What 5 Coronavirus models say the next month will look like
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Lab have released a model with state-level predictions that assume social distancing interventions will continue. Their predictions for New York State include a broad range of possibilities, including cumulative totals of less than 25,000 deaths and more than 60,000 deaths by the end of May. Four of the other modelers are publishing estimates for individual states as well as the nation as a whole. (Full Story)
Also from the New York Times this week:
How New Mexico, one of the poorest states, averted a steep death toll
New Mexico is drawing from a team of national defense scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory — which was created in 1943 to design and build an atomic bomb — to assist with contagion forecasts.
Sara del Valle and Carrie Monroe, mathematical epidemiologists at Los Alamos, said that by April 19, New Mexico had already experienced a stunning decline of more than 40 percent in the number of originally forecast total cases.
“Because of the stay-at-home order,” Ms. del Valle and Ms. Monroe said in a statement, “the virus had fewer people to infect so the growth rate declined.” (Full Story)
Virus forecast model from defense team in Los Alamos draws attention
A team of national defense scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory that studies contagions with award-winning accuracy has developed its own U.S. forecast for the spread of the coronavirus.
With support from the U.S. Energy Department, the Los Alamos model builds upon a decade of past experience in forecasting contagions, including the seasonal flu, the Ebola virus and mosquito-borne Chikungunya.
Last year, Los Alamos statisticians beat out more than 20 teams in a CDC competition aimed at improving flu forecasting using supercomputing power. The lab’s “Dante” model was most successful in predicting the peak and short-term intensity of the unfolding flu season – and became the basis for the new COVID-19 model. (Full Story)
LANL forecast suggests NM has hit peak already
The statistical model estimates a 57% chance that New Mexico is past its peak in the number of new virus cases confirmed each day.
Carrie Manore, a scientist and mathematician at Los Alamos, said the forecast covers the next six weeks only. It’s based on data reported so far, she said, not an attempt to factor in potential changes to people’s behavior or other new information that might emerge. (Full Story)
Los Alamos National Lab COVID-19 model helping guide the country
For more than a decade, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have been tracking and forecasting infectious diseases from all over the world. Currently, the CDC is using the LANL model for COVID-19 to help keep people safe.
“It gives us something to expect and something to plan for, and I think that’s a utility of this model is that folks who are planning for hospitalizations, and planning on what to do next, have at least something to go on,” explained Carrie Manore, Mathematical Epidemiologist with LANL. (Full Story)
Also from KRQE this week
How New Mexico's national labs joined the COVID-19 fight
Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratory are undertaking a wide array of initiatives aimed at helping the state and nation cope with the unprecedented health crisis. They include computer modeling to predict a surge, boosting key medical supplies, testing people for COVID-19 and even hunting for a vaccine.
The lab’s vaccine research draws from its experience designing an HIV vaccine. It includes the groundbreaking work of the lab’s noted biologist Bette Korber.
Korber designed a “mosaic” vaccine composed of various HIV genomes, which recently underwent human trials. She is now on a team that’s pursuing a COVID-19 vaccine. (Full Story)
Novel Coronavirus prompts computer sharing
One resource that’s not in short supply during the pandemic is computing power. For researchers working to combat COVID-19, access to these resources has recently gotten easier, thanks to a collective effort that unites the computing capabilities of 33 government labs, universities, and private companies in the US.
Simulating a complex molecule with molecular dynamics can take “vast quantities of time,” explains Irene Qualters, Associate Laboratory Director for Simulation and Computing at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. That’s why many of the projects are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to guide the calculations. “AI is being used to target a simulation for a particular aspect of the virus.” (Full Story)
The heavy cost of ignoring biosurveillance
Stopping the devil in the dust
Morgan Gorris, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was the first author on the paper about the pathogen’s range if climate change continues unabated. “In our baseline model, looking at where Valley fever is currently, we estimated that the fungus is probably in 12 states, and by the end of the 21st century that could increase up to 17 states,” Gorris said. “And, as a result, the number of Valley fever cases could increase by up to 50%.” (Full Story)
Scientists fashion new class of X-ray detector
"The perovskite material at the heart of our detector prototype can be produced with low-cost solution process fabrication techniques," said Hsinhan (Dave) Tsai, an Oppenheimer postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The result is a cost-effective, highly sensitive and self-powered detector that could radically improve existing X-ray detectors, and potentially lead to a host of unforeseen applications."
The development and analysis of the perovskite material was a close collaboration between Argonne APS (Sector 8-ID-E) and a Los Alamos team lead by device physicist Wanyi Nie. The material and thin film was created at Los Alamos and brought to Argonne to perform grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering. (Full Story)
Planetary lightning: Same physics, distant worlds
But thunderstorms aren’t the only environment that creates the conditions needed for lightning. “Volcanic lightening is really common in explosive eruptions. It’s not a rare, unusual phenomenon,” explained Alexa Van Eaton, a volcanologist at the USGS.
“You can expect that if it’s an ash-producing eruption, it is capable of making lightning,” said Sonja Behnke, a scientist who researches volcanic lightning at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “It’s very common, and even if it doesn’t produce lightning, the ash plume might still have charge to it.” (Full Story)
SFCC, Los Alamos lab join to offer machinist program
Santa Fe Community College and Los Alamos National Laboratory announced last week a new collaboration to revamp the college’s machinist program.
Director Thomas Mason said LANL is investing $400,000 in equipment and paid internships to help support the machine engineering technologies program for five years. Starting salary for a machinist at the lab is around $60,000 per year, with growth potential, and students who are hired at the lab after completion of the program will be reimbursed for tuition, fees and books, Mason said. (Full Story)
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