COVID-19 – Page 17

How Apple and Google will let your phone warn you if you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, TECHNOLOGY

How Apple and Google will let your phone warn you if you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus

On April 10, Apple and Google announced a coronavirus exposure notification system that will be built into their smartphone operating systems, iOS and Android. The system uses the ubiquitous Bluetooth short-range wireless communication technology. There are dozens of apps being developed around the world that alert people if they’ve been exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID-19. Many of them also report the identities of the exposed people to public health authorities, which has raised privacy concerns. Several other exposure notification projects, including PACT, BlueTrace and the Covid Watch project, take a similar privacy-protecting approach to Apple’s and Google’s initiative. So how will the Apple-Google exposure notification system work? As researchers who study secu...

Top football recruits bring in big money for colleges – COVID-19 could threaten revenue

29Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, SPORTS

Top football recruits bring in big money for colleges – COVID-19 could threaten revenue

Colleges and universities are spending more than ever to land the nation’s top football recruits, with some schools having boosted their recruiting budgets by more than 300% in the last five years. These budgets can surpass US$2 million for schools like the University of Tennessee. Is it worth it? I study economics. Research I recently did shows just how big the payoff for spending money to recruit the best players can be. Half a million dollars The schools that secure five-star recruits – the 30 or so players judged to be in the top one-hundredth of the top 1% of high school football players – can increase total revenue by over $500,000 for a university’s athletic department. Most football teams never secure a five-star recruit. Others, such as the University of Alabama and Louisiana St...

Coronavirus bailouts will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars – unlike past corporate rescues that actually made money for the US Treasury

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, Journalism

Coronavirus bailouts will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars – unlike past corporate rescues that actually made money for the US Treasury

The U.S. government has now pledged almost US$3 trillion to save the economy and Americans from the coronavirus recession. Most of that is aimed at individual Americans in the form of additional unemployment insurance or the so-called economic impact checks. About $1.2 trillion – and counting – represent bailouts for American companies, large and small. And more than 60% of that is in the form of grants or other financial assistance that will likely become grants – funds that will not be recovered by taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on April 23 that the company-related coronavirus bailouts, excluding the fourth one just signed into law, will ultimately cost more than $400 billion over 10 years. Given that most of the latest bailout, worth $484 billion, will most likel...

Lethargic global response to COVID-19: How the human brain’s failure to assess abstract threats cost us dearly

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, Journalism

Lethargic global response to COVID-19: How the human brain’s failure to assess abstract threats cost us dearly

More U.S. citizens have confirmed COVID-19 infections than the next five most affected countries combined. Yet as recently as mid-March, President Trump downplayed the gravity of the crisis by falsely claiming the coronavirus was nothing more than seasonal flu, or a Chinese hoax, or a deep state plot designed to damage his reelection bid. The current U.S. administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus threat is part of a larger problem in pandemic management. Many government officials, medical experts, scholars and journalists continued to underestimate the dangers of COVID-19, even as the disease upended life in China as early as mid-January. The results of this collective inertia are catastrophic indeed. The U.S., along with Italy, Spain, Iran and the French Alsace, is now the site of...

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, EDUCATION

6 tips for parents who home-school

With most U.S. schools closed for the rest of the school year due to the COVID-19 outbreak – and uncertainty surrounding the decision to reopen them in the fall – parents may be tempted to try out home-schooling. As a sociologist who has interviewed dozens of home-schooling parents to learn which practices work best, I know that first-timers can quickly find themselves feeling unprepared and overwhelmed. With that in mind, here are six tips for parents who educate their children at home. 1. Don’t copy a regular classroom When many of the parents I interviewed first started home-schooling, they tried to make their homes look and feel like a traditional school environment. They set up desks and decorated the walls with the kinds of things you’d see in a classroom. They set a schedule and po...

5 ways parents can support their college-age children who’ve been forced to return home due to COVID-19

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, EDUCATION

5 ways parents can support their college-age children who’ve been forced to return home due to COVID-19

With many college students forced to return home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tensions and arguments are bound to flare up. Here, Matthew Mayhew, an education researcher who co-authored a book about the college experience and its effect on students, offers five things parents and families of the many college students who are now learning from home should consider. 1. Empathize Whatever feelings of grief and fear are affecting you are also affecting your college students. Put yourself in their shoes – they are probably under just as much stress, if not more, as they try to complete the semester in unexpected ways. Also, many students might be questioning their decisions to go to college in the first place. Or what school will be like when they return. Can they still choose their roommates...

Robots are playing many roles in the coronavirus crisis – and offering lessons for future disasters

22Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Robots are playing many roles in the coronavirus crisis – and offering lessons for future disasters

A cylindrical robot rolls into a treatment room to allow health care workers to remotely take temperatures and measure blood pressure and oxygen saturation from patients hooked up to a ventilator. Another robot that looks like a pair of large fluorescent lights rotated vertically travels throughout a hospital disinfecting with ultraviolet light. Meanwhile a cart-like robot brings food to people quarantined in a 16-story hotel. Outside, quadcopter drones ferry test samples to laboratories and watch for violations of stay-at-home restrictions. These are just a few of the two dozen ways robots have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic, from health care in and out of hospitals, automation of testing, supporting public safety and public works, to continuing daily work and life. The lessons ...

Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data

22Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data

The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front-line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white. Black, Indigenous and racialized people, and many whose lives have been further imperilled by this pandemic, remain virtually disappeared from the Canadian landscape. That makes collective care for members across our communities untenable. We take pause and reflect on how this will impact Black ...

Ways to be neighborly and keep social distancing

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Ways to be neighborly and keep social distancing

“Won’t you be my neighbor?” Fred Rogers sang this song upwards of 900 times during 31 seasons of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” But how is being a good neighbor possible during this time of quarantines and social distancing? Tracy Kirby Harbold, executive director of the Upper Arlington Community Foundation in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, said its Good Neighbor Fund has experienced an increase in monetary donations and gift cards in the past month. “People want to do something to help neighbors,” said Harbold, pointing out that about 33,000 live in the community. “We will pay rent, car payments, insurance, back bills ... whatever is the need.” She added, “The silver lining in this is that people are looking at their neighbors and asking how they can help them. They are checking on seni...

Trump wants sports back – but fans aren’t so sure

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, IN OTHER NEWS, SPORTS

Trump wants sports back – but fans aren’t so sure

Some politicians, media figures and business leaders are clamoring for sectors of the economy to re-open in the near future, and President Trump, on April 14, specifically mentioned America’s professional sports leagues. CC BY-ND “We have to get our sports back,” Trump said. “I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.” But a recent poll of 762 Americans across the country conducted by my colleagues and me at Seton Hall’s Sharkey Institute shows that Americans may be less enthusiastic than the president about the prospect of “Play Ball!” – at least, until there are some effective COVID-19 treatments in place. Asked if they would feel safe attending a game before the development of a vaccine, 72% of Americans said they would not, while 12% said they would only go to games...