Smartphones are one of the most used gadgets for everyone. Given how many surfaces and body parts a smartphone touches within a day, it also makes a smartphone the most exposed gadget to germs and viruses. Given the spread of the novel coronavirus or the COVID-19 disease, there have been concerns about smartphones being exposed to the virus as well. Some of the major concerns are – how likely is it for a person to catch the virus from their smartphone, or how long does coronavirus stay on a smartphone. In order to calculate the risk factor, we will see how long the novel coronavirus can stay on a smartphone surface.
Now, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) study, the original SARS-CoV virus which was found in 2003 was stable on a glass surface for up to 96 hours (four days). Apart from glass, it lasted on hard plastic and stainless steel for about 72 hours (three days), the WHO study says. Now, a recent study from the United States' National Institutes of Health finds that the current novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) can live on surfaces like steel and hard plastic for about 72 hours (three days), same as the SARS-CoV virus. The study also said that the novel coronavirus can last on a cardboard surface for about 24 hours, and about 4 hours on copper. Now, since the new NIH study did not factor in how long the virus stays on glass, other factors do point at similar results as the previous SARS coronavirus.
Hence, from the WHO study of 2003 and the NIH study from this month, it can be assumed that the novel coronavirus can stay on glass for up to 96 hours (four days). And since almost all smartphones come with a glass panel up front, it can be said that the coronavirus can stay on a smartphone for up to four days. Not just smartphones, this applies to any gadget with a glass surface – be it a smartphone, a smartwatch, a tablet, or a laptop.
Now, out of all of these gadgets, the smartphone still remains the most exposed gadget. Hence, it is important to keep cleaning your phone every now and then, in order to avoid further exposure from coronavirus. In order to clean a smartphone, users can either use a cleaning liquid for smartphones/ gadgets or just wipe the surface with a slightly wet microfibre cloth. To sanitise it, it's best to use a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol solution or disinfecting wipes, something that Apple also recommends. One should be careful not to use concentrations higher than 70 percent, or other disinfectant liquids, as these can destroy the oleophobic coating on your smartphone's display. You can also install a screen protector, and clean that instead, so that you don't damage the display coating.
"Using a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, you may gently wipe the hard, nonporous surfaces of your Apple product, such as the display, keyboard, or other exterior surfaces. Don't use bleach. Avoid getting moisture in any opening, and don't submerge your Apple product in any cleaning agents. Don't use on fabric or leather surfaces," Apple says on its support page.
You can also check out our video on how to clean your smartphone.
The early-1900s exploits of intrepid explorers like Robert Scott and Edward Shackleton captured the public imagination. With the benefit of cameras and deft handling of newspaper media, the Edwardian British explorers, alongside their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen, established themselves as heroic polar pioneers. In the process, however, the south polar exploits of their American forerunner, Charles Wilkes, have been largely forgotten.
It was the round-the-world expedition by Wilkes—whose scientific collection constituted the first treasures of the infant Smithsonian—that first established the continental dimensions of Antarctica. But in a twist of 19th-century international politics, that claim to Antarctica was denied to the Americans by the pole-hungry British. Fast forward to today, and the United States finds itself in another nationalistic race to capitalize on the frozen southern continent. This time, its sparring partner is China.
Amundsen might have been the first man to reach the South Pole, in 1911, but the discovery of the Antarctic continent occurred several generations earlier. In January 1840, when Wilkes was commander of the United States Exploring Expedition, he charted 1500 miles of the east Antarctic coastline in his flagship U.S.S. Vincennes. Before this American expedition, only small, rocky outcrops of Antarctica had been sighted. Most exploreres believed an open polar sea or, at most, a scattered archipelago lay at the planet’s far south.
In a remarkable coincidence, a French expedition led by the legendary Jules Dumont D’Urville reached the same stretch of coastline on the same day. But D’Urville stayed just long enough to plant the French flag on a tiny offshore island before sailing back north. Wilkes, meanwhile, against the advice of his medical staff and officers, braved the cold, ice, and howling katabatic winds to claim glory for the Vincennes.
Charles Wilkes barely had time to announce his Antarctic triumph before British rival James Clark Ross (celebrated discoverer of the North Magnetic Pole) began to steal his thunder. Wilkes’s mistake was to send the lagging Ross his historic first chart of the east Antarctic coast. A year later, when Ross retraced Wilkes’s route, he found the American had been deceived in places by glacial reflections and had mistaken ice shelves for actual coastline, marking it several degrees too far north. These errors did nothing to undermine the substance of Wilkes’s discoveries, yet Ross and the British Admiralty built a public case against the American claim—with great success. Most 19th-century maps of Antarctica do not recognize Wilkes’s remarkable 1840 feat. Even his obituaries in American newspapers made only passing mention of Wilkes’ polar discoveries.
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838 to 1842
(Thomas Sully, U.S. Naval Academy Museum)
In the 20thcentury, Wilkes would finally get his due. In 1912-13, Australian explorer Douglas Mawson was the first to revisit the east Antarctic shores mapped by the Vincennes. Mawson so admired Wilkes’ navigation of the ice pack in a wooden sailing ship that he christened the entire coast “Wilkes Land,” which remains the largest continuous territory on Earth named for a single individual.
Wilkes’ rehabilitation reflected the changing power dynamics of the polar great game. The British and French eventually ceded the argument, and corresponding territory, to the United States as the world’s emerging polar power. During the Cold War, the United States continued to assert its leadership in Antarctic affairs, brokering the international Antarctic Treaty of 1958 and investing in cutting-edge polar research. Much of what we know about climate change, for instance, comes from secrets revealed in drilling Antarctic ice cores, an outgrowth of America’s interest in polar science.
2015 photograph of McMurdo station, Antarctica
(Mike Lucibella, NSF)
Today, the Antarctic landscape is changing—and not just from melting glaciers. America’s interest in Antarctica appears to be waning, and so too is its influence.
In the decade following the 2008 global recession, funding for the Office of Polar Programs, which oversees American facilities and research in Antarctica, fell by 8 percent. Plans for the long-overdue replacement of aging facilities at McMurdo Station, the United States’ Antarctic headquarters, were drawn up during the Obama administration, but a further proposed cut of more than 10 percent in the 2021 budget places those rebuilding plans in jeopardy just as work is set to begin. Without modernization of McMurdo, which in its size and sophistication has long been the envy of other nations, the perception of America’s declining interest in Antarctica will grow.
China, long relegated to spectator status in Antarctic affairs, stands to gain the most. With four Antarctic stations already, China is now in the advanced planning stages for a fifth station—this one to be located in the heart of “downtown” Antarctica, on an island in the Ross Sea adjacent to McMurdo. The image of a rusting, outdated American station alongside a gleaming, state-of-the-art Chinese facility will communicate more clearly than a hundred polar policy papers the reality of the power transfer already under way in Antarctica, where China’s investments in icebreakers, communications hardware, and station infrastructure dwarfs that of other nations, including the United States.
China's 35th Antarctic expedition sends 37 members of two inland expedition teams to the Kunlun and Taishan stations in Antarctica Dec. 18, 2018.
(Xinhua News Agency / Getty Images)
The French, British, and American expeditions of the 1840s sailed south in the hope of discovering a Terra Australis laden with mineral treasures, only to find towering glaciers and deathly cold. A couple of centuries later, it’s China that is determined to reap Antarctica’s mineral riches.
As the northern ice melts, the Arctic Ocean is already the scene of international jockeying for mining rights. But as China scholar Anne-Marie Brady has documented extensively, Beijing views Antarctica as the last great terrestrialfrontier on Earth, hosting great deposits of coal, natural gas, precious minerals, added to plentiful fish stocks in the surrounding ocean and even vast freshwater reserves locked up in Antarctic ice. China intends to exploit the continent fully once the current Antarctic Treaty expires in 2048, if not sooner. With nations hungry for new sources of oil and mineral wealth, and China laying the groundwork for industrialization of the pole, the stakes for Antarctica couldn’t be higher.
An obvious irony looms over this new Antarctic rush. If Antarctic glaciers are already melting, and the consequent sea-level rise threatens to inundate coastal cities across the globe, why would any government make plans to exacerbate global warming by exploiting fossil fuel reserves in Antarctica? Will the 21stcentury end with oil fields in an ice-free Wilkes Land or strip-mining in the forested Transantarctic Mountains that are currently buried in ice? It seems outlandish, but this is exactly the future that Beijing’s plan could trigger, even if public pronouncements from China conform to the diplomatic polar language of international collaboration and disinterested scientific research.
As the nation with the greatest historical investment in Antarctica, the U.S. has the resources and authority to lead an international re-commitment to south polar conservation. By reaffirming its leadership role at the pole, America can ensure that the great game of the 21ar century does not repeat the mistakes of those of centuries prior, when the world’s pristine frontiers were fought over and ransacked with little thought for environmental damage, or for what future human generations might do once the last wilderness on Earth melts away.
SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, got its start in a still unidentified animal source before making its hop into humans. Now, as the outbreak continues to grow, experts are beginning to worry that the virus may be poised to make yet another devastating cross-species jump into some of our closest living relatives, including gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees.
Already threatened by rampant habitat destruction, poaching and other illnesses, these and other great ape species could be further imperiled by the new virus, which swept across the global human population, sickening hundreds of thousands—and likely more—in a matter of weeks. Though no non-human primates have yet been diagnosed with COVID-19, a team of researchers has put out an impassioned plea for enhanced protections for our kin to forestall such a crisis, Damian Carrington reports for the Guardian.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is a critical situation for humans, our health and our economies,” Thomas Gillespie of Emory University, who recently wrote a letter to the journal Nature detailing the risks of the ape-human infection interface, tells the Guardian. “It’s also a potentially dire situation for great apes. There is a lot at stake for those in danger of extinction.”
Members of the great ape group, which includes humans, share a great deal of genetic material and anatomy, making them susceptible to several of the same diseases. In some cases, symptoms present similarly across species. But in other cases, pathogens that typically spark mild illnesses in humans can be lethal to other great apes.
For these transmission events to happen, two species have to come into close contact, exchanging the bodily fluids that pathogens tend to travel in, such as droplets produced from the airway through sneezes and coughs. Such encounters are rare, but as humans continue to encroach on wild habitats and tour their forested homes for recreation or research, the risks have grown. In 2008, researchers documented the first direct evidence of a virus passing from humans into wild apes; eight years later, another hop happened involving a relative of SARS-CoV-2, specifically with a coronavirus known to cause the common cold.
Species such as the Tapanuli orangutan, an Indonesian great ape whose numbers severely dwindled, could be brought “even closer to extinction” by an unexpected viral outbreak, Serge Wich of Liverpool John Moores University tells Helen Briggs at BBC News.
Under typical circumstances, national parks that are home to wild ape populations will instate distance requirements to keep humans from infecting or otherwise harming animals. But these rules are often broken—sometimes by the humans, and sometimes by the apes, Ugandan conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka tells Rodney Muhumuza at the Associated Press.
To minimize transmission during the pandemic, some experts advocate for a halt to “great ape trekking tours, research and habituation activities,” conservationist Arend de Haas writes for the Conversation. “Ecotourism is vital to the long-term conservation of endangered animals. But in the longer term, a ban would protect the great apes as well the ecotourism operations.”
Already, many national parks have closed to patrons. In some cases, this could amount to a pyrrhic victory—if, for instance, patrols are no longer able to keep poachers out of ape habitats—and the losses in tourist revenue have many officials worried about the future of conservation-focused establishments, according to the Associated Press. Researchers also don’t yet have a sense what symptoms—if any—other apes might experience if SARS-CoV-2 is indeed able to infiltrate their bodies.
But as Susan Sheward of Orangutan Appeal UK tells the Guardian, amidst a global crisis, transferring this deadly virus to our vulnerable kin “is a risk that we cannot [afford to] take.”
It’s important to talk with children about the pandemic, but knowing how to go about it can be tricky. In this post, the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center shares its approach to talking to young children about difficult and complex topics.
State Age-Appropriate Facts
Regardless of age, you should share the facts about COVID-19. Children naturally begin to fill in the blanks if you don’t share information with them and they often begin to build a narrative that can be scarier than reality.
What Does "Age Appropriate" Mean?
As an educator or caregiver, you have a sense of what your children can handle. Think ahead about what you want to say to them if you can and remain positive (see below). Don’t dodge their questions, but also don’t add a lot of detail on top of what they are asking. Be clear about what questions children have, they don’t always know how to articulate their concerns, so it’s helpful to restate their questions to ensure you are on the same page.
Reassure Children
Children, even tweens and teens, need to feel safe. For younger children, it is helpful to point out that there are a lot of community helpers who are involved in keeping us safe and healthy right now. The very fact that we are all staying home is something that will help lessen the spread of the virus. For older children, you can share additional facts or try to focus on how communities are coming together to support each other.
Empower Children
Feeling in control is important even for very young children. Explain to them that we all have a part in this and that their role is good hygiene. Establish new hand washing routines in your home/school, children love visual schedules or reminders. Posting photos of when and how to hand wash can be very effective. We’ve all been told to sing the “Happy Birthday” song, but why not mix it up and find different songs. Come up with new ways of showing love that might not involve hugging or kissing, like a funny dance. Make them feel in charge and coming up with creative approaches can go a long way for young children.
For older children, you may want to speak more about their responsibility to older generations and how social distancing is one way that we are keeping people safe. If you have the resources, think about other ways you can support your community. Maybe it’s making a meal to bring to a neighbor or sharing on social media about where families can get meals while schools are closed.
Monitor Media
Limiting and monitoring what your children are exposed to regarding COVID-19 is important. You may not think they are listening to the news program you have on or that conversation you are having with a spouse, but they are. Be mindful of time, access and the messages you are sending.
Extra Care
Children of all ages need extra care right now. Depending on your child’s personality and age, take time to check-in with them and show a little extra affection. Understand, too, that a child’s behavior might change during this time because of stress. As caregivers, we want to show some additional patience and latitude.
Dealing With Stress
As adults, our instinct is to protect our children. Realistically, though we are not going to be able to shield children entirely from the anxiety of the COVID-19 situation. As adults, our role it to model healthy behavior. Think about how your family, your classroom and your community can combat stress. Physical exercise (outdoors if possible), creative outlets like journaling, cooking or drawing and mindful habits like meditating or quiet reading can help feed the soul.
Recommended resources:
The Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center (SEEC), founded in 1988, is a model early childhood program that utilizes the Smithsonian's vast collections as the foundation for its curriculum. In addition to its school, SEEC serves the broader community through family programs and educator workshops.
This system is meant to unlock the full potential of satellite data
Raytheon has developed a prototype system for managing the floods of satellite data that help generate warnings and intelligence information for combatants and eventually, civilian first responders and researchers.
The U.S. government’s global satellite network produces a constant flood of data — petabytes and petabytes of it every day.
“The U.S. has more than 350 satellites in space right now, doing everything from monitoring weather patterns, providing GPS signals, collecting intelligence and relaying communications. That doesn’t even include the hundreds of commercial satellites operated by U.S. companies,” said Ted Glusko, vice president for C2, Space and Intelligence at Raytheon. “We need to make sure we’re able to make use of all the information those satellites are collecting.”
Raytheon is working with the U.S. Air Force on a prototype system to manage the massive amounts of satellite data, developed as part of a $197 million contract to upgrade the service’s missile-warning architecture.
The Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution Mission Data Processing Application Framework — FORGE MDPAF for short — will process Overhead Persistent Infrared satellite data from both the U.S. Air Force’s evolving Space Based Infrared System constellation and the future Next Gen OPIR constellation, as well as be capable of processing data from other civil and environmental sensors.
The goal: generate warnings, awareness and intelligence information for combatants and eventually, civilian first responders and researchers.
“FORGE will open up access to data,” said Karen Casey, a Raytheon engineering fellow leading the system’s development. “For missile-warning information, we’ll have a platform available for every security level. But we’ll also have apps for fire detection, early warnings of volcanic activity, agricultural changes and electric power consumption, to name a few.”
Different applications will allow FORGE, an advanced, data-processing framework, to process specific types of data.
“The FORGE platform operates much like a smartphone; it doesn’t do a lot without all the apps,” said Jabari Loving, a Raytheon FORGE systems engineer. “Since FORGE will be a Department of Defense-owned system, all applications will be highly vetted using the DoD’s most stringent cybersecurity certification standards. Raytheon, in turn, will provide the framework.”
Raytheon’s FORGE technology has been tested with data from SBIRS, the company’s satellite-based Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite and ground radar. It’s also been built to the latest cyber and information security standards.
The primary mission of the framework will be to issue missile warnings to the Pentagon and National Command Authority. But the system has obvious civilian applications.
“OPIR is a very advanced heat-signature detector,” Loving said. “If FORGE was hosting a first-responder application, it could actually see things like forest fires just as they start.’”
FORGE is being developed using a DevOps pipeline process to write and install new applications as new missions are added.
The closet comparison to the FORGE framework is Global Positioning System, which started out as a military system, but is now a critical service much of the world relies on.
“FORGE could really play the same kind of role,” said Glusko. “GPS is something all of us pretty much use every day.”
Local community involvement is vital in efforts to raise water levels to help restore Indonesia's tropical peatlands, a new study has found.
Unspoilt peatlands act as a carbon sink and play an important role in reducing global carbon emissions. They are also a crucial habitat for many birds and animals, including endangered species such as orang-utans and tigers.
Draining peatland for farming destroys habitats and causes the peat to emit the carbon it once stored. The dry land also becomes prone to fire -- leading to increased carbon emissions and a threat to the lives of many species including humans.
The study, led by researchers at the University of York, interviewed people involved in work to conserve and restore Indonesia's 15 million hectares of peatland -- more than half of which has been drained and converted to cropland.
The international team, which included researchers from Jambi University and the Indonesia Soil Research Institute, gained the views of scientists, charities, and government officials. All participants agreed that getting support from local communities and raising water levels were key to successful restoration.
Lead author of the study, Dr Caroline Ward from the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York, said: "While many peatlands in Indonesia have been drained for large palm oil plantations, many hectares have also been drained for local smallholders and farmers to grow crops on.
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"Many of these local people have no other option but to use the land in this way. Efforts need to be made across all stakeholders involved in peatland restoration to provide people with an alternative source of income or a crop which can be farmed in a more sustainable way."
Restoring drained peatland involves a process of "re-wetting" where canals draining water away are blocked or filled in.
Professor Lindsay Stringer from the University of Leeds commented that "rewetting brings the water table closer to the surface, so this makes it less likely that the peatlands will catch fire. Rewetting is often used together with revegetation and revitalisation to improve the overall peatland condition."
Professor Jane Hill, project leader at the University of York, commented that "restoration of peatlands to prevent fires has huge benefits for local communities and preventing forest fires is vital for conserving wildlife."
Dr Ward added that "Tropical peatland restoration is really important to reducing global carbon emissions.
"Our study highlights that while everyone agrees that restoration of peatland is crucial, there is no consensus on how this should be achieved and how much progress has been made to date.
"We need to gather an evidence base urgently, and establish better ways of collaborating and sharing information between different groups."
The increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere does not compensate the negative effect of greenhouse gas-induced climate change on trees: The more extreme drought and heat become, the less do trees profit from the increased supply with carbon dioxide in terms of carbon metabolism and water use efficiency. This finding was obtained by researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) when studying Aleppo pines. Their study is reported in New Phytologist.
Due to greenhouse gas-induced climate change, trees are increasingly exposed to extreme drought and heat. The question of how the increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere influences physiological reaction of the trees under climate stress, however, is highly controversial. Carbon dioxide is known to be the main nutrient of plants. By photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates and biomass. Periods of drought and heat, however, increase the stress level of the trees. Their roots have difficulties reaching the water. To reduce evaporation losses, trees close the stomata of their leaves, as a result of which they take up less CO2 from the air.
These relationships have now been studied in more detail by the Plant Ecophysiology Lab of the Atmospheric Environmental Research Division of KIT's Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-IFU), KIT's Campus Alpine in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Together with scientists of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the University of Vienna, and Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot/Israel, KIT researchers studied the impact of an increased CO2 concentration on carbon metabolism and water use efficiency of Aleppo pines (pinus halepensis) under drought and heat.
As reported by the researchers in New Phytologist, they cultivated Aleppo pines from seeds under atmospheric as well as under a significantly increased CO2 concentration (421 ppm and 867 ppm). The one-and-a-half year old trees were then either watered well or left dry for a month. Then, they were planted into high-tech plant chambers and exposed to temperatures gradually increasing from 25°C to 40°C over a period of ten days. During this period, the scientists continuously measured gas and water exchange of the trees and analyzed vital metabolic products.
The findings of the study: An increased CO2 concentration reduced water loss of the trees and increased their water use efficiency under increasing heat load. Net carbon uptake, however, decreased considerably. In addition, heat adversely affected metabolic properties of the trees, while metabolism hardly profited from the increased CO2 supply. The main positive effect observed was an increased stability of root proteins. "Overall, the impact of the increased CO2 concentration on stress reactions of the trees was rather moderate. With increasing heat and drought, it decreased considerably," summarizes Dr. Nadine Rühr, Head of the Plant Ecophysiology Lab of IMK-IFU. "From this, we conclude that the increasing CO2 concentration of the atmosphere cannot compensate the stress of the trees resulting from extreme climate conditions."
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