Coronavirus – Page 17

Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Researchers use live virus to identify 30 existing drugs that could treat COVID-19

May 11, 2020

Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., a professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys, gestures to experimental assays that test for compounds that may treat COVID-19.

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the University of Hong Kong, Scripps Research, UC San Diego School of Medicine, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and UCLA have identified 30 existing drugs that stop the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Almost all of the drugs are entirely different from those currently being tested in clinical trials, and weren’t previously known to hold promise for COVID-19 treatment. The new candidates expand the number of “shots on goal” for a potential COVID-19 treatment and could reach patients faster than drugs that are created from scratch. The study was placed on bioRxiv (pronounced “bio-Archive”), an open-access distribution service for preprints of life science research.

“We believe this is one of the first comprehensive drug screens using the live SARS-CoV-2 virus, and our hope is that one or more of these drugs will save lives while we wait for a vaccine for COVID-19,” says Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., director of the Immunity and Pathogenesis Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys and senior author of the study. “Many drugs identified in this study—most of which are new to the COVID-19 research community—can begin clinical trials immediately or in a few months after additional testing.”

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2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, government, Green Friendly, Internet, Science & Technology News

Why Coronavirus will Accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution

May 11, 2020

The pandemic’s silver lining is the chance to experiment with technologies and co-operative approaches across borders that could lead to safer, more sustainable and more inclusive global futures.

The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972 by biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, holds that populations of living organisms tend to experience a significant amount of evolutionary change in short, stressful bursts of time. Gould and Eldredge argued that evolution isn’t a constant, gradual process—it occurs during episodes when species are in environments of high tension or especially crisis.

The human species is going through such a period right now: the Covid-19 pandemic. The profound pressures that individuals, organizations and societies face in this crisis are accelerating the fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), blurring the boundaries between the physical, digital and biological worlds. The current state of emergency compels us to consider the necessity of structural shifts in our relationship with the environment and how we conduct ourselves as a global community.

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Automation, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Trending

The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future

May 10, 2020

Starship

“We saw that business double overnight,” startup says of UK grocery deliveries.

On the morning of March 30, I set out from my home in Washington, DC, to the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In only a few hours, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam would issue coordinated stay-at-home orders. But I was going to GMU’s campus to check out a new technology seemingly tailor-made for the moment—technology that could help people get food without the risks of face-to-face interactions.

Campus was eerily quiet; most students and staff had long been sent home. But as I approached a Starbucks at the northern edge of GMU, I heard a faint buzzing and saw a six-wheeled, microwave-sized robot zip along the sidewalk, turn, and park in front of the coffee shop. The robot looked like—and essentially was—a large white cooler on wheels. It was a delivery robot from Starship, a startup that has been operating on campus since early last year.

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Coronavirus, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Silicon Valley is forced to reset its moral compass for the pandemic

May 10, 2020

The tech industry is rushing to offer remedies to the crisis and, in the process, trying to rehabilitate its image.

Before the pandemic, Yiying Lu was known for her work designing the Twitter Fail Whale and the dumpling and boba tea emojis. In the past few weeks, Lu said she was called to a higher purpose. From her apartment in San Francisco, she toiled away in a Slack channel with two dozen people she has never met to create a free website called Corona Carecard. It asks Americans to buy gift cards to their favorite local shops, providing a much-needed source of income while stores are shuttered.

Lu is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of workers across Silicon Valley trying to, in their words, hack the virus. The pandemic has stirred up a missionary zeal throughout Silicon Valley. Apple Inc. and Google put aside a decade-long rivalry to form an alliance to track the spread of infections. Facebook Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. are procuring millions of masks for health-care workers. Jeff Bezos is donating $100 million and Jack Dorsey $1 billion.

In other corners of the Valley, people are developing test kits and possible vaccines, as well as software to treat the social and economic maladies of the pandemic. Smaller companies have created entirely new business models in response to the virus. The projects can be as simple as an app reminding people to wash their hands or one that connects users with barbers in Brooklyn for lessons on how to cut their hair at home.

There’s a feeling among some technologists that some of their work in recent years had become mercenary or frivolous—attempts to capitalize on a prolonged tech boom with apps that cater to the whims of wealthy coastal elites, rather than meeting the urgent needs of the rest of the world. “Facebook, Snapchat and the last decade of tech has brought us together in some ways but has also pushed us further away from real life,” said Lu, a former creative director at venture capital firm 500 Startups. “The virus is a warning for people in the Bay Area that we can’t just come here and take and take. We have to give, too.”

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Coronavirus, Employment, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Three hours longer, the pandemic workday has obliterated work-life balance

May 9, 2020

Work From Home Has Nearly Doubled Our Load on Infrastructure: BT Consumer CEO

People are overworked, stressed, and eager to get back to the office.

An executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co. gets unapologetic messages from colleagues on nights and weekends, including a notably demanding one on Easter Sunday. A web designer whose bedroom doubles as an office has to set an alarm to remind himself to eat during his non-stop workday. At Intel Corp., a vice president with four kids logs 13-hour days while attempting to juggle her parenting duties and her job.

Six weeks into a nationwide work-from-home experiment with no end in sight, whatever boundaries remained between work and life have almost entirely disappeared.

With many living a few steps from their offices, America’s always-on work culture has reached new heights. The 9-to-5 workday, or any semblance of it, seems like a relic of a bygone era. Long gone are the regretful formalities for calling or emailing at inappropriate times. Burnt-out employees feel like they have even less free time than when they wasted hours commuting.

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2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

Universities are expecting 230,000 fewer students – that’s serious financial pain

May 9, 2020

Without government support, universities will struggle to provide the education people will need to rebuild their lives after Covid-19

Our universities are a vital and unique part of our society with an importance that far outweighs their considerable economic value. Yet research into the impact of Covid-19, conducted by London Economics for the University and College Union, shows that universities face a black hole of at least £2.5bn in fee and grant income for 2020-21 as students both in the UK and around the world defer or abandon their plans to study here.

The new analysis suggests that over 230,000 fewer students will enter higher education in 2020 as a result of the crisis, over half of which are international students. That fall in student numbers would translate into a drop in income of around £1.51bn from non-EU students, £350 million from EU students and £612 million from UK students opting to stay away.

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2020 Predictions, Architecture, Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

10 ways COVID-19 could change office design

May 8, 2020

COVID-19 has upended working life, changing how and where people do their jobs.

Millions of people in China have returned to work, and other countries are considering easing lockdowns in phases.

Organizations should plan how to adapt offices to comply with social distancing rules.

Real estate company Cushman & Wakefield has designed an office where workers can keep six feet apart.

But with governments and companies around the world looking to ease lockdowns, minimizing virus transmission at work is now at the top of many organizations’ agendas.

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Big Problems, Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

Here’s how global supply chains will change after COVID-19

May 7, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is fundamentally reshaping global trade.

• The coronavirus crisis has revealed the fragility of the modern supply chain.

• Recent data shows the devastating economic impact as week-on-week trade in China, the US and Europe halved because of the crisis.

• Diverse sourcing and digitization will be the key to building stronger, smarter supply chains and ensuring a lasting recovery.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit global trade and investment at an unprecedented speed and scale. Multinational companies faced an initial supply shock, then a demand shock as more and more countries ordered people to stay at home. Governments, businesses and individual consumers suddenly struggled to procure basic products and materials, and were forced to confront the fragility of the modern supply chain. The urgent need to design smarter, stronger and more diverse supply chains has been one of the main lessons of this crisis.

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Aviation, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Travel

Design firm proposes new airline seating arrangements in response to coronavirus pandemic

May 7, 2020

Although the chances of contracting COVID-19 on an airplane are low, there are certain precautions passengers can take and protocol in place for the CDC to follow if a sick passenger is reported.

An Italian manufacturing firm has unveiled two of its concepts for aircraft seating in a post-coronavirus world, both of which propose some degree of physical separation among passengers seated in the same row.

Aviointeriors, a company that was once mocked for its “standing” plane seats, shared both designs to social media this week, explaining how each would promote “isolation” among travelers on the same aircraft.

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2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Venture Capital

All the things COVID-19 will change forever, according to 30 top experts

May 6, 2020

Tech exec, VCs, and analysts—from WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart to AOL cofounder Steve Case—on the pandemic’s lasting impact on how we live, work, and think.

We’re four weeks into the massive time-out forced on us by coronavirus. Many of us have spent much of that time trying to get used to the radical lifestyle change the virus has brought. But we’re also beginning to think about the end of the crisis, and what the world will look like afterward.

So it’s a good time to round up some opinions about how the pandemic might change how we think about various aspects of life and work. We asked some executives, venture capitalists, and analysts for thoughts on the specific changes they expected to see in their worlds.

Naturally, many of them tended to see the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis in optimistic terms, at least when it comes to their own products, ideas, and causes. And at least some of them are probably right. But the general themes in their comments add up to preview of what might be ahead for tech companies and consumers once the virus is no longer the biggest news story in the world.

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Coronavirus, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Startup

‘A moral dilemma’: Tech startups wrestled with taking coronavirus bailout loans

May 5, 2020

Some startup founders hesitated to apply for the SBA’s PPP loans because they feared Main Street businesses may need them more. Now, the pot of money has run out.

In the past few weeks, Silicon Valley startups have grappled with a confusing, ethical quandary: whether to take money from the government to weather the economic downturn brought on by coronavirus.

Congress passed the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act on March 27, which included $349 billion in forgivable loans for small businesses to help avoid laying off employees. The Paycheck Protection Program, as it’s called, is run through the Small Business Administration, and the loan applications are processed by banks like Bank of America or Silicon Valley Bank. The SBA will forgive the loans if the recipient uses the money to help keep all its employees on the payroll for eight weeks.

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Coronavirus, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News, Uber

Uber Connect lets you deliver things to friends and family

May 5, 2020

Uber has announced a duo of new services as the company chases fresh revenue streams to offset the impact of COVID-19.

With billions of people around the world forced into lockdown during the coronavirus crisis, tech firms across the spectrum have been adapting to this “new normal.” For platforms that enable remote working, this has meant catering to a surge in demand. But for Uber, which relies significantly on physical interactions, it has had to get creative. Shelter-at-home policies enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated Uber’s core ride-hailing business, leading the company to fast-track the global launch of Uber Eats for business, accept phone orders for food deliveries, and even expand into grocery deliveries.

Now, Uber is looking to deliver pretty much anything, from pet food and medical supplies — and it even wants to deliver goods between friends and family living at different addresses.

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