What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic
How contagious is it? A mathematical analysis from Los Alamos National Laboratory found the figure was 5.7 during the early epidemic in Wuhan. The Los Alamos team’s results were specific to the Wuhan outbreak. But if they hold true elsewhere in the world, the pandemic may be more difficult to control than some authorities have anticipated. By way of comparison, seasonal flu has an r0 of about 1.3 and killed an estimated 61,000 people in the U.S. in the 2017-18 season. (Full Story)
Race for vaccine intensifies as coronavirus hits Asia with a second wave of outbreaks
Researchers racing to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 face an even more urgent task in light of recent reports that the coronavirus has rebounded in Asia despite efforts to tamp it down.
Los Alamos National Lab, which developed the first atomic bomb, has been working in biological sciences since 1945 and is applying its earlier pioneering research on HIV and influenza to the new coronavirus, said Kirsten Taylor-McCabe, a biochemist and program manager at the New Mexico lab.
“We do see resurgence and second waves in the future,” she said. “As you ease off restrictions in place and transportation increases, you can see resurgence over time. A vaccine will be very important in preventing a resurgence.” (Full Story)
Virus may spread twice as fast as earlier thought
The new coronavirus raced through China much faster than previously thought, a U.S. research team said, suggesting that extremely widespread vaccination or immunity will be necessary to end the pandemic.
Each person infected early in the epidemic in Wuhan probably passed the virus to an average of 5.7 other people, according to a mathematical analysis from Los Alamos National Laboratory. That’s more than twice what the World Health Organization and other public health authorities reported in February. (Full Story)
Also from the New York Post and Newsmax
Will it be safe to hold the Olympics in 2021?
“It’s a little too early to say how everything will evolve,” says Sara Del Valle, a mathematical and computational epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. But slowing transmission could also mean that many people are still susceptible to COVID-19 next year. “If that’s the case, then we’re not going to be able to have international events next year because it would still be spreading.”
Del Valle and her colleagues have studied how past crises—including the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the 1918 influenza pandemic—have played out. Usually, these pandemics cause an enormous first wave of infections, followed by a somewhat smaller second wave the following year. (Full Story)
Also from Popular Science this week:
Did Uranus get smacked so hard it spun sideways?
So what tipped the Uranus system over? Many planetary scientists assume that the young planet—when it was just a few hundred million years into its billions of years of life—suffered a cataclysmic collision.
Two years ago a team including Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Chris Fryer of Los Alamos National Laboratory pushed the idea even farther. Harnessing three decades of computing advances, they simulated a range of collisions between two planets each made up of millions of pieces.
New research picks up where the previous simulations left off. “They take it to the next level,” Fryer says. “It’s getting quite exciting.” (Full Story)
Can AI take us where no human has gone before?
When good data sets contain only hundreds of points, algorithms can learn faster if they don’t have to teach themselves fundamental or empirical rules of nature, says Ghanshyam Pilania, a materials scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The trade-off is that encoding these rules inevitably means encoding human bias about where useful molecules will be found. “The potential for discovery gets limited” if you tell the AI algorithm too much, Pilania says. He’s used AI algorithms to search for new materials for radiation detectors and electronics. Pilania and others have found that both approaches have their place in exploration. (Full Story)
AI pinpoints renewable energy resources
Rather than rely on humans to ascertain the key subsurface characteristics that make for ideal geothermal prospects, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory aim to dramatically improve geothermal exploration through machine learning – computer programs that can process vast amounts of data, learn from it, and then automatically modify their algorithms to analyze it with increasing accuracy and efficiency.
Rather than a team of scientists and engineers poring over huge stacks of images, maps and other data to hypothesize which sites are likely the best, these mountains of information are instead fed to a computer. (Full Story)
Gamma ray experiment suggests speed of light is constant
In the latest experiment, led by Andrea Albert, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, researchers with the HAWC were looking to test the Lorentz Invariance.
This is part of Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity that says the speed of light is constant across the universe, regardless of where you are or how fast you are moving.
"How relativity behaves at very high energies has real consequences for the world around us," Pat Harding, an astrophysicist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a statement. "Most quantum gravity models say the behavior of relativity will break down at very high energies." (Full Story)
Also from Science Alert
Dark matter decoys
The axion is one of several dark matter candidates. The particle was originally proposed in the 1970s as a potential solution to the strong CP problem in particle physics. Later, researchers saw that the particle could also explain dark matter.
“This is two for one,” says ADMX analysis team member Leanne Duffy of the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Not only do you solve this existing problem with the Standard Model, but you also get an excellent dark matter candidate out of it.”
Assuming dark matter axions exist, the Earth and everyone on it is traveling through a “galactic halo” that is thick with them. To touch an axion, we don’t need to do anything. (Full Story)
Reinventing the mirror to transform antennas, wireless and cell phone communications
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are reinventing the mirror, at least for microwaves, potentially replacing the familiar 3-D dishes and microwave horns we see on rooftops and cell towers with flat panels that are compact, versatile, and better adapted for modern communication technologies.
“Our new reflectors offer lightweight, low-profile alternatives to conventional antennas. This is a potential boon for satellites, where minimizing weight and size is crucial,” said Abul Azad, of the MPA-CINT group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The panels could be easily incorporated onto surfaces of buildings or terrestrial vehicles as well.” (Full Story)
Triad National Security pledges $50,000 In emergency grants to local philanthropies
“These community partners are experts in responding to the urgent needs of their respective communities,” said Thom Mason, president of Triad National Security. “They have proven track records of mobilizing resources quickly and delivering relief effectively.” (Full Story)
South Africa’s National Integrated Cyberinfrastucture system joins LANL’s Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium
“We are pleased to collaborate with NICIS on experiences in deploying a scalable cool data storage tier. Sharing requirements, solutions and experiences on challenges in providing an efficient computing environment is an important part of EMC3,” said Gary Grider, division leader for High Performance Computing at Los Alamos. (Full Story)
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