Encore

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How to obtain evidence that something does not exist
What is the feasibility of survival on another planet and being self-sustaining? [...] I show here that a mathematical model can be used to determine the minimum number of settlers and the way of life for survival on another planet, using Mars as the example. [...] The minimum number of settlers has been calculated and the result is 110 individuals. [Nature] How to obtain evidence that something does not exist Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate sues Netflix for giving Sherlock Holmes too many feelings How to Topple a Statue Using Science the researchers found that women and people with insecure attachment styles tended to play hard-to-get more How do cars fare in crash tests they're not specifically optimized for? How hackers extorted $1.14m from University of California, San Francisco A plan to turn the atmosphere into one, enormous sensor -- It… Read More...

Can AI Differentiate Cats from Covid-19?

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Evidence that authentic people seek to appear authentic rather than be authentic
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 In this report, we apply basic scientific techniques to answer the question “Is Kansas as flat as a pancake?” 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 Men holding cats were viewed as less masculine; more neurotic, agreeable, and open; and less dateable. Effect of Coitus on Nasal Temperature -- Nasal temperature readings were taken approximately 20 minutes before the subject engaged in coitus… Read More...

What nudists do during a lockdown

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Super-flexible woman can look at her own butt from behind
Super-flexible woman can look at her own butt from behind Belgian man has been receiving pizzas he never ordered for years, sometimes several times a day. “I cannot sleep anymore. I start shaking every time I hear a scooter on the street.” at least 42.7% of adult women have experienced orgasm during sleep On average, women are more sexually disgusted than men women fantasized more so than did men about sadomasochistic fantasies, but men fantasized more than did women about intimate, exploratory, and impersonal sexual fantasies [...] higher frequency of sexual fantasy were predictive of higher levels of infidelity intentions among men [...] women who fantasized more frequently about exploratory fantasies were less likely to engage in physical infidelity Results showed that bisexual individuals reported higher levels of openness than homosexual individuals, who in turn, reported higher levels of openness… Read More...

'Anything can happen, but it usually doesn’t.' —Robert Benchley

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Your face mask selfies could be training the next facial recognition tool
Your face mask selfies could be training the next facial recognition tool 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic Asks America To Join 'Mullet Challenge' To Promote A Presidential Pardon The Effects of Barefoot Running on Working Memory -- working memory may be enhanced after at least 16 minutes of barefoot running if the individual has to focus attention on the ground People in long term, committed relationships try to support their decisions to maintain their relationships with marriage illusions In Peru, where roughly 20 percent of the world’s cocaine is produced, public health lockdowns imposed by local communities brought coca growing and paste production to a standstill, according to Pedro Yaranga, a Peruvian security analyst. “What in nearly four years the drug control agency could not do, the coronavirus did in a few weeks,” he said. In Bolivia, which produces about one… Read More...

the effect of wind speed on social distancing

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A single cough releases about 3,000 droplets and droplets travels at 50 miles per hour
We computationally investigate the effect of wind speed on social distancing. For a mild human cough in air at 20○C and 50% relative humidity, we found that human saliva-disease-carrier droplets may travel up to unexpected considerable distances depending on the wind speed. When the wind speed was approximately zero, the saliva droplets did not travel 2 m, which is within the social distancing recommendations. However, at wind speeds varying from 4 km/h to 15 km/h, we found that the saliva droplets can travel up to 6 m with a decrease in the concentration and liquid droplet size in the wind direction. [Physics of Fluids] Superspreading events are ill-understood and difficult to study [...] Individual patients’ characteristics play a role as well. Some people shed far more virus, and for a longer period of time, than others, perhaps because of differences… Read More...

Tear gas flavor ice cream

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The two drivers of the spread of the disease are close contact and crowding in closed spaces
Our projections suggest warmer and more humid times of the year, and locations, may offer a modest reduction in reproductive number;  however, upcoming changes in weather alone will NOT be enough to fully contain the transmission of COVID-19.  112 persons were infected with SARS-CoV-2 associated with fitness dance classes at 12 sports facilities. Vigorous exercise in confined spaces should be minimized during outbreaks. [...] Instructor C taught Pilates and yoga for classes of 7–8 students in the same facility at the same time as instructor B, but none of her students tested positive for the virus) [CDC] Even before Vietnam reported its first cases on 23 January, it was on high alert for Covid-19. At one Lima market, 79% of vendors had coronavirus There is a common misunderstanding that the social benefits of a share of the population acquiring immunity… Read More...

How this moment will be misremembered

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It is unclear whether infected dogs can transmit the virus to other animals or back to humans.
Drive-in rave in Germany there is a substantial probability that normal speaking causes airborne virus transmission in confined environments The highest levels of SARS-CoV-2 copies per cell were detected in the respiratory tract, and lower levels were detected the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and blood Kidney injury seen in more than a third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients: U.S. study Three domestic cats were inoculated with SARS-CoV-2 on day 0. One day after inoculation, a cat with no previous SARS-CoV-2 infection was cohoused with each of the inoculated cats to assess whether transmission of the virus by direct contact would occur between the cats in each of the three pairs. [...] On day 3, one of the cats with no previous infection had infectious virus detected in a nasal swab specimen, and 5 days later, virus was detected in all three… Read More...

messing with AI models

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Herd immunity is the only realistic option. The question is how to get there safely.
Spiky 'coronavirus hairdo' makes comeback in Kenya Wearing a face mask against COVID-19 results in a reduction of social distancing Men less than women believe that they will be seriously affected by the coronavirus, and this partly mediates gender differences in intentions to wear a face covering (this is particularly ironic because official statistics actually show that men are affected by the COVID-19 more seriously than women). [...] men less than women intend to wear a face covering, but this difference almost disappears in counties where wearing a face covering is mandatory. [...] Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma. [ psyArXiv] The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on female sexual behavior in women in Turkey. Sexual desire and frequency of intercourse significantly increased during the… Read More...

Vitamin D

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Three potential futures for Covid-19: recurring small outbreaks, a monster wave, or a persistent crisis
Three potential futures for Covid-19: recurring small outbreaks, a monster wave, or a persistent crisis “I’ve been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that’s my best-case scenario,” she said. “I’m quite certain that this is going to go in waves,” she added. “It won’t be a tsunami that comes across America all at once and then retreats all at once. It will be micro-waves that shoot up in Des Moines and then in New Orleans and then in Houston and so on, and it’s going to affect how people think about all kinds of things.” [NY Times] Deaths in March 2020 vs March 2015-9. Northern Italy +94.9%. Southern Italy +2%. Lombardy +186.5%. Emilia-Romagna +70.1%. Campania -1.9%. Sicily -2.7%. Milan +92.6%. Rome -9.4%. COVID can come for anyone, but older adults, men, and black people have… Read More...

false positives, not reinfections

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Couple Hosts "Pants Optional" Wedding On Zoom Amid Lockdown Tests in recovered patients found false positives, not reinfections, experts say The findings of this study…
Couple Hosts "Pants Optional" Wedding On Zoom Amid Lockdown Tests in recovered patients found false positives, not reinfections, experts say The findings of this study suggest that most transmission of COVID-19 occurred at the very early stage of the disease or even before the onset of symptoms. [...] High transmissibility of COVID-19 before and immediately after symptom onset suggests that finding and isolating symptomatic patients alone may not suffice to interrupt transmission, and that more generalized measures might be required, such as social distancing. [JAMA Intern Med.] My problem with contact tracing apps is that they have absolutely no value. I'm not even talking about the privacy concerns, I mean the efficacy. Does anybody think this will do something useful? ... This is just something governments want to do for the hell of it. To me, it's just techies doing… Read More...

the amount of virus exposure

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The largest Arctic ozone hole ever recorded is now closed
The largest Arctic ozone hole ever recorded is now closed Facial recognition has become more widespread and accurate in recent years, as an artificial intelligence technology called deep learning made computers much better at interpreting images. Governments and private companies use facial recognition to identify people at workplaces, schools, and airports, among other places, although some algorithms perform less well on women and people with darker skin tones. Now the facial-recognition industry is trying to adapt to a world where many people keep their faces covered to avoid spreading disease. [...] “We can identify a person wearing a balaclava, or a medical mask and a hat covering the forehead,” says Artem Kuharenko, founder of NtechLab, a Russian company whose technology is deployed on 150,000 cameras in Moscow. He says that the company has experience with face masks through contracts in… Read More...

The Dark Room Problem

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Changes in sexual behaviors of young women and men during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak (44% of participants reported a decrease in the number of…
Changes in sexual behaviors of young women and men during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak (44% of participants reported a decrease in the number of sexual partners and about 37% of participants reported a decrease in sexual frequency) The effect of facial hair and sex on the dispersal of bacteria below a masked subject (mask wiggling has been reported to increase dermabrasion and bacterial contamination of surfaces immediately below the face ... Bearded males may also consider removing their beards) Apple consumption is related to better sexual quality of life in young women Oral sex: A new, and possibly the most dangerous, route of toxoplasmosis transmission. -- This route of toxoplasmosis transmission could be experimentally verified by force-feeding laboratory mice with the ejaculate of infected men. Unhappiness is hill-shaped in age and the average age where the maximum occurs is… Read More...

intra-household contagion

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we find evidence consistent with higher intra-household contagion as days go by.
In this paper, we explore different channels to explain the disparities in COVID- 19 incidence across New York City neighborhoods. [...] We find evidence consistent with higher intra-household contagion as days go by. [...] Although commuting patterns have been put forth as a major factor in the spread of the disease in NYC, we show that, after including occupation controls, they fail to significantly explain variation in share of positive tests at the zip code level. [Previously: Home outbreaks were the dominant category, followed by transport] In NSW, from March to mid-April 2020, 18 individuals (9 students and 9 staff) from 15 schools were confirmed as COVID-19 cases; all of these individuals had an opportunity to transmit the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) to others in their schools. 735 students and 128 staff were close contacts of these initial 18 cases. One… Read More...

ROMO, the reality of missing out

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Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a…
Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed. The pandemic shows that the US is no longer much good at coming up with technologies relevant to our most basic needs. Combining these large-scale data with a transmission model of social interactions and transmission in four settings (home, school, work, other) we were able to simulate where contacts are typically made, and how effective different approaches might be. [...] If there were 10,000 new symptomatic cases per day, it meant around 150,000 to 400,000 contacts would be quarantined each day under the scenarios we considered. [...] We also looked Iceland-scale mass… Read More...

irradiance and solar zenith angle

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We show case and death counts had significantly lower growth rates at higher temperatures (>14 °C) when aligned for stage in the epidemic. We show…
We show case and death counts had significantly lower growth rates at higher temperatures (>14 °C) when aligned for stage in the epidemic. We show irradiance and in particular solar zenith angle in combination with cloudopacity explain COVID-19 morbidity and mortality growth better than temperature. Healthy people in their 30s and 40s barely sick with covid-19 are dying from strokes People are dying from coronavirus because we’re not fast enough at clinical research we propose that reduced innate antiviral defenses coupled with exuberant inflammatory cytokine production are the defining and driving feature of COVID-19. COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries: Critical Patterns and Lessons Modelling COVID-19 exit strategies for policy makers in the United Kingdom Experts offer four benchmarks that can serve as a guide for cities and states, eliminating some of the guesswork. Hospitals in the state must be… Read More...

a few repeated contacts

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Our models demonstrate that while social distancing measures clearly do flatten the curve, strategic reduction of contact can strongly increase their efficiency, introducing the possibility…
Our models demonstrate that while social distancing measures clearly do flatten the curve, strategic reduction of contact can strongly increase their efficiency, introducing the possibility of allowing some social contact while keeping risks low. Limiting interaction to a few repeated contacts emerges as the most effective strategy. More than 21 percent of around 1,300 people in New York City who were tested for coronavirus antibodies this week were found to have them [...] possibly as many as 2.7 million [...] It would mean that the fatality rate from the virus was relatively low, about 0.5 percent [more] The challenges of antibody testing for Covid-19 -- no tests to date have performed well scientists say the true potential of the rapidly developed antibody tests is still unknown Developing antibody tests for SARS-CoV-2 Nearly all Covid-19 patients put on ventilators in New… Read More...