The US Army has developed a quantum sensor that can detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, using a single antenna. That is currently impossible with a traditional receiver system, and would require multiple systems of individual antennas, amplifiers and other components.

The director general gave a really good speech on Friday, and I am sharing it here, to help people have more courage in what are going to be difficult times.

Up until March 20th, the WHO said this is the first pandemic we can stop.

Now the WHO say that Wuhan has its first day with no cases which shows the world that even the most severe situation can be turned around.

They are particularly concerned about the effects if it reaches vulnerable populations of malnourished children and people with AIDS which is endemic in parts of sub Saharan Africa.

He says however none of this is inevitable. This is the first pandemic in history where we have the power to change the way it goes.

Singapore is controlling its outbreak with case finding and contact tracing. Any other country can do the same. Singapore is a particularly clear case. They test everyone for COVID-19 if they go to a doctor or clinic for treatment with symptoms of a respiratory disease. For instance if you are living in Singapore, and get a cough or fever, and go to see your doctor - he or she will take a swab which is automatically tested for COVID-19. That's in a country of over 5 million, as large as Scotland.

skip to: Contact tracing in Singapore

A new study claims the recent form of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes the COVID-19 disease remains far longer in aerosol form than other experiments showed and up to 3 days on some surfaces.

The study says the virus is detectable for up to three hours in aerosols, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two days on plastic and stainless steel. This is far longer than other studies of viruses in aerosols, which found them for 45 minutes.

Everyone in the UK - please share this widely, this and other posts that explain what is happening in the UK. We are no longer trying to contain COVID-19 in the UK, only to slow down its spread. Also, we no longer try to keep track of who in our society has the virus, as people with mild symptoms are not tested to see if they have COVID-19. This would be good advice for influenza which is a very different disease. Sadly the Netherlands have also joined us in declaring a similar policy.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has gone just this side of declaring martial law due to a .000008 risk of death from COVID-19. His promotion of panic has led to depletion of essential goods nationwide. With 40,000,000 people and the fifth largest economy in the the world (if it were its own country), California can vacuum up the nation's short-term stores easily. And has. Forget survey results about equality, social justice, and kindness, in reality America's most progressive state is just as greedy and selfish as anyone when it comes to personal behavior.

In the 1980s, as tanning beds became a craze, melanoma rates began to climb. Since cancer often takes time to develop deaths due to melanoma peaked in 2013 but thanks to immunotherapy, less risky behavior, and earlier detection, rates dropped 18 percent within three years after.

This is a fantastic public health victory. People still die, but that is from metastatic melanoma, the aggressive form that spreads from the skin to other organs, such as the lung, liver, or brain.

First off, let me say I do not wish to sound disrespectful to anybody here, leave alone my colleagues, to most of which goes my full esteem and respect (yes, not all of them, doh). Yet, I feel compelled to write today about a sociological datum I have paid attention to, in these difficult times of isolation, when all of us turn to the internet as our main outlet for rants, logorrhea, or to make the impending threat of a global catastrophe less heavy by sharing it with our peers, to exorcise our fears.

Public health officials consistently promote hand-washing as a way for people to protect themselves from the COVID-19 coronavirus. However, this virus can live on metal and plastic for days, so simply adjusting your eyeglasses with unwashed hands may be enough to infect yourself. Thus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have been telling people to stop touching their faces.

Social bonding in vampire bats is no surprise, they have roommates. What is uncommon is that they demonstrate behavior some might call friendship; unrelated vampire bats engage in social grooming and food sharing to form life-saving bonds that can last a lifetime. 

Vampire bats sustain themselves on only blood, and if a bat is unable to feed for 3 days, it runs the risk of starving. Like early man, they have a 'boom and bust' foraging lifestyle, so they either hit it big and get a large blood meal or they're starved for that night.

If they starve three nights in a row there is a high chance they'll die but vampire bats with close social ties can be rescued from the brink.