Evan Tang Elder Moderator | Wed Aug 19, 2020 | 11:04 AM | Likes: 1 

Is Voting by Mail Safe and Fair?

Categories: General | Pubby Cash Received:  0

Numerous states within the U.S. may begin to be utilizing mail-in voting for the 2020 election. Mail-in voting is sending your votes instead of voting at polling places. Since polling places are extremely crowded, this could increase the possibility of getting the Coronavirus, which is a life-threatening virus that could potentially annihilate people. However, mail-in voting still has many serious problems though. Some of these problems are that some votes might be blocked or misplaced. Also, dishonesty could become easier, so many Americans may not believe the results of the election. Since many people do not do mail-in voting, there may be many concerns and challenges. For example, some states do not have the time to set up a vote by mail system or some people do not know the rules of voting by mail system. The 2020 elections are coming up very soon, so how do you think voting will work? Well, that is it for this article and I hope you learned something new....  Read more

Evan Tang Elder Moderator | Tue Aug 18, 2020 | 10:57 AM | Likes: 1 

The First Pictures of a Black Hole

Categories: General | Pubby Cash Received:  0

Notwithstanding this initial period, experts possess some pictures of black holes. A black hole is a range of tremendous gravitational strength which is a variety of infinite abyss within space. Anything that becomes extremely close is consumed by its gravity which not even light can avoid. A distinct photograph presents an immense black hole and is approximately 54 million light-years away from Earth. It remains at the focus of the tremendous M87 galaxy. The image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) which is not a single telescope but rather, it is a group of eight telescopes that achieve contemporaneously. The new picture shows the boundary between light and dark around a black hole and the area is named the event horizon. In April 2017, EHT astronomers on four continents worked together to take pictures of M87 while spending five days taking pictures and two years studying what they had. The work often seemed endless but finally, they found it a black hole! Well, that's all for this article and I hope you learned something new....  Read more

H2O Member | Tue Aug 18, 2020 | 12:37 AM | Likes: 1 

What Can I Do on COVID-19?

Categories: Tech, Education | Pubby Cash Received:  0

I have participated in two meetings on soliciting COVID-19 research ideas hosted by the IUP research institute and the Indiana Borough. There appears to be a national campaign on exploring wastewater epidemiology - quantification of COVID-19 viruses (i.e. SARS-COV-2 virus) in wastewater and projection of infected people in a community. And the meetings are all about it. I highly doubt this is feasible: (1) There are concentration problems when wastewater samples are processed for viruses (Calgua et al. 2020). This is not like laboratory reagent water isolation. The environmental applications, especially in wastewater matrix, are quite complicated; (2) Even if some viruses are successfully discovered from a wastewater sample, the results from the current real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) technology give RNA copies with a sensitivity as low as 5 RNA copies per reaction. It is not the count of infectious live viruses, but the non-infectious dead viruses. Such data will lead to over-estimation of the infected people if improperly interpreted; (3) Scientists have reported PCR inhibition problems during detection of the SARS-COV-2 virus (Kitajima et al. 2020). All of these above-mentioned problems will make the sensitivity and reliability of SARS-COV-2 quantification an issue. For a reliable control, another virus that is expected not present in the wastewater could be spiked into the sample, and go through the same concentration, isolation, and PCR processes as the target SARS-COV-2 virus. Enteric viruses such as murine norovirus and mengovirus, which are both single-stranded RNA viruses like the SARS-COV-2, could serve as the spike virus, but none of studies has investigated this so far. As far as what I could contribute to this kind of pandemic-related research problems with my expertise, I mentioned in the meetings a possible approach of exploring presence/absence test kits for wastewater SARS-COV-2 quick testing, expand the testing capability at different campus buildings and different time periods, and utilizing such data to obtain useful information. However, as I have been doing further research on such preliminary idea, it does not seem possible at current stage, as there is no established protocols on such test for SARS-COV-2, even for the viral surrogates. The training and protection of student workers for sampling wastewater are also an issue during the pandemic. Thus, I've decided to move on towards other plans. As my literature research goes on deeper and deeper, I've found tons of published papers on COVID-19 in the environmental field coming out just in the past 4-5 months and it is very important I don't miss such a opportunity of filling these huge and numerous research gaps at current stage. Combining with my expertise, I'm thinking of (1) figuring out the unit water or wastewater treatment processes for additional log reduction of viruses. This would be a literature study based on the published data on viral inactivation kinetics during different types of experimental conditions; and (2) conducting a computational analysis based on the global, national, and regional data. The machine learning techniques can be used in this case for projection and interpretation...  Read more

Evan Tang Elder Moderator | Mon Aug 17, 2020 | 10:41 AM | Likes: 2 

How to Wash Your Hands Properly

Categories: General | Pubby Cash Received:  0

The two varieties of bacteria that exist on our hands are resident bacteria, which are infrequently implicated in infection and are suitable for the skin. And transient bacteria, which we pick up on our fingertips when we brush surfaces. The latter are the individuals that we require to eliminate. Washing your hands should be a habit whenever you use the toilet or before you eat. The fundamental step to cleaning hands is that you necessitate some soap and streaming water. Wet your hands while rubbing soap around your hands. Rub your palms together, then interlink your fingers and rub them together. Rubbing the hands together creates friction, which assassinates the bacteria and generates bubbles. The finishing step is to wipe your hands with a dry towel. Well, that is the proper way to wash hands, so stay safe....  Read more

Evan Tang Elder Moderator | Wed Aug 12, 2020 | 10:05 AM | Likes: 1 

You May not Need Ten Fingers to be a Good Typist

Categories: Tech | Pubby Cash Received:  0

Did you know that people are beginning to type nearly as quickly on a smartphone as they do on a conventional computer keyboard? Mobile people usually use two thumbs tho generate an average of about 38 words per minute. On the other hand, physical keyboard users can type around 51.56 per minute. Yet, the experts announced that the gap was not as gigantic as presumed. Mobile typists who use auto-correct happen to be speedier than those who use word-prediction accessories, according to research. Professors and scientists alike have questioned about long-term consequences as the smartphone has demanded an increasingly bigger piece of our interactions. Moreover, 10- to 19-year-olds type about 10 wpm quicker than people in their 40s do, notwithstanding whether the keyboard stayed on a smartphone or a computer. But, there are some trade-offs when it comes to writing on a smartphone since those competing in the research left more numerous flaws uncorrected. This may be because there is a higher interaction expense of editing slips on mobile accessories and the limited text editing techniques. Well, that is it for this article and I hope you learn something new....  Read more

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