Daily Archives: March 15, 2020

As governments around the globe crack down on journalistic freedom and censor their national press, Reporters Without Borders is working to deliver uncensored news to the public through an unlikely channel: an enormous library housed inside the popular block-building video game Minecraft.

Even in the most restrictive countries where news is censored across the web like Chinas crackdown on the spread of information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic citizens can now receive their news by loading Minecraft and flipping through the virtual bookshelves of The Uncensored Library.

Inside, you can find articles and information about the journalists that are being censored in their own countries, said Robert-Jan Blonk, senior interactive producer atproduction company MediaMonks, which helped build the library, in an interview with Fast Company. We share these stories through the books that live in that library, and people can just openly read them, because even in the countries where these journalists are from, youre able to play Minecraft.

The massive digital library which contains more than 12.5 million Minecraft blocks, and took 24 builders from 16 different countries over 250 hours to design and build houses real articles written by five journalists from censored countries including Russia, Mexico, Egypt, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia, providing unblocked news to readers through a savvy internet loophole.

Even if government censors try to hack and delete the library, multiple other server hosts in other countries are prepared to take over and protect it, according to Fast Company.

Inside the library, which also received design help from design studio BlockWorks and creative agency DDB Germany, is a giant circular rotunda showcasing flags from countries around the world, off of which branch wings of the library organized by country. Readers and gamers can simply download the game and map, walk their characters into the Russia wing, pick up a book, and read an article from grani.ru, a blocked site in Russia that reports on the government and protests in the country.

Journalist Hatice Cengiz, fiance to Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was assassinated by the Saudi government worked with the developers to help include her late partners censored articles in the game. Articles also appear from other journalists: Nguyen Van Dai, who was exiled from Vietnam, Javier Valdez, who was murdered in Mexico, Mada Masr in Egypt, and Yulia Berezovskaia in Russia.

Announced on the World Day Against Cyber Censorship, the projects goal is to not only provide access to censored journalism, but to bring awareness to the threats to the freedom of press worldwide, as well as the draconian treatment of censored journalists whove stood up to their governments.

This is such a unique way of bringing attention to censorship, Blonk told FastCo. We hope that with so many players and so many people that we basically bring this problem up again. People die because theyre being censored.

Read More: This beautiful library in Minecraft lets people access the work of censored journalists from anywhere [Fast Company]

More on censorship: China Censored Info About Growing Pandemic on Social Media

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This Virtual Library in Minecraft Gives a Voice to Censored Journalists - Futurism

When a mysterious new coronavirus started to spread out of Wuhan, China, last year, fear began to grow that it would turn into a new global pandemic.

Now, months after reports of an outbreak began, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has infected nearly 100,000 and killed just over 3,300 people around the world a rapid spread in which some historians see parallels to deadly historical diseases.

Graham Mooney, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins University, told Futurism that the ongoing coronavirus outbreak bears a number of striking similarities to past outbreaks like Smallpox and Ebola and especially to the Spanish flu pandemic that killed tens of millions around the world during the years between 1918 and 1922.

Were about three months into the coronavirus outbreak, whereas the real devastation of the 1918 flu began about six to seven months in, after the virus started to cause deadly, rapidly-developing bacterial infections and pneumonia deep in patients lungs.

And while there are major obvious differences, one disturbing takeaway is that political leaders and to a lesser extent the communities they govern are making the same mistakesthey did in the past.

I think what that means, Mooney said, is public health as an endeavor, as a professional career, hasnt quite gotten it right yet when it comes to convincing those in power to make the right decisions.

When the Spanish flu hit, scientists barely knew what viruses were. The first microscope capable of even seeing them wasnt built until the 1930s, and doctors hadnt yet developed vaccines or any sort of antiviral or antibacterial medications.

In other words, doctors had no effective treatment against the 1918 flu. Physicians threw everything they had at it: bloodletting, oxygen, and rudimentary vaccines that didnt work, all to no avail.

On top of that, the pandemic was drastically exacerbated by World War I. Early reports of the 1918 flu came from training camps and barracks where it spread rapidly among soldiers who were limited in both personal space and an understanding of disease control and who also got shipped out to Europe.

On March 11, 1918, an Army private in Kansas complained about flu-like symptoms. By that afternoon, there were over 100 other sick soldiers. Within five weeks, that number increased ten-fold and 47 soldiers had died.

Meanwhile, civilian communities hit by the flu were left without doctors or healthcare professionals, as many of those resources had been sucked into the war effort.

But despite the similarities, COVID-19 is following a very different trajectory than the Spanish flu; theres no global war raging, but there are fast and easier ways for a higher volume of people to travel quickly across the globe, spreading the virus far from where it began.

Our understanding of microbiology and pharmacology has progressed substantially over the last hundred years. Quarantines, though, are as effective as ever.

There are some obvious differences, but really the parallels are in non-pharmaceuticals interventions that can take place, like mandatory quarantine of the diseases so public health officials know where they are and whos got them, Mooney said.

Some of Mooneys research has focused on managing the balance between individual liberty and the needs of society during a public health emergency. For instance, he said that more governments are likely to pursue oversteps and measures such as controlling or at least managing or trying to prevent public gatherings as well. You see some of that happening now in some countries where theyre beginning to think about suspending public gathering.

But mostly the interventions are individual quarantines, closure of schools, he added.

Historically, isolation and quarantine have worked best if enacted early enough. Limiting exposure to disease is still among the best ways to limit its spread. The challenge was and remains the ability to pinpoint infection quickly, and isolate the patient before they spread it to others.

For instance, China blocked transportation in and out of the first cities to be hit by the coronavirus, effectively quarantining the diseases epicenter from the rest of the world. The U.S. quarantined nearly 200 citizens who tried to flee China, urging thousands of others to isolate themselves on top of that.

The big question is whether its appropriate for the state to be able to tell people youve got to go to the hospital, youve got to stay away from school, youve got to keep your business closed, Mooney said.

Appropriate or not, the state has historically wielded that power in the face of deadly outbreaks.

Mooney cited legislation that, in the face of the Spanish flu, let authorities show up and cart people off to isolation hospitals a policy that he said hit racial minorities, the poor, and anyone else living in overcrowded areas the hardest.

But the most disturbing parallel between todays outbreak and those of yesteryear is how governments have controlled the flow of information.

Because the Spanish flu coincided with World War I, many of the countries first affected by it had heightened control over their media due to the war effort. In fact, the only reason the pandemic is called the Spanish flu is because Spain, a neutral country, allowed its newspapers to report about the disease.

On top of that, U.S.s Sedition Act of 1918 made it illegal to willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States.

The government relied heavily on the Sedition Act to stamp out news about the pandemic lest it embarrass the state or detract from the war effort, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The result was a media ecosystem full of inaccurate information and propaganda telling the public not to worry, all while cities like Philadelphia turned into ghost towns and entire communities were wiped out.

This time around, China responded to early reports of an emerging coronavirus outbreak by punishing whistleblowers and censoring social media. As a result, efforts to contain the outbreak failed, in part because people didnt get the information or warnings they needed. For instance, when a Wuhan-based doctor was one of the first to warn of an outbreak which he mistook at the time for a resurgence of SARS he was arrested and silenced by the government over spreading rumors. He later contracted the virus and died from it.

Now, having learned seemingly nothing from Chinas errors, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed, and spread false information about, the outbreak. Hes called it a political conspiracy to make him look bad, and on Wednesday dismissed World Health Organization reports and common-sense practices like staying home from work when sick.

I think knowledge is power, Mooney said. People cant take appropriate action if they dont have full information. If youre a citizen who wants to voluntarily isolate, if youre a citizen who wants to take other kinds of precautionary measures like social distancing, it helps to have information in hand.

Ultimately, the response of both the American and Chinese governments shows a disturbing inability to learn from both the scientific and political lessons of the past.

Mooney points out that the way authorities have controlled the narrative around the outbreak reveals that their priorities are backwards. Instead of putting the concern for human life and citizens welfare first, leaders like Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have focused more on national pride.

The argument here should be that human life has a value above a governments concern for outside attitudes about its ability to control an epidemic, said Mooney. You want reliable information, you want evidence-based information, and you want information that comes from sources you can trust.

People need transparency, he continued, so that they can make informed decisions about travel, sending kids to school, and going about daily life. Without that guidance, theres no way to organize an effective response on the individual or community level.

Meanwhile, the rush to create a vaccine for a new outbreak rather than invest in public health shows that the leaders remain reactive rather than proactive.

Its interesting how these kinds of things repeat themselves, in the sense that every time something like this happens, the focus is the quick fix: getting a vaccine out, setting up emergency measures, Mooney said. These are only ever going to be temporary until the next thing comes along.

A vaccine wont be ready for at least a year, by some estimates and when another epidemic rolls around well be back at square one. Meanwhile, healthcare remains prohibitively expensive to many in the U.S. and public health measures are a low political priority for the Trump administration.

Its a question of how important is public health compared to investing in the economy, investing in education its a question of priorities, said Mooney. Its easy to put it in a drawer and forget about it until the next pandemic comes along, whereas you could argue that public health is something that needs to be constantly invested in, the eye never be taken off the ball.

And about those historical laws that let officials show up and take people into quarantine? Mooney says that by and large, the rich went unaffected. Wealthy people with large homes were more or less left to their own devices their kids werent taken to isolation hospitals because it was assumed they had the space and resources to putz around at home in self-imposed isolation instead.

For those today who are exposed, theU.S. government wont even guarantee that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be affordable, let alone free suggesting many people in the most at-risk populations wont be able to access it.

Additionally, Mooney said data shows that people respond according to personal fear: When a vaccine was available for smallpox, people didnt decide to use it until they were personally endangered, potentially putting their entire community at risk.

What we really need is affordable healthcare and investment in primary care so the resources are already there on the ground, said Mooney. Thats to help people so people have got access to resources that enable them to manage themselves during an epidemic.

The rest is here:
In the Coronavirus, Historians See Echoes of Past Pandemics - Futurism

Cosmic Mystery

For some reason, the North Star has eluded scientists best attempts to measure and quantify it.

Depending on which method researchers use to measure the star, officially known as Polaris, they come away with conflicting results, according to Live Science. As a result, the same star that humans have used as a navigational tool for centuries still defies scientific explanation.

Depending on how they calculate Solaris mass, astronomers either arrive at about seven times the mass of our sun or three and a half times, Live Science reports.

Some types of stars can be sized up based on how frequently they pulse. Thats the method that gives astronomers the higher value for the North Stars mass. The smaller value comes from measuring how rapidly it and its binary partner orbit each other and scientists arent sure why the two approaches dont line up.

Part of the problem and an equally baffling quirk is that measurements suggest that one of the two binary stars is significantly older than the other, according to Live Science.

Its possible, astronomers told Live Science, that the main star in the Polaris system used to be two smaller stars that merged a process that makes stars appear younger than they are and also messes up some of the methods used to determine their mass.

READ MORE: Something strange is going on with the North Star [Live Science]

More on space: Polaris, the North Star

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Scientists Still Can't Tell How Big the North Star Is - Futurism

In the global health war against the COVID-19 coronavirus, there are two measures we know of that effectively prevent the spread of the outbreak while the world waits on a vaccine: Quarantine/social isolation, and cleaning your hands. But whats the best if not only surefire way to get that right?

Washing them with soap and water.

Not hand sanitizer.

Not just water.

Its soap and water.

This might seem obvious, but it turns out theres a truly fascinating bit of science involved in the way viruses cling to our skin. Once you learn just how weaponized you are with water and a little bit of soap, theres no turning back. Also, itll make you realize that panicbuying hand sanitizer is slightly absurd when all you need is water (and a little bit of soap).

Palli Thordarson, a professor at the University of New South Wales School of Chemistry, took to Twitter on Sunday night for a 25-part thread about exactly what happens when water and soap hit your mitts.

In the first part of the thread, he explains why soap and water basically take out the bottom piece of a tower of Jenga blocks, or, in his words, a house of cards:

It gets really wonderful early on, when Thordarson basically illuminates why one of the most common things in the world not hand sanitizer or any of the ostensibly fancier or more portable products available to us are the key to fighting COVID-19:

The next few tweets go into the chemical breakdown of nanoparticals:

And then theres that whole sneezes can send particles flying from 30 feet away thing, which, honestly, we might try to forget. But there it is:

Also, heres even more stuff you didnt know: The ways in which various surfaces do and dont carry the virus. Flat surfaces? Less to stick to for the virus. Rougher surfaces? Plenty to pull the virus apart on.

And your skin? Your skin is COVID-19s favorite surface, basically:

And heres where the hand-washing fun comes into play:

Not that you need reminding, but please do not wash your hands with Titos, or Jack Daniels. Its a perfectly good waste of both:

And finally, the conclusion, et voila: Soap. And. Water.

Please feel free to anoint Prof. Palli Thordarson, a prize of a human, how you shall long live, Prof. Soapy, Soapy King, Soapy Daddy, et al but really, the best way to thank this guy for his service to the world is, pretty obviously, by washing your hands with soap and water, often, and well.

Read more:
This, Not Hand Sanitizer, Will Save Us from the COVID-19 Coronavirus - Futurism

Where did the Moon come from and how was it formed? Its a question that scientists have been scratching their heads over for decades.

According to the widely-accepted giant-impact hypothesis, the Moon was formed billions of years ago when a Mars-sized planet called Theia collided with the Earth, breaking off a large chunk in the process.

Now, researchers from the University of New Mexico say in a new paper published in Nature Geoscience that they believe theyve found the remains of Theia buried beneath the lunar surface.

The big drawback to the impact hypothesis as discussed at length by numerous scientists over many years is the fact that even though oxygen isotopes in lunar rocks collected during NASAs Apollo missions closely resemble those found on Earth, theyre strikingly different from those found on other objects in our Solar System, as explained by Science Alert.

So how could the Moon be largely made up of the remains of Theia, as many models have predicted?

Despite very small odds, Earth and Theia may have originally had similar compositions, but then been mixed up beyond recognition.

In their research, the New Mexico scientists examined oxygen isotopes in a range of different lunar rock types, collected from a variety of altitudes. They found that the deeper the origin of the rock, the heavier the oxygen isotopes, when compared to the ones found on Earth.

Clearly, Theias distinct oxygen isotope composition was not completely lost through homogenisation during the giant impact, the researchers wrote in their paper.

That means the oxygen isotopes didnt fully mix during the Theia-Earth impact, leading to their conclusion that Theia couldve still originated from outside of the Solar System before impacting with Earth.

This data suggests that the deep lunar mantle may have experienced the least mixing and is most representative of the impactor Theia, said research scientist and co-author Zach Sharp in a statement.

READ MORE: We May Have Finally Found a Chunk of Theia Buried Deep Inside The Moon [Science Alert]

More on the Moon: DARPAs Working on a Nuclear-Powered Rocket for Easy Moon Access

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Fragment of Planet That Hit Earth May Be Buried Inside Moon - Futurism

Back In Time

Scientists have discovered what seems to be the oldest supermassive black hole yet.

The black hole, dubbed PSO J0309+27, likely formed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, Live Science reports. Sounds like a long time ago, but cosmically speaking, thats nothing (at least compared to the age of the universe). Based on their discovery, the team of Italian astronomers suspects that there were probably hundreds more black holes just like it during the earliest days of the universes existence.

The team managed to spot the black hole because it gave off a blazar a massive explosion focused into a beam-like jet of ions. The explosion occurred nearly 13 billion years ago, but the light it gave off is still reaching Earth today, according to research published in the journal Astronomy Astrophysics last week.

Thanks to our discovery, we are able to say that in the first billion years of life of the universe, there existed a large number of very massive black holes emitting powerful relativistic jets, lead researcher Silvia Belladitta of the University of Insubria said in a press release.

Because the jet streams given off by a blazar are so narrow, its far more likely that there were more ancient black holes than the one that was spotted that simply arent facing Earth.

Observing a blazar is extremely important, said Belladitta. For every discovered source of this type, we know that there must be 100 similar, but most are oriented differently, and are therefore too weak to be seen directly.

READ MORE: The universe may have been filled with supermassive black holes at the dawn of time [Live Science]

More on ancient black holes: New Theory: Vast, Ancient Black Holes Formed Because of Dark Matter

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Astronomers: Here's This Incredibly Ancient Supermassive Black Hole We Found - Futurism

While most patients who caught COVID-19 ended up making a full recovery, some are dealing with long-term effects of the coronavirus.

In an analysis of 12 patients who recovered from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, doctors at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HKHA) found that several of them now have reduced lung capacity, according to Business Insider.

They gasp if they walk a bit more quickly, Owen Tsang, medical director of the HKHAs Infectious Disease Center, said in a press conference. Some patients might have around a drop of 20 to 30 percent in lung function.

After scanning the patients lungs, doctors saw signs of organ damage.

Thats far too small a sample size to declare that COVID-19 necessarily causes long-term damage, but it could be a warning sign that doctors should keep an eye out for potential complications.

Its not yet clear how applicable these results are to the outbreak at large or most other patients hit by the disease.

But even on its own, its a troubling sign that more severe cases of COVID-19 could lead to more medical problems in the long run, even after patients have kicked the virus itself.

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After the Coronavirus, Some Patients Face Ongoing Lung Damage - Futurism