The novel coronavirus outbreak has quickly become the largest pandemic in recent history, but it’s not unprecedented. The outbreak of the so-called “Spanish Flu”, an avian influenza virus, spread worldwide, infecting one-third of the population. While scientists are still learning how the coronavirus operates, we have lots of tools at our disposal to fight it.
Widely tuneable continuous-wave lasers based on OPO technology make it quicker and easier to characterize the internal energy structure of different qubit contenders Light fantastic: experiments to measure the properties of single-photon emitters frequently require a continuous-wave light source that can easily be tuned across a wide frequency range. (Courtesy: Hübner Photonics) Physicists are still
Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . Amado Vazquez, a Mexican botanist, named an orchid after Joan Didion. While that was a chic gesture, I don’t think of her as an orchid. I think of her
Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . It’s fitting—maybe even a little on-the-nose—that the last book I finished on my commute to work was Hilary Leichter’s Temporary. Now that my twice-daily train ride has been indefinitely
Cancer Is the Secret of This Company Town Leah Hampton Share article Electric Lit is committed to publishing—and paying writers—through the pandemic without any layoffs or pay cuts. Please consider supporting us during this difficult time. Donate here. . “Twitchell”by Leah Hampton For the first half of Margie Pifer’s pottery lecture at the Arts Council picnic,
Wingbeat scanner: the lidar system in operation. The bright line in the upper right of the beam reveals the motion of a mosquito. (Courtesy: Mikkel Brydegaard) Lidar technology has been used to monitor how mosquito activity varies throughout the day in a natural African landscape. The measurements were made by an international team led by
One of the most captivating aspects of the summer Olympics is watching the world’s best athletes push their bodies to the edge of what is humanly possible. In 2016, the world watched in awe as Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won his third consecutive Olympic gold in each of three distances—the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay.
If you’re on the receiving end of a snapping shrimp’s attack, prepare to be stunned. Also known as pistol shrimp, these little crustaceans shoot lethal rounds at predators and prey at highway speeds—a direct hit can be outright fatal or shock the recipient into submission. It’s not just the force of the attack that’s stunning
UUltrasound is a powerful tool for looking inside the body. The scans see through layers of tissue to reveal pumping hearts, developing fetuses, troublesome blood clots, and injured muscles. They are relatively low-cost, portable, and have few side effects. Patients aren’t exposed to ionizing radiation or confined in a small space. They are, however, slathered
The unit known as Detachment 3 is responsible to rescue astronauts if they have to abort the mission. WASHINGTON — As NASA and SpaceX prepare for a May 27 mission to fly astronauts to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center, a unit of the U.S. Space Force will be on alert should
WASHINGTON — German space company OHB is moving ahead with plans to launch a commercial lunar lander mission in cooperation with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in late 2022 as it looks for government and commercial customers. OHB and IAI announced an agreement in January 2019 to cooperate on an initiative to deliver payloads to the
SAN FRANCISCO — Capella Space announced a contract May 13 to provide airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and analytics services to the U.S. Navy. Capella, a San Francisco startup focused on establishing a constellation of SAR satellites, is not planning to offer airborne imagery as a product line. Instead, the airborne campaign is “a
SAN FRANCISCO – Silicon Valley space mapping startup LeoLabs unveiled a service May 13 to help commercial and government satellite operators avoid collisions with debris and other satellites in low Earth orbit. LeoLabs operates three ground-based phased array radars to track satellites and debris in low Earth orbit. Drawing on the radar data, LeoLabs created
Six SkySat satellites will be evenly split across two Starlink launches on Falcon 9. WASHINGTON — Planet announced that its next six SkySat satellites will fly to low Earth orbit on SpaceX Starlink missions scheduled later this summer. The six SkySats will be evenly split across two launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Planet said May
WASHINGTON — Maxar Technologies said this week it has received a contract to build multiple geostationary communications satellites for an undisclosed customer. The announcement was made in tandem with an earnings report showing that the coronavirus pandemic roiling the global economy put a crimp in Maxar’s satellite manufacturing revenue even as its satellite imagery division
Francisco fills a neighbors’ cup with wine at a rooftop during a nationwide quarantine due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Caracas, Venezuela April 6, 2020. Picture taken April 6, 2020. REUTERS/Manaure Quintero CARACAS (Reuters) – When Venezuela ordered a quarantine in March to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, real estate agent
Adult female panda Er Shun, one of two being returned to China by Canada’s Calgary Zoo due to the difficulty of obtaining their food of fresh bamboo due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) related logistical problems, is seen in an undated photograph provided May 13, 2020. Calgary Zoo/Handout via REUTERS. (Reuters) – Unable to import
AMC has officially purchased the rights to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches. The cable network today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Anne Rice’s major literary works, The Vampire Chronicles Series and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches Series, encompassing 18 titles, including such beloved and celebrated works as