Trump accuses hospitals of hoarding ventilators

WE DID NOT FAIL TO SUPPLY VENTILATORS THE HOSPITALS ARE HOARDING 

By Nandita Bose and Phil Stewart,Reuters•March 29, 2020

Trump orders ventilators, demands appreciation

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump accused hospitals on Sunday of hoarding ventilators that are in scarce supply across the United States as the coronavirus spreads, adding any hospitals not using the devices must release them.

Trump, whose critics have accused him of trying to deflect blame over his handling of the crisis, did not cite any evidence to back his accusation that hospitals were hoarding the devices. It was also unclear which medical facilities he was referring to.

"We have some healthcare workers, some hospitals ... hoarding equipment including ventilators," Trump said at the White House following a meeting with corporate executives, including from U.S. Medical Group.

"We have to release those ventilators -- especially hospitals that are never going to use them."

His remarks came just two days after Trump invoked emergency powers to require General Motors Co to build much-needed ventilators for coronavirus patients after he accused the largest U.S. automaker of "wasting time" during negotiations.

Trump was more upbeat about GM on Sunday, saying the auto giant was "working very hard."The Trump administration has been under pressure to ramp up the production of ventilators, which are essential to saving the lives of patients who develop complications with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated in an interview with CNN on Sunday that the pandemic could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the United States.

Speaking earlier on Sunday, Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program that the administration was asking U.S. governors and mayors to know "where your anesthesia ventilators are."

On March 25, Trump issued an executive order to prevent hoarding of essential medical equipment to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, including ventilators and masks.

The executive order authorized the U.S. government to directly target hoarders, who can be criminally prosecuted.

But with the infection rate rising rapidly, Reuters has documented shortages of vital protective equipment in hospitals in hard-hit New York, where healthcare workers are hiding supplies such as facemasks from colleagues in other departments.

As supply chains break down or delay delivery of vital equipment, nurses say they are locking away or hiding N95 respirator masks, surgical masks and other supplies that are prone to going missing if left unattended for long.

(Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe and David Shepardson; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Nearly Half of Gen Z and Millennial Respondents Don't Consider COVID-19 Pandemic Very Serious, According to New Survey

PR Newswire•March 31, 2020


SAN MATEO, Calif., March 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A new national survey from Swytchback, a leader in mobile visual surveys, found that nearly a quarter (23%) of Gen Z and Millennial respondents consider COVID-19 not at all serious, not very serious or mildly serious, and only about half (51%) consider it very serious. The survey of more than 20,000 men and women between the ages of 16 to 30 years old examines young people's perceptions of and knowledge about COVID-19, and identifies areas for improved communication and education to help prevent its spread. The survey was conducted in partnership with Tap Research.

The findings show that many Gen Zers and Millennials continue to have significant knowledge gaps concerning the coronavirus pandemic. Other topline findings from the survey include:


More than a quarter (26%) of respondents did not know there is no current cure for COVID-19.


14% of respondents did not know that asymptomatic people can spread the virus.


Only 40% of respondents knew that the virus can also sicken 20 to 54 year olds to the point of hospital care.

Despite the gaps in knowledge highlighted in the findings, the free form responses to the survey reflect concern among most respondents, especially for their family members.

Swytchback created and flighted the mobile info-survey in response to the current coronavirus crisis, as companies around the world do what they can to help. Swytchback leveraged its unique ability to quickly engage young people with a visually rich mobile study to address reports that Gen Zers and Millennials are not practicing social isolation, which can lead to severe delays in containment. The survey simultaneously assesses respondents' knowledge and educates on best personal practices for preventing the spread of COVID-19, based on CDC recommendations.


"Swytchback runs an innovative mobile-base insight platform for companies to engage hard to find consumers including Millennials," said Bruce Bower, Swytchback founder. "We wanted to help during this crisis, and it was clear to us that we could use our platform to understand information gaps while educating about the virus and containment. Our goal is to work with the CDC and other government organizations to monitor the state of young people throughout the crisis."

Swytchback continues to help address the crisis through its educational survey. The survey remains open and available on the Swytchback home page and live results are available here.

About Swytchback™

Swytchback is a unique survey solution that boasts completion rates that regularly exceed 90% and provides immediate access to high-quality, highly actionable insights data. Our patent-pending platform leverages a mobile optimized, visually focused and gesture driven format to allow you to engage and delight even the hardest to reach audiences. For more information, visit swytchback.com or follow the company on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

About the survey

Swytchback launched the COVID-19 survey on March 20, 2020 and since then, more than 20,000 men and women between the ages of 16 to 30 years with a profile to match US census have taken the survey. The mobile survey – the "Swydget" – has been shared 793 times and has generated a 97% completion rate.

For more information please contact info@swytchback.com
Cision

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SOURCE Swytchback, Inc.

Movie Theaters and Concerts Could See Major Attendance Drop Post-Pandemic (Study)

By ADAM B. VARY 

Adam B. Vary

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After a month of increasing anxiety and self-isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic, audiences in the U.S. are largely not eager to return to public events once the crisis subsides, according to a new study.

In a survey of 1,000 consumers in the U.S., 44% of respondents said they would attend fewer large public events, even once they are cleared by the CDC, with 38% saying they’d attend about the same number, and 18% saying they’d attend more. And 47% agreed that the idea of going to a major public event “will scare me for a long time.”

The study was published by Performance Research, a sports and events research firm, in partnership with Full Circle Research Co.

The news for movie theaters was particularly grim, with 49% of respondents saying it would take a few months to never for them to return, and 28% saying that they will attend movie theaters less often once they’re safe. While 15% of respondents said they plan on going to the movies more often post-pandemic (and 58% said their attendance won’t change), the net effect suggests an alarming erosion of theatrical returns that theater exhibitors and studios alike can ill afford.

Major indoor concert venues, indoor sports venues, and — of significant interest to the Walt Disney Company — theme parks appear to be the hardest hit by the pandemic, with 56%, 51% and 50% of respondents respectively saying it would take anywhere from a few months to possibly never for them to return, even after they’ve been deemed safe. A third of respondents further said they plan to attend indoor sports venues and indoor concert venues less often after the COVID-19 epidemic has subsided.

Outdoor parks and beaches, outdoor sports venues, and zoos and aquariums appear to be the least affected, with 64%, 56%, and 55% of respondents respectively saying they would return right away or within a few weeks.

Even for those who do say they will return to public venues, however, the possibility of catching a pathogen will be front of mind: Two-thirds of respondents said their concern over the cleanliness and sanitation of venues and restrooms will be higher than prior to the pandemic; 65% stated concern for the cleanliness of food service areas; and 59% said they will be concerned about crowds and their general proximity to strangers.

The news isn’t entirely bad, however: 46% said they will value going to public events more than they did before, and 53% reported a “pent-up desire to attend the events I love” once the pandemic is over.

A vast majority of respondents — 66% — said the decision by major sports organizations to suspend public events was “about right.”

The study, which has a margin of error of 3%, drew from consumers in Full Circle’s research panel, who were surveyed between March 23 to 26 — when the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. nearly doubled from 43,667 to 83,836. The number of confirmed U.S. cases currently stands at over 184,000, as of Tuesday afternoon.

Todd Spangler contributed to this report.

A shutdown - but not for government: how US federal employees provide vital services
TRUMP MAY NOT BE BUT THE GOVERNMENT IS...WORKING

While Washington appears to have come to a grinding halt, more than 2 million federal workers across the US continue to provide vital services

Joan E Greve THE GUARDIAN Sun 29 Mar 2020
 

A significant percentage of government employees are still reporting to their place of work while public health experts urge Americans to stay at home. Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images


White House tours have been canceled; Capitol Hill hallways are mostly empty; the Smithsonian museums have been closed. Washington DC, like much of the rest of the country, appears to have come to a grinding halt as America grapples with the coronavirus crisis.

But government goes on. More than 2 million federal employees spread out across America are continuing to provide vital services to keep the country running amid the crisis, often putting themselves in harm’s way to do so and dealing with previous decisions by the Trump administration that are hampering the effort.

How US governors are fighting coronavirus – and Donald Trump

The Trump administration has told federal agencies to postpone “non-mission-critical functions” to mitigate the spread of the virus, but a significant percentage of government employees are still reporting to their place of work while public health experts urge Americans to stay home.

“There are hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are still going to work today, and they have the same kind of concerns as any other worker in other sectors of the economy,” said Randy Erwin, the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union representing government workers.

Many of those government employees still reporting to their posts are unable to shift to working from home due to lack of equipment or the nature of their jobs.

For example, the Department of Defense, which reported its first coronavirus-related death on Sunday, employs many workers who retrofit critical military equipment like tanks. Hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals working for the Department of Veterans Affairs will also need to continue caring for veterans as they contract coronavirus.

A number of those federal workers have expressed concerns about their safety, as many workplaces go without personal protective equipment to limit their risk of becoming sick. “You’d be shocked at how ill-prepared a lot of federal agencies are with even the basics,” Erwin said. He described one work site that didn’t have soap in the bathrooms, even though public health experts are recommending frequent hand-washing to mitigate the spread of the virus.


For the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have desk jobs, the shift to telework amid the pandemic has not always been seamless. The Trump administration has tried to limit telework at multiple government agencies, after the Obama administration made efforts to expand remote working opportunities. The policy shift appears to have left the government without much of a broad strategy for how to keep federal employees working while they cannot safely go to their offices.

Some employees lack government-issued laptops, and concerns have been raised about the virtual private networks (VPNs) employees use to connect to government networks while working remotely. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security warned in a memo earlier this month that the VPNs expose more technical “vulnerabilities”, which can be “found and targeted by malicious cyber actors”.

The agency also noted the “limited number of VPN connections” could prevent some employees from working remotely, urging senior officials to update and test VPNs to prepare for mass usage.

“I think it is obvious from the lack of equipment that our federal government was caught completely with its pants down,” Erwin said. “It’s not as easy as flipping a switch and shifting to telework.”

Moe Vela, who served as the director of administration and management to former vice-president Joe Biden, said the Trump administration had missed opportunities in the months and years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic to prepare for such a crisis.

“Our government was severely delayed in many ways in their response to the pandemic,” Vela, now chief transparency officer of TransparentBusiness, said. The former White House official noted the government “tends to operate somewhat like a dinosaur”, so federal agencies are often slow to implement beneficial changes to long-standing systems, which may have cost the Trump administration some critical time in responding to the pandemic.

“However, I do not think it’s irreparable, and it can be addressed,” Vela added. He argued the government needs to move quickly to implement a robust teleworking policy that would allow more employees to avoid public transportation and offices, limiting the spread of the virus.

As the country’s largest employer, the federal government could be setting an example on how to responsibly continue operations amid the pandemic, Erwin said. “The federal government should be a leader in these things, and telework is one of the primary ways that you can still get business done while respecting the guidance on social distancing,” the union president said.

But Donald Trump appears eager to resume normal operations, saying on Tuesday that he wants the country “opened up and just raring to go by Easter”. The comments raised concerns that federal employees who have been able to work remotely will be forced to return to their offices while the pandemic is still raging.

“If in the near term they make a shift to bring people back to work, I can promise you federal employees will be extremely concerned for their safety,” Erwin said. “And I can promise you that as the union representing them, we will fight that with every fiber of our being.”

Having served on the White House emergency preparedness council, Vela urged the president to defer to public health experts, who have warned the country may need to adhere to social distancing practices for at least several more weeks. “Please stop prescribing. Just facilitate and coordinate,” Vela said of Trump’s approach to the crisis. “That’s what the role of the federal government is, to keep our citizens safe, and you’re not keeping people safe when you don’t listen to the experts.”

---30---

Designers fabricate masks, shields and swabs to battle COVID-19

by New Jersey Institute of Technology

Justin Suriano and Daniel Brateris try on a face shield they designed and fabricated in the Makerspace at NJIT. Credit: New Jersey Institute of Technology

As emergency response teams in the region scramble to acquire dwindling medical supplies to combat the surge in COVID-19 (coronavirus) infections, diverse members of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) community—from engineers to physicists to advanced manufacturing specialists to students—are designing and fabricating devices to help address the shortfall.


After consulting with emergency room physicians on specifications, a team in the Makerspace at NJIT designed and manufactured a prototype of a face shield that can be used by various emergency workers. The front of the mask is a long piece of clear polycarbonate plastic, while the frame is made from HDPE plastic—the material used in plastic milk bottles—which pathogens have difficulty clinging to. The shield covers most of the face and is held in place by a simple strap. It can withstand even industrial grade cleansers.

"Our goal was to build something as cleanly as possible that is easily sanitized and reusable," said Daniel Brateris, director of experiential learning at NJIT's Newark College of Engineering (NCE). Cutting the masks with lasers from sheets of plastic, rather than 3-D-printing them, allowed the effort to avoid the "little cavities that develop when objects are built up layer by layer," he said.

By early April, the team plans to send a batch of 100 shields, put together in safely spaced assembly lines, to New Jersey state agencies for testing. While requests for supplies have begun flowing in at a steady clip, NJIT didn't wait for them, said Moshe Kam, NCE's dean.

"We have the capability, so we started to work on designs, make prototypes and see who could use them," Kam said, adding, "As we are working on these face shields, other efforts have been launched."

The Makerspace team is working with a group from a public hospital in Michigan on a field ventilator for short-term use for patients waiting for standard ventilators to become available. They also are reviewing a request from a hospital in Ohio to make specialized vent filters.

"As long as this crisis continues, the Makerspace at NJIT will be fully dedicated to the design of prototypes, making and testing of these prototypes, and delivery of ready-to-manufacture designs of needed devices to industry," Kam said.

NJIT's fabricators are collaborating with researchers, including as part of NJIT's partnership in the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) led by Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, on studies that will, for example, better elucidate the rates and risk factors for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among health care workers.

NJIT physicists John Federici and Ian Gatley and their team are developing a swab that will be used in a study at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences that seeks to characterize the factors related to viral transmission and disease severity in a large healthcare system, both in healthcare settings and in health care workers' households. The swabs, which are mostly 3-D-printed, will be used to collect serial biospecimens over a six-month period from a cohort of 500 health care workers and 250 age- and sex-matched staff members outside of clinical settings, all from within the same health care system.

"As COVID-19 spreads rapidly around the world, health care workers are the frontline of defense and highly vulnerable to acquiring the infection. In this sense, COVID-19 poses a double threat, endangering lives not only through its effects on the body and immune response, but through its potential to devastate workers essential for treating the sickest infected patients," said Rutgers University's Reynold Panettieri, the program director of NJ ACTS. "Our long-term goal is to protect the health care workforce caring for SARS-CoV-2-infected patients, their families, communities and the general population."

Procuring supplies for a research study, however timely and focused, has been an enormous challenge. "It is critical to do this sort of study right now, while the pace of infections is growing and the need is most time-sensitive," noted Federici, director of NJIT's Additive Manufacturing Laboratory (AddLab), which develops innovative manufacturing techniques in conjunction with embedded electronics.

Answering the call from a local emergency room physician, NJIT's Albert Dorman Honors College sponsored a design competition for both face shields and masks. Students were directed to follow CDC guidelines to ensure regulatory compliance and to use specified materials, and nearly two dozen took up the challenge. The winner of the face shield contest, whose design was approved by a regional medical system, produced more than 500 shields that were delivered to the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood. The winner of the mask competition sent 100 triple-cotton masks to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

With requests flowing in, the Honors College is following up with a competition to build shields and masks for local emergency responders and other area hospitals as well.

The Makerspace at NJIT is central to both the university's hands-on learning mission and its growing relationship with New Jersey's manufacturing community. Students and faculty use it on a daily basis to create devices for research experiments, club team contests and research capstone projects, among other ventures. But it also is available to industrial partners to participate as mentors, trainers, and instructors, for companies to collaborate with students and faculty members on research and development projects, and for employees to receive customized training tailored to their needs.

The equipment inside ranges from small 3-D printers to large industrial machines such as an additive metal 3-D printer that uses powdered stainless steel to print parts, an optical scanner that effectively digitizes real life objects, enabling reverse engineering, and a continuous fiber 3-D printer that is capable of depositing strands of carbon fiber, fiberglass or Kevlar inside 3-D-printed parts, to add considerable strength. Labs across the campus, including the AddLab, also design and create prototypes for novel devices.

"Traditional factories are designed to manufacture specific products at very large volumes, while additive manufacturing labs are much more versatile. We instead fabricate whatever is required as the need arises, in much smaller amounts," said Samuel Gatley, the AddLab's senior additive manufacturing technician. "One day, we might make face masks and the next day, swabs."

NJIT labs also are donating supplies. In the early days of the regional surge in coronavirus cases, researchers emptied their closets of hundreds of gloves, goggles and gowns to donate to the Essex County Office of Emergency Management.

"As we respond to COVID-19, while keeping the well-being of students, faculty and staff at the forefront, NJIT is still operating. We are rethinking our approaches and making difficult decisions in real-time, from moving all our classes online, to carrying out our business functions remotely, to conducting our research computationally and sharing our laboratory supplies with our local community," said NJIT Provost Fadi Deek.

He added, "More importantly, NJIT is leading and collaborating with partner universities and government agencies to contribute to the collective fight against the coronavirus by rapidly developing in our additive manufacturing and prototyping facilities swabs, shields and masks, as well as other medical devices, to deliver into the hands of doctors and nurses."

The placebo effect and psychedelic drugs: tripping on nothing?

by McGill University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

There has been a lot of recent interest in the use of psychedelic drugs to treat depression. A new study from McGill suggests that, in the right context, some people may experience psychedelic-like effects from placebos alone. The researchers reported some of the strongest placebo effects (these are effects from "fake" medication) on consciousness in the literature relating to psychedelic drugs. Indeed, 61% of the participants in the experiment reported some effect after consuming the placebo.

"The study reinforces the power of context in psychedelic settings. With the recent re-emergence of psychedelic therapy for disorders such as depression and anxiety, clinicians may be able to leverage these contextual factors to obtain similar therapeutic experiences from lower doses, which would further improve the safety of the drugs," said Jay Olson, a Ph.D. candidate in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and the lead author on the research paper that was recently published in Psychopharmacology.

Setting the mood

Participants, who were expecting to take part in a study of the effects of drugs on creativity, spent four hours together in a room that had been set up to resemble a psychedelic party, with paintings, coloured lights and a DJ. To make the context seem credible and hide the deception, the study also involved ten research assistants in white lab coats, psychiatrists, and a security guard.

The 33 participants had been told they were being given a drug which resembled the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms and that they would experience changes in consciousness over the 4-hour period. In reality, everyone consumed a placebo. Among the participants were several actors who had been trained to slowly act out the effects of the ostensible drug. The researchers thought that this would help convince the participants that everyone had consumed a psychedelic drug and might lead them to experience placebo effects.

Strong effects for a placebo

When asked near the end of the study, the majority (61%) of the participants reported some effect of the drug, ranging from mild changes to effects resembling taking a moderate or high dose of an actual drug, though there was considerable individual variation. For example, several participants stated that they saw the paintings on the walls "move" or "reshape" themselves. Others described themselves as feeling "heavy... as if gravity [had] a stronger hold", and one had a "come down" before another "wave" hit her. Several participants reported being certain that they had taken a psychedelic drug.

"These results may help explain 'contact highs' in which people experience the effects of a drug simply by being around others who have consumed it," says Samuel Veissière, a cognitive anthropologist who teaches in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and supervised the study. "More generally, our study helps shed light on the 'placebo boosting' component inherent in all medical and therapeutic intervention, and the social influences that modulate these enhancing effects. Placebo effects may have been under-estimated in psychedelic studies. The current trend towards 'micro-dosing' (consuming tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to improve creativity), for example, may have a strong placebo component due to widespread cultural expectations that frame the response."


Explore furtherNew research confirms lingering mood benefit of psychedelics

More information: Jay A. Olson et al, Tripping on nothing: placebo psychedelics and contextual factors, Psychopharmacology (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s00213-020-05464-5
Provided by McGill University

TUNE IN, TURN ON, DROP OUT

IS A MATTER OF MIND

YOU CAN BE ANYBODY THIS 

TIME AROUND 

DR. TIMOTHY LEARY PSYCHEDELIC REBEL SHAMAN 

THE CORRECT AND INCORRECT WAY TO SOCIAL DISTANCE  

CORRECT
Striking Health Care Workers in New York City outside hospital practicing proper Social Distancing during protest picket over lack of proper PPE for staff.

INCORRECT
MARCH 27/2020 TRUMP SIGNING $2 TRILLION DOLLAR RELIEF BILL

PRAYING FOR TRUMP MARCH 2020




THE RESULT OF FAILING TO SOCIAL DISTANCE DURING PANDEMIC

The architecture of a 'shape-shifting' norovirus

THAT OTHER VIRUS THAT CONTAMINATES CRUISE SHIPS

by University of Leeds

The murine norovirus captured by cryo-electron microscopy. Credit: University of Leeds

Every picture tells a story... none more so than this detailed visualisation of a strain of the norovirus.

Created from 13,000 separate images taken by an electron microscope, it reveals in rich detail the structure of the virus. It shows bump-like protrusions on the outside of the virus capsid, the protein shell that holds the genome of the virus.

Joseph Snowden, a Ph.D. researcher from the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds, said it revealed that the protein casing did not keep a fixed shape—as the protrusions on the surface would extend, retract and rotate.

This dynamic shape-shifting may hold clues as to why the noroviruses are such potent pathogens, responsible for over 200,000 deaths worldwide each year, mainly in low-to-middle-income countries. In the UK, noroviruses cause the winter vomiting bug that forces the closure of schools and hospitals.

To identify subtle changes to the structure of these protein shells, the scientists processed the data from the images with a super computer, using a method called "focussed classification".

The study, Dynamics in the murine norovirus capsid revealed by high-resolution cryo-EM, is reported in the online journal PLOS Biology.

For safety reasons, the researchers used a mouse norovirus in their study, which closely resembles the human noroviruses.

How the protrusions on the exterior of the virus change shape. Credit: University of Leeds

Mr Snowden said: "The constant changing or morphing of the virus shell may enable it to confuse the body's defence systems.

"Immune systems work on the basis of molecular shape. The body's defences will produce proteins that bind to pathogens to prevent them from infecting host cells. But if the shape of the virus is constantly changing, the body's defence systems may be unable to act efficiently."

The protrusions seem able to move independently or in a co-ordinated fashion and the scientists believe this may enable the virus to prime itself ready for infection depending on where it is—i.e. if it is in the digestive tract of a host organism.

It is believed that this study is the first study to use the focussed classification computing tool to investigate the structure of a norovirus.

Structural insight to aid vaccine development

Dr. Morgan Herod, one of the senior authors on this study, also from the University of Leeds, hopes that a greater understanding of the structure of the norovirus may help with vaccine development, which so far has been unsuccessful.

Dr. Herod said "The University of Leeds has a strong track record in the use of virus like particles (VLPs) to create vaccine candidates, for example against polio. VLPs are harmless proteins modelled on the structure of a virus's casing and they fool the immune system into thinking the body is under attack, prompting an immune response. "

"Our research shows that the capsid or protein shell of norovirus is dynamic—and perhaps we have to look at VLPs that are better able to mimic this aspect of norovirus structure."

"That will make the vaccine development task a little harder."

Explore furtherNorovirus structures could help develop treatments for food poisoning

More information: Dynamics in the murine norovirus capsid revealed by high-resolution cryo-EM, PLOS Biology (2020). journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ … al.pbio.pbio.3000649

Journal information: PLoS Biology

Sunny prospects for start-up's clear solar energy windows

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Credit: Ubiquitous Energy

A Redwood City, California-based tech startup has developed a glass window packed with transparent photovoltaic cells that it believes will revolutionize the way solar energy is harnessed.

As companies around the world are increasingly working to expand and improve upon renewable energy resources, solar-energy based companies have been working to extract more energy from ever-smaller solar cells. Some resistance to the technology stemmed from the unsightly physical appearance of giant solar units placed on rooftops or vacant fields.

But Ubiquitous Energy Inc. has taken a different approach. Instead of joining competitors in trying to reduce the size of each solar cell, the company instead designed a solar panel of virtually clear glass that allows light to pass through unobstructed while tapping into the invisible ranges of the light spectrum.

Their product consists of an invisible layer of film about one one-thousandth of a millimeter thick that is layered onto existing glass components. It is clear and does not contain the blue-gray tint normally associated with solar panels.

The film, using what the company terms ClearView Power, allows the visible spectrum of light to pass through while absorbing near-infrared and ultraviolet light waves. Those waves are converted into energy. More than half of the light spectrum that can be used for energy conversion lies within those two ranges.

The panels will produce approximately two-thirds the power generated by traditional solar panels. And although installation of ClearView Power windows costs about 20 percent more than traditional windows, they are less expensive than rooftop-installed or remote solar power structures.

Miles Barr, the company's founder and chief technology officer, says he sees applications beyond merely windows in homes and office buildings.

"It can be applied to windows of skyscrapers; it can be applied to glass in automobiles; it can be applied to the glass on your iPhone," Barr said. "We really see the future of this technology as being applied everywhere, all around us, ubiquitous."

The solar units can be utilized in other everyday applications as well. Highway signage, for example, can be self-powered with these solar cells, as could supermarket shelf signage displaying product prices that can be updated at a moment's notice.

California has been a leader in the transition to renewable energy resources. State initiatives called for 33 percent of the state's electricity to come from alternate power sources by 2020, and half of all electric needs to be met by alternate sources by 2030.

California also this year began requiring all new homes to include some form of solar energy technology.

Explore furtherNew record could usher in new era for solar energy

More information: ubiquitous.energy/
ubiquitous.energy/technology/

AMERICA
Flooding stunted 2019 cropland growing season, resulting in more atmospheric CO2

by Robert Perkins, California Institute of Technology

Researchers are using satellite and aircraft observations to monitor regional land carbon fluxes in near real-time, as illustrated in this artist's concept. Satellite observations of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) were used to track photosynthesis and estimate corresponding changes in land surface carbon fluxes. Meanwhile, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which are influenced by the land surface carbon fluxes, can be observed by aircraft and from space. In this illustration, the two satellites depicted from left to right are: TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) and OCO-2 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2). The aircraft is the ACT-America (Atmospheric Carbon and Transport - America). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Severe flooding throughout the Midwest—which triggered a delayed growing season for crops in the region—led to a reduction of 100 million metric tons of net carbon uptake during June and July of 2019, according to a new study.

For reference, the massive California wildfires of 2018 released an estimated 12.4 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. And although part of this deficit due to floods was compensated for later in the growing season, the combined effects are likely to have resulted in a 15 percent reduction in crop productivity relative to 2018, the study authors say.

The study, published March 31, 2020, in the journal AGU Advances, describes how the carbon uptake was measured using satellite data. Researchers used a novel marker of photosynthesis known as solar-induced fluorescence to quantify the reduced carbon uptake due to the delay in the crops' growth. Independent observations of atmospheric CO2 levels were then employed to confirm the reduction in carbon uptake.

"We were able to show that it's possible to monitor the impacts of floods on crop growth on a daily basis in near real time from space, which is critical to future ecological forecasting and mitigation," says Yi Yin, research scientist at Caltech and lead author of the study.

Record rainfalls soaked the Midwest during the spring and early summer of 2019. For three consecutive months (April, May, and June), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 12-month precipitation measurements had hit all-time highs. The resulting floods not only damaged homes and infrastructure but also impacted agricultural productivity, delaying the planting of crops in large parts of the Corn Belt, which stretches from Kansas and Nebraska in the west to Ohio in the east.

Credit: California Institute of Technology

To assess the environmental impact of the delayed growing season, scientists at Caltech and JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, turned to satellite data. As plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight into oxygen and energy through photosynthesis, a small amount of the sunlight they absorb is emitted back in the form of a very faint glow. The glow, known as solar-induced fluorescence, or SIF, is far too dim for us to see with bare eyes, but it can be measured through a process called satellite spectrophotometry.

The Caltech-JPL team quantified SIF using measurements from a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite-borne instrument to track the growth of crops with unprecedented detail. They found that the seasonal cycle of the 2019 crop growth was delayed by around two weeks and the maximum seasonal photosynthesis was reduced by about 15 percent. The stunted growing season was estimated to have led to a reduction in carbon uptake by plants of around 100 million metric tons from June to July 2019.

"SIF is the most accurate signal of photosynthesis by far that can be observed from space," says Christian Frankenberg, professor of environmental science and engineering at Caltech. "And since plants absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, we wanted to see if SIF could track the reductions in crop carbon uptake during the 2019 floods."

To find out, the team analyzed atmospheric CO2 measurements from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite as well as from aircraft from NASA's Atmospheric Carbon and Transport America (ACT-America) project. "We found that the SIF-based estimates of reduced uptake are consistent with elevated atmospheric CO2 when the two quantities are connected by atmospheric transport models," says Brendan Bryne, co-corresponding author of the study and a NASA postdoc fellow at JPL.

"This study illuminates our ability to monitor the ecosystem and its impact on atmospheric CO2 in near real time from space. These new tools allow for global sensing of biospheric uptake of carbon dioxide," says Paul Wennberg, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering, director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, and founding member of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory project.

The paper is titled "Cropland carbon uptake delayed and reduced by 2019 Midwest floods."

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More information: Yi Yin et al. Cropland Carbon Uptake Delayed and Reduced by 2019 Midwest Floods, AGU Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1029/2019AV000140

Provided by California Institute of Technology