While many doctors and scientists are thinking about whether the Chinese coronavirus will stay with us forever or just disappear, ordinary people learn new habits: wear masks, it is better to monitor hygiene, and so on.
Marketers are in full swing to come up with ways to earn money on the fear of a person to catch an infection. Already now, what has been invented: from a contactless door opener to cars and even aircraft with protection against coronavirus. We tried to look into the near future and understand how we will live after the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the damned SARS-CoV-2 will stay with us forever or disappear. Some argue that after the appearance of the vaccine and as a result of building a person’s own immunity to the causative agent of the COVID-19 disease, the virus will gradually disappear. This has already happened with another coronavirus – SARS-CoV, the causative agent of SARS. The outbreak occurred in 2003, however, since 2004, not a single case of SARS has been reported in the world.
The second possible scenario – Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 will stay with us forever. This is not the first or second, but the seventh coronavirus, which is able to infect humans. Scientists believe that in the process of mutation, the pathogen gradually weakens, so that after a while it will become easier for a person to cope with it. At the same time, we have already formed a certain reflex to wear medical masks and respirators to protect against the virus, use sanitizers and generally better monitor hygiene. And this is great: when a person processes his hands when entering or leaving a store (cafe, cinema, museum etc.) or puts on a respirator in a public room, he protects his body not only from coronavirus, but also from other unpleasant pathogens.
In a pandemic, people found a way to organize mass protests. Moreover, no arrangements are yet required for events. A kind of “rallies” have already taken place in some cities. The form of such actions is very peculiar and has no analogues in the world – all participants write comments near government buildings. The plus, at least, is that they won’t beat the protesters with batons. But there are drawbacks – the chance that you will be “heard” by officials is negligible.
New fears are at the good of business. The label “Protected from COVID-19” or “Processed Against Viruses” can become the new mainstream, as the prefix “Bio” and “Eco” once turned out to be. Such marketing gimmicks are used now not only by food manufacturers, the label “Virus-free” appeared even on building materials.
Courier services have now a new service – contactless delivery: the courier informs about arrival and leaves the parcel under the door. The manufacturer of special diving masks has added a filter element to its products, so its now akin to a respirator. Moreover, the novelty is not a dubious marketing ploy at all: it really protects all the mucous membranes, including the eyes.
A new penny gadget – a contactless door opener – is now gaining special popularity. A small plastic hook with which you can catch on the doorknob to open it. There is an option that is mounted on the handle, which facilitates opening the door with the elbow.
A huge number of devices for disinfecting a car and protecting its interior from infectious agents have been previously sold. But now, with mobile ultraviolet lamps, dubious nozzles for airflow deflectors and antibacterial steering wheel covers, the gear lever and buttons are the second wave of popularity. Unless manufacturers added the note “Against Coronavirus” in the description.
The Italian company Avio Interiors has developed a conceptual design of seats for aircraft that could ensure the safety of travelers in the post-pandemic world. There are two options: the first – transparent curtains are installed on the already existing seats on both sides of the seat, and in the second case, the central chair in a row unfolds upstream and is also isolated by transparent screens. The second option is more reliable in terms of protection, but also requires large investments for deep conversion of the cabin.
At the origins of “coronavirus” marketing was the Chinese Geely, which released a special version of the Iconic crossover with a new intelligent air purification system (IAPS) with an air filter that can hold bacteria and viruses. The system is certified according to the standard CN95. In total, a line of 30 thousand pre-orders was lined up for the car per day.
The US military organized a whole secret “coronavirus” special forces detachment. It included 10 thousand military personnel, and it reports directly to the US Secretary of Defense. The task of the secret special squad includes the evacuation of the president and top officials of the state, as well as some other American officials and generals in case of an epidemiological threat. Welcome to the post-apocalyptic future!
Planet Earth
Geologists have confirmed a strange unprecedented “boomerang” earthquake deep under the Atlantic Ocean
Earthquakes come and go, often leaving destruction behind. What they luckily don’t usually do is turn around immediately and come back for another push. Except … it looks like they can do it on very rare occasions.
In a new study, scientists have uncovered evidence of an unusual and almost unprecedented boomerang earthquake that shook the deep seafloor under the Atlantic Ocean in 2016.
This earthquake, dubbed “reverse super-shear rupture”, occurred along the Romansh fracture. It is an area that lies near the equator, about halfway between the east coast of Brazil and the west coast of Africa.
The rift, which stretches about 900 kilometers between the South American and African tectonic plates, adjacent to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, caused a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in August 2016, which was detected by underwater seismometers in the region, as well as by remote monitoring stations.
Analysis of the signals reveals that this was not an ordinary earthquake, but a strange earthquake that went one way before turning around and returning and with a significant increase in speed.
“While scientists have found that this reverse rupture mechanism is possible on the basis of theoretical models, our new study provides some of the clearest evidence that this mysterious mechanism actually occurs,” Stephen Hicks said, lead researcher and seismologist of Imperial College London.
According to the analysis of seismic data, the 2016 earthquake had two separate phases.
First, the rip extended upward and eastward towards the weak point where the rip zone meets the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Then, in a sudden U-turn, an “unusual westward propagation” occurred, with the tremors returning to the center of the fault and at significantly accelerated “super-shear” velocities of up to 6 kilometers per second.
“Even though the structure of the fault appears to be simple, the quake grew differently, and it was completely the opposite of how we expected the quake to look before we started analyzing the data.”
While the team’s explanation for how this boomerang unfolded remains speculative so far, the researchers speculate that the first, deep phase of the quake released enough fracture energy to initiate a reversal of the rift in the shallower, western underwater terrain.
“Either both sections of the fault were preseismically loaded enough to promote seismogenic failure, or the deeper SE1 fracture instantly increased static stress, immediately causing the shallower portion of SE2 to collapse,” the authors explain in their paper.
Although earthquakes propagating in the opposite direction have been studied by seismologists before, so far there has been little evidence of their existence, and this phenomenon is mainly observed in theoretical modeling.
Finding this type in the real world – in the middle of the ocean – is the first of its kind, not to mention the boomerang that returned at super shear speed.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time this has been reported,” geophysicist Yoshihiro Kaneko of GNS Science in New Zealand, who was not part of the research team, told National Geographic.
The results are reported to Nature Geoscience.
Planet Earth
What is the real cause of explosions and fires around the world in the past few days?
Planet Earth
Geneticists have clarified the origin of American slaves
It is the largest study of DNA from people living in the Americas. It shows where the slaves came from in the United States and reveals the details of their abuse.
The work includes information on 50 thousand people, of which 30 thousand are of African origin. The article, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics , serves as “evidence that genetics can shed light on history,” said Alondra Nelson, professor of social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
The study began with the work of Joanna Mountain, senior director of research at the company 23andMe. Together with the team, she created a genetic database, which included mainly information about the company’s clients, whose grandparents were born in regions where slavery flourished. Dr. Stephen Micheletti, the geneticist at 23andMe who led the study, compared it to data from the Slave Travels digital project, which contains information about the people brought in: information on ports of embarkation and disembarkation, the number of enslaved men, women and children. He also collaborated with historians to learn more about the plight of African regions, such as contemporary Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the 17th and 19th centuries.
Scientists have found out: the DNA of the study participants from the United States showed their Nigerian origin. This means that there are far more ships that transported enslaved people directly to America from Nigeria than would be expected based on historical records.
At first, historians “could not believe how many Nigerian ancestors were there in the United States,” Micheletti said.
Later, after consulting with experts, the study authors learned that slaves were first sent to the British Caribbean Islands, and only then sold to the Americans.
Experts estimate that more than half of the people were brought into the United States and Latin America from West Africa. The study found that the modern black population is genetically related to six regions, among them Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria and Benin. Moreover, according to historical sources, there were more regions from which slaves were exported.
The work also showed that the brought women made a much greater contribution to the modern gene pool than men, although there were much fewer of them. Scientists have calculated that in the United States there are 1.5 times more descendants of slaves, and in Latin America and the Caribbean – 13-17 times. Moreover, in the United States, European men have influenced the modern gene pool of people of African descent three times more than European women, and 25 times more in the Caribbean.
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