Tripura seeks NICD’s help to stem COVID-19 spread

There are several hypotheses about how amphibian chytrid has spread around the world, but the trade in amphibians for food, bait, pets and laboratory animals has been identified as the most likely mode of spread

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Reptiles that live near and feed upon amphibians in the tropics may be spreading the deadly amphibian disease Chytridiomycosis (caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dedrobatidis), holding and transporting reservoirs of the fungus on their skin.

The post Reptiles may be spreading deadly amphibian disease in the tropics appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Microbes that live in rice paddies, northern peat bogs and other previously unexpected environments are among the bacteria that can generate highly toxic methylmercury, researchers […]

The post Toxic methylmercury-producing microbes more widespread than realized appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The bush dog is one of the most enigmatic of the world’s canid species, seldom seen throughout its range in Central and South America. New […]

The post Elusive bush dog widespread in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Cobia, a promising fish for aquaculture, lives throughout the world’s oceans except in the Central and Eastern Pacific. In August 2015, a large number of […]

The post Invasive Cobia Spreads in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

WASHINGTON — In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to establish a Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.

The recently formed National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, assembled at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, has been providing rapid expert consultations on several topics, such as social distancing and severe illness in young adults.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine responds to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) regarding survival of the COVID-19 virus in relation to temperature and humidity and potential for seasonal reduction and resurgence of cases.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine responds to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) regarding the effectiveness of homemade fabric masks to protect others from the viral spread of COVID-19 from potentially contagious asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals.

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

People using a coworking space.; Credit: Cross Campus

In a sign of increased desire of professionals to work remotely, the successful Santa Monica shared workspace Cross Campus is opening a second location in Pasadena later this month, and the company hopes to open eight others in Southern California and beyond in the next two years. 

Dubbed by one user as  the “nerve center” of the Silicon Beach tech scene, Cross Campus opened its membership-based workspace facility in Santa Monica in 2012.   

But co-founder Ronen Olshansky said the shared workspace phenomenon isn't limited to coders. 

"Fewer and fewer people are making the traditional drive into the corporate office," Olshansky said. "They're working remotely as professionals, going off on their own as freelancers, or they're starting their own companies as entrepreneurs."  

A forecast from Forrester Research says that 43 percent of workers will telecommute by 2016, compared to estimates of about a quarter of the workforce telecommuting last year. 

Olshansky said that, for many people, working from home or in a coffee shop isn't productive. 

That's led shared workspaces to pop up in Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica. Among them: Maker City L.A., WeWork, NextSpace, Coloft and Hub LA.  

Los Angeles-based tech investor David Waxman said these kind of shared spaces are crucial for the early stages of tech ventures.

"When you’re just starting out, and capital is very scarce, having not to commit to an entire office but having part of an office is very important," Waxman said.  “There comes a collective energy when a bunch of entrepreneurs get together in the same space, even if they’re not working on the same project."

And he said Pasadena is a good choice for a shared workspace.

"It is the home of Caltech, the Arts Center, and IdeaLab — probably the world’s first tech incubator — started there," he said.

But he said the need isn't limited to Pasadena.

"In Silver Lake, in South Pasadena, in Glendale, you see a lot of little pockets of  people getting together, and as soon as there’s a critical mass, we’ll see co-working spaces like Cross Campus come into being," said Waxman, who named his investment firm TenOneTen after the two freeways that connect Santa Monica and the Westside to Pasadena. 

Alex Maleki of IdeaLab in Pasadena is happy a well-known company is opening up in his city. 

"Anything that helps attract talent and capital to the region," Maleki said, "is absolutely fantastic."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The scam machine shows no signs of slowing down, as fraudsters dispense bogus health advice, peddle fake testing kits and issue malware-laced purchase orders

The post Coronavirus con artists continue to spread infections of their own appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Hypoxia (low levels of oxygen) is widespread in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, according to recently published research. The trend of increasing hypoxia since the 1950 is alarming, although improvements can be seen in some areas as a result of measures to reduce inputs of organic material.

A fungus could offer an alternative to chemical pesticides for the control of biting midges that spread livestock diseases, including Bluetongue and African horse sickness, according to new research.

A new study suggests that abandoned farmland is widespread in Europe and that not all land that has been abandoned is unsuitable for farming. Understanding how abandoned farmland is distributed may be important for making land management decisions – for instance, recultivation versus reversion to forest.

A recent survey of businesses in France, Germany and the UK has revealed that they recycle and refurbish much of their waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). However, some of this information is not being reported under the EU’s WEEE Directive because the waste is being disposed of informally or by contractors, rather than by manufacturers who are responsible for the whole life cycle of the products.

A recent study has projected changes in the spread of malaria caused by climate change and climate variability in Africa by including the effect of variations in land use on local climate. It concludes that the risk of malaria epidemics is likely to shift from the north to the south of the Sahel, and to highland areas previously free of the disease.

Crop pests and pathogens are moving into new habitats, towards the North and South Poles, as global warming progresses, new research suggests. Observation records from around the world show that many crop pests, including insect and bacterial pests, are moving towards the poles at an average rate of 2.7 km per year.

New areas of land suitable for agriculture will open up under climate change’s effects, new research predicts, particularly in far northern regions of the world. However, the overall quality of land for farming will decline and many regions, including Europe, could lose large areas of suitable land.

Driven by trade, the spread of alien species is increasing worldwide. This study combined 60 years of trade data with that on biodiversity and climate to model the spread of plant species across 147 countries. The model predicts significant increases in plant invasions in the next 20 years, especially for emerging economies. The authors say trade legislation must consider biological invasion and focus on regions at high risk.

From driving behavioral change to encouraging doctor-patient collaboration, telemedicine’s time in the sun has proved beneficial as a collateral benefit of Covid-19.

The North American pine wood nematode (PWN), Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, is a pest worm species that causes a disease known as pine wilt. It was discovered for the first time in the EU in Portuguese forests in 1999. Today, the entire territory of Portugal is demarcated for the presence of PWN, with a 20 km buffer zone, free from the pest, established along the Spanish border with the aim of preventing its further spread. The spread and establishment of PWN in the rest of EU territory is very likely if no strict measures are taken, as required by Decision 2012/535/EU of the European Commission, with serious economic and environmental consequences. To date, Spain has experienced five outbreaks of PWN, three of which have been successfully eradicated thanks to the EU measures and the effective work of the Spanish forest administration; and two outbreaks are currently being eradicated.

Researchers have developed a new scientific method to estimate the time lag between the introduction of an alien species and its extensive spread. For New Zealand weed species, the study estimated that the average lag was around 20-30 years. Although this may seem to be a long time, seemingly rare but fast-spreading species could become tomorrow's harmful weeds.

Researchers have identified areas of Italy that have a climate capable of sustaining a population of tiger mosquitoes, an invasive mosquito species that can carry several human diseases. The findings also indicate how these areas will expand as the climate changes in future.

By 2090, up to 76.7 million more people in Africa could be at risk of infection by the parasite that causes sleeping sickness, according to recent research. The study predicted which areas of Africa would be at greatest risk in future.

A recent study sheds light on why some alien species are more likely to become invasive than others. The research in Switzerland found that the alien Spanish slug is better able to survive under changing environmental conditions than the native Black slug, thanks to its robust 'Jack-of-all-trades' nature.

Decreasing biodiversity in an ecosystem can increase the spread of disease, research suggests. Researchers studying amphibian communities in natural wetland ecosystems as well as controlled experiments have shown that as diversity increased, infection rates dropped.

Milder winters under climate change could increase the extent of alder tree (Alnus glutinosa) decline in Europe due to the increased spread of the pathogen Phytophthora alni, a recent study has found. However, this may be offset by hotter summers, which reduce the severity of the disease.

A new disease capable of devastating European salamander and newt populations was probably introduced via international wildlife trade, new research has found. The study shows that the disease is deadly for many European species of salamanders and its analysis of more than 5000 amphibians from across four continents suggests the pathogen spread from Asia to Europe via the pet trade.

Driven by trade, the spread of alien species is increasing worldwide. This study combined 60 years of trade data with that on biodiversity and climate to model the spread of plant species across 147 countries. The model predicts significant increases in plant invasions in the next 20 years, especially for emerging economies. The authors say trade legislation must consider biological invasion and focus on regions at high risk.

The ability of organisms to adapt to toxic chemicals like pesticides is essential for their survival, but also an agricultural annoyance. This study shows that interactions between different species can delay the development of pesticide resistance and therefore suggests that biodiversity supports effective pest management.

Sewage sludge and manure are sometimes added to soil to improve crop production. However, these ‘natural fertilisers’ may contain not only nutrients and organic matter but also antibacterial agents. This study investigated their impact on the microbes in soil, revealing an increase in antibiotic resistance genes. The researchers recommend greater efforts to remove antibiotic residues from wastewater and manure.

Last week, my colleague Mariano Lizarraga Fernandez pointed me to the Washington post simulation of COVID-19 and we thought it would be interesting to implement something similar using MathWorks products.... read more >>

In a previous post, I introduced a model simulating the exponential spread of a phenomenon like COVID-19. With more and more talks in the news about deconfinement plans, I thought it would be interesting to run multiple simulations with different deconfinement scenarios and observe the potential outcomes.... read more >>

A study on the transport of radioactive isotopes from Fukushima in the two months after the nuclear incident suggests that they were at official levels of contamination for 34,000 km2 of Japan, and that 2.8% of iodine radionuclides from the event were calculated to have reached the EU.

Video: A Florida marine ecologist narrows down the spread of the first lobster virus.

Danny Ferraro was driving on Highway 105 in Texas when he spotted clouds arranged in an angelic way.

What started off as a recall of one version of Trader Joe’s peanut butter has spread to other brands of peanut butter, other nut butters and tahini.

Scientists are searching for possible sources for life on Earth on the edge of our Solar System.

HIV might never have become a global pandemic if it wasn't for the ecology of what is now known as Kinshasa, and what was then a 1920s colonial hub.