We’re finally figuring out how to forecast the flu — and this season isn’t looking good
A test that enables CDC officials to quantify flu viruses, CDC photo.Every year since 2013, the CDC has held a competition called FluSight, in which researchers put their probabilistic models up against one another to see which can best predict the course of the flu season. Last year’s winning model, Dante, was helmed by Dave Osthus at Los Alamos National Laboratory. And here’s the bad news: “Dante is a little worried that it’s going to be a bad and early peaking season,” says Osthus. That’s because the illness level for the season so far is trending higher than normal for this time of year, he explains. The onset of flu occurred in the first week of November, when usually it starts a week or two after Thanksgiving, and Osthus notes that “often when we have an early peaking season, it’s usually one of the more intense seasons.” (Full Story)
Early flu season and expert warns 'this could be a precursor to something pretty bad'
Preparing a flu shot in Atlanta, AP photo.Dave Osthus, a statistician and flu forecaster at Los Alamos National Laboratory told The Associated Press the early start may mean people get sick at the same time.
"This could be a precursor to something pretty bad. But we don't know," Osthus said.
Osthus told Newsweek the flu season has started about a month earlier this year than is typical, and is largely driven by elevated flu activity in the Southeastern states.
"There is an elevated likelihood of a higher than normal peak this season," he said.
"The main reason is how high flu activity already is," Osthus said, adding: "The 2019/20 season is already worse than three of the past 20 flu seasons ever were, and the worst part of the flu season—historically late December through early March—hasn't happened yet. (Full Story)
This story also appeared in the Los Angeles Times
Evidence of new X17 particle, scientists are wary
Illustration from SciAm.“This fifth force really means there is a new particle that intermediates new interactions, or new forces,” says Daniele Alves, a particle physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was not involved in the Hungarian team’s work. “It’s possible that this particle is part of a larger ‘dark sector,’ meaning it could also interact with dark matter particles. It could be a portal to this sector.”
Alves and her colleagues are exploring the possibility of using Los Alamos to search for the particle, too. “We are investigating whether some of the studies that Los Alamos does for other purposes could also be repurposed to look for signs of this new particle,” says Alves, who notes that their method of searching would be somewhat different from the Hungarian team’s. (Full Story)
Also from Scientific American this week:
What’s shaking in Oklahoma?
LANL image. Mysterious seismic signals lead to some scientific detective work. Joshua Carmichael is a seismologist and applied mathematician at Los Alamos National Laboratory who specializes in explosion monitoring.
We did not see surface waves in these signals in Oklahoma, so we knew it wasn’t an earthquake—but not much more than that.
My initial suspicion, along with other researchers who saw the signals, was that they were telemetry spikes in the seismometers—voltage changes that can be caused by anything from a lightning strike to a power surge. (Full Story)
Muons: probing the depths of nuclear waste
IAEA image.Muons offer a way to establish how much waste there is in a container without having to open or move the container in question. That capability would become vital, according to Matt Durham of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, should inspectors or the countries involved ever lose confidence in their monitoring. “This issue is only getting worse as more plutonium piles up around the world,” he says.
Atmospheric muons were first used in this way back in the mid-1950s by British physicist Eric George, who measured the thickness of ice above a mining tunnel in Australia. But it was not until 2003 that Durham’s Los Alamos colleague Christopher Morris and several co-workers proposed using the scattering of muons, instead of their absorption, to image concealed dense objects, particularly nuclear material. (Full Story)
LANL announces winners of first-ever New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge
Judges from Los Alamos National Laboratory Jake Miner and James Owen listen to students from Taos Academy Charter School, LANL photo. Led by New Mexico’s Office of the Governor, the first-ever New Mexico Governor’s STEM Challenge was a collaboration between the Department of Public Education, the Department of Workforce Solutions, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and 18 other STEM employers in the state.
Each team was composed of up to 10 students who have made a computer simulation or prototype answering the question posed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, “How can you use science and technology to make the world safer?” (Full Story)
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