While the platform could be better than nothing, a 90 percent accuracy rate still leaves room for asymptomatic individuals to slip through the cracks. If 1,000 people use the system, 100 people may still get inaccurate results. So while this shows promise and it could indicate the kinds of solutions we’ll have in the future, it may take some time before something like this is ready for real-world use.

“We feel this platform will be integral to protecting our healthcare workers, first responders and communities as we adjust to life in the COVID-19 era,” said Ali Rezai, RNI executive chair.

The platform is currently being tested by more than 600 healthcare professionals and first responders, and RNI is working with partners like Thomas Jefferson University and Vanderbilt University to scale the test to include more than 10,000 participants. 

The study isn’t the only attempt to use the rings to predict COVID-19 infections. Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) are also exploring how Oura Ring might be used to detect the virus in emergency medical workers.

“We are hopeful that Oura’s technology will advance how people identify and understand our body’s most nuanced physiological signals and warning signs, as they relate to infectious diseases like COVID-19,” Oura Health CEO Harpreet Rai said in a statement.

Fitbit is venturing beyond its research partnerships to launch an infectious disease study of its own that’s very easy to join. The device maker has introduced a study inside its app that will help determine if smartwatches and fitness trackers can spot early signs of COVID-19, the flu and similar diseases without waiting for symptoms. If you’re at least 21 years old and live in the US or Canada, you can volunteer by filling out a questionnaire regarding your health (such as whether you’ve had COVID-19). Fitbit will combine that with activity data to see if there are any telltale clues and, ideally, build an algorithm that alerts people before they infect others.

The study is available in the app’s Discover tab under Assessments & Reports, and you can withdraw at any time.

The main difference between the two is that the ISS vegetables have more microorganisms, but that’s probably just because of the microflora that live on the space station. None of them, however, are harmful to humans, such as E. coli and Salmonella. The scientists’ findings are significant, because they tell us that we can grow food in space for long journeys. NASA regularly sends supplies to the ISS, so the station’s crew isn’t at risk of food shortages. For trips to the moon and Mars in the future, though, NASA needs to find a way to supplement pre-packaged food.

Massa and Khodadad explained:

“Right now we cannot guarantee that we will have a diet to meet the needs of the crew for these longer, deep space missions, so one potential solution will be to supplement the packaged diet with fresh produce. This [space-grown lettuce] will provide additional vitamins and other nutrients, flavors, textures and variety to the packaged diet. Growing plants may also help with menu fatigue and provide psychological benefits when astronauts are far from home. In the long term, if we ever want to have space colonization, growth of crops will be crucial for establishing any level of sustainability and self-sufficiency.

In addition to providing food, plants may also play a role in future Life Support Systems needed for long-duration missions. Plants generate oxygen as well as remove and fix carbon dioxide, which is critical in closed systems like the ISS or future moon/Mars facilities.”

Since humans can’t live on lettuce alone, NASA also sent kale and cabbage to the ISS to figure out if astronauts can grow them for long trips in the future.

The team trained its computers by having them analyze hundreds of conspiracy and non-conspiracy videos, helping them “learn” how to differentiate between the two. Once they were trained, the computers analyzed eight million recommended videos over the course of one year. Unfortunately, they were unable to classify the videos by actually watching them — instead they used transcripts, metadata (titles, descriptions and tags), the top 200 comments of each video and the perceived intent of those comments. Depending on the contents of each of these sources, the videos would be classified as either conspiratorial or not.

The researchers considered conspiracy theory videos as those which cover secret plots by those in power, ideas that are contrary to scientific consensus and views that are not backed by evidence or are unfalsifiable. These include both harmful conspiracies like those that state that mourning Sandy Hook family members are actually “crisis actors,” as well as the relatively innocuous ones, such as the assertion that the Mothman caused the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

The results show that there has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of conspiracy theory videos that YouTube serves to its users. However, the study did not use an actual user account during the analysis. Rather, all content was viewed in a “logged out” state. This may have had a major impact on results, as watch history is an important factor in how YouTube determines which videos to suggest to a logged-in user.

Diving into the content of the videos shows that YouTube may be selective in which conspiratorial subjects it suppresses. The rate at which climate change denial videos are being suggested hasn’t changed much, while the aforementioned Sandy Hook videos have been noticeably reduced. While leaving the judgement over what constitutes a harmful conspiracy to YouTube’s employees could be a problem, one could argue that suppressing conspiracy theory videos across the board could also be an issue. Non-harmful conspiracies can be fun — the strange antics of Andrew W.K. come to mind — and, after all, several conspiracy theories, such as MKUltra and Project Sunshine, turned out to be true.

On a broader level, these conspiracy theory videos are a problem because YouTube is becoming an increasingly popular source for news and facts — the platform has two billion active users every month — as well as its monopoly on the longform social video market. As such an active platform, bad actors are more frequently leveraging YouTube as a forum for social engineering, disinformation and misinformation.

A new clinical study analyzed samples from 51 EVALI patients and a comparison group of 99 healthy individuals. The study identified vitamin E acetate in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid from 48 of the 51 EVALI patients. It did not detect the chemical in BAL fluid from healthy individuals.

This isn’t entirely surprising. Last month, the CDC said it suspected vitamin E could play a role in EVALI. The chemical is used to dilute liquid in some THC-containing e-cigs and vaping products. It can also be found in some foods and cosmetic products. It doesn’t seem to cause an issue when it is ingested or applied topically, but past research suggests it could be more harmful when inhaled.

The number of reported cases of EVALI seems to be on the decline, but the CDC says new cases are being reported weekly. As of December 17th, EVALI has injured 2,506 in the US, and the CDC has confirmed 54 deaths. It warns that there may be more than one cause of EVALI and it has not ruled out other substances and product sources.

“Bone is a building,” says Purdue University professor Pablo Zavattieri. “It has these columns that carry most of the load and beams connecting the columns. We can learn from these materials to create more robust 3D-printed materials for buildings and other structures.”

The researchers discovered that the “beams” in bones provide more stiffness and strength than previously understood. Those beams, also known as trabeculae, form vertical plate-like struts and horizontal rod-like struts in bone. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they propose that it’s the horizontal struts that increase the fatigue life of bone.

They believe that 3D-printed building materials designed with similar internal structures might lead to more durable buildings. To test the theory, Zavattieri’s lab designed 3D-printed polymers with architectures similar to trabecula.

Mechanical analysis simulations found that the thicker the horizontal struts, the longer the polymer lasted under load. Because thickening the struts didn’t significantly increase the mass of the polymer, the team believes similar bone-inspired polymers could be used to create resilient, lightweight building materials, and those could be key to creating 3D-printed homes and buildings.

About 88 percent of those in the study said that social networks favored news outlets with “attention-grabbing articles” — that is, sensationalist fare. Roughly 84 percent said companies liked sites that had many social followers, while 79 percent thought the companies favored news with a specific political stance. There were also gripes about bias, with 53 percent saying one-sided news represented a “very big problem” while 51 percent felt the same about inaccurate or fake news.

And yes, the perceived level of bias depended on political leanings. People who lean Republican were more likely to claim that sites had excessive control (75 percent versus 53 percent), and more likely to argue the sites were liberal. Neither side thought the sites were especially conservative, however, with a mere 18 percent of Democrat supporters claiming social sites generally leaned to the right.

Not that these complaints are deterring people from reading all the same — in fact, they’re more reliant on social networks for news than ever before. Where 18 percent of users said they often relied on social media for news in 2016, 28 percent of them do as of 2019. Unsurprisingly, more than half (52 percent) of Americans sourced news from Facebook, 28 percent from YouTube and 17 percent from Twitter.

This isn’t necessarily a definitive study. Pew was gauging opinions from 5,107 people in its American Trends Panel. That’s a healthy survey size, but it might not be perfectly representative of sentiments. However, it does illustrate the challenges for Facebook, Twitter and others as they try to improve their news. Many people are distrustful, and simply tweaking algorithms or adding human curation may not be enough for those convinced social networks are a destructive influence.

Every plant emits a different volatile organic compound (VOC) signature, or fingerprint, which can change based on factors like drought or flood. By monitoring these signals, scientists can study how forest ecosystems adapt to stressors. Despite that valuable info, the Amazon’s VOCs were previously monitored by just a handful of towers built in one type of ecosystem. The data was limited and biased, and biosphere emissions models assumed nearby ecosystems had the same VOC emissions.

Since 2017, researchers from Harvard, Amazonas State University (UEA) and the Amazonas State Research Support Foundation (FAPEAM) have been working on a drone-based system to map the VOCs emitted in different ecosystems in central Amazonia.

Their research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, proves that different ecosystems have different VOC signatures. Next, the team plans to sample more ecosystems in water-logged valleys along rivers. They’ll use a boat as a launching platform, and hope to test a three-drone fleet.

“This research highlights how little we understood forest heterogeneity,” said Harvard professor Scot Martin. “But drone-assisted technologies can help us understand and quantify VOC emissions in different, nearby ecosystems in order to better represent them in climate and air quality model simulations.”

Advancements in drone technology could make research like this more common. Already, Boeing is working on a solar-powered drone that will gather climate data and atmospheric research, and of course, we’ve seen drones put to use surveying farms and crops.

In a paper published by the IEEE Computer Society, the researchers say how quickly, how far and when we walk — and if we pick up our phones during the night — reveals telling patterns. By correlating physical activity to personality traits, the team determined that “agreeable” people have random activity patterns and are busier on weekends and weekday evenings. Sensitive females apparently check their phones regularly and well into the night, but sensitive males do the opposite. And more inventive and curious people make and receive fewer phone calls compared to others.

The researchers say this data could be used to better inform social media friend recommendations, online dating matches and targeted advertising. They also suggest it might help us better understand ourselves — you can decide how depressing that sentiment is. There are some holes in the study, like the fact that it only sampled 52 people. It’s also based on personality surveys, and people tend to be pretty bad at answering questions about themselves. The researchers plan to replicate the study in Australia to confirm their theories. Regardless of the outcome, you can be sure companies will use accelerometers to gather user data in one way or another.

IIHS asked 2,000 drivers to answer questions about Autopilot (Tesla), Traffic Jam Assist (Audi and Acura), Super Cruise (Cadillac), Driving Assistant Plus (BMW) and ProPilot Assist (Nissan). They found that 48 percent of the participants thought it would be fine to take their hands off the wheel in a Tesla, whereas only 33 percent thought that about ProPilot Assist. A total 34 percent even thought it’s OK to talk on the phone with Autopilot in charge. Thankfully, only six percent thought they could nap while Autopilot is engaged. The other systems got much lower percentages in all instances.

The current iteration of Autopilot only reaches level 2 in the driving automation scale and still requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. Not doing so could be very dangerous — in fact, some fatal crashes involving Tesla vehicles in the past happened because drivers didn’t have their hands on the wheel like their cars instructed. As Ars Technica noted, though, it’s not entirely clear how many of the 2,000 participants have actually driven a Tesla. They might have thought that it’s OK to talk on the phone or nap while Autopilot’s on, because they had zero idea about what it could do.

Another IIHS study found that information displayed on instrument clusters could be confusing to drivers, as well. The organization asked 80 volunteers to watch videos showing the instrument cluster of a 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class with the Drive Pilot system. While half of them went through a brief orientation about the system’s adaptive cruise control and lane-centering features, most couldn’t understand what was happening when it couldn’t detect any of the vehicles ahead. That happens when other vehicles on the road are beyond the range of detection.

In addition, even those who received training were often confused when Drive Pilot’s lane centering becomes inactive. The best solution, of course, would be to make instrument clusters more intuitive. But as IIHS said, providing comprehensive orientations for new owners at the dealership could help.