Monday, April 27, 2020

IRONY; COVID-19 CREATES NEED FOR 6G

Coronavirus made working from home the new normal. So the FCC is giving us a new Wi-Fi lane

by Mike Feibus, Usa Today

About a month ago, the internet started to list.

Up to that point, online activity flowed more or less in balance, with work traffic relegated mostly to the business side of the ship. Then social-distancing directives forced much of the serious stuff over to the starboard side. Which is where we watch Netflix.

As it happens, the country's internet infrastructure has proven robust enough to handle the wholesale shift. Unfortunately, it's a different story for many homes with older Wi-Fi routers that weren't equipped to handle the onslaught.

If your work videoconference is struggling to keep pace because it's crowded out by your spouse's team meeting and the kids' virtual classes, then take heart. Help is on the way.

Thursday, the FCC approved a new lane for Wi-Fi traffic, something it hasn't done in more than two decades. It spans the 6GHz frequency range, which means it's much faster than both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. Plus, it's more than twice as wide as both those bands combined. Which means that 6GHz-enabled smartphones and tablets will have plenty of elbow room for all your family's left-boat and right-boat activities.

You can't buy electronics with 6GHz Wi-Fi yet. When devices do become available, they'll be marked with the Wi-Fi 6e designation, which means they support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard with radios that can communicate on the new band as well as the older, more crowded frequencies.

Expect to start seeing 6GHz devices—as well as routers to connect them—in time for what I'll call the back-to-homeschool shopping season this summer.

A spectrum that can keep up

It's not so much the skyrocketing volume of traffic borne out of social distancing that's stressed older networks so much as the type of traffic. Even before work-from-home directives, Wi-Fi 4 and older-generation routers often had trouble keeping pace in the evening, when family members simultaneously played online games, engaged in social media and streamed videos.

Daytime internet traffic during social isolation has proven to be even more challenging, with multiple family members logged into high-bandwidth videoconferencing sites, with real-time activity flowing in both directions. Wi-Fi 6 laptops and smartphones are built for that. They'll perform even better on 6GHz spectrum, where they will be free of interference from smart doorbells, thermostats and older tablets, PCs and phones.

These new network demands that Wi-Fi 6e addresses aren't fleeting. They'll remain in place long after the current stay-at-home directives are lifted. For one thing, health experts predict we're in for more social-distancing initiatives over the next year or two in response to the ebb and flow of COVID-19 infections. But even when we're not trying to flatten the curve, education and productivity are retooling for a future with more homebound activity than before. For one, school boards are expected to incorporate video into classrooms so kids can participate virtually when they're home sick. With younger children, that likely will force at least one parent to stay behind and work from home.

As well, some professions are already rethinking how they approach face-to-face communication. In healthcare, for example, coronavirus is turning the emerging telemedicine industry on its head. Rather than examine people remotely who aren't sick enough to go to the hospital, clinicians increasingly are tapping the technology to maintain safe distances between them and contagious patients.

I also believe that America's culture of showing up to work sick will suffer collateral damage from the coronavirus crisis. We'll still work, contagious or not. But going forward, we'll probably do it from home.

Although it wasn't planned that way, the new 6GHz spectrum couldn't come at a better time. Because while the hull of our internet infrastructure has proven to be sound enough to handle the stress of an all-hands call to the home side of the deck, older home wireless networks have been exposed.

The upcoming 6GHz Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi 6e, has the raw bandwidth, range and networking intelligence to run smoothly what we want to do and what we need to do. You might call it the new Wi-Fi for the new normal.

IRONY BECAUSE LOTS OF TINFOIL HAT COVIDIOTS SPREAD CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT 5G AND COVID-19

Home internet jammed up? Try these steps before upgrading

Cyberattack can steal data via cooling fan vibrations

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Israeli researchers uncovered a novel way that hackers could steal sensitive data from a highly secured computer: by tapping into the vibrations from a cooling system fan.

Lead cyber-security researcher Mordechai Guri at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev said data encoded by hackers into fan vibrations could be transmitted to a smartphone placed in the vicinity of the targeted computer.

"We observe that computers vibrate at a frequency correlated to the rotation speed of their internal fans," Guri said. Malware can control computer vibrations by manipulating internal fan speeds, he explained. "These inaudible vibrations affect the entire structure on which the computer is placed."

The covertly transmitted vibrations can be picked up by a smartphone resting on the same surface as the computer.

Since accelerometer sensors in smartphones are unsecured, they "can be accessed by any app without requiring user permissions, which make this attack highly evasive," he said.

Guri demonstrated the process, named AiR-ViBeR, with an air-gapped computer setup. Air-gapped computer systems are isolated from unsecured networks and the internet as a security measure.

The research team said three measures would help secure a computer system against such an assault. One would be to run the CPU continuously at maximum power consumption mode, which would keep it from adjusting consumption. Another would be to set fan speeds for both CPU and GPU at a single, fixed rate. The third solution would be to restrict CPUs to a single clock speed.

The Ben-Gurion University cybersecurity team specializes in what are termed side-channel attacks. Rather than exploiting software or coding vulnerabilities, side-channel attacks zero in on the manner in which a computer accesses hardware.

"This is the very essence of a side-channel attack," Guri said of AiR-ViBer. "The malware in question doesn't exfiltrate data by cracking encryption standards or breaking through a network firewall; instead, it encodes data in vibrations and transmits it to the accelerometer of a smartphone."

AiR-ViBer relied on vibration variances sensed by an accelerometer capable of detecting motion with a resolution of 0.0023956299 meters per square second. There are other means of capturing data through side channels. They include electromagnetic, magnetic, acoustic, optical and thermal.

In 2015, for instance, Guri's team introduced BitWhisper, a thermal covert channel that allowed a nearby computer to establish two-way communication with another computer by detecting and measuring changes in temperature.

A year earlier, his team demonstrated malware that extracts data from air-gapped computers to a nearby smartphone through FM signals emitted by the screen cable. He subsequently showed that he could exfiltrate data using cellular phone frequencies generated from buses connecting a computer's RAM and CPU.

Cameras can steal data from computer hard drive LED lights: study

More information: AiR-ViBeR: Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers via Covert Surface ViBrAtIoNs, arXiv:2004.06195 [cs.CR] https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.06195v1

Air-Gap Research Page: https://cyber.bgu.a

Court approves record $5 bn fine of Facebook over privacy

Facebook said it is already implementing provisions of a privacy settlement with US authorities, approved this week by a federal judge, which included a record $5 billion fine over data protection missteps

US regulators on Friday welcomed a "historic" $5 billion settlement with Facebook over data privacy as the social network said it was already implementing the provisions of the deal.

The deal between the leading social network and the US Federal Trade Commission became official with the approval Thursday of a federal judge.

Along with the fine, the settlement announced last July requires Facebook to ramp up privacy protections; provide detailed quarterly reports on compliance with the deal, and have an independent oversight board.

Some privacy activists had challenged the deal claiming it let off Facebook too easy after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that allowed the hijacking of personal data of millions of users ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

FTC chairman Joe Simons said in a statement he was "pleased" with the court approval, pointing out it was the largest monetary penalty ever obtained by consumer protection agency.

"At the same time, the court also highlights that the conduct relief included in this settlement will require Facebook 'to consider privacy at every stage of its operations and provide substantially more transparency and accountability for its executives' privacy-related decisions," Simons said.

The agreement goes beyond measures required by US law and should "serve as a roadmap for more comprehensive privacy regulation," Facebook chief privacy officer Michel Protti said in a blog post.

"We hope this leads to further progress on developing consistent legislation in the US and elsewhere," Protti said.

"Ultimately, our goal is to honor people's privacy and focus on doing what's right for people."

The FTC reopened its investigation of Facebook's data handling following revelations of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other missteps by the California giant.

Facebook has created dozens of team devoted to privacy and has thousands of people working on privacy-related projects, according to Protti.

"This agreement has been a catalyst for changing the culture of our company," Protti said.

Facebook, government urge court to approve $5-billion FTC settlement

Study traces spread of early dairy farming across Western Europe

by University of York

A study has tracked the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to early farming that occurred in prehistoric Europe over a period of around 1,500 years.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of York, analysed the molecular remains of food left in pottery used by the first farmers who settled along the Atlantic Coast of Europe from 7,000 to 6,000 years ago.

The researchers report evidence of dairy products in 80% of the pottery fragments from the Atlantic coast of what is now Britain and Ireland. In comparison, dairy farming on the Southern Atlantic coast of what is now Portugal and Spain seems to have been much less intensive, and with a greater use of sheep and goats rather than cows.

The study confirms that the earliest farmers to arrive on the Southern Atlantic coast exploited animals for their milk but suggests that dairying only really took off when it spread to northern latitudes, with progressively more dairy products processed in ceramic vessels.

Prehistoric farmers colonising Northern areas with harsher climates may have had a greater need for the nutritional benefits of milk, including vitamin D and fat, the authors of the study suggest.

Senior author of the paper, Professor Oliver Craig from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: "Latitudinal differences in the scale of dairy production might also be important for understanding the evolution of adult lactase persistence across Europe. Today, the genetic change that allows adults to digest the lactose in milk is at much higher frequency in Northwestern Europeans than their southern counterparts".

The research team examined organic residues preserved in Early Neolithic pottery from 24 archaeological sites situated between Portugal and Normandy as well as in the Western Baltic.

They found surprisingly little evidence for marine foods in pottery even from sites located close to the Atlantic shoreline, with plenty of opportunities for fishing and shellfish gathering. An exception was in the Western Baltic where dairy foods and marine foods were both prepared in pottery.

Lead author of the paper, Dr. Miriam Cubas, said: "This surprising discovery could mean that many prehistoric farmers shunned marine foods in favour of dairy, but perhaps fish and shellfish were simply processed in other ways.

"Our study is one of the largest regional comparisons of early pottery use. It has shed new light on the spread of early farming across Atlantic Europe and showed that there was huge variety in the way early farmers lived. These results help us to gain more of an insight into the lives of people living during this process of momentous change in culture and lifestyle—from hunter-gatherer to farming."

'Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe' is published in Nature Communications

Study sheds light on unique culinary traditions of prehistoric hunter-gatherers

More information: Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15907-4

Journal information: Nature Communications

Provided by University of York

Salmonid fishes use different mechanism to defend against parasite infections

by University of Jyväskylä

Research on salmonid fishes by the University of Jyväskylä and the Natural Resources Institute Finland sheds light on animal defence mechanisms and their interactions. The research demonstrates that populations with a strong physiological resistance show little behavioural avoidance and damage repair, and vice versa. The results can have important practical implications for stocking activities of endangered salmonids. The study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in April 2020.

Animals can use a set of different defence mechanisms to combat infections. There are three main routes of defence that can be jointly used: behaviours that reduce exposure (such as the currently practised social distancing in humans), physiological resistance (immune system) that attacks the pathogen, and mechanisms that repair tissue damages of infection (tolerance).

"We studied populations of Atlantic salmon and sea trout from different rivers in Finland and found that those with a strong physiological resistance against an eye parasite showed little behavioural avoidance and damage repair, and vice versa. This suggests that each defence type comes with costs for the host and that fish have to balance between these defence mechanisms," says researcher Ines Klemmefrom the University of Jyväskylä.

"It seems that different salmonid populations have evolved different optima of defence, likely matching the infection pressure in their own natural environment," says Klemme.

"It is important to release fish stocks to their original habitats"

The present investigation provides information of the overall level of defence and interactions between individual mechanisms. Previous studies have commonly focused on one mechanism at a time.

Repairing tissues, i.e., tolerance, does not harm the parasite itself, but avoidance and immune defense negatively affect parasite reproduction and induce counteractions that lead to the evolutionary arms races.

The results have important practical implications for artificial selection and stocking programmes.

"The results suggest that artificial selection, for example to increase immunological defences, can lead to reduction in other defence mechanisms. It is also important for aquaculture stocking programs, which are used to support threatened salmonid populations, to release fish stocks to their original populations and habitats to which they may be adapted to," says senior lecturerAnssi Karvonenfrom the University of Jyväskylä.

Enriched environment in aquaculture enhances the survival of fish from bacterial disease

More information: Ines Klemme et al. Negative associations between parasite avoidance, resistance and tolerance predict host health in salmonid fish populations, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0388

Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Provided by University of Jyväskylä

UK

Research revealing huge number of vulnerable children failing at school spurs call to action

by University of Bristol

One in seven of all children in England have a social worker at some stage during their schooling and are behind educationally by at least 30 percent by the age of 16 compared to their peers, according to new research published today.

The first-of-its-kind study, led by the University of Bristol, investigated the educational achievements and progress of children who need a social worker, comprising Children in Need and Children in Care, during their school years and its findings have prompted national calls for radical changes.

There are currently nearly 400,000 Children in Need in England, meaning they have a social worker but usually live with their parents or family. Children who have ever been "In Need' fell prey to an educational attainment gap, on average, of between 34-46 percent in their GCSEs. Children who have ever been in Care, who tend to live away from family with foster carers or at a residential home, number more than 78,000 and, overall, achieved 53 percent lower at 16.

The joint study with the University of Oxford's Rees Centre, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, showed both Children in Need and Children in Care had already fallen significantly behind other children at school by the age of seven, lagging by between 14-24 percent at Key Stage 1.

Professor David Berridge OBE, Emeritus Professor of Child and Family Welfare in the School for Policy Studies, said: "The sheer volume of children receiving social worker support was especially surprising. Their family problems clearly have a significant impact on their educational attainment.

"While there are many policies in place to support the education of Children in Care, this is not the case for Children in Need who account for three-quarters of all children needing a social worker and are receiving insufficient help.

"Given the huge numbers involved, this needs to be a high Government priority so these vulnerable children receive greater support and a better start in life."

The research analyzed anonymized data of all 471,000 children born in England between 2000 and 2001 and tracked their education through to 2017, when they took their GCSEs.

Young children, who needed a social worker before the age of seven, achieved better GCSEs if they had experienced a long-term stay in Care than those who had not.

The report also identified that Children in Need and Children in Care were more affected by other forms of disadvantage, such as poverty, socio-economic status, special educational needs, and disabilities, which led to lower educational attainment.

Absence, temporary or permanent exclusions, and changing schools at the age of 15 or 16 were other factors shown to worsen academic performance.

Many parents of Children in Need interviewed as part of the study said they were living in poverty and struggled to pay for their child's school needs, such as uniform, computers and internet access. Older children interviewed indicated they liked primary school but regarded secondary schools less favorably, due to their size, complexity, and difficulties with teachers.

A quarter of all children who had ever needed a social worker were still receiving a social work service in the final year of their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams.

"Our study highlights the importance of effective early intervention, the significance of stability and continuity in children's everyday care and education, and the need for an inclusive and consistently understanding approach to these children's difficulties from secondary schools in particular," added Professor Berridge.

Professor Berridge has undertaken extensive child welfare research and has acted as children's services adviser to the House of Commons Education Select Committee. In 2005 he was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for services to children.

Various improvements are proposed in the extensive report, including making support available for Children in Care applicable to Children in Need, such as Pupil Premium Plus payments provided to schools and Virtual Schools which oversee their education. Teacher training for pupils' well-being, procedures relating to social work case closure, and measures to address the affordability of schooling are cited as other necessary changes.

Ruth Maisey, Education Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation, said: "We welcome this research which suggests ways the education system might better support children who need a social worker during their school years, and help close the attainment gap. These findings are particularly pertinent given that childhood inequalities have come into sharp focus during the coronavirus pandemic."

The report has led to a national call to action, appealing for more comprehensive and coordinated support.

Anne Longfield OBE, Children's Commissioner for England, said: "Too many children in this country are growing up in disadvantage, struggling at home and at school. The educational prospects for many thousands of Children in Need are, frankly, terrible. Many leave the education system without even the basic qualifications.

"The Government has promised to 'level up' across the country, and this must include properly-resourced, cross-departmental strategies for tackling the issues that blight the life chances of the most vulnerable children.

"The response to the coronavirus shows that coordinated action and political will on funding can have a transformative impact. The 'new normal," post-coronavirus, is an opportunity for similar brave action which gives help and support to vulnerable children from their early years and throughout their childhood and tackles the generational problems that have held back so many."

Chatty kids do better at school

More information: Children in Need and Children in Care: Educational Attainment and Progress. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/polic … -education-progress/

Provided by University of Bristol

How to manage the COVID-19 pandemic without destroying the economy

by Tali Aronsky, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In a new study published online on ArXiv, Profs. David Gershon, Alexander Lipton and Hagai Levine show that based on real-life data, Israel and other countries could have controlled COVID-19 without lockdown.

In theory, authorities can stop an epidemic by using the medieval method of quarantining all the population for a prolonged enough period. However, the economic and social toll of a long lockdown these days is catastrophic in any dimension. Expected consequences include enormous unemployment and social aspects of quarantine, such as isolation and loneliness, low access to healthcare, drug abuse and domestic violence, hunger and social unrest, and on top of it, the destruction of the economy will cause an enormous deficit that will weigh down the economy for years. It raises the question of whether the lockdown is really necessary, or if governments triggered lockdown too late when the pandemic had already spread massively. Often, governments state that the purpose of the lockdown is to "flatten the curve" or in simple words to ensure that the health system does not exceed its full capacity. In the case of COVID-19, the likely measure is if the number of beds in the intensive care unit (ICU) is enough for all the patients that require ICU.

Prof. David Gershon and Prof. Alexander Lipton from the Jerusalem Business School at the Hebrew University, both well-known experts in finance and fintech and Prof. Hagai Levine from the School of Public Health of the Hebrew University, a leading infectious diseases epidemiologist and public health physician, developed a detailed and precise model to calculate the occupancy of ICU beds and hospital beds in general during the spread of the pandemic. The model considers each of the stages of the disease and separates between different population groups (for example, by their vulnerability to the disease, residential density, behavioral characteristics, etc) and calculates the rate of infection, hospitalization and ICU beds for the different populations.

The model was calibrated with real-time data from recent research articles about COVID-19 in different countries about infection rates, hospitalization and deaths as well as number of patients in ICU.

According to the model, if a country adopts a policy of social distancing as much as possible, including at work, 14 days self-quarantine of every person with symptoms such as fever or cough, testing all individuals with symptoms and hygiene measures including face masks in public places, then in most cases there is no need for lockdown. By now, all the high-risk population is aware of the danger and the need for caution more than the low-risk population. Naturally, frequent testing is an advantage that improves control of the infection, but the model assumes that there are limitations with the number of tests that can be provided.

One of the conclusions of the model is that in countries where the number of ICU beds for COVID-19 patients is above 60 ICU beds per million (depending on the ratio between the high- and low-risk populations and the level of compliance of the population to the hygiene measures) then no lockdown is necessary, and when the number of ICU beds for COVID-19 per million people is below 60, then a temporary partial quarantine of the high-risk population may be required, but in any case, the economy can continue to operate and society can function normally.

The model shows that in Israel, under the worst assumptions and without any lockdown, the number of ICU beds for COVID-19 patients will not exceed 600. It was reported that before the COVID-19 outbreak, there were 2000 beds in Israel and currently around 3000 beds. This means that the lockdown was unnecessary and could be ended and replaced with a responsible policy of hygienic behavior in public places.

The researchers applied the model to countries like Sweden, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. In all these countries, there was never a lockdown, and the health system never got close to full capacity even though the number of ICU beds per population is less than in Israel. More evidence is provided by the Gertner Institute of the Israeli Ministry of Health showing that on March 9, when the disease had just started in Israel, the infection rate was very high (the reproduction number was 3.0) and thanks to awareness of the population to the disease and the caution measures taken by the majority of the population, the infection rate decreased significantly (the reproduction number was 1.3 on March 22), before the start of the lockdown period. Since the beginning of the lockdown, the further reduction in the infection rate was minor, and most likely is a result of the behavior of the population and not the lockdown itself.

The researchers suggest two reasons that countries like Italy, Spain and the United States had thousands of deaths despite the lockdown. First, in these countries, the number of people that die every year from seasonal flu is extremely high. Among the reasons is the exceptionally large high-risk population due to aging, and second, when the lockdown was ordered, the number of infected people was likely already enormous in the absence of hygiene measures that could have reduced the infection rate significantly.

Gershon, Levine and Lipton call for a systematic investigation of the deaths caused by the lockdown itself in the short and long term. Such an investigation might show that the growth in the number of deaths related to lockdown is higher than the deaths related to COVID-19. It may have a similar effect to "Iatrogenesis" in medicine, a phenomenon in which the cure is worse than the disease. It is important that all decisions regarding public policies and restrictions be taken based on real-time data, and published to the public.

We can 'shrink' the COVID-19 curve, rather than just flatten it

More information: Managing COVID-19 Pandemic without Destructing the Economy, arXiv:2004.10324 [q-bio.PE] https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.10324

Journal information: arXiv

Provided by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

WHAT THE STUDY FAILED TO MENTION IS THAT THE USA UNLIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD HAS A COMPLETELY PRIVATIZED INSURANCE RUN MEDICAL SYSTEM, WHEREAS ITALY ALSO HAS A PARTIALLY PRIVATIZED HEALTHCARE SYSTEM VS. PUBLIC CARE RESULTING IN RAMPANT PANDEMIC HOSPITALIZATIONS AND DEATHS

Dramatic loss of food plants for insects

by University of Bonn

Just a few weeks ago, there were news headlines about plummeting insect numbers. Academic discourse focused on three main causes: the destruction of habitats, pesticides in agriculture and the decline of food plants for insects. A team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL have now demonstrated for the first time that the diversity of food plants for insects in the canton of Zurich has dramatically decreased over the past 100 years or so. This means that bees, flies and butterflies are increasingly deprived of their food base. The study, which is representative for all of Central Europe, has now been published in the journal Ecological Applications.

"Over the past 100 years, there has been a general decline in food plants for all kinds of insects in the canton of Zurich," says Dr. Stefan Abrahamczyk from the Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants at the University of Bonn. The homogenization of the originally diverse landscape has resulted in the disappearance of many habitats, especially the wetlands, which have shrunk by around 90 percent. Human settlements have spread more and more at the expense of cultivated land, and the general intensification of pasture and arable farming has led to a widespread depletion of meadows and arable habitats. The researchers compared the abundance of food plants of different insect groups, based on current mapping for the years 2012 to 2017, with data-based estimates from the years 1900 to 1930 in the canton of Zurich (Switzerland).

The food plants of specialized groups of flower visitors are particularly affected by the decline. For instance, the Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) is pollinated by bumblebees, bees and butterflies, as their tongues are long enough to reach the nectar. The decline is particularly dramatic for plant species that can only be pollinated by a single group of insects. In the case of Aconite (Aconitum napellus), for example, this can only be done by bumblebees because the plant's toxin evidently does not affect them.

Overall, all plant communities have become much more monotonous, with just a few dominant common species. "It's hard for us to imagine what vegetation looked like 100 years ago," says Dr. Michael Kessler from the Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany at the University of Zurich. "But our data show that about half of all species have experienced significant decline in their abundance, while only ten percent of the species have increased."

250 volunteers helped with mapping

Residents with appropriate botanical knowledge helped with the current survey. They mapped the entire canton of Zurich by plotting an area of one square kilometer each at intervals of three kilometers. The focus here was on the different types of vegetation and the abundance of different plants. "Without the assistance of more than 250 volunteers, who not only mapped the current flora but also processed the historical collections, a project of this scope would not have been feasible," says Dr. Thomas Wohlgemuth of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, who initiated the mapping project ten years ago with the Zurich Botanical Society.

The most important source on the earlier flora in the canton of Zurich was the unpublished manuscript of Eugen Baumann, a collection of about 1200 handwritten pages. It contains precise and detailed information on the abundance and distribution of plant species before 1930. Dr. Abrahamczyk researched which of the listed species belong to those flowering plants that are visited by insects in search of pollen and nectar. The "customers" include bees, bumblebees, wasps, butterflies, hoverflies, flies and beetles.

Results are largely transferable to Central Europe

Dr. Abrahamczyk has been working on pollination biology for about ten years. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich, then conducted research at the LMU Munich and joined the Nees Institute of the University of Bonn in 2014. When, in late 2018, his former doctoral supervisor, Dr. Michael Kessler, suggested that the recently completed mapping of the canton's flora be combined with pollinator data, Dr. Abrahamczyk was immediately enthusiastic—also because this subject is highly topical. "The laborious literature search and analysis then took some time, and now the study could finally be published," says the scientist from the University of Bonn. "The results are transferable to the whole of Central Europe with minor regional restrictions."

Flies and bees act like plant cultivators

More information: Stefan Abrahamczyk et al, Shifts in food plant abundance for flower‐visiting insects between 1900 and 2017 in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, Ecological Applications (2020). DOI: 10.1002/EAP.2138

Journal information: Ecological Applications

INDOOR AIR/ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

A five-layered approach to safely reopening workplaces

by Alvin Powell, Harvard University

A five-layered defense for workplace reopening — Credit: Kate Sade/Unsplash

A Harvard healthy-buildings expert has laid out a lower-cost, five-layered approach for employers and building managers as they consider how to safely reopen their establishments and get America back to work.

Joseph Allen, assistant professor of exposure, assessment science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the School's Healthy Buildings Program, said existing safety guidelines called the "hierarchy of controls," normally used to reduce risk in situations such as hazardous chemicals in the workplace, would be suitable for blocking exposure to COVID-19.

The system used by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) consists of five steps, with the use of personal protective equipment being the last, Allen said. They include:

Hazard elimination, which means keeping employees home, a tactic that works for some, but not others, and won't lead to full economic recovery.
Personnel substitution, in this case initially bringing back just those key employees who need to be physically present to get and keep the business running.
Engineering controls, including healthy-building strategies such as increasing the flow of outside air, using portable air purifiers, and swapping existing filters in air circulating systems for ones that can capture smaller particles.
Administrative controls, such as de-densify buildings by having portions of the workforce come in on alternate days or staggering shifts within a day. This might also include spreading workers out in space and limiting the use of conference rooms for large gatherings.
Use of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as the now-familiar cloth face coverings, respirators, and other gear in common areas and situations where other controls don't achieve the required level of safety.

"I haven't yet come across an environment where putting in sensible controls isn't able to significantly reduce the risk," said Allen, who is deputy director of the NIOSH Education and Research Center on Worker Health and Safety.

There are additional actions that could be tailored to each workplace, Allen said. Employers could rearrange desks so workers would be offset instead of sitting directly across from each other; ensure hard surfaces are regularly disinfected; or position portable air purifiers near employees. Things like managing lines near elevators and ensuring PPE is used inside them would also be important.

Allen, who spoke to the media on a conference call Thursday, said the guidelines constitute a relatively low-cost roadmap for employers thinking about bringing people back to work. He cautioned against assuming any one action will provide complete protection, but said it's rather a matter of understanding and managing risks, not just putting a mask on everyone who walks through the door.

"There is no silver bullet here," Allen said. "You don't give someone a mask and say, "Our responsibilities are done.'"

Allen also cautioned that managing risks doesn't mean there will be no transmission.

"Everyone has to be really clear. There's no such thing as zero risk," Allen said.

And these guidelines don't mean businesses should reopen before it's safe to do so. Several Chan School epidemiologists and infectious disease experts have urged current social-distancing restrictions remain in place until case numbers have declined, health care system capacity is sufficient to handle a new increase in cases, and adequate testing is in place to detect any new surge in cases.

"I'm not talking about 'when,'" Allen said. "I'm talking about when they say it's clear, how you go about this safely."

There's a common misperception that strategies will necessarily be expensive, he said, but simple things like installing more efficient filters, increasing the supply of fresh air, and enhancing disinfection are well within the reach of most business owners.

"There are technology solutions that are being considered that are more expensive, require a big capital outlay, might take a couple of months to implement. But … I'm being cognizant we have to put in right now strategies that people can take and deploy in almost any situation," Allen said. "Broadly, these are strategies that people can put in and the costs are low or manageable."

Steps taken in the workplace, however, don't get everyone safely through their commutes. Those who drive or walk may have fewer concerns, but those who take public transportation face a tougher challenge, Allen said. For those taking car transport—taxis, Ubers, Lyfts—models have shown that simply opening a window three inches significantly decreases concentrations of airborne contaminants inside. For those whose commutes include time on subway trains and buses, however, he said more work still needs to be done.

"It's a vexing problem, everything about this pandemic is," Allen said. "I'm confident that we'll get there."

How buildings, masks can be barriers to coronavirus

Provided by Harvard University

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