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#NotDying4WallStreet

Hard to believe that anyone is this cold-hearted.

As the coronavirus outbreak batters the economy and businesses close, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Monday that plenty of seniors would be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to preserve the economy for their grandchildren.

““No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.””

Continue reading “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says grandparents are willing to die to save economy for their grandkids” | >

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have used Summit, the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, to identify 77 small-molecule drug compounds that might warrant further study in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The team performed simulations of more than 8,000 compounds to screen for those that are most likely to bind to the main “spike” protein of the coronavirus, rendering it unable to infect host cells. They ranked compounds of interest that could have value in experimental studies of the virus.

Earlier this year, when Chinese researchers sequenced the virus, they discovered that it infects the body by one of the same mechanisms as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which spread to 26 countries during an epidemic in 2003. The similarity between the two virus structures and their entry point into a host cell facilitated this latest new study at ORNL.

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Ever wonder what’s under the hood of your favorite electronic device? The transistor is the engine that powers every Intel processor. To build a modern computer chip, our engineers place billions of these tiny switches into an area no larger than a fingernail. It’s one of mankind’s most complex feats, and it’s happening every day across Intel’s global network of chip manufacturing facilities. Check out this video to learn more about how we turn sand into the silicon chips that power the world.

Subscribe now to Intel on YouTube: http://bit.ly/1BZDtpf

About Intel:
Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Founded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, Intel introduced the world’s first microprocessor in 1971. This decade, our mission is to create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.

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Continue reading “From Sand to Silicon: The Making of a Microchip | Intel” | >

MIT’s Open Source ventilator design submitted for fast-track FDA approval. #COVID19

In many parts of the world the COVID-19 pandemic is causing shortages in hospital space, staff, medical supplies, and equipment. Severe cases may require breathing support, but there are only so many ventilators available. With that in mind, MIT is working on FDA approval of an emergency ventilator system (E-Vent). They have submitted the design to the FDA for fast track review. The project is open source, so once they have approval the team will release all the data needed to replicate it.

The design is actually made simple by using something that is very common: a manual resuscitator. You have doubtlessly seen these on your favorite medical show. It is the bag someone squeezes while the main character struggles valiantly to save their patient. Of course, having someone sit and squeeze the bag for days on end for thousands of people isn’t very practical and that’s where they’ve included an Arduino-controlled motor to automate the process.

Continue reading “MIT Ventilator Designed With Common Manual Resuscitator; Submitted For FDA Testing” | >

O,.,o woah.

Chiral superconductors are unconventional superconducting materials with distinctive topological properties, in which time-reversal symmetry is broken. Two of the first materials to be identified as chiral superconductors are UPt3 and Sr2RuO4. So far, experimental evidence for broken time-reversal symmetry in both these materials was based primarily on surface measurements collected at a magnetic field equal to zero.

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University, however, recently set out to gather new evidence for the chiral superconductivity of the material UPt3, moving beyond at conditions with a zero magnetic field. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, contains the results of truly bulk measurements of UPt3 with an applied magnetic field, which provide direct evidence of broken in the material.

“The measurements we collected are the conclusion of a decade long-term collaboration between William Halperin at Northwestern University and myself, driven by previous (William Gannon) and current (Keenan Avers) graduate students,” Morten Eskildsen, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Nature Physics. “They are especially timely given that recent thermal conductivity and 17O Knight shift measurements call into question the earlier determination of odd parity pairing in Sr2RuO4.”

Continue reading “Evidence for broken time-reversal symmetry in a topological superconductor” | >

This movement towards a more automated society has some positives: it will help us stay healthy during times like the present, it will drive down the cost of goods and services, and it will grow our GDP in the long run. But by leaning into automation, will we be enabling a future that keeps us more physically, psychologically, and emotionally distant from each other?

We’re in a crisis, and desperate times call for desperate measures. We’re sheltering in place, practicing social distancing, and trying not to touch each other. And for most of us, this is really unpleasant and difficult. We can’t wait for it to be over.

For better or worse, this pandemic will likely make us pick up the pace on our path to automation, across many sectors and processes. The solutions people implement during this crisis won’t disappear when things go back to normal (and, depending who you talk to, they may never really do so).

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