Paywall Exclude – Newswire Report

The Race to Get Convalescent Plasma to Covid-19 Patients

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 NewsEditorcoronavirus, COVID-19, Health, Hospitals, medicine, Paywall Exclude, science, WIRED Free Access

One morning a few weeks ago, Rebecca Haley realized that her job had changed. Haley is the medical director for blood collection at Bloodworks Northwest, a nonprofit that serves 90 hospitals in the Pacific Northwest. But, Haley decided, regular blood and platelet donations weren’t the focus anymore. Like thousands of blood centers across the country, Bloodworks needed to collect something new: plasma from Covid-19 survivors. How Long Does the Coronavirus Live on Surfaces? Plus: What it means to “flatten the curve,” and everything else you need to know about the…

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PopSockets Pop-Up Phone Grips Are on Sale for $5

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 NewsEditordeals, Paywall Exclude, phones, shopping

Have you ever seen a round disc emblazoned with a splashy logo jutting out from the back of a friend's smartphone? Maybe they use it to stabilize their selfies, or maybe the kids like to play with it, popping it up and down incessantly. I'm talking about PopSockets grips, the omnipresent grips adhered to millions of phones around the world. PopSocket phone grips are popular for good reason. They're easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and undeniably useful. As WIRED put it back in 2018, PopSocket grips are life-changing. They're also…

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The New Math Bridge Beyond Fermats Last Theorem

April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 NewsEditor_syndication_noshow, math, Paywall Exclude, physics, quanta magazine

When Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in the early 1990s, his proof was hailed as a monumental step forward not just for mathematicians but for all of humanity. The theorem is simplicity itself—it posits that x n + yn = zn has no positive whole-number solutions when n is greater than 2. Yet this simple claim tantalized legions of would-be provers for more than 350 years, ever since the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat jotted it down in 1637 in the margin of a copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica. Fermat,…

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Why Some States Are Resisting Social Distancing Measures

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 NewsEditorcoronavirus, COVID-19, Paywall Exclude, public health, states, WIRED Free Access

Alabama hospitals were more than 630 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the state, more than 100 of whom were hospitalized, and dozens of patients on ventilators. Read all of our coronavirus coverage here. Her own lieutenant governor disagreed. The day before, Will Ainsworth “One thing that this outbreak reminds us of is that infectious diseases observe no borders—and that's true if they’re international borders, state borders, or county lines for that matter,” said Ben Lopman, a professor of epidemiology and environmental health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. “At…

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The Mathematics of Predicting the Course of the Coronavirus

March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 NewsEditorcoronavirus, COVID-19, epidemiology, modeling, Paywall Exclude, WIRED Free Access

In the past few days, New York City’s hospitals have become unrecognizable. Thousands of patients sick with the novel coronavirus have swarmed into emergency rooms and intensive care units. From 3,000 miles away in Seattle, as Lisa Brandenburg watched the scenes unfold—isolation wards cobbled together in lobbies, nurses caring for Covid-19 patients in makeshift trash bag gowns, refrigerated mobile morgues idling on the street outside—she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: “That could be us.” It could be, if the models are wrong. Until this past week, Seattle had been the…

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Where Did Plants Come From? This Ancient Algae Offers Clues

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 NewsEditorBiology, Earth Science, Evolution, Nature, Paywall Exclude, quanta magazine

Around 500 million years ago—when the Earth was already a ripe 4 billion years old—the first green plants appeared on dry land. Precisely how this occurred is still one of the big mysteries of evolution. Before then, terrestrial land was home only to microbial life. The first green plants to find their way out of the water were not the soaring trees or even the little shrubs of our present world. They were most likely soft and mossy, with shallow roots and few of the adaptations they would later evolve…

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The Nonprofits and Companies Helping to Fight the Pandemic

March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 NewsEditorCharity, coronavirus, COVID-19, free, Paywall Exclude, shopping

It’s been a tough few weeks for everyone. At times, it can feel like the world is unraveling. Whether you’re dealing with sickness, social distancing, working from home for the first time, and/or trying to homeschool kids, it isn’t easy. We all want to get back to normal. We don’t know when that will be, and what normal will look like, but we wanted to point out a few of the organizations, companies, and brands (big and small) that are chipping in to help. While the government has been struggling…

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A Star’s Auroras Light the Way to a New Exoplanet

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 NewsEditorPaywall Exclude, quanta magazine

Jupiter’s moon Io—the solar system’s most volcanic world—has inspired a new way to find distant exoplanets. As the moon orbits Jupiter, it tugs on the planet’s magnetic field, generating bright auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Even if we couldn’t see Io itself, the enormous auroras, pulsing to the beat of a hidden orbiting body, would tell us that something was out there. Original story reprinted with permission from Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and…