Social media can accurately forecast economic impact of natural disasters—including COVID-19 pandemic

by University of Bristol
 

Time series for the total number of Facebook posts made by all businesses in Kathmandu, Nepal showing transformed posting activity data resulting from the proposed methodology. Credit: University of Bristol

Social media should be used to chart the economic impact and recovery of businesses in countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in Nature Communications. University of Bristol scientists describe a 'real time' method accurately trialled across three global natural disasters which could be used to reliably forecast the financial impact of the current global health crisis.

Traditional economic recovery estimates, such as surveys and interviews, are usually costly, time-consuming and do not scale-up well. However, researchers from Bristol's Departments of Engineering Maths and Civil Engineering show they were able to accurately estimate the downtime and recovery of small businesses in countries affected by three different natural hazards using aggregated social media data.

The method relies on the assumption that businesses tend to publish more social media posts when they are open and fewer when they are closed, hence analysing the aggregated posting activity of a group of businesses over time it is possible to infer when they are open or closed.

Using data from the public Facebook posts of local businesses collected before, during and after three natural disasters comprising the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, the 2017 Chiapas earthquake in Mexico, and the 2017 hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the team charted the number of smaller urban businesses who were closed and then were able to measure their recovery post-event. The team validated their analysis using field surveys, official reports, Facebook surveys, Facebook posts text analysis and other studies available in literature.

Importantly, the framework works in 'real time' without the need for text analysis which can be largely dependent on language, culture or semantic analysis and can be applied to any size area or type of natural disaster, in developed and developing countries, allowing local governments to better target the distribution of resources.

Dr. Filippo Simini, Senior Lecturer and lead author explains: "The challenge of nowcasting the effect of natural hazards such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and pandemics on assets, people and society has never been more timely than ever for assessing the ability of countries to recover from extreme events.

"Often, small to medium-sized businesses slip through the net of traditional monitoring process of recovery. We noticed in areas struck by natural hazard events that not all areas and populations react in the same way."

Dr. Flavia De Luca, Senior Lecturer in Bristol's Department of Civil Engineering and lead author, added: "We had the idea of supporting post-emergency deployment of resources after a natural hazard event using public Facebook posts of businesses to measure how a specific region is recovering after the event. It was amazing to find out that the approach was providing information on the recovery in 'real time."

"We would like to test the method to measure the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Organizations with broad social ties help recovering from natural disasters

More information: Robert Eyre et al. Social media usage reveals recovery of small businesses after natural hazard events, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15405-7

Fearful of COVID-19, Amazon workers ask California to probe working conditions

by Sam&Dean

Workers at Amazon's Eastvale, Calif., fulfillment center filed complaints with California and Riverside County regulators Wednesday, asking for investigations into what they say are dangerous working conditions that pose a threat to public health during the coronavirus pandemic.

The fulfillment center was the first in Southern California to report an employee testing positive for COVID-19 in late March, with a second case confirmed shortly after. On April 2, The Times confirmed that a third worker at the same facility, which Amazon refers to as LGB3 for short, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and that cases had also occurred at five other Amazon facilities in the region.

But it wasn't until Tuesday night that Amazon sent a mass text to all workers at the facility informing them of the third case—five days after it was reported in The Times. According to screenshots of the text obtained by The Times, the third worker last reported for a shift March 31.

That delay put workers at risk, the complaints argue, and is representative of what they characterize as Amazon's slipshod response to the COVID-19 pandemic within its operations.

The filings, compiled by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center on behalf of LGB3 employees, allege that Amazon never stopped operations to clean and disinfect the parts of the facility where the infected workers had spent their shifts and that the company has failed to adapt its operations to promote social distancing. The CDC recommends that employers close off areas that people with COVID-19 have visited and "wait 24 hours or as long as practical before beginning cleaning and disinfection," as a precaution to ensure that cleaning crews encounter minimal levels of active virus.

Despite Amazon's official recommendation that employees wash their hands often, the complaints allege workers are forced to walk several minutes each way to the restroom to access hand sanitizer or soap and water, and that hand sanitizer dispensers are often empty. A typical employee is allowed only 30 minutes total for bathroom breaks during a 10-hour shift, in addition to a 30-minute lunch break and two 15-minute breaks.

In a statement, Amazon spokesman Timothy Carter said accusations of workers being put at risk are "simply not true. We are supporting the individuals who are recovering. We are following guidelines from health officials and medical experts, and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site."

"Like all businesses grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we are evaluating and making changes in real time, and encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits and speed in which we're managing this crisis to other retailers and major employers across the country."

According to interviews with workers at the facility, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, only some employees and managers are wearing masks, even after Amazon pledged to provide masks to all workers by this week in response to worker activism at Amazon warehouses in New York City and Riverside County officials ordered all residents to cover their faces when leaving home.

"Every time I come into work ever since the pandemic started, I'm coming into work with anxiety. I'm on edge all the time," one worker said. "There's a big question mark: Who has it? Why isn't everybody wearing a mask?"

Hundreds of workers at LGB3 signed and submitted a petition to managers after the first two reported cases in late March, asking Amazon to close the warehouse for two weeks, give all workers full pay during the closure, provide free testing for COVID-19, and offer time-and-a-half hazard pay, child-care subsidies, permanent paid sick leave, and an end to write-ups based on productivity rates.

Amazon has not responded directly to the petition but has implemented a number of new procedures in the last few weeks in response to the pandemic.

On March 30, Amazon warehouse workers in New York staged a walkout over the lack of protective gear and other safeguards. After the walkout, Amazon said it would provide masks to all warehouse workers and perform daily temperature checks on all arriving employees. (It also fired an employee who helped organize the walkout, saying he disregarded an instruction to self-quarantine in attending.)

The company is testing the temperature of employees at the beginning of their shifts, turning away anyone who has a fever over 100.4 degrees and requiring them to stay home for at least three days. After pushback from employees, the company said that workers who are turned away will be paid for up to five hours of their shift that day.

The company is also offering unpaid sick leave to all employees who wish to stay home and two weeks paid leave to any who test positive for COVID-19.

To increase social distancing at its logistics facilities, the company has also canceled the stand-up meetings that typically begin each shift, staggered shift times, spread out tables and chairs in break rooms, asked employees to remain six feet apart, and suspended exit screenings, which the company performs to check if employees are stealing merchandise, to reduce crowding at exits and entrances.


Amazon also says that it has increased the frequency and intensity of cleaning and sanitizing of surfaces, such as door handles and screens, that employees touch during a workday, and that workers are being asked to clean their workstations with sanitizing wipes at the beginning of their shifts. The company also announced Wednesday that it was testing the use disinfectant fog, a cleaning method often used on hospitals and airplanes, at the Staten Island warehouse where workers staged a walkout.

But workers say these measures are failing in practice. The LGB3 facility has only three break rooms, and even with staggered break schedules, people inevitably crowd around sinks, refrigerators and microwaves, with pressure to get back to their workstations on time making it difficult to wait for traffic to clear.

The complaints ask Cal/OSHA to conduct an immediate on-site inspection of the facility and request that the Riverside County Department of Public Health "use the full extent of (its) unique emergency authority" to address the issues raised by workers.

Neither department could be reached for comment by the time of publication.

Riverside has become one of the counties in the state that are most heavily affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, with 1,179 confirmed cases and 32 deaths as of Wednesday evening.


Explore further

Temperature checks, masks new norm for Amazon employees

©2020 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Japan auto industry vows to protect jobs amid virus crisis

by Yuri Kageyama

In this photo provided by Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda speaks during a video meeting at his office in Nagoya, central Japan, Friday, April 10, 2020. Toyoda promised Friday the Japanese auto industry would protect jobs, as it braces to overcome the unfolding crisis set off by the coronavirus pandemic. Toyoda, speaking as head of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said he was worried the Japanese economy might be destroyed before the world can win the fight against the sickness caused by COVID-19. (Toyota Motor Corp. via AP)

Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda promised Friday that the Japanese auto industry would seek to protect jobs worldwide as it endures the coronavirus pandemic.

Toyoda, speaking as head of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said he was worried the Japanese economy might be destroyed before the world can win the fight against the sickness caused by COVID-19.

"If our hospitals get overloaded to the point of devastation, then Japan may never be able to recover," Toyoda said on an online news conference.

The group that brings together Japanese automakers, including Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., and also parts makers, will set up a special fund to help those laid off find jobs, Toyoda said.

Toyoda said the biggest threat to the industry is the potential loss of skilled workers with their manufacturing and engineering finesse.

After World War II, Toyota made pots and pans and grew potatoes on farms, Toyoda said, emphasizing automakers' determination to make practically anything to protect jobs and survive.

Like its counterparts in the U.S., Toyota has begun making face masks, although they were too wrinkly to be sold and will instead be used at Toyota facilities to reduce demand elsewhere, Toyoda said.

Japan declared a state of emergency this week as cases have continued to surge, especially in Tokyo and other urban areas. Japan has about 5,500 coronavirus cases, but the fear is that there may be an exponential jump. The world has 1.6 million confirmed cases, with more than 466,000 in the U.S.

Toyoda said 3,000 rooms now being used to quarantine auto workers returning from abroad, could, if needed, be used for other people.

He compared the current uncertainty and the need to stay home to enduring a long winter. Some assembly plants have halted production because cars aren't selling.

"We are now feeling more than ever that being able to go wherever you want is a truly moving experience," Toyoda said.

"We must survive. Or else there can be no spring."

Toyota chief hopes to help Japan automakers keep tech edge

---

© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

THIRD WORLD USA 
Crowdfunding fills gaps for virus-displaced workers

CROWD FUNDING; POST MODERN BEGGING BOWL

by Glenn Chapman

As unemployment rises due to virus-related closings, more people are turning to crowdfunding efforts to make ends meet

The coronavirus pandemic threatened game over for Endgame restaurant near Seattle.

It shared its plight online at crowd support platform GoFundMe, where donations eclipsed the restaurant's $5,500 goal to stay in business.

"All donations will go to expenses until we are able to resume normal operations," Michael Lamere and Austin Sines said in an online plea for help.

Musicians, podcasters, writers, strippers and others denied income by the coronavirus pandemic are turning to the power of online community spirit to make ends meet.

The health crisis and its massive economic impact have stirred increased interest in crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and membership platforms such as Patreon.

"The generosity we are seeing is rather incredible and unprecedented," said GoFundMe chief executive Tim Cadogan.

The crowdfunding platform, which allows anyone to launch a campaign, has seen more than two million individual donations to coronavirus-related efforts, amounting to about $120 million, according to Cadogan.

COVID-19 related GoFundMe campaigns reflect evolving needs, from raising money to get supplies for health care professionals to supporting local restaurants barred from seating diners to helping the jobless pay rent.

A Coronavirus Rent Relief Fund launched about two weeks ago is raising money to help those left jobless avoid eviction.

"Coronavirus (COVID19) has created one of the most difficult moments in world history, a moment we will surely look back on," wrote the New York fund organizer, who raised some $220,000.

A journalists' furlough fund raised some $46,000 and a Miami campaign has collected $11,000 for struggling restaurant workers.

The platform has some more modest campaigns including a $1,000 effort for dancers—the Burlesque Community COVID-19 Response Fund in Los Angeles.

"I felt it imperative to help my community of dancers who are already underpaid and have effectively lost any way to make income," said organizer Veronica Voss, who boasts being Miss Hollywood Burlesque 2019.

Many campaigns however fall short, with demands rising and an estimated 17 million newly unemployed in the United States.


In one example, a campaign for the Just Oxtails Soul Food Restaurant in Texas raised just $1,700 toward a goal of $150,000.

The pandemic has forced the closing of thousands of businesses including Universal Studios Hollywood, adding to the jobless rolls

Desire to act

Large operations are also turning to GoFundMe, which makes a profit through processing fees from donations.

Frontline Responders Fund started by logistics giant Flexport and other companies is among top fundraisers at GoFundMe, having collected more than $6 million to get masks, gowns, gloves and other critical supplies to health care workers fighting the pandemic.

An Americas Food Fund at GoFundMe launched by Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurene Powell Jobs and Apple, along with the Ford Foundation, has raised more than $13 million.

Going behind the scenes

Meanwhile, some 50,000 new artists launched on Patreon last month.

The appeal to patrons goes beyond performers showing off their crafts to paying for inside glimpses their lives, particularly at this stressful time, said Patreon chief financial officer Carlos Cabrera, himself a musician.

"Orchestras are getting hit so hard; for them it is a double-whammy," he said.

Musicians unable to perform during the pandemic have been hit hard, and many have turned to online platforms for support

"They depend on in-person events, and the majority of their demographic are older folks who are at high risk."

Cabrera said that he feared financial hardships caused by the pandemic would cause Patreon pledges to plummet but the opposite has happened.

"Way more patrons are creating pledges and raising pledges," Cabrera told AFP.

More than 150,000 artists use Patreon to generate income by offering exclusive content to four million patrons in over 180 countries, according to the San Francisco-based platform established seven years ago.

The biggest category at Patreon is YouTube video creators, with podcasts in fast-growing second place ahead of illustrators such as artists who draw web comics and authors who release novels by the chapter.

Cabrera is seeing top music talent from around the world who, unable to tour, are recording at home and building Patreon pages to make money.

"I've seen artists go out for a walk in nature and hang out virtually with their fans," Cabrera said.

Half a million stolen passwords, 

emails for sale on dark web

by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Hackers stole personal data from more than a half million users of an Italy-based email service and posted the purloined information for sale online.


The servers at email.it were hacked two years ago. They contained passwords, security questions and email contents.

"Unfortunately, we must confirm that we have suffered a hacker attack," Email.It said in a statement to ZDNet, which broke the story Sunday.

The hackers, who obtained data from servers dating to 2007, put the information up for sale on the dark web this year, on Feb. 1.

In a statement the hackers posted on their site, they appear to view the act as part of just another business transaction.

"We breached Email.it Datacenter more than 2 years ago and we plant ourself like an APT [Advanced Persistent Threat]," the hackers, who call themselves NN (No Name) Hacking Group, said. "We took any possible sensitive data from their server and after we choosen [sic] to give them a chance to patch their holes asking for a little bounty."

The email.it company refused to pay the "little bounty" and instead notified Italian postal police authorities. The exact extortion amount was not revealed.

Following their failure to blackmail the company, NN listed their stolen data. They say it includes 46 databases filled with sensitive information about 600,000 users of the free email service. The hackers are listing the databases at prices ranging from 0.5 to 3 bitcoins per file. That translates to between $3,500 and $22,000.

Officials at email.it said no financial information from users was stored on any of their servers.
"The attack only concerned a server with administrative data" such as billing addresses, officials said. They also said paid subscribers of their business service were not affected.

The company has patched its servers.

This latest intrusion is reminiscent of a massive email server assault just over a year ago at VFEmail. In that instance, hackers erased data on all U.S. servers containing primary and backup information, leading the company to announce: "We have suffered catastrophic destruction at the hands of a hacker."

Kaspersky Lab, a multinational cybersecurity firm, advises consumer victims of major email hacks to take the following actions:

Run a deep scan on your hard drive and delete any tagged malware.

Change passwords on sensitive accounts.

Contact online services such as banks, credit card companies, entertainment accounts, etc.

Notify friends and other personal contacts whose information may have been lifted from address books in the assault.

Change security questions and answers

AOL probes breach allowing hackers to spoof email

© 2020 Science X Network

Amazon moves to create own lab for employee COVID-19 tests

Angela, a delivery worker for Amazon Prime, wears a mask and gloves on her route in Los Angeles on April 8

Amazon is moving to create it own lab to test employees for coronavirus as the e-commerce giant struggles with safety issues amid the pandemic.

The online retail leader, which began the year with some 750,000 employees and is growing, said it had begun "building incremental testing capacity" for the virus.

"A team of Amazonians with a variety of skills—from research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers—have moved from their normal day jobs onto a dedicated team to work on this initiative," the company said in a blog post late Thursday.

"We have begun assembling the equipment we need to build our first lab and hope to start testing small numbers of our front line employees soon."

Amazon said it was making the move because of a shortage of tests that can confirm infections and concerns that even people without symptoms may be spreading the disease.

"We are not sure how far we will get in the relevant timeframe, but we think it's worth trying, and we stand ready to share anything we learn with others," the company said.

"If every person, including people with no symptoms, could be tested regularly, it would make a huge difference in how we are all fighting this virus. Those who test positive could be quarantined and cared for, and everyone who tests negative could re-enter the economy with confidence."

Amazon is believed to have had COVID-19 cases in a number of its warehouses, and has seen employee protests and walkouts in several of them to press for safety improvements.

Last week, Amazon began temperature checks and distribution of masks for employees, part of a ramped up safety effort.

Temperature checks were to be rolled out across Amazon's operations networks in the US and Europe, including Whole Foods Market grocery operations.

Last month, the Seattle-based internet giant set a goal of hiring 100,000 people and investing $350 million to support employees and partners during the pandemic, which has thrust the company into the spotlight due to its extensive infrastructure and logistics.

Temperature checks, masks new norm for Amazon employees

---

© 2020 AFP

The shift to a more sustainable food system is inevitable: Here's how to make it happen

by Thomas Deane, Trinity College Dublin

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Europe's top scientists agree that a radical change is coming in how we produce and distribute food, to ensure food security and deliver healthy diets for all.

Now a new report from SAPEA, co-authored by Professor Anna Davies from Trinity's School of Natural Sciences, lays out the social science evidence on how that transition can happen in an inclusive, just and timely way.

Professor Davies said:

"The current crisis has revealed many fragilities in the way we live today and not least with respect to our food system. Food insecurity and sustainability are among the most significant global challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It was an honour to be part of the SAPEA Review process, where we used social science insights to map and analyse food system dynamics in relation to sustainability objectives; to consider how a socially just and sustainable food system for the EU is best defined and described."

The Evidence Review Report 'A sustainable food system for the European Union' a base for the scientific opinion of the European Commission's Chief Scientific Advisors. It was requested by the College of Commissioners and written by a multidisciplinary group of leading scientists, nominated by academies across Europe.

Based on the best available evidence, the report concludes that the key steps towards the new model are not only to reduce food waste and to change our consumption patterns—but also to recontextualise how we think about food in the first place.

Professor Peter Jackson, the chair of the working group that wrote the report, said:

"Food is an incredibly complex system, with social, economic and ecological components. Yet, it contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and plays a key role in driving climate change. The food system is responsible for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the annual financial cost of wasted food to be €900 billion in economic costs and an additional €800 billion in social costs. That's why 'business as usual' is no longer an option."

"Our report doesn't stop at highlighting the problems, which are now widely recognised. It also provides a range of evidence-based examples about how the transition to a sustainable food system can happen."

Among the report's other main conclusions are:

The transition to a more just and sustainable food system needs to be coordinated at multiple levels of governance and involve a range of actors in both land-based and marine environments

To change how our society consumes food, we must first change people's routines, habits and norms. Behaviour change is best effected with joined-up actions, addressing groups rather than individuals

Taxation and legislation are key ways to drive change, while European policies in agriculture and fisheries offer great opportunities for developing robustness and sustainability in food production

The report informs the Scientific Opinion from the European Commission's Group of Advisors, also published today and which in turn informs the Commission's new 'Farm to Fork strategy for a sustainable food system'.


Explore further

Unsustainable food systems: Can we reverse current trends?
More information: A sustainable food system for the European Union: www.sapea.info/topics/sustainable-food/

Provided by Trinity College Dublin 

Piercing the dark birthplaces of massive stars with Webb

by Ann Jenkins, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The Snake is a serpentine-shaped, extremely filamentary cloud. In this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope, the blue dots are stars relatively undimmed by dust, while the red dots are embedded, forming stars. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech/S. Carey (SSC/Caltech)

High-mass stars, which are eight or more times the mass of our Sun, live hard and die young. They often end their short lives in violent explosions called supernovas, but their births are much more of a mystery. They form in very dense, cold clouds of gas and dust, but little is known about these regions. In 2021, shortly after the launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scientists plan to study three of these clouds to understand their structure.


"What we're trying to do is look at the birthplaces of massive stars," explained Erick Young, principal investigator of a program that will use Webb to study this phenomenon. He is an astronomer with the Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland. "Determining the actual structure of the clouds is very important in trying to understand the star formation process," he said.

These cold clouds—which can have up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun—are so dense that they appear as big, dark blobs on the sky. While they seem devoid of stars, the clouds are actually just obscuring the light from background stars. These dark patches are so thick with dust that they even block out some wavelengths of infrared light, a type of light that is invisible to human eyes and can usually can penetrate through dusty clouds. That's why they are called "infrared-dark clouds." However, the unprecedented sensitivity of Webb enables observations of background stars even through these very dense regions.

Birth Environments and Cookie Dough

To understand how massive stars form, you have to understand the environment in which they form. But one of the things that makes studying massive star formation so difficult is that as soon as a star turns on, it radiates intense ultraviolet light and strong and powerful winds.

"These forces destroy the birth environment that the star was created in," explained infrared-dark-cloud expert Cara Battersby, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. "The environment you're looking at after it formed is totally different from the environment that was conducive to its forming in the first place. And since we know that infrared-dark clouds are places where massive stars can form, if we look at their structure before stars have formed or have just started to form, we can study what environment is needed to form those massive stars."

Battersby likens the process to baking cookies: As soon as you bake them, they're totally different than the dough itself. If you've never seen dough before, you may not have a good idea of what that baking process would look like. The infrared-dark clouds are like the raw dough before you bake it. Studying these clouds is akin to getting a chance to look at the cookie dough, seeing what goes into it, and learning what its consistency is.


The Importance of Massive Stars

Understanding massive stars and their environments is important for a variety of reasons. First, in their explosive deaths, they release many elements that are essential for life. Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium—including the building blocks of life on Earth—come from inside massive stars. Massive stars have transformed a universe that was almost completely composed of hydrogen to the rich, complex environment that is able to produce planets and people.

Massive stars also produce enormous amounts of energy. As soon as they are born, they give off light, radiation and winds that can create bubbles in the interstellar medium, possibly sparking star formation in different locations. These expanding bubbles could also break up a region where new stars are forming. Finally, when a massive star dies in a spectacular explosion, it forever changes its surroundings.

The Targets

The study will focus Webb on the following three areas.

More than 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, the Brick doesn't seem to be forming any massive stars--yet. But based on its immense mass in such a small area, if it does form stars--as scientists think it should--it would be one of the most massive star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, and S.V Ramirez (NExSCI/Caltech)

The Brick: One of the darkest infrared-dark clouds in our galaxy, this roughly brick-shaped cloud resides near the galaxy's center, about 26,000 light-years from Earth. More than 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, the Brick doesn't seem to be forming any massive stars—yet. But it has so much mass in such a small area that if it does form stars, as scientists think that it should, it would be one of the most massive star clusters in our galaxy, much like the Arches and Quintuplet clusters, also in the neighborhood of the galaxy's center.

The Snake: With a name inspired by its serpentine shape, this extremely filamentary cloud is about 12,000 light-years away with a total mass of 100,000 Suns. Scattered along the Snake are warm, dense dust clouds, each containing about 1,000 times the mass of the Sun in gas and dust. These clouds are being heated by young, massive stars forming inside of them. The Snake may be a section of a much longer filament that is a "Bone of the Milky Way," tracing out the galaxy's spiral structure.

IRDC 18223: Located about 11,000 light-years away, this cloud is also part of a "Bone of the Milky Way." It shows active, massive star formation happening in one side of it, while the other side seems completely quiet and unperturbed. A bubble on the active side is already starting to destroy the initial filament that was there before. While the quiescent side has not started forming stars yet, it probably will soon.

The Technique
To study these clouds, Young and his team will use background stars as probes. "The more stars that you have, the more different lines of sight," said Young. "Each one is like a little pencil beam, and by measuring the color of the star, you can assess how much dust is in that particular line of sight."

The scientists will make maps—basically, very deep images—in four different infrared wavelengths. Each wavelength has a different ability to penetrate the cloud. "If you look at a given star and see that it's actually a lot redder than you expect, then you can surmise that its light has actually gone through some dust, and the dust has made the color redder than the typical, unobscured star," said Young.

By observing the difference in color based on these four different measurements in the near-infrared, and comparing that with a model of dust dimming and reddening, Young and his team can measure the dust in that particular line of sight. Webb will allow them to do that for thousands and thousands of stars that penetrate each cloud, giving them a wealth of data points. Since most stars of a given type are similar to each other in brightness and color, any marked differences that Webb can observe are mostly due to the effects of material between us and the stars.

Only with Webb

This work can only be done because of Webb's exquisite sensitivity and excellent angular resolution. Webb's sensitivity enables scientists to see fainter stars and a higher density of background stars. Its angular resolution, the ability to distinguish tiny details of an object, allows astronomers to discriminate between individual stars.

This science is being conducted as part of a Webb Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) program. This program is designed to reward scientists who helped develop the key hardware and software components or technical and interdisciplinary knowledge for the observatory. Young was part of the original instrument team that built Webb's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.


Explore furtherOn the origin of massive stars
More information: For more information about Webb, visit http://www.nasa.gov/webb.

WIND TURBINES

Monitoring, deterrence and curtailment make skies safer for bats

by National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Through research collaborations, NREL is working to minimize wind energy impacts on wildlife like the hoary bat, pictured above. Credit: Kathleen Smith, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

The German word for bat is Fledermaus, which translates literally to "flutter mouse." But while some bats do look like mice fluttering on leathery wings, bats are more closely related to humans than rodents. And, as NREL reported last year, bats are amazing. Whether they are providing pest control by hunting mosquitoes, pollinating flowers by drinking nectar, or dispersing seeds by eating fruit, bats are vital to the health of our planet.

Yet these beneficial mammals face many threats, including the wind turbines that occupy their airspace. Tree-roosting species like the hoary bat, eastern red bat, and silver-haired bat account for the most activity around wind turbines, and endangered species like the Hawaiian hoary bat and Indiana myotis are at risk as well. Complicating matters, bats seem to be attracted to wind turbines.

Bats are notoriously difficult to study, and there is still much we do not know about them. To help improve understanding of bats and their behavior around wind turbines, NREL is collaborating on several research and development projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office. These efforts are helping minimize wind turbine-bat encounters through monitoring, deterrence, and curtailment.

Deterring Bats with Ultrasound Devices

Ultrasound has proven an effective deterrent for some species at wind sites, but additional research is needed to improve ultrasound's success in discouraging more bats from approaching the turbines.

NREL is involved with two projects focused on ultrasound bat deterrents. The laboratory is leading a project that uses thermal video and acoustic detectors to record the behavior of bats inside an "open-air" flight cage with acoustic deterrent devices mounted on either end. With the data gained from observing bats' behavior around these devices, the team hopes to better understand the frequency range needed to effectively deter bats from approaching turbines.

NREL is also collaborating with Midé Technology to develop a self-powered, blade-mounted ultrasound deterrent.

"The device operates according to the same basic fluid dynamic principle as a hydroelectric generator," said NREL researcher Jason Roadman. "Air moves through the device as it rotates on the turbine blade, which generates the power the device needs to generate the acoustic deterrent."

This design puts the deterrent device directly on the turbine blade, repelling bats from the point they need to avoid most and minimizing the effect of the ultrasonic noise dissipating with distance.

Monitoring Bat Behavior with Thermal Imaging

Thermal imaging is a useful tool for monitoring bats and other airborne wildlife at wind sites, as it can help researchers develop deterrent and curtailment systems and determine how well existing systems are working.

NREL is supporting two projects focused on thermal monitoring technology. In collaboration with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Bat Conservation International, NREL is supporting the advancement of 3-D video analysis to capture tracks of flying targets and developing an accompanying software package. The software is currently in a beta testing phase and will be published, along with the underlying code, later this year.

In addition, NREL is working with the United States Geological Survey to improve thermal imaging target detection and classification with the development of binary and multi-class machine learning algorithms in an open-source language, which will be published in the coming months.

"Thermal video shows the most promise in helping us understand how bats interact with turbines," said NREL researcher Bethany Straw. "Then we can focus research and development on using what we know about bat behavior to inform more effective solutions."

Curtailing Turbines with Real-Time Data

Curtailed turbine blades move slowly when wildlife is likely to be present, allowing species to more easily navigate around the blades. However, this strategy has a few drawbacks.

"Curtailment may not be effective for all species, results in a loss of power generation, and can be cost-prohibitive, particularly in relatively low wind regions," said NREL Researcher Cris Hein. "This means we need smart curtailment methods, which use additional variables to limit curtailment to the highest periods of risk."

NREL is working with the Electric Power Research Institute and Natural Power, an independent renewable energy consulting company, to develop the Turbine-Integrated Mortality Reduction (TIMR) system and the Bat Smart Curtailment (BSC) system, respectively. These technologies use real-time data on bat presence and wind speed to determine whether a turbine should be curtailed. Once completed, these systems will reduce both impacts on bats and unnecessary curtailment while reducing loss in annual energy production.

Right now, it is more important than ever that we learn about and protect these often misunderstood creatures. Through these efforts, NREL researchers are finding innovative solutions for making the skies safer so bats can do what they do best: eat bugs, pollinate flowers, scatter seeds, and keep our planet healthy.

Scientists use night vision to save bats

Bailout or subsidy: Oil in the age of pandemic

by University of Pennsylvania

Oilprice.com: WTI Crude, one year. Downloaded on 03/27/2020. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

COVID-19 is disrupting all sectors of the global economy, and the energy sector is far from immune. As economic activity slows precipitously on its way to catastrophically, the fossil energy sector that drives part of that activity is responding. With crashing demand due to the pandemic, the first response is seen in prices. A barrel of oil now sells for $25 or less, down from over $60 at the beginning of 2020. The second response is seen in production. So far production has remained stable in the last two months, but companies have announced massive spending cuts that will soon constrain production.


But production hasn't stopped completely. Extraction and refining companies are likely selling for reduced profits or perhaps even at a loss. But there is something else going on that has big implications for both the government stimulus efforts and the shape of future economic recovery.

That something else is storage. Energy companies employ a variety of ways to store crude and refined products. There are vast storage tank facilities or underground caverns at points along the oil supply chain. There are also large capacities for storage in facilities normally devoted to transporting oil and its derivatives: tanker ships, tanker rail cars, tanker trucks, as well as long distance pipelines.

Fossil energy companies have strong incentives to continue extracting and refining as long as there is a place to store products until demand and price recover. The estimated gap between world oil supply and demand will be 7.4million barrels/d for the first quarter of 2020. Storage facilities are filling fast around the globe and soon will be full. According to commodity data, there are currently over 3.5 billion barrels of global crude oil inventories. This enormous global supply has large and complex implications for the eventual recovery of the global economy.
 

EIA Weekly U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil. Release Date 3/25/2020. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

But our concern here focuses on the urgent question of how to design government assistance to fossil energy companies. This assistance is rightly characterized as a bailout, an extraordinary government effort to soften the blow of crashing demand and ensure that the damage done does not persist after demand returns.

In the United States, the recently approved Coronavirus Relief Package excluded $3 billion to "bail out" the oil industry. But that exclusion was at the last minute and at the behest of the Democratic caucus; next time, a stimulus package may well include a bailout for oil. In Canada, plans to rescue the industry are in the making. As prices continue to plummet, oil state producers in the U.S. and around the world will likely be exploring ways to provide relief to oil companies. Any of that assistance made available for oil must be designed to prevent an appropriate bailout from becoming a hidden subsidy. Any compensation for the costs of storing oil that sells for $25 a barrel now but might sell for $100 a barrel in a future recovery is not a bailout. Instead, it is subsidy that provides a future windfall for oil companies.


Assistance must soften the temporary effects of low demand: worker emergency pay, the costs of safe idling of refining equipment, and so on. In places where oil revenues represent a substantial part of government income, this assistance should be directed to ensure continuity in public expenditure.

Credit: University of Pennsylvania

And assistance must not further subsidize obstacles to a clean energy system—a system that provides lower total costs, safer operations, and healthier environmental performance.

Reasonable people can have a lively policy debate over how to subsidize a transition from fossil-fueled energy to carbon-free energy. But calling a subsidy a bailout is not how to do it.


Explore further

Oil price crash: will it affect the move to green energy?

Provided by University of Pennsylvania