Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 360

The search for a coronavirus COVID-19 vaccine is probably the most-wanted thing on this planet right now, outside of toilet paper that is -- and don't worry, scientists are on top of it.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have said that their clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins, with a new study kicking off in Seattle with local, healthy adult volunteers putting their arms up for a jab. A new Phase 1 "clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle", according to a new post on the NIH website.

The new COVID-19 vaccine trial will see 45 "healthy adult volunteers" that are aged between 18-55 years old, across the next 6 weeks, where the first "participant received the investigational vaccine today". The 6-week study will be evaluating "different doses of the experimental vaccine for safety and its ability to induce an immune response in participants".

NASA has been directly affected by COVID-19 coronavirus, with the US space agency having a staffer in Alabama testing positive for COVID-19.

This has forced NASA into a lockdown and pushing a mandatory work-from-home order, elevating the center to "Stage 3". This is NASA's internal label for a mandatory work-from-home order. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama is the NASA site affected, with all employees at the Alabama-based facility forced to work from home.

In a NASA press release, the US space agency explains that all staff will have "restricted access to the center until further notice". Stage 3 designation has NASA forcing its other facilities into a Stage 2 mandate, which means the US space agency "strongly encourages" employees to work from home, but it's not mandatory at this stage -- which is where Stage 3 comes in.

Ava Louise is a 22-year-old "clout-chaser" on social media, where she posted a video of her doing the "coronavirus challenge" which saw her licking a plane toilet seat. Yeah, I wish I was joking, but I'm not.

Louise completed the "coronavirus challenge" stunt and then has been slammed on social media across the world, with the video in question shared to TikTok and saw her licking a plane toilet seat. She captioned the 6-second video clip with: "Please [retweet] this so people can know how to properly be sanitary on the airplane".

She has 19,000 followers on TikTok and over 150,000 followers on Instagram. The video was posted on her personal Twitter on March 14. The reason for her doing the "coronavirus challenge" -- that would be clout. Yeah, she actually admitted that in a follow-up tweet:

The current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak is stopping the world, forcing the largest technology companies in the world to issue a joint statement.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube have all joint forces against coronavirus -- with the joint statement reading:

"We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We're helping millions of people stay connected while jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe".

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that in-person events with over 50 people be limited, or outright cancelled in the United States over coronavirus.

In an update of COVID-19 coronavirus on March 15, the CDC has new interim guidance that recommends "in accordance with its guidance for large events and mass gatherings, recommends that for the next 8 weeks, organizers (whether groups or individuals) cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States".

The CDC includes "conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events, weddings, and other types of assemblies" in its criteria for "large events" and "mass gatherings". However, the new guidance over COVID-19 coronavirus spread doesn't include schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses.

AMC is the largest movie theater chain in the United States, and has just announced plans it is pushing forward with social distancing plans -- cutting down theater attendance by 50% to reduce the chance of COVID-19 coronavirus spread.

The company will now only sell half the tickets per theater that it does now, with any theater that can seat over 500 people to be capped at 250. AMC will also be complying with local and federal restrictions on large social gatherings, where it will be limiting ticket availability and screenings in some of its auditoriums, too.

AMC Theaters boss Adam Aron, said in a statement: "The health and safety of our guests and theatre teams are of the utmost importance to AMC. Therefore, AMC is proactively taking action to cut in half the number of tickets that we will make available at all our US theatres. With this action, who still want to see movies on a big screen".

If you want to use the power inside of your GPU and CPU at home to help researchers find a cure for COVID-19 / coronavirus, then Folding@Home is where you'll want to go.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project spearheaded by Stanford University, and has been around for what feels like forever. Instead of a single gigantic supercomputer, the premise of Folding@Home will use regular computers owned by regular people, building the computing power up into a single, much more powerful force -- towards a single effort, which in this case is coronavirus.

Your unused computational resources from your CPU and graphics card/s can be used to help researchers that are working on understanding the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV (COVID-19 / coronavirus) that will help "aid in the design of new therapies".

This probably won't be surprising to anyone who has been keeping up with the news recently, but the coronavirus has caused The Walt Disney Company to announce the closure of Disneyland.

The announcement was made this past Thursday, and according to the statement, there have been no cases of COVID-19 at the park, but the company has decided to close it anyway in the people's best interest. The closure will be for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure and will begin on March 14th until the end of the month. It was also mentioned that Disneyland Resort Hotels would remain open until March 16th so guests can sort out the proper travel arrangements.

According to New York Times reporter Brooks Barnes, this is the fourth time in the history of the park that it has closed down. The previous times the park has experienced a close was on September 11th, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. At the moment, there is no word on whether or not The Walt Disney Company will be deciding to close Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. If the news is announced, I will be sure to update you in a follow-up post.

An announcement from the European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that the ExoMars mission will be delayed for a further two years as further testing is needed to be done.

According to the announcement, several parts of the spacecraft still need to crucial testing completed before it's given the green light to be sent off to the red planet. Since more testing is needed, the ExoMars mission will miss its launch window for 2020 and will need to wait until sometime between August and October in 2022 for another opportunity. Why do they have to wait so long? Well, that is because of the orbital cycles of Earth and Mars.

Space agencies can only launch spacecrafts to the red planet when the orbital cycles of Mars and Earth are at their closest points to each other. Launching it at any other time would require unnecessary amounts of fuel. The rover is being held back from launch this year to have its parachutes tested, which are used to ensure that the craft lands safely on the red planet. ESA director Jan Woerner said just yesterday, "Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests. This is a very tough decision, but I am sure the right one."

Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to discover a new exoplanet that is so hot that it rains iron instead of water.

The planet is called WASP76b, and is an ultra-hot giant exoplanet that's dayside temperature of more than 2,600 degrees Celsius (4712F). This temperature is high enough that it can melt metals such as iron, but what happens is that strong winds push the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it is cooled and turns into tiny droplets of iron. According to David Ehrenreich, "One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron."

So why does this happen on this planet in particular? Phys.org explains that 'iron rain' occurs on this planet because it only ever shows one side of the planet to its neighboring star. This means that the other side of the planet always remains in darkness, much like how our Moon is tidally locked to Earth. Since the dayside side of the planet is so hot, molecules separate themselves into atoms, and metals such as iron begin to evaporate into the atmosphere. Winds then carry the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it's then cooled, and iron droplets are formed.