The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is following an asteroid approaching Earth this week and while it poses no threat, it appears to know our planet is facing a pandemic. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-04-asteroid-earth-neighborhood-mask.html…
Tag: mask
New York Orders Residents To Wear Masks In Public
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Imposing a stricter measure to control the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday that he would start requiring people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public whenever social distancing was not possible. The order will take effect on Friday and will…
Medical Device ‘Jailbreak’ Could Help Solve the Dangerous Shortage of Ventilators
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Security researcher Trammell Hudson analyzed the AirSense 10 — the world’s most widely used CPAP — and made a startling discovery. Although its manufacturer says the AirSense 10 would require “significant rework to function as a ventilator,” many ventilator functions were already built into the device firmware. Its manufacturer, ResMed, says the…
Do face masks work against the coronavirus and should you wear one?
The advice on widespread face mask use to protect against covid-19 varies wildly, but there is some evidence that they stop sick people spreading the virus Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2240288-do-face-masks-work-against-the-coronavirus-and-should-you-wear-one/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Elon Musk Shares a Video: Making Ventilators From Tesla Parts
Elon Musk shared a new video today from Tesla Engineering. “We’re trying to make some ventilators from some car parts, so we can help the medical industry without taking away from their supply,” it begins. (All three people who appear in the video are wearing a face mask.) It ends with a demonstration of a prototype using a touchscreen display from…
What It’s Like To Attend a Conference — in Person — in the Age of Covid-19?
What happens when no one shows up for a tech conference? Fast Company’s technology editor harrymcc writes:
From Apple to Microsoft to Google, major tech companies have responded to the coronavirus crisis by either canceling their 2020 conference or making them purely virtual. But one well-established event — Vancouver’s CanSecWest — went ahead earlier this month, with streaming as an option but…
Why Taiwan’s Coronavirus Response Is Among The Best Globally
Why does Taiwan have less than 400 confirmed cases of Covid-19? Taiwan’s experience with the 2003 SARS outbreak “helped many parts of the region react faster to the current coronavirus outbreak and take the danger more seriously than in other parts of the world,” reports CNN, “both at a governmental and societal level, with border controls and the wearing of face…
Hospital Autoclaves May Allow Safe Reuse of N95 Masks
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from CBC.ca: “[Autoclaving] is like a pressure cooker — basically you enclose items into a chamber, you lock down the chamber, you heat it up and actually increase the pressure inside the chamber,” Dr. Anand Kumar, a professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba, said. The machines heat up to about 121 C for 15…
Hospitals Tell Doctors They’ll Be Fired If They Speak Out About Lack of Gear
schwit1 shares a report from Bloomberg, commenting: “And the claim that this is about protecting ‘patient privacy’ is b***shit.” From the report: Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, said he was told Friday he was out of a job because he’d given an interview to a newspaper about a Facebook post detailing what he believed to be inadequate…
C.D.C. Weighs Advising Everyone To Wear a Mask
Widespread use of nonmedical masks could reduce community transmission. But recommending their broad use could also cause a run on the kind of masks that health care workers desperately need. From a report: Should healthy people be wearing masks when they’re outside to protect themselves and others? Both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have…