Woman made S$589,800 by buying insurance on flights she predicted would get delayed
Researchers discovered a data breach exposing sensitive images from numerous niche dating apps, such as 3somes, CougarD, Gay Daddy Bear, BBW Dating, and Herpes Dating.
Evidence that authentic people seek to appear authentic rather than be authentic
Spies Can Eavesdrop by Watching a Light Bulb's Vibrations
Doubling effort makes up for 6 IQ points
Scientists trigger hibernation in mice, astronauts could be next
Maps of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women
Effect of Coitus on Nasal Temperature -- Nasal temperature readings were taken approximately 20 minutes before the subject engaged in coitus and repeated within 5 minutes after termination of the act. [...] post coital rise ranges from 3.5 to 6.5° F.
List of killings by law enforcement officers by country
Can US Law Enforcement Officers Refuse to Identify Themselves?
Assessing Kurzweil predictions about 2019: the results
“This virus is never going to be gone.”
Can Your AI Differentiate Cats from Covid-19?
On a normal day, over 3,000 people work in the 52-story AMA building. With only four passengers at a time, which is about half of a typically crowded elevator, that translates to about 750 elevator rides each morning launching from 24 elevator cabs [KHN]
New York State published its sit-down restaurant guidelines -- restaurants will have to cut their occupancy by 50 percent
Habitual Time of Dinner Is Predisposing to Severe COVID-19 Outcome - Death
Coronavirus survival hospital bill: $1.1 million
Slowing the Coronavirus Is Speeding the Spread of Other Diseases -- Diphtheria is appearing in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Cholera is in South Sudan, Cameroon, Mozambique, Yemen and Bangladesh. A mutated strain of poliovirus has been reported in more than 30 countries. And measles is flaring around the globe, including in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Nigeria and Uzbekistan.
Perception of Scary Halloween Masks by Zoo Animals and Humans -- Animal results showed that primate latencies correlated significantly with the human ratings, while non-primate latencies did not.
It is clear from daily experience that flushing a toilet generates strong turbulence within the bowl. Will this flushing-induced turbulent flow expel aerosol particles containing viruses out of the bowl? ... massive upward transport of virus particles is observed, with 40%–60% of particles reaching above the toilet seat, leading to large-scale virus spread.
The police in China are collecting blood samples from men and boys from across the country to build a genetic map of its roughly 700 million males, giving the authorities a powerful new tool for their emerging high-tech surveillance state.
Two hairstylists who had coronavirus saw 140 clients. No new infections have been linked to the salon, officials say The clients and the stylists all wore face coverings.
Potential weapons against covid-19 include manufactured antibodies, serum transfusions from survivors, antivirals, steroids, and more than 100 vaccine candidates, some now advancing toward decisive tests in volunteers. But there’s another approach to battling the virus—one that hasn’t won much attention, but which in the future could become the fastest way to beat back a pandemic. It involves isolating genetic material from survivors and injecting it directly into others, lending them protection against the pathogen. DNA-encoded antibodies, as these therapeutics are called, have shown promising results in animals. In humans, genes injected into the arm or leg would convert the recipient’s muscle cells into factories to make antibodies against the virus. That could provide temporary immunity or lessen the severity of the disease for those already infected. [Technology Review]
“We shouldn’t think that, once we get to a vaccine—whenever that is—and once we’re able to arrest this virus, that we’ll be able to rest easy. We are in a new era of more frequent, higher-impact, higher-velocity zoonotic threats.”
An infection that causes severe symptoms is likely to lead to a stronger immune response, which would also help encourage strong and longer-lasting immunity moving forward. On the flip side, a mild or asymptomatic case is likely to yield lower antibody levels, as was found in covid-19 patients in a new study published in Nature Medicine
Amid the economic fallout from COVID-19, several small towns issued their own money
NBA players will wear a ‘smart ring’ at Disney world. The Oura smart ring is capable of predicting COVID-19 symptoms up to 3 days in advance with 90% accuracy. [Thanks Tim]
It’s growing clearer that the coronavirus does not spread in an orderly way. Each infected person might infect two others on average but most people who get it infect no one. On the diagram, where DeRisi’s cursor lingers, he highlights a person with a particular talent for spreading the disease. The genetic information shows you the urgency of getting that person into quarantine, but it does more than that: It has the potential to lead you more generally to the social activity that’s spreading the disease. It works the other way, too. The approach DeRisi has developed can be used not just to shut things down but to open them up. Last week, in Northern California, a pair of workers at a fish-packing plant came down with symptoms of Covid-19. The Biohub processed their tests and found both workers had the virus. In an age not all that distant from ours, the fish-packing plant, which believed it had taken the measures to keep its workers safe, would have been forced to close, as it would have had to assume that one of the workers had infected the other on the job. But then Joe DeRisi’s Badass Virus Hunters sequenced the two viruses and showed they were genetically far apart: The two workers had contracted the virus independently and outside of work. The fish-packing plant was able to stay open — and its workers were able to stay on their jobs. [Bloomberg]
The optimal strategy is broadly found to be to release approximately half the population 2–4 weeks from the end of an initial infection peak, then wait another 3–4 months to allow for a second peak before releasing everyone else.
What do Covid-19, Ebola, Lyme and AIDS have in common? They jumped to humans from animals after we started destroying habitats and ruining ecosystems. [NY Times]
In moments of stress, consumers exhibit a greater tendency to seek out their smartphone (study 2); and engaging with one’s smartphone provides greater stress relief than engaging in the same activity with a comparable device such as one’s laptop (study 3) or a similar smartphone belonging to someone else (study 4).
Facebook has rejected a proposal to share advertising revenue with news organisations, saying there would “not be significant” impacts on its business if it stopped sharing news altogether.
Apple Rejects Facebook’s Gaming App, for at Least the Fifth Time [NY Times]
More driving means more congested traffic. So to reduce congestion, it makes sense to build more highway lanes so that more cars can fit. A new report shows that doesn’t work at all. Between 1993 and 2017, the researchers found that the largest urban areas in the U.S. added 30,511 new lane-miles of roads—a 42 percent increase. That’s a faster rate of growth than population growth, which rose by 32 percent in those cities over the same time period. But in that 24 year period, traffic congestion didn’t drop at all. In fact, it rose by 144 percent.
Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’
Her last exhibition, ‘Parbunkells’ (2016), was the result of a long and convoluted project that began with a simple proposal: to introduce the internet to a word it didn’t know. That word was parbunkells, a nautical term meaning ‘coming together through the binding of rope’ and one that Weist emblazoned on a vast white billboard in Forest Hills, Queens, as a part of a commission for the public art organization 14x48. The intention was for curious viewers to google the word and experience the special singularity of a single Google result: Weist’s own website and a short text, starting: ‘This is where I come to be alone. We’re here together now.’