WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is canceling some of its remaining orders for ventilators, after rushing to sign nearly $3 billion in emergency contracts as the COVID-19 pandemic surged in the spring.
Thousands of students returning to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York this month are being asked to wear masks in public, register their health status online each day and electronically log classroom visits for contact tracing if a coronavirus outbreak occurs. But the most novel effort at the school to measure and limit virus spread will require little effort and come quite naturally.
A COVID-19 test that takes 15 minutes and can be run without lab equipment was just granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. It will cost $5, and runs on a simple card that uses the same technology as a pregnancy test.
The glory of the prize—in lives saved, reputations made, and profits earned—is incalculable. The hunt for a cure has unleashed an epic arms’ race among world powers, multinational corporations, and universities. And as with any arms’ race, not everyone is playing by the rules.
NEW DELHI, India (AP) — In June, India began using cheaper, faster but less accurate tests to scale up testing for the coronavirus — a strategy that the United States is now considering.
A person in China scans a QR code with a smartphone to register their real name before getting off a bus in Wuhan, China. Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty Images
The US is rolling out digital contact tracing. How has it been working in other countries?
vox.com - by Shirin Ghaffary - April 18, 2020
If and when lockdown restrictions are lifted in the US, would you agree to let the government anonymously track your interactions with people within a 6-foot radius to control the spread of Covid-19?
That’s an increasingly urgent question as President Trump and state governors debate how and when to safely reopen the US economy — and as technology is being touted as a solution that would help people reenter public life.
And tech giants are stepping up. Last week, Apple and Google announced a plan to turn phones into opt-in Covid-19 tracking machines that would, if all goes as planned, make it easier for health officials to identify and alert people if they’ve been exposed to the virus.
The AI renaissance of recent years has led many to ask how this technology can help with one of the greatest threats facing humanity: climate change. A new research paper authored by some of the field’s best-known thinkers aims to answer this question, giving a number of examples of how machine learning could help prevent human destruction.
The suggested use-cases are varied, ranging from using AI and satellite imagery to better monitor deforestation, to developing new materials that can replace steel and cement (the production of which accounts for nine percent of global green house gas emissions).
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