sidestep credit card fees. As NS Banking has reported, “Swish has been a driving force behind Sweden’s digital payments revolution, which has pushed the country ever closer to becoming a cashless society.” This growing trend away from cash has also led the Riksbank to consider replacing Sweden’s official currency, the kronor, with a state-issued electronic money, the e-krona.

In a recent statement, the Riksbank revealed that the e-krona pilot program is to last until at least 2021. The initiative is meant to determine whether the electronic money can actually make for a viable alternative to cash and, in doing so, help make transactions simpler, more accessible to everyone, and more user-friendly for individuals, businesses, and banks. If it proves successful, Sweden will become the world’s first country to debut a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.

According to the test environment parameters, simulations will allow users to pay, deposit, or withdraw with e-krona. These can be achieved in one of three ways: with a mobile app, with a wearable like a smartwatch, or with a card.

Why is the Riksbank interested in forging ahead with the e-krona? Ever since Bitcoin was released in 2009, cryptocurrencies have been growing in popularity, with Facebook’s Libra being the latest contender for the top spot. The social media titan’s move into the cryptocurrency sector has sent red flags that the future of money might no longer be in the traditional control of centralized banks — unless those banks get on the digital bandwagon via CBDCs. And so, with the Riksbank’s testing of the e-krona, the Swedes can feel confident that no competing private currency alternative will weaken their nation’s currency, in terms of both “security and performance.”

But Reuters is also quick to point out that “central bankers fret that Libra could reach billions and quickly erode sovereignty over monetary policy.” In other words, these central bankers fear that individual countries might no longer have exclusive legal control over their respective national currencies. Instead, if Libra takes hold as the dominant currency of choice, then Facebook will have more sway, than, say the Swedish government on monetary policy. To guard against this, the central banks of several different countries will have no choice but to explore CBDCs.

A 2019 study published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has stated that “across the world, central banks are reportedly thinking about how new central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could replace traditional money.” At that time, the number of central banks exploring CBDC was 63, “representing jurisdictions covering close to 80 percent of the world population.”

Meanwhile, the Global Government Forum emphasized that the central banks at the forefront of CBDC development include (alphabetically) the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Swedish Riksbank, the Swiss National Bank, European Central Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements. But Sweden’s now deployed e-krona pilot program puts it slightly ahead of the pack, bringing it “closer to being the first major country to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC).”

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Tech firms Intela AI and Soul Machines spearheaded the development of Ella, with Erin Greally assuming the role of lead researcher. For starters, Ella’s face was conceptualized as a composite of 26 different people. She’s also been programmed to realistically account for voice, tone, speech, body language, and empathy. To give her an added level of warmth, she’s even been designed to smile and blink. She can greet you, carry a full-on conversation, and even simulate the appropriate facial expressions in real-time. Of course, she is still a virtual assistant, or avatar, on a digital kiosk screen, and not a bona fide three-dimensional robot (yet).

Ella is part of a pilot program wherein New Zealand law enforcement can innovatively connect with the public. Her trial run spans three months, an in May, her performance will be reviewed to see how her technology can be further applied and upgraded. If successful, Ella will go on to grace other law enforcement kiosks across New Zealand.

“Her capabilities are basic at this stage as she is a proof of concept, but we see some real benefits of digital person technology if we can equip the AI with more knowledge and capabilities, and it can learn from more interactions,” explained New Zealand Commissioner of Police Mike Bush in a recent statement. “This trial is designed to help police understand if a digital person makes sense in a policing context, but Ella could eventually provide a variety of non-emergency services and advice in more places and on more devices, such as the NZ Police app and Police Connect.”

New Zealand has been taking several steps to modernize its police force lately. The other new technology implemented is the “Police Connect” digital kiosk, a self-service platform that provides people with answers to commonly asked queries, connects them to call centers, and reports non-emergency mishaps as they occur. Possible future improvements to this kiosk include CCTV monitoring and built-in alarms, as noted in the New Zealand Herald. It’s likely that Ella will also work in tandem with this, particularly when citizens start to access it for information or advice.

Commissioner Bush was quick to point out that Ella would not replace her human counterparts. Indeed, the New Zealand police force is looking to grow its numbers. “We’re in the process of recruiting 1,800 new staff to bolster our frontline and ensure we have the capabilities to deliver the best services, emergency and non-emergency, to everyone in New Zealand,” her said.

Rather, Ella and all the new technology being deployed are a means to enhance the force and bring it to the 21st century.

“We’re very much just starting this journey, as Police Connect, Ella, and other modern digital technologies present many more exciting opportunities for us to provide new and improved policing services,” Bush explains

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Nano tanks — small aquariums under 15 gallons in size — are quickly becoming a favorite decor piece among renters and homeowners, especially those who live in urban areas. Not only are these tiny aquariums minimalist in style, they also make for a great way to bring nature’s touch into the house.

Why is Minimalism So Popular?

Perhaps it’s Marie Kondo’s beloved philosophy of tidying up, decluttering, and simplifying interior spaces, or maybe it’s the fact that city and suburban rentals aren’t very spacious to begin with. On top of all that, the newfound popularity of reducing one’s carbon footprint and leading a sustainable lifestyle is likewise encouraging everyone to cut back. Rather than splurging on large things, people are opting for more compact, more convenient designs.

The minimalism aesthetic visually conveys a purposeful cleanliness that’s soothing to any denizen, whether they reside in the heart of concrete jungle or the quaint countryside (though of course, it’s probably most impactful to urban dwellers who regularly need to decompress and de-stress). And with big publications like Vice having previously reported that “staring at a fish tank is like getting the healing benefits of nature on demand,” it’s no wonder that people everywhere are choosing to work small tanks into their own decor schemes.

The Health Benefits of Nano Tanks

A nano tank is like a zen sand garden, providing calming effects to pet owners and promoting serenity in the homespace. There’s also a type of mindfulness and meditation that takes place as you care for an aquarium, tending to the aquascape as a form of mental escape from daily stress.

Pet Central recently shared the views of certified sleep science coach Chris Brantner, who states: “It seems that watching fish, and listening to the trickling water, causes the production of serotonin, which stimulates the brain to increase endorphins. The result? Positive feelings. Such stress reduction translates well to sleep.”

Brantner adds that “We’re learning more and more about how important it is to set calming bedtime routines and creating a relaxing sleep environment in our bedrooms. An aquarium is perfect for both. The trickling sound of the water naturally does what we try to emulate with sound machines. And watching the fish swim around is a perfect meditative precursor to sleep.”

A nano tank can thereby “spark joy” and bring balance to one’s home, much like minimalism. Even better, its a miniature oasis that you get to design and curate, allowing all your creative juices to flow freely. So what are you waiting for? Stop staring out the window all day, and bring this magical little pice of nature into your home.

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Led by Chemical Engineering Professor Zhenan Bao and Materials Science Engineering Professor Yi Cui, the Stanford researchers first published their work in the Nature Communications journal, highlighting their prototype battery’s use of a special plastic polymer electrolyte characterized by “unprecedented toughness and high ionic conductivity.” Implementing a supramolecular ion conductor, this prototype’s binding material allowed for more elasticity. Hence, the research team’s thumbnail-sized battery proved extremely effective as a solid, malleable, and highly capable conveyor of electric charge. On top of that, laboratory tests revealed that the battery’s experimental design delivered a consistent power output, no matter what shape or size it was squeezed, folded, or stretched into.

By contrast, conventional lithium-ion batteries — which power electric cars, grid-level storage, and personal electronics — tend to utilize combustible liquid electrolytes, or flowable gels. Their highly flammable nature commonly leads them to leak or catch fire, making them “culpable for the majority of recent catastrophic battery fires.” These disadvantages have to be addressed to meet the performance demands of today’s wearable technology, and to ensure the safety of its many users.

The Stanford team’s thumbnail-sized prototype overcomes these challenges and is already expected to transform the wearable electronics experience, especially when it comes to products that interface directly with the human body. As the team notes in their Nature Communications piece, “The method reported here of decoupling ionic conductivity form mechanical properties opens a promising route to create high-toughness ion transport materials for energy storage applications.”

As Bao explained further: “Until now, we haven’t had a power source that could stretch and bend the way our bodies do, so that we can design electronics that people can comfortably wear.”

Another anticipated application of Stanford’s stretchable battery is its future development as a power source for health-monitoring sensors. Such sensors are designed to stickily cling to the skin as a means of tracking heart rate, respiration, temperature, and other vital signs. Bao’s own BodyNet wearable technology, for instance, makes extensive use of adhesive sensors to pick up physiological indicators or signals emanating from the wearer’s dermal and epidermal skin layers. These signals are then wirelessly transmitted as health readings to a receiver.

Ultimately, it’s hoped this new stretchable battery can power wearables without interfering with a person’s normal behavior, making them more unobtrusive, safer, and a lot more comfortable.

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