Monthly Archives: May 2020

Colleges Closing

The dramatic and widespread fallout from the COVID-19 vi-rus has thrown the U.S. higher education system into a state of turmoil with fears that it could transform into an existential moment for the time-honored American tradition of high school graduates heading off to college.
“What every college and university is facing is an immediate cash flow crisis,” says Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. ”We’re dealing with something completely unprecedented in modern history. There is just so much ambiguity how this will continue to evolve.”
Families are entitled to re-funds on room and board since those services are no longer being used, but there’s an out-standing question about tuition refunds as teaching migrates online and the quality of education is questionable. Students complain that online education is much less effective than in-person classes, and parents are asking, “You want this tuition but sonny will be sitting here at home playing with his phone?”
Across America, campuses have become ghost towns, graduation ceremonies have been canceled and school administrators watch as the pandemic rips through budgets, costing billions of dollars in refunded room and board. Some students are seeking partial repayment of their tuition, arguing that online classes can’t compare to campus learning. Hiring freezes have been imposed at some schools, and laid-off professors face difficult job prospects.
Info: shpr.fyi/colleges
Doubling Solar Panel Efficiency?

Solar panel efficiency might be improved by getting high-energy photons striking silicon to kick out two electrons instead of one.
In any conventional silicon-based solar cell, there is an absolute limit on overall efficiency, based partly on the fact that each photon of light can only knock loose a single electron, even if that photon carried twice the energy needed to do so. But now, researchers have demonstrated a method for getting high-energy photons striking silicon to kick out two electrons instead of one, opening the door for a new kind of solar cell with greater efficiency than was thought possible.
The key to splitting the energy of one photon into two electrons lies in a class of materials that possess “excited states” called excitons.
The key was in a thin, only a few atoms thick, intermediate layer of a material called hafnium oxynitride.
“It turns out this tiny, tiny strip of material at the interface between these two systems [the silicon solar cell and the tetracene layer with its excitonic properties] ended up defining everything,” they said.
That finally made it possible for the single high-energy pho-tons to trigger the release of two electrons inside the silicon cell. That produces a doubling of the amount of energy produced by a given amount of sunlight in the blue-green part of the spectrum.
Info: shpr.fyi/2xsolarcell
Signal Most Secure Email Cryptography
Last month, the highly respected cryptographer and coder known as Moxie Marlinspike was getting settled on an air-plane when his seatmate, a midwestern-looking man in his 60s, asked for help. He couldn’t figure out how to enable air-plane mode on his aging Android phone. But when Marlinspike saw the screen, he wondered for a moment if he was being trolled: Among just a handful of apps installed on the phone was Signal.
Marlinspike launched Signal, widely considered the world’s most secure end-to-end encrypted messaging app, nearly five years ago, and today heads the nonprofit Signal Foundation that maintains it. But the man on the plane didn’t know any of that. He was not, in fact, trolling Marlinspike, who politely showed him how to enable airplane mode and handed the phone back.
“I try to remember moments like that in building Signal,” Marlinspike told Wired in an interview over a Signal-enabled phone call the day after that flight. “The choices we’re making, the app we’re trying to create, it needs to be for people who don’t know how to enable airplane mode on their phone,” Marlinspike says.
Various schemes proposed by ignorant politicians to force manufacturers to be able to un-encrypt any message are existential threats to nonprofit Signal and its world-best encryption. If those laws were passed, all encryption would be impossible, including that of our bank when it sends us our balance.
Info: shpr.fyi/signal

Cougar
By Dave Bunting, including excerpts from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Wildlife Department of British Columbia
The cougar, the largest wild cat native to North America, is an imposing but evasive member of our wildlife. His secretive habits, and sometimes astounding predatory abilities (the cougar is capable of killing a 600 pound moose or elk), have resulted in a wealth of human misconceptions and irrational fears. In some instances, “control” programs responding to these fears placed severe and unwarranted hunting pressure upon cougar populations.
Appearance and
 Distribution
The adult cougar is a large animal: the heaviest recorded was an Arizona cougar that weighed 276 pounds. Although there have been several cougar taken in British Columbia weighing between 190 and 210 pounds, the average adult male weighs about 125 pounds and the female 100 pounds. Large adult males may measure 9 feet in length, including a 30-inch tail.
The cougar is found only in the Western Hemisphere, from northern British Columbia to Patagonia in southern Argentina. In Canada, the cougar has been recorded from British Columbia east to New Brunswick. Distribution in British Columbia extends north from the United States – British Columbia border to Big Muddy River on the Alaska Highway South of about 54 degrees latitude cougar are generally found from the British Columbia-Alberta border west, to and including, most coastal islands. Cougar have not reached the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Following snowfalls in December 2015, numerous cougar tracks were identified definitely by a skilled Eastern Lewis County cougar hunter in and near the Timberline and High Valley residential areas northeast of Packwood.
Territory
The territory or home range of individual cougar has been recognized for many years, but only recently have accurate limits been assigned to these ranges. Early estimates suggested that cougar maintained home ranges of up to, or greater than, 100 square miles. In Idaho, where the winter territory of cougar was examined, females on the study area maintained territories of 5 to 20 square miles. Females with kittens required larger ranges than females without kittens, and some overlap of female ranges was noticed. Males occupied larger territories – one male occupied a range of 25 square miles.
Food Habits
The predatory activities of the cougar are legendary, and prey species range from large animals to mice, and include deer, porcupine, beaver, varying hare, moose, elk, wild sheep, mountain goats, black bear (cubs), grouse, coyote, other cougar, domestic stock, and household pets.
There are few authentic instances of cougar attacking humans. Normal behavior is one of human avoidance, although cougar often displays a harmless curiosity toward the actions of man. They have been observed sitting at a vantage point and watching, sometimes for hours, people either working or playing out of doors. Hunters, and others, have reported the tracks of a cougar following their own in the snow. The infrequent attacks on humans are usually attributed to old, starving cougar, or to cougar that are defending their young.
When hunting the larger ungulates, cougar do not crouch over or near a game trail waiting for the unsuspecting prey to pass nearby. The kill is usually made following a careful stalk of the intended victim. Cougar hunters have observed that cats must make a kill within two or three jumps, usually 20 to 50 feet after their stalk. If the prey escapes, the cougar will rarely follow, and the stalk will be repeated upon a different animal. The kill follows a sudden leap from the ground onto the shoulders and neck of the prey. The most effective kills are made when the cougar holds the head with a forepaw and bites down through the back of the neck, near the base of the skull.
Kills are not always quick or successful and the larger prey, particularly large elk, moose, or deer, will struggle violently to escape. Instances where cougar have been seriously hurt following such encounters are infrequent, but not unheard-of.
Wasteful behavior in the killing of prey is the exception and not the rule. Cougar generally eat about 70 per cent (by weight) of the carcass of a big-game animal, leaving most of the larger skeletal bones, the rumen, some viscera, and parts of the hide. They will make repeated visits to a carcass, take a meal during each visit, and usually cover the remains with dirt and debris after each feed.
Although there have been observations where a single cougar has killed several deer, domestic sheep, etc., at one time, detailed studies have shown an adult cougar needs no more than 14 to 20 average-sized mule deer per year. This will be less if the diet is supplemented by other foods.
Encounters
Cougar attacks on humans are extremely rare. In North America, roughly 25 fatalities and 95 nonfatal attacks have been reported during the past 100 years. However, more cougar attacks have been reported in the western United States and Canada over the past 20 years than in the previous 80. In Washington, of the one fatal and fifteen nonfatal attacks reported here in the past 100 years, seven attacks occurred since 1990.
It is extraordinarily unlikely that you will encounter a cougar in the wild. Many lifelong Forest Service employees have worked their entire careers in the forest without ever seeing a cougar while working. Experienced southwestern Washington forest workers consider ridiculous being fearful of an attack by a cougar… or, for that matter, a bear or any other wild animal. However…
If you encounter 
a cougar:
Stop, stand tall and don’t run. Pick up small children. Don’t run. A cougar’s instinct is to chase.
Do not approach the animal, especially if it is near a kill or with kittens. Go away quickly from a killed deer or other prey animal.
Try to appear larger than the cougar. Never take your eyes off the animal or turn your back. Be angry! Do not crouch down or try to hide. If the cougar remains where you can see it, walk backwards to safety.
If the animal displays aggressive behavior, shout, wave your arms, pick up and wave a large stick, and throw rocks. The idea is to convince the cougar that you are not prey, but a potential danger.
If the cougar attacks, fight back aggressively and try to stay on your feet. Cougars have been driven away by people who have fought back. Many people have survived cougar attacks.

“Things could have gone either way.”
British Prime Minister Bo-ris Johnson said his personal battle with the coronavirus “could have gone either way” and said there was “no question” doctors saved his life, speaking in a candid video message after leaving hospital Sunday.
The UK leader checked into hospital a week ago and spent three days in intensive care after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the end of March, the most high-profile leader to come down with the virus.
Dressed in a suit and tie, Johnson thanked his doctors and vowed to help Britain defeat the virus as the country’s death toll topped 10,000 Sunday — a grim milestone only a handful of countries have passed.
“I hope they won’t mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way,” said Johnson, referring to the state-run National Health Service (NHS) staff who cared for him at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital.
He said he was discharged af-ter “a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question,” and officials said he would now convalesce at Chequers, the country estate of British prime ministers, on the advice of his medical team.
“The reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed,” he said of the medical staff.
Johnson is said to have disregarded the early recommendations for masks, separation, stay-at-home and disinfection of surfaces.
Johnson has announced England’s plan to reopen.
Parts of it:
1. “This is not a short-term crisis. It is likely that COVID-19 will circulate in the human population long-term, possibly causing periodic epidemics. In the near future, large epidemic waves cannot be excluded so we cannot afford to make drastic changes,” the government said.
2. The government says that any of the reduced social distancing measures will be rein-stated if the changes increase infections.
3. Those in the clinically extremely vulnerable group will continue to be advised to shield themselves for some time yet.
4. All those who cannot work from home should travel to work if their workplace is open. For the foreseeable future, workers should continue to work from home rather than their normal physical work-place, wherever possible
5. Schools should prepare to begin to open for more children from 1 June. The government’s ambition is for all primary school children to return to school before the summer for a month if feasible.
6. Everybody should continue to avoid public transport wherever possible and avoid peak times. Social distancing guidance on public transport must be followed rigorously.
7. All international arrivals must self-isolate in their accommodation for 14 days on arrival into the UK.
When will it end?
COVID apparently will be with the human population permanently, like the influenza viruses.
We’re forced to face the fact that this COVID pandemic probably can only end when we, the earth’s human population, develop “herd immunity” to it.
Health experts believe herd immunity requires about 60% of a population become immune. Then infections, though they may spread to a person or two, soon encounter an immune per-son and stop there.
The American population is about 250 million, so 60% is about 150 million of us who must catch and recover from it for us to see the “end” of it. Estimates are that we may reach 60% infections and the “end” of it around the end of this year.
Two medications have been found to arguably be able to help us recover: Remdesavir and Hydroxychloroquine, though neither is suggested as a “cure” and actually none are yet actually approved for use against COVID except in testing situations. Remdesivir has shown promise in shortening hospital recovery time. Hydroxychloroquine has now been shown in a random, double blind trial to have no positive effect but continues to be used based on hear-say reports.
Vaccines to prevent us from catching it are under develop-ment but health experts don’t expect a vaccine to become available until 2021.
The attempt to track and trace and quarantine all Americans who have it or who have been closely exposed to COVID probably might have succeeded if they’d been started when the first several cases occurred in the US, but now when the virus is so widespread throughout us, tracking and tracing are unlikely to be successful.
Our situation seems unbelievable. The entire human population of the earth has been hammered by this new virus. Any-how, it’s not the first time, as we were hammered much worse than this by the virus pandemic of 1917-1918.

Rural county hospitals don’t know what 
to prepare for
“As one of our doctors put it, it feels like we’re waiting for a tsunami of molasses,” said Kimber Wraalstad, CEO of North Shore Hospital in Grand Marais, Minnesota, population 1351, which hasn’t seen any diagnosed COVID-19 patients yet. “We don’t know if it’s going to be up to our ankles or our knees or over our head. Are we going to be a hot spot? We don’t know, so the planning has to be for the worst-case scenario.”
Info: shpr.fyi/ruralhosp
Cries for testing are 
just politicians avoiding the decision to reopen.
Following is a statement by scientific director from one of the top ten hospitals in the United States who has been briefing powerful decision makers since the coronavirus epidemic began.
This director didn’t want to be quoted by name, lest his assessments cause headaches for his institution.
Testing and tracking 
won’t do it
“Politicians and other decision makers like university presidents — who are just politicians of another stripe — are a highly risk-averse species,” this scientific director told me. “If they can avoid making a tough decision, they will, and as long as they think that if we test enough people, we can identify and quarantine everyone who is infected and make the problem go away.” Testing is not that good and will not be the answer.
As he sees it, there are two problems with tests that are largely being overlooked. “One is that they’re only as good as the sample being collected. The technology is as close to perfect as you’re going to get in a diagnostic test. But if you don’t sample where the virus is, the test result will be a false negative. A recent scientific paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed concluded that the real-life sensitivity of tests where persons were collecting their own samples was down around 60 percent, which is pretty much unacceptable when testing for a contagious disease. It turns out, and this is no surprise, that you can’t rely on people to stick a swab far enough up their nose or down their throat to get a useful specimen.”
He added, “the second problem is that the test is only a one-time snapshot, and it doesn’t mean that a person isn’t going to be contagious tomorrow, or even later today. That has serious policy implications and may be the only way to get people to understand that by testing we can’t bring the risk down toward zero.
“From where I sit, demanding ‘We need more testing!’ has turned into a comfortable dodge for elected officials and opinion leaders.”
Editor: Testing and tracking involve hiring thousands of unqualified people. They are also objectionably invasive of human privacy rights so many people may refuse to be tested or to quarantine themselves when they are not sick but only supposedly exposed to an infected person.
Masks won’t do it either
The Director continued, “Go out to the supermarket or the hardware store or wherever else people are being instructed to wear a mask or other facial covering, and you’ll see about half of them have pulled the mask down off their nose because it’s uncomfortable to breathe,” he said. “That totally defeats the purpose. There are people spending stupid amounts of money to buy N95s, and then wear them with big gaps around their nose or mouth because they don’t take the time to learn how to use them properly — and they keep using them, even after they’re physically broken down and can’t seal properly. Since this is the epidemiologic equivalent of TSA Security Cartoon Theater, and the typical American puts personal comfort and convenience before health and security, I’ll just say testing and masks are not worth doing.”
Info: shpr.fyi/testmask
Yakima County has highest infection rate 
on west coast
Yakima County has the highest rate of COVID-19 cases on the West Coast.
A Yakima County health official said that is due to a combination of aggressive testing, outbreaks at nursing homes and a large number of workers deemed essential during the pandemic.
“Having more testing being done is allowing us to identify more cases, compared to other counties across the state,” said Lilián Bravo, director of public health partnerships with the Yakima Health District.
As of Saturday, the total number of positive cases in Yakima County was 1,351, an increase of 58 from Friday. The number of deaths remained at 48, according to the health department.
Looking at case numbers compiled by the New York Times and U.S. Census data, Yakima County has an infection rate of 519 per 100,000 people. That is the highest of any county along the West Coast, and the 201st highest in the nation, according to the data.
Excerpted from report by Amanda Ray, Yakima Herald Republic, updated May 4, 2020
Info: shpr.fyi/yakhigh

Reopen June 1?
I signed the Paycheck Protection loan application for the Shopper with our bank, promising to repay $900 per month–which the Shopper can’t afford–beginning Nov. 1. Provided we keep paying employees the loan will be forgiven by Nov. 1. Presumably most business owners did the same.
The money we’re borrowing will allow us to pay our employees for two and a half months, presumably applying to half of March plus April and May, while we have little income because many fewer businesses are advertising. The Shopper total cost is about $13,000 per month, mostly for payroll and printing. We are well along toward enabling all employees to do much of their work from home with expensive new laptops and unexpectedly challenging cloud file sharing. As media or communication, we are essential, so continuing publish-ing and distributing even though doing so involves extra risk to ourselves.

For us and most businesses, the two and a half month loan is al-lowing us to continue through March, April and May. After June 1 we presume (Hint Hint) we will again have income from our business advertisers.
So we must look forward to businesses being back open somewhat normally after about June 1.
To me, reopening about June 1 is reasonable.

The reasons for the shutdown has been not to protect ourselves, but rather:
a) to prevent hospitals from being overloaded, i.e. flatten the curve, and
b) to protect our much more vulnerable beloved elderly and poor-health family and friends.

In reopening June 1, we won’t increase hospitalizations or fatalities much for the following reasons.
1) We’ve all learned separation and sanitation of surfaces. Most of us are covering our faces though this probably should soon be required temporarily by law for about a year until the vaccine is available. These practices have successfully flattened the curve, greatly reduced hospitalizations and fatalities. For our own safety and now out of habit, all Americans will continue these practices through and far beyond June 1 including in our business-es and employment.
2) We must strongly encourage the elderly and those with obesity, heart, lung, kidney or cancer disease to voluntarily continue shutdown practices. With most of them being retired, doing so is somewhat natural and will not seriously disrupt their lives. Studies have found that 89% of hospitalizations for COVID involved one or more of these diseases, and 79% of COVID fatalities are over 65. Thus ,with persons elderly or with those with diseases continuing shutdown practices, we eliminate probably 95% of hospitalizations and fatalities.