Daily Archives: July 25, 2020

There are about 3,500 species of mosquitoes around the world, but only a few are responsible for spreading infectious diseases to humans.

Scientists studied mosquitoes across sub-Saharan Africa and found that mosquitoes actually have wide-ranging palates.

"There's a huge diversity in mosquito preferences. Some like to bite humans and others don't like to bite humans at all," said the paper's co-author Noah Rose, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey.

"At first we thought that mosquitoes who lived around people would simply like to bite people and that those who lived in the forests wouldn't like to bite humans," Rose said. "We were really surprised that that wasn't the case."

While mosquitoes living near dense cities such as Kumasi, Ghana, or Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, showed increased willingness to bite humans, researchers found that city life alone didn't explain the mosquitoes' evolution. In fact, any mosquitoes living in large cities still preferred to bite animals rather than human hosts.

That's where the second factor -- dry climate -- comes in. In areas with harsh dry seasons, such as Africa's Sahel region, extending from Senegal to Sudan and Eritrea, mosquitoes evolved to have a strong preference for humans.

"Mosquitoes are dependent on containers of water for their larvae," Rose told CNN. "So in places with an intense long dry season, mosquitoes become very dependent on humans who store water."

The mosquitoes' evolution to bite humans is a by-product of their dependency on breeding in areas close to human city life. That means urbanization in the coming decades could lead to even more human-biting mosquitoes in the future.

Urbanization to spark further change in mosquitoes

The new research predicts this rapid urbanization will drive further mosquito evolution, causing a shift toward biting humans in many large cities by 2050.

"We should be watching these mosquitoes," said Rose, noting that the future of mosquito adaptations is still uncertain.

"We don't really know what will happen when the urbanization of sub-Saharan Africa moves beyond what we see in the present day. But we know something will happen and we think that it will be a shift to biting more human hosts."

That means the way mosquitoes spread disease could also change.

But in the short term, researchers said that climate change isn't expected to drive major changes to dry season dynamics that impact the mosquitoes' behavior.

Mosquitoes can thrive in different habitats

It took more than three years for the international team of scientists to conduct the research and collect mosquito egg samples from a wide range of habitats across 27 locations in Africa.

"I was surprised that immediate habitat didn't have much of an effect -- mosquitoes in forests and nearby towns had similar behavior," Rose said.

"We thought that maybe moving into human landscapes would be a key driver of attraction to human hosts. But it seems like mosquitoes fly back and forth too readily between these habitats for their behavior to diverge in many cases."

Mosquitoes can thrive in a "mosaic of habitats" within the same region, which makes preventing mosquito-bourne illnesses an even greater challenge, he added.

"Even if you got rid of the human-biting mosquitoes in one place, there's a huge diversity of mosquitoes in a habitat. They're really good at solving problems and surviving in different habitats," Rose said.

The World Health Organization has said mosquito control can effectively reduce the transmission of vector-borne diseases like Zika and yellow fever, but "mosquito control is complex, costly, and blunted by the spread of insecticide resistance."

Protect yourself from mosquitoes

For people living in or traveling to areas where mosquito-borne illness is prevalent, there are a few things you can do to prevent mosquito bites, according to the US Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and WHO:

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How mosquitoes evolved to be attracted to humans, and what that means for the future - CNN

A new grant will help researchers at Rochester Institute of Technologys National Technical Institute for the Deaf learn more about one of the most challenging phases in stellar astrophysics, according to the National Science Foundation.

The nearly $300,000 project, which incorporates research opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students, will revolutionize how scientists understand a crucial phase of binary star evolution that rapidly shrinks the orbit of two stars to 0.1 percent of the distance from the Earth to the sun in only one year.This is the main method for forming tight binaries in the universe, such as binary black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and many other classes of objects. But scientists have never seen it happen.

Jason Nordhaus, an RIT/NTID assistant professor of physics and the principal investigator on the grant, is beyond excited to lead the first-of-its-kind survey that will allow astrophysicists to create the first observational constraints on the outcomes of what is called the common envelope phase.

Through the project, titled Brief But Spectacular: New Windows into the Physics of Common Envelope Evolution, Nordhaus and his team will be conducting an observational survey of all galactic star clusters within 1 kiloparsec of Earth to hunt for close binary systems.To do that, they will use data from NASA and the European Space Agencys flagship space missions, TESS and Gaia, in addition to some of the largest telescopes on the planetthe Lowell Discovery Telescope in the northern hemisphere and the Magellan Telescopes in the southern hemisphere.

The common envelope phase is responsible for making the systems that will later merge and create gravitational waves, explains Nordhaus.Because only one star in our galaxy is experiencing this phase at any time, we have never directly seen it. However, close binaries in clusters act as a Rosetta stone, allowing us to map the conditions right before the common envelope phase to the conditions right after the phase is over.

As part of this three-year project, several deaf and hard-of-hearing RIT/NTID undergraduates will help conduct research at Boston University each summer. Philip Muirhead, co-PI on the project, is the director of graduate admissions for Boston Universitys astronomy department.Nordhaus and Muirhead will work together on best practices for supporting those students successfully in the summer. Also contributing to the project are Maria Drout, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and Jeffrey Cummings, associate research scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

This new venture that Dr. Nordhaus is taking on will lead to discoveries beyond our imagination, said Gerry Buckley, NTID president and RIT vice president and dean. This work also provides a tremendous opportunity for our young deaf and hard-of-hearing science students to work in a research setting and be a part of this remarkable project.

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Groundbreaking study of binary star evolution is focus of new NSF grant | National Technical Institute for the Deaf | RIT - RIT News

By Aparaajita Pandey

Epidemics and pathogens have played an important role in the history and evolution of Latin America. While the novel coronavirus has made a virtue of its name and truly has proven to be an unprecedented situation for the entire planet, but, it would be prudent to point out the Latin American continent and the Caribbean islands are not new to the spread of epidemics that cause massive loss of life accompanied by debilitating economic strain.

In the past centuries Latin American countries and civilizations have suffered the spread of hazardous and in some cases life-threatening diseases like Small Pox, Yellow Fever, and Malaria. The periodic transmission of diseases like Malaria, Dengue Fever and Cholera is not unheard off and is usually anticipated every couple of years in some countries. The epidemic caused by the Zika Virus across the Latin American continent in 2016 and the economic ruin it left in its wake could be perceived as a prologue of a Post- COVID Latin America in some limited aspects.

An over worked and insufficient public health system along with political apathy and underestimation of the Coronavirus has had disastrous consequences for Latin America. The number of patients who have contracted COVID and those who have lost their lives to the disease is constantly on the rise. As the situation becomes progressively unmanageable, the politics and social threads holding the Latin America society together is unravelling. While some would say the term Latin American Society is a gross generalization of the region, upon closer reflection, the hues of political dissent and social unrest have coloured almost every country in the continent.

Before the beginning of the COVID induced Lock-Downs, citizens of Chile were protesting their presidents neo-liberal policies and their ramifications that had led to increased wealth inequality and steady inflation in the price of essentials. Bolivia was in doldrums about the election of its president Evo Morales and his less than constitutional claim to the presidency. Colombia saw its largest anti-government protests in Bogota as Colombians spilled on the streets banging pots and pans and singing Duque Ciao, their version of the famous Bella Ciao. The tear gas and curfews attempted suppression of the protest and found glimmers of momentary success.

In addition to the above, there are also deep systemic problems with Venezuela and Argentina. Brazil and Mexico could not be termed peaceful either. These issues have not been resolved and people of the countries in Latin America are still suffering, when a pandemic is added to this mix, the result is a volatile society that is impatient and eager for change.

The IMF estimated that Latin America would see its worst rate of economic growth in a decades, the already stymied economy of the region is estimated to contract further by 9.4 per cent. The report also states that those who are employed by the unorganized sector would stand to lose 80 per cent of their income, and the highest number of the ones in the age bracket of 15 to 24 years of age would be idled. The statistics regarding unemployment bolster the IMFs claims as countries like Brazil and Argentina saw the disappearing of 1.4 million jobs and 852,000 jobs respectively.

These conditions will be placing the governments and leaders of Latin America under great stress in the coming decade. One is now looking at a continent that is ravaged by a pandemic, wrapped in social unrest and staring at the economic ruin. As the quiescent protesters would rise again once Lock-downs ease up, one would see a revival of social unrest. Latin America has long been regarded as one of the most violent regions in the world and not without reason. The region accounts for 8 per cent on the worlds population and one-third or 33 per cent of the worlds homicides. Although the rate of violent crime varies on the basis of countries, it would be a safe prediction to make that the above mentioned socio-political and economic agitations will translate into increasing crime and social violence.

However as people in Latin America vie for change, there is a glimmer of hope. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay are set to have elections in 2020 and some rounds in 2021. While it is true that the elections have been postponed due to COVID in almost all of the countries barring a few, these elections cant be deferred indefinitely. As people began to realize the lack of political success their previously chosen leaders have had, they have now begun to look for a change. The current social upheaval may give way to a change. However, it would be difficult for the chosen leaders to deliver the magnitude of reform that the people demand, as strict austerity measures and restructuring of the existing system is pre-requisite for gainful transformation. The conflict that the region would engage in with attempting to change but not wanting to go through the motions of change is inevitable. Latin America has a long road ahead of her, and socio-political upheavals will be an undeniable part of this journey.

(The author is a Doctoral Candidate at Centre for Canadian, US, and Latin American Studies at JNU and Asst. Professor at Amity University. Views are personal.)

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Pandemic, politics and the role they played in the history and evolution of Latin America - The Financial Express

Pride as we know it today looks a lot different than when it first emerged back in the late 1960s as a protest for equality and recognition. Today, Pride is marked by a month of festivals, events and parades that celebrate and show support for LGBTQ2SIA+ communities.

As this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride parade (held in New York City), we spoke to Matt Numer, an associate professor and head of the Division of Health Promotion in the School of Health and Human Performance and an advocate for LGBTQ2SIA+ health issues, about the history of Pride and why it is still so important to celebrate today.

Can you tell us a bit about the history of Pride and how it has evolved over the decades?

Pride started as a form of protest against fairly overt oppression, primarily from the police, I would say. We saw a lot of issues decades ago with police attempting to out people, arrest people for engaging in what at the time they called homosexual activities. People are pretty familiar with the rise of the gay rights movement with the Stonewall Riots, when police attempted to raid bars. What they would do is they would go in and they would particularly target people transgressing gender norms. Today, we might call them drag queens; the way we define people has also evolved over the years. But they would drag people out and publish their names and attempt to have them fired, and all sorts of things like that. In Canada, you had the bath house raids in Toronto, where they would go and purposefully target people engaged in sex activities. Out of that, Pride became a protest a march very similar to the protests we see today with the Black Lives Matter movement. I think thats where it gets its historical roots.

How has it evolved? I think in many ways Pride is still a form of protest and a form of garnering attention, though it may not necessarily be for the same cause and it may take on different forms today. Today, when we think of Pride, most people just think of the celebration, parties, drinking, the parade in particular. But it is still calling attention to the fact that theres a community of people out there who have been historically marginalized and continue to be in many ways. Pride is the opportunity today for many allies to come out and show their support for us to make queer identities visible to youth. A big way that oppression works is to hide how people are marginalized. Growing up, I didnt really know many gay people. They were just seen as so outlandish in the eyes of the general population, unless it was something like arrests and protests and stuff like that.

A gay rights demonstration in Toronto, circa 1980s. (Courtesy Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives)

What are some of the unique challenges experienced by LGBTQ2SIA+ communities today and how does Pride bring recognition to those issues?

Pride is also a way for us to see issues that may not be immediately visible. So, youll often see different groups marching in the Pride parade. Today it has become very corporatized with the banks and other companies pay their employees to go march in the parade which, dont get me wrong, Im glad that we have corporate support, but thats not really what Pride is about. But you will see other community groups marching in the parade. They give rise and give light to issues that may not be visible in the Canadian context. Theres a queer Arabs group, Rainbow Refugees an organization that attempts to help people who have suffered because of their sexual orientation or gender identity to emigrate to Canada. Pride Health is a group through Nova Scotia Health Authority that looks at the disparities in health that emerge for people with queer identities.

Pride is also a time when you can typically get attention from government and media. For many organizations, its a time when they show that support. I know from my own advocacy work that when we can raise issues close to Pride they tend to get more attention than during the rest of the year. Governments are fairly dismissive until there is political expediency for them.What can governments, workplaces, community groups and the general public do to support LGBTQ2SIA+ communities and address these unique challenges?

Money speaks. When governments and organizations are investing in the health and well-being of queer people, then we may start to address some of the health disparities. I think that we still havent done a good job of that. On the surface, we think that because weve got gay marriage that everything has been solved in Canada, but actually we have greater issues related to mental health, suicide, substance use and things of that nature. That isnt a product of being gay or queer thats a product of a homophobic society. Those are more difficult issues to get at and what we need is a commitment from government to invest more substantively in things like Pride Health, the Youth Project, access to medications. My own advocacy work has a lot to do with HIV prevention and theres a drug out there that can prevent it almost 100 per cent, but many people dont have access to it because its expensive. The Government of Nova Scotia has refused to pay for it, while about half of Canadas other provinces have.

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Ask an Expert: Health Promotion's Matt Numer on the evolution of Pride - Dal News

Kevin Maxwell

By Kevin Maxwell

One of the economic byproducts of the COVID crisis is that many companies transitioned quickly to their employees working from home. Now nearly 4.5 months into the pandemic, a prolonged work-from-home effort will be the norm.

Companies with large employee counts are working to establish safe protocols for return efforts. The question of productivity and the need for office space is emerging.

Now that companies have settled into work from home, do they need to return to an office environment? And if they do, will they occupy the same footprint as before? Or will companies need more space to accommodate the new social distancing practices that experts say we will need? Where do cities fit into this question?

I have long been an advocate of more class A office space in Scottsdale. This will help us diversify our economy with high-wage employers. This begs the question: do our cities require office buildings with large workforces in the future?

Last week on the podcast, Deep Background with Noah Feldman, he provided insights into these questions. People are naturally social creatures. It is inherent for us to want to congregate and engage with others --- especially when we come off the prolonged isolation from the lockdown.

In Scottsdale, we know this all too well. As soon as some of our bars opened, people flocked to enjoy an evening out with friends. They did so with disregard for the recommended protocols that accompanied the opening of businesses.

As unfortunate as that was, it reminded us that cities and urban cores are resilient. Cities are not just government entities; they also provide an informal distributed network of support, protection and belonging.

As city budgets struggle with reduced tax revenue, they will need to reevaluate what it means to be a city. Cities may evolve from being government-centric top-down organizations to a flexible, more accommodating type of urbanism.

In short downtown Scottsdale may grow to be more of a hybrid mixed-use commercial model rather than what we have known in the past. Regardless the economic prosperity for downtown still looks very bright.

As Scottsdale deals with the COVID aftermath, there may be some opportunities to redefine our city. Until then the economic road may be disruptive and unpredictable, but Scottsdale has proven time and time again that it is capable of change.

In the future, perhaps Scottsdale can be defined as the Wests most Western and Resilient Town.

Editors Note: Kevin Maxwell is a candidate for Scottsdale City Council in the upcoming Aug. 4 primary election.

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Maxwell: What will Scottsdale's evolution be post COVID-19? - Your Valley

Everton boss Carlo Ancelotti has promised a summer of evolution rather than revolution as he plots the way forward.

The Toffees will end their latest Premier League campaign against struggling Bournemouth on Sunday knowing they can finish no higher than 11th and no lower than 12th. For a club that has spent heavily in recent years, either will represent a disappointing return.

Ancelotti will head into talks over his summer transfer plans next week with his sights set on a significant improvement, but he is not about to tear up the blueprint and start all over again.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

He said: We are going to meet next week and we are going to make a plan for the future. It will be surely an evolution of the club. Everyone want to go to the next step that is to improve.

If this season we are able to finish in 11th position or 12th position, I dont know, but for sure next season, we have to go up, there is no other way.

Carlo Ancelotti hopes to make significant strides this summer(PA)

But with an evolution of the team, putting in better quality, putting in better ambition, putting in better motivation and putting in more passion.

Ancelotti was buoyed by his sides display in victory at Bramall Lane on Monday evening, when Richarlisons lone strike was enough to secure the points.

It was not just the fact of the win but the manner in which it was achieved which gave the Italian cause for confidence that there is something to build on.

He said: The key point was the spirit and the attitude of the players. When the attitude is there, we can have the possibility to show our quality because this team in a lot of games has showed good quality with the ball and without the ball.

But you can show the quality only if the spirit is good and in the last game, the players understood really well what went wrong against Wolves and they tried to learn from that game.

Its the last game of the season. It will be important to try to repeat the same game that we played against Sheffield. We showed a good image and we showed good attitude.

PA

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Everton will undergo an evolution this summer, says Carlo Ancelotti - The Independent

Several projects Im currently involved in have me thinking about cruise control. Although this technology has been around for a long time, it does not get much attention. However, it has been quietly evolving, changing its role in recent years and is likely to keep adapting.

Yunsu Park is the Director of Engineering for North American Council for Freight Efficiency.

In the beginning, cruise control had a simple job: maintain a set speed. It was a driver convenience to ease fatigue by removing the need to hold the throttle down for hours on end. Simple to understand and easy to operate, cruise control also had the added benefit of improving fuel consumption for many drivers in most situations. These days we often refer to this system as conventional or basic cruise control.

Cruise control got slightly more sophisticated when additional engine parameters became adjustable. These parameters allowed the driver (or perhaps the fleet) to adjust the speed band above and below the target speed before cruise control took any action to either accelerate or slow the truck. The result was slightly better fuel economy though perhaps at the cost of intuitiveness.

Things started getting more complicated when truck makers began incorporating more technology to make cruise control more fuel efficient going up and down hills. About 10 years ago, truck makers began offering cruise control that took into account what the road is doing.

These systems, called predictive cruise control (PCC), combined maps that were either stored from a previous trip or pre-programmed with the trucks location to adjust speed more efficiently for the terrain. With this change, cruise control became adept at handling more situations and solidified its role as a fuel-efficiency tool.

In the latest iterations, cruise control has become even more sophisticated, complete with names, more acronyms and more capability. Many new trucks now are equipped with adaptive cruise control (ACC), a system that can maintain a specified gap to the vehicle in front of it.

The most advanced systems are part of a suite of systems and sensors that detect and track the road and a number of objects in front of and around the truck at all times. While reduced driver fatigue and fuel economy still are benefits of cruise control, the technology is now part of a trucks active safety system. This is confirmed by the fact that several truck OEMs now include ACC and the associated safety systems as standard equipment on their vehicles.

All that is a good thing. Drivers (both the ones in the cab as well as the ones in front of and around the truck) are better off if there are fewer collisions. The evolution of cruise control shows how what started as a relatively simple technology that has been around for a long time can continue to get smarter and better.

And the evolution is likely not done yet.

The role of cruise control may continue to change as we start bringing electric trucks to the road. I had the privilege of participating in the Department of Energys 2020 Annual Merit Review for Vehicle Technologies. One of the projects I reviewed focused on ways to extend the range of an electric truck by modifying the way it is driven.

The logic makes sense. To extend the vehicles range, you can buy 30% more battery which increases cost, weight and charge times, or you can find ways to operate the truck more efficiently to get the same range. Cruise control wasnt specifically mentioned, but it would seem to be a good way to implement that change.

If that happens, it may mean that cruise control has changed its role once again from an important safety device to one critical in allowing a truck to do its job.

Amazing how things can evolve.

Yunsu Park is the Director of Engineering for North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) and an independent consultant in the trucking industry. He has authored several Confidence Reports for NACFE in addition to the summary report for 2017 Run on Less.

Link:

Cruise control continues to evolve with other trucking tech - Commercial Carrier Journal