Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss

COVID-19 Designs


we’ll see lots of innovation like this. See also the design differences between quickly-evolving face shields:

Face shield donations are coming fast and furious these days. Ford, Apple, Prusa Research and Foster + Partners are just a few of the organizations pitching in with different designs, which have by necessity evolved rather quickly. Let’s look at the design changes.

First off, what’s needed with a face shield is a curved, transparent sheet that stands off of the face. All designs accomplish this by incorporating a forehead band that serves as both a spacer and, in concert with an elastic band, the thing that holds it onto the user’s head.

Speaking of face masks, too many people are still confused about masks, but these look awesome. And then there’s this personal protective suit. It includes in-suit booze and vaping supply systems, speakers and more. very dystopian cool

Or how about design changes for elevators:

Automatic UV Disinfecting When Cars are Empty

Respirator Design Reuse

To go as fast as possible, the Ford and 3M teams have been resourcefully locating off-the-shelf parts like fans from the Ford F-150’s cooled seats for airflow, 3M HEPA air filters to filter airborne contaminants such as droplets that carry virus particles and portable tool battery packs to power these respirators for up to 8 hours.

Another idea is to reprogram smart CPAP machines to become emergency ventilators. Millions of snorers might save us.

Deccan traps

Hull went on to lead a global collaboration that published a definitive timeline of how the mayhem played out in small ocean fossils. The team tracked changes in global temperature over time. The planet did warm up before the impact, but then cooled back down before the asteroid arrived. And while that warming event didn’t seem to correlate to marine extinctions, over 90% of plankton species abruptly vanished after the impact. The study suggests that the major influence of the Deccan Traps was to guide the post-apocalyptic evolution of surviving species — not to drive the extinction itself.

For COVID-19 surveillance

I am a privacy activist who has been riding a variety of high horses about the dangers of permanent, ubiquitous data collection since 2012. I believe the major players in the online tracking space should team up with the CDC, FEMA, or some other Federal agency that has a narrow remit around public health, and build a national tracking database that will operate for some fixed amount of time, with the sole purpose of containing the coronavirus epidemic. It will be necessary to pass legislation to loosen medical privacy laws and indemnify participating companies from privacy lawsuits, as well as override California’s privacy law, to collect this data. I don’t believe the legal obstacles are insuperable, but I welcome correction on this point by people who know the relevant law.

this guy is super super tedious, but he raises valid questions this time.

Extranuclear mRNA

Researchers found that the cephalopod is the only creature that can edit its RNA outside the nucleus.. now that his team knows that the squid has the cellular machinery to do this RNA editing, the next task is to understand why. He suspects it has something to do with allowing the squid to better adapt to changing environmental conditions such as water temperature.