Articles of the Week
Pubbies of the Week
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
Building a PC: Choosing the right keyboard
Categories: Tech | Pubby Cash Received: 0
The whole point of building that gaming PC was so you can effortlessly game using a mechanical keyboard. But which one should one buy? Razer makes good keyboards. Mechanical switches have always been superior for speed and accuracy, and before 2010, they were only used for typing – because they were made precisely for that purpose. Razer then made the radical decision to use mechanical switches for a gaming keyboard, and that birthed the world’s very first gaming mechanical keyboard, the Razer BlackWidow. Four years later, Razer redefined the limits of gaming performance by creating mechanical switches that were designed specifically to meet the demands of gaming - the Razer Mechanical Switch was born. You can find various switches out there, each marked with their unique feel and color. Razer has three distinct switches, notably the green, orange, and yellow. When you buy a Razer keyboard, you can choose which style you want. But the question now is which one do you want? The first type is the green switch. It can be classified as the classic. It's for those who want to feel and hear every keypress, the Razer Green Mechanical Switch features a tactile bump and distinctive click sound along with optimized actuation and resets points for best in class gaming and typing performance. Some people are confused with the term "tactile" when it comes to mechanical switches, but it's nothing more than that satisfying click each time your finger strikes a key. It's that button-like feeling. Next, we have the orange key. Silent, but deadly. the Razer Orange Mechanical Switch is for those who enjoy a tactile bump and feedback without the audible click. Enjoy the same optimized performance with less actuation force as a Razer Green Mechanical Switch, while maintaining a quiet gaming experience. For most people, the orange keys are the way to go. Finally, we have the yellow switches. You are looking at the fastest and quietest switch. Best for rapid-fire keypresses and fast-paced gaming, the Razer Yellow Mechanical Switch has an ultra-fast actuation of only 1.2mm, which allows you to press keys multiple times as fast as possible. There's some tactile feeling, but not much, as the keys sink when pressed. If you don't like the button-like feeling in the keyboards, you should get the yellow switches. ... Read more
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
The Five Second Rule?
Categories: General | Pubby Cash Received: 0
Have you ever heard of something called the five-second rule? Well, investigations seem to confirm what every 12-year-old knows: If you drop food on the ground, you have five seconds until it becomes infected. Biology undergraduates at Aston University in Birmingham, England, experimented with the time-honored five-second rule and declare to have discovered some fact to it. Operating under the control of microbiology educator Anthony Hilton, the scholars left toast, pasta, cookies, and sticky candy on the floor for three to thirty seconds, according to knowledge published on the university's website March tenth. The bacteria, they resolved, do a rather lousy job at moving from floor to food, particularly if the food isn't given enough time to be a target. The variety of covering mattered too since bacteria were least probable to transfer from carpet and most expected to transfer from laminate or tile, the investigation uncovered. The study contradicts findings of earlier research at Clemson University, where scientists tested how fast Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria made their way from flooring surfaces to bologna and bread and it happened instantly, the researchers found. LeJeune, a professor and head of the Food Animal Health Research Program at the center, said eating food off the floor violates pretty much every recommended method for preventing food-borne illnesses. And scientists know from previous research that our floors are littered with nasty organisms that can make us sick, even in homes where the occupants have been educated about proper cleaning, he said. Well, that is it for this article and I hope you enjoyed it.... Read more
A Robotic Hand Learned to Solve a Rubik's Cube on its Own
Categories: Tech | Pubby Cash Received: 0
Solving a Rubik's Cube is hard enough for most people, and solving a Rubik's Cube with one hand is even harder. But what about designing a lone robot hand capable of solving a Rubik's Cube all by itself? Researchers at OpenAI — a popular San Francisco-based analysis lab focused on advancing benevolent artificial intelligence — announced that they'd done just that, introducing a new robotics benchmark in an era of increasingly sophisticated, intelligent instruments. To solve a Rubik's Cube, you require unprecedented dexterity and the ability to execute flawlessly or recover from mistakes successfully for a long period. Even for humans, solving a Rubik's Cube is not easy, because there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to mix it up. For ages presently, researchers have continued programming robots to solve Rubik's Cubes as instantly as possible. But more recently, in July, the University of California at Irvine proclaimed that an artificial intelligence system solved a Rubik's Cube in just over a second, surpassing the current human world record by more than two seconds. Highly experienced individuals can tackle a Rubik's Cube in approximately 50 movements, but the AI system can solve the cube in about 20 moves, usually in the minimum number of steps possible, researchers said. The narrator says that the hope is to build robots that can do many different tasks to increase the standard of living and give everybody a better life. Well, that's it for this article and I hope you learned something new.... Read more