Is the Æ supposed to sound like 'eye' or 'ash'? We're just as confused too

The 'Biospherians' in Biosphere 2 tried to recreate in miniature everything needed to survive on Earth

Workers at Amazon, Target and other companies walked off the job on Friday to demand safer working conditions and transparency about how many front-line workers have gotten sick during the pandemic.

The ride-hailing company is cutting 3,700 jobs. It's the latest U.S. tech company to turn to layoffs to deal with fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.

Companies around the country are figuring out how to safely reopen office during the pandemic. The new normal might involve smartphone apps and badges to track employees.

The track is the Mumbai-based acoustic outfit’s first release this year

The post Exclusive Premiere: See ANC Become One with Nature in New Video For ‘Be Alright’ appeared first on My Site.

The world music duo on reinventing their 2011 track ‘Karpur Gauram’ with 17 musicians from nine countries

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The year-old band also called on Zygnema’s Sidharth Kadadi to produce their second release

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The Bengaluru turn up on dissonance and retain prog flavors on their latest song

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Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow

The post Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 appeared first on My Site.

Air-burning plasma thruster may be competitive with jet engines.

Regulatory “flexibility” was never meant to allow fraud, agency says.

A mutation in the virus seems to be getting more common, but we don't know why.

"There will be no social distancing in place," union rep wrote to city leaders.

A new paper analyzes what we know about the sample the probe grabbed last year.

Trump admin allegedly told CDC its reopening guide would "never see the light of day."

China now has a capsule potentially capable of returning from the Moon.

On Monday, officials in Los Angeles County released preliminary results of a study that suggest roughly 4.1% of the county's adult population has already had the coronavirus, which translates to between 221,000 and 442,000 people, factoring in adjustments for statistical margin of error.That's a much higher number than confirmed case counts indicate. (As of early Tuesday, the county had 13,816 cases.)"We haven't known the true extent of COVID-19 infections in our community because we have only tested people with symptoms and the availability of tests has been limited," Neeraj Sood, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California and lead investigator on the study, said in a statement.Dr. Barbara Ferrer, LA County's public health director, said in a statement that the early results pointed to the possibility that many people may have been unknowingly infected.The study relies on rapid antibody tests, which have faced concerns about accuracy.And as The Mercury News reported, a Stanford study that also showed higher rates of infection in Santa Clara County drew criticism, although that was largely from statisticians over the study's methodology.Still, experts have emphasized that more studies will help develop a clearer picture of the virus's true prevalence.In any case, officials say it's crucial to continue to adhere to public health orders for many reasons, including that if more people are infected but asymptomatic, they could unknowingly spread the virus.______A change to the USNS Mercy's assignmentOn Monday, my New York Times colleague John Ismay and I spoke with leaders aboard the Navy hospital ship Mercy. Here's our dispatch about how their assignment has changed:In the weeks since the Mercy arrived at the Port of Los Angeles from San Diego, the hospital ship's mission has been clear: Serve as a crucial relief valve for patients who have not been infected with the coronavirus as hospitals fill up with patients sick with COVID-19.In recent days, the work has shifted, but that underlying goal has remained the same, the commanding officer of the ship's medical facility told us."FEMA, after having made an assessment of the situation and the local needs, has changed our assignment," said Capt. John Rotruck, the medical treatment team's commanding officer.The Mercy has sent 40 medical staff members -- two family practice doctors, 16 nurses and 20 corpsmen, including two respiratory technicians -- to help care for patients who do not have COVID-19 at a state-run skilled nursing facility in Orange County."We're essentially augmenting their staff," Rotruck said, as the anticipated surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations has, for now, been held at bay.The capacity onboard will decrease to 250 beds from 1,000, in large part as a result of that staffing shift -- although officials emphasized that leaves more than enough space at the rate the Mercy has been taking in patients.At the same time, leaders aboard the Mercy said that most of the military crew is moving off the ship to stay at nearby hotels to make it possible for crew members to keep their distance from one another as they work, eat and sleep.Sailors will be bused from their hotels to work their shifts aboard the ship.The move, which will decrease the number of crew members staying aboard the ship to roughly 140 from more than 800, came as the number of crew members who may have been exposed inched upward.By Monday, Rotruck said that nine crew members had tested positive for the coronavirus and that about 130 people were in quarantine because they had come into what federal officials define as close contact with at least one of those nine. All of those in quarantine tested negative.All nine who have COVID-19 were outpatients as of Monday -- meaning their cases were not severe enough to warrant being hospitalized -- and their conditions are being closely monitored.Rotruck said that moving crew members off the Mercy was unusual but not unprecedented.During a previous mission, for instance, some medical staff members flew to Vietnam to provide medical care to patients on the Mercy, although they did not sleep on the ship.However, Rotruck added, "We have not done it to this scale," with the vast majority of the ship's crew members living ashore.A spokesman said Friday that the crew aboard the Navy hospital ship Comfort, which is docked in New York City, recently moved most of its crew to hotels ashore as well.Rotruck said that the Mercy was ready to care for coronavirus-negative seniors living in nursing homes, as the governor has previously announced, but none had been transferred yet.Such nursing home patients may be moved to the Mercy for care through the typical intake process, if, for example, a facility needed to free up space to care for COVID-19 patients.As of Monday evening, the ship had taken in 65 patients total since it docked in San Pedro, and its crew had performed 22 surgeries. There were 13 patients still being treated onboard, meaning that 52 had been discharged.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Environmental crises must not be forgotten amid the pandemic, says the UN Secretary General.

Swarm Technologies has struck an agreement with California-based Momentus for the launch of a dozen telecommunication satellites, each the size of a slice of bread, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December. The December rideshare mission is the first of a series that Momentum plans to execute for Swarm, continuing into 2021 and 2022. Swarm plans to have 150 satellites launched over the next couple of years for a communication network in low Earth orbit. The first 12 SpaceBee satellites covered by the agreement announced today will be deployed into orbit from the Falcon 9. The inch-thick satellites fit… Read More

Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc. has signed an agreement to secure most of the payload mass on a Firefly Aerospace rocket that's due to lift off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in 2021. The agreement, announced today, establishes Spaceflight as the mission's anchor customer and commits the company to managing the logistics for multiple payloads on the Firefly Alpha rocket. That should help Firefly maximize use of the rocket's 630-kilogram (1,389-pound) capacity for a launch to sun-synchronous orbit. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is planning to launch the Alpha on its maiden flight from Vandenberg later this year. The company suffered a setback in… Read More

The third time's the charm for the Allen Institute for Brain Science's 3-D atlas of the mouse brain. Version 3 of the atlas, known as the Allen Mouse Brain Common Coordinate Framework or CCFv3, is the subject of a research paper published today in the journal Cell. It builds on a partial brain map that focused on the mouse cortex and was released in 2016. Previous versions of the atlas were rendered with lower-resolution 3-D maps. The latest high-resolution maps are fine enough to pinpoint the locations of individual brain cells — which is crucial for interpreting datasets that contain thousands… Read More

Funding for English local authorities is likely to be unveiled to encourage people to be more active.

The following is a brief roundup of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. A new antibody test is highly accurate at determining whether people have been infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a study published on Friday in The Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine found the test, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, had a specificity rate of 99.9% and a sensitivity rate of 100%, suggesting little chance of incorrectly diagnosing a healthy person as having been infected and virtually no chance of a false negative readout.

The ancient Roman city’s House of the Lovers has reopened to the public 40 years after it was severely damaged in 1980 by an earthquake

• Pompeii’s House of Lovers reopens to public

Australian photographer Christian Bowman from Queensland was among Australians waking up before the sun rose to capture images of the Eta Aquarids meteor shower

• Australians told to look to the skies early Wednesday for best views

Two gems from the wizard of recreational maths

UPDATE: Puzzle solutions can be read here.

Today’s column is a celebration of John Horton Conway, the legendary British mathematician, who died of coronavirus earlier this month, aged 82.

Conway was an inspirational, iconoclastic genius who invented and studied countless puzzles and games, in addition to his more highbrow work in group theory, number theory, geometry, topology and many other fields.

The answers to today’s puzzles

Earlier today I set you two puzzles that the late John Horton Conway suggested for this column:

1) The Miracle Builders

Smartphones can be used to digitally trace Covid-19. But not if the public don’t download an app over privacy fears – or find it won’t work on their device

The idea of the NHS tracing app is to enable smartphones to track users and tell them whether they interacted with someone who had Covid-19. Yet this will work only if large proportions of the population download the app. No matter how smart a solution may appear, mass consent is required. That will not be easy. Ministers and officials have failed to address the trade-offs between health and privacy by being ambiguous about the app’s safeguards.

Instead of offering cast-iron guarantees about the length of time for which data would be held; who can access it; and the level of anonymity afforded, we have had opacity and obfuscation. It is true that we are dealing with uncertainties. But without absolute clarity about privacy the public is unlikely to take up the app with the appropriate gusto.

Some weeks ago my main worries were around my GCSEs. Now I hear every day about deaths from Covid-19

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It is the sixth week of lockdown, and for many people things are getting progressively more intense. Most families are physically distancing at home. People are only leaving the house for their weekly shop – and spending a lot of that time waiting in the queue – or to exercise once a day.

In my family things are a bit different. Our driveway is usually empty during the day as my parents, who are doctors, go in to work. It is difficult to imagine how only some weeks ago my main worries were around my GCSEs. Now every day, I hear about deaths from coronavirus. I cannot help but feel a surge of fear for my parents as I watch these updates with my brother. I’m painfully aware of the many healthcare workers who have lost their lives.

Lawyers say failure to provide adequate PPE may amount to corporate manslaughter

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The deaths of more than 50 hospital and care home workers have been reported to Britain’s health and safety regulator, which is considering launching criminal investigations, the Guardian has learned.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which investigates the breaking of safety at work laws, has received 54 formal reports of deaths in health and care settings “where the source of infection is recorded as Covid-19”. These are via the official reporting process, called Riddor: Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences.

Sage told widespread use of antibody tests could lead to criminal behaviour, papers reveal

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Downing Street’s scientific advisers feared people might intentionally seek to contract coronavirus and that a black market in fake test results could emerge if employers allowed workers to return only when they had a positive antibody test.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as Sage, was warned last month by its behavioural psychology subgroup that the widespread introduction of antibody tests could lead to a range of potentially dangerous and even criminal “negative behavioural responses” if not handled well.

Recent deaths have stood out, but scientists say they must be interpreted with caution

Amid the steady stream of stories on the lives lost to coronavirus are cases that stand out as remarkable. In the past month, at least two pairs of twins have died in Britain and two pairs of brothers, all within hours or days of each other. But do the deaths point to genetic factors that make some more likely than others to succumb to the disease?

Most scientists believe that genes play a role in how people respond to infections. A person’s genetic makeup may influence the receptors that the coronavirus uses to invade human cells. How resilient the person is to the infection, their general health, and how the immune system reacts will also have some genetic component.

Studies have examined some of the more unusual signs of Covid-19

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The World Health Organization lists the most common symptoms of Covid-19 as fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Others include a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion, pain, diarrhoea and the loss of sense of taste and/or smell. But there are also other more unusual symptoms that patients have presented.

Alberta's police watchdog have released new details about an armed confrontation that left one person dead and a police officer seriously injured.

In a tale of two cities, Moscow keeps its distance while in Minsk, thousands turn out for the traditional military spectacular

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In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of relatives who fought in the second world war in a memorial called the Immortal Regiment.

But on Saturday, the images of Soviet veterans and their families floated past on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.

While the White House looks ahead to reopening houses of worship, most Americans think in-person religious services should be barred or allowed only with limits during the coronavirus pandemic — and only about a third say that prohibiting in-person services violates religious freedom, a new poll finds. States have taken different approaches to resuming gatherings as the coronavirus continues to spread, raising tough questions for religious leaders and the faithful about the appropriate time to return. Among that group is 54-year-old Andre Harris of Chicago, a onetime Sunday school teacher who has shifted his routine from physical worship to the conference calls his church is holding during the pandemic.

The US believes Russia is working with Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, to send militia fighters and equipment to Libya, according to senior officials. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, US special envoy for Syria, Jim Jeffrey, said Libya’s increasingly shadowy battlefield could get even more complicated. “We know that, certainly, the Russians are working with Assad to transfer militia fighters, possibly third country, possibly Syrian, to Libya, as well as equipment,” he said. His comments came a day after a leaked UN report confirmed the presence of Russian and Syrian mercenaries operating in Libya in support of renegade military commander, Khalifa Haftar. The report revealed that Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group, has up to 1,200 mercenaries operating in Libya in support of General Haftar’s forces, which are already backed by the UAE, Russia and Egypt. The report, seen by Reuters, is one of the first indications of the scale of Wagner’s military operation in Libya’s messy battlefield, as well as the first time the UN has confirmed the presence of the shadowy Russian mercenaries. Since 2014, the oil-rich North African country has been split between areas controlled by the internationally recognised Government of National Accord in Tripoli and the northwest, and territory held by Gen Haftar’s eastern-based forces in Benghazi. For almost six years Gen Haftar’s forces have been at war with a coalition of militias from the west of the country who support the government in Tripoli. Turkey is the only military backer of the Tripoli government that is currently trying to stave off Haftar’s year-long offensive on the capital. The UAE and Egypt have long strengthened Haftar’s forces with military equipment, including aircraft and helicopters, while Moscow provided private contractor forces. As the conflict has drawn on and involvement has increasingly become the stage for a struggle for power in the region, diplomats say both Turkey and the UAE have deployed drones and the use of mercenaries has increased, now seemingly including forces from Russia and Syria. Libya has been mired in chaos since a 2011 NATO intervention helped topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and its battlefields increasingly populated with foreign fighters in a shadow-war. Russian mercenaries were first reported fighting alongside General Haftar’s forces in Libya in 2018. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, however, insisted that those mercenaries do not represent the Russian government. Yet when General Haftar visited Moscow in 2018, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with long-standing ties to Mr Putin and suspected owner of Wagner, was seen in the footage of the meeting, sitting near the Russian defence minister. Russia, which also backs Assad’s government in Syria, has maintained a delicate balancing act in Libya, forging ties with both the UN-recognised government and with the rebel commander. But Moscow’s patience with General Haftar began to run out earlier this year when he and his entourage in January abruptly left the much-anticipated cease-fire talks in Moscow mediated by Russia and Turkey without signing the deal. Henry Wooster, deputy assistant secretary at State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs also expressed increasing concern over the ties between the Libyan commander and Syria’s president, who are both bitter enemies of Turkey and fighting Turkish-backed militant groups on their soil. “Haftar’s establishment of so-called diplomatic relations with the Assad regime...is very much a part of the piece of the question of Syrian mercenaries, at least on his side of the equation,” he said. While the leaked report also confirmed the presence of Syrian mercenaries in Libya fighting alongside Haftar’s forces, Pro-Turkish Syrians are also known to be fighting with the Tripoli government, against General Haftar.

Smart Education And Learning Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Age, By Component (Hardware, Software, Service), By Learning Mode, By End User, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2020 - 2027Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891723/?utm_source=PRN The global smart education and learning market size is expected to reach USD 680.1 billion by 2027. The market is anticipated to witness a CAGR of 17.9% from 2020 to 2027. Demand for smart education and learning solutions is increasing among the growing population in corporate and academic sectors, owing to benefits such as improved education quality and easy access to educational content. Increasing adoption of consumer electronics, such as smartphones, e-readers, laptops, and e-learning applications, has altered conventional education methodology and has enhanced the efficiency of an individual to learn. Additionally, there are enormous opportunities for advancements in the market, owing to improved internet accessibility.Also, the COVID - 19 outbreak has emerged an opportunity for the market with an increasing number of states and countries closing educational institutes. For instance, over 90.0% of the world's students are not attending their schools due to this pandemic, as mentioned by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization of The Commonwealth (Canada), has supported educational institutions and governments in building robust distance education solutions for quality e-learning practices. However, lack of awareness among end-users about the latest technologies and inadequate amount of resources for delivering quality education in developing regions is anticipated to hinder market growth.The simulation-based learning segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest CAGR because this mode enables corporate professional and educational institutions to create a realistic experience in a controlled environment.It also allows professionals and learners to practice, navigate, explore, and obtain more information through a virtual medium before they start working on real-life tasks.Growing awareness among people and the rising popularity of smart education are encouraging solution providers to invest in research and development for creating more reliable, better, and cost-effective solutions. Manufacturers are making substantial investments in developing new products for enhancing the user experience.Smart education and learning market report highlights:• Growing demand for smart educational practices can be accredited to factors, such as reducing expenses of online training, curbing geographic challenges in physically attending classes, and time constraints faced by aspirants• Increasing penetration of the Internet of Things (IoT), enhanced internet accessibility, and rapid adoption of mobile technology have encouraged users to adopt smart education and learning solutions• Innovative techniques, such as gamification, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), microlearning, and adaptive learning, which improve the overall educational process, are expected to drive the market over the projected period• North America accounted for the largest market share in 2019 owing to its large consumer base for e-learning methodsRead the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891723/?utm_source=PRN About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Contact Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001