The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Thursday that it's begun enrolling participants in a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. The Hill reports: The first participants have enrolled in the trial at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. The study will be conducted by the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. According to the NIH, the blinded, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial aims to enroll more than 500 adults who are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, or who are in an emergency department with anticipated hospitalization.

Participants will be randomly assigned to receive 400 mg of hydroxychloroquine twice daily for two doses (day one), then 200 mg twice daily for the subsequent eight doses (days two through five) or a placebo twice daily for five days. Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid conditions such as arthritis. However, its effectiveness at treating COVID-19 has never been proven, despite its embrace by President Trump. The evidence on hydroxychloroquine is conflicting, at best. NIH scientists said urgent clinical evidence is needed. Even so, the study is not estimated to be completed until July 2021.

A rare hole has opened up in the ozone layer above the Arctic, in what scientists say is the result of unusually low temperatures in the atmosphere above the north pole. From a report: The hole, which has been tracked from space and the ground over the past few days, has reached record dimensions, but is not expected to pose any danger to humans unless it moves further south. If it extends further south over populated areas, such as southern Greenland, people would be at increased risk of sunburn. However, on current trends the hole is expected to disappear altogether in a few weeks. Low temperatures in the northern polar regions led to an unusual stable polar vortex, and the presence of ozone-destroying chemicals such as chlorine and bromine in the atmosphere -- from human activities -- caused the hole to form. "The hole is principally a geophysical curiosity," said Vincent-Henri Peuch, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. "We monitored unusual dynamic conditions, which drive the process of chemical depletion of ozone. [Those dynamics] allowed for lower temperatures and a more stable vortex than usual over the Arctic, which then triggered the formation of polar stratospheric clouds and the catalytic destruction of ozone."

The number of deaths linked to the coronavirus worldwide has passed 100,000 as known infections surged past 1.6 million, according to data collected by The New York Times. From a report: At least 177 countries have reported cases. The most recent was war-torn Yemen, which reported its first coronavirus case on Friday. The death toll in the United States has surpassed that of Spain, with almost 18,000 fatalities related to the virus reported by Friday afternoon. Only Italy has reported more deaths. Although some governments are considering easing restrictions, lockdowns are being extended across much of the world heading into the Easter weekend, and policing measures stepped up. Tokyo's governor parted ways with Japan's national government by requesting the closure of a range of businesses -- including nightclubs, karaoke bars, gyms and movie theaters -- during a state of emergency declared this week.

Engineering teams at Apple and Google have banded together to create a decentralized contact tracing tool that will help individuals determine whether they have been exposed to someone with COVID-19. From a report: Contact tracing is a useful tool that helps public health authorities track the spread of the disease and inform the potentially exposed so that they can get tested. It does this by identifying and 'following up with' people who have come into contact with a COVID-19 affected person. The first phase of the project is an API that public health agencies can integrate into their own apps. The next phase is a system level contact tracing system that will work across iOS and Android devices on an opt-in basis. The system uses on-board radios on your device to transmit an anonymous ID over short ranges -- using Bluetooth beaconing. Servers relay your last 14 days of rotating IDs to other devices which search for a match. A match is determined based on a threshold of time spent and distance maintained between two devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A global group of scientists and lawyers announced their efforts to make their intellectual property free for use by others working on coronavirus pandemic relief efforts -- and urged others to do the same -- as part of the "Open Covid Pledge." Mozilla, Creative Commons, and Intel are among the founding members of this effort; Intel contributed to the pledge by opening up its portfolio of over 72,000 patents, according to a press release. Participants are asked to publicly take the pledge by announcing it on their own websites and issuing a press release.

"Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat those it has affected," the pledge states. "It is a practical and moral imperative that every tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy technologies on a massive scale without impediment. We therefore pledge to make our intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease." From there, people and companies are asked to adopt a license detailing the terms and conditions their intellectual property will be available; while pledgers are permitted to write their own license based on their needs, the organizers wrote "Open COVID License 1.0" as a template for immediate use, which grants usage rights to anyone working toward "minimizing the impact of the disease, including without limitation the diagnosis, prevention, containment, and treatment of the COVID-19 Pandemic." The license is effective until one year after the World Health Organization declares the pandemic to be over. Other participants include Berkeley and UCSF's Innovative Genomics Institute, Fabricatorz Foundation, and United Patents.

A team of Clemson University College of Science researchers, in collaboration with international colleagues, has reported the first definitive detection of a relativistic jet emerging from two colliding galaxies -- in essence, the first photographic proof that merging galaxies can produce jets of charged particles that travel at nearly the speed of light. Phys.Org reports: The paper is titled "TXS 2116-077: A gamma-ray emitting relativistic jet hosted in a galaxy merger." In addition to Paliya, who is now at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, the other Clemson authors include associate professor Marco Ajello, professor Dieter Hartmann, and adjunct professor Stefano Marchesi of the department of physics and astronomy. The fact that the jet is so young enabled the researchers to clearly see its host. According to Ajello, others have already imaged galactic collisions many times. But he and his colleagues are the first to capture two galaxies merging where there is a fully formed jet pointing at us -- albeit, a very young one, and thus not yet bright enough to blind us.

Jets were thought to be born from older, elliptical-shaped galaxies with an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is a super-massive black hole that resides at its center. As a point of reference, scientists believe all galaxies have centrally located super-massive black holes, but not all of them are AGNs. For example, our Milky Way's massive black hole is dormant. Scientists theorize that the AGNs grow larger by gravitationally drawing in gas and dust through a process called accretion. But not all of this matter gets accreted into the black hole. Some of the particles become accelerated and are spewed outward in narrow beams in the form of jets. Ajello believes that the team's image captured the two galaxies, a Seyfert 1 galaxy known as TXS 2116-077 and another galaxy of similar mass, as they were colliding for the second time because of the amount of gas seen in the image. The findings have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

jmcbain writes: In many societies, handshakes are a gesture of friendliness. How many times have you shaken hands when meeting new engineering professionals? Probably quite a lot. However, given what we've seen with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, it's time for a new way to greet people. According to a CNBC article, Anthony Fauci, the head advisor of the USA's task force on the coronavirus, says "I don't think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you. Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease, it probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country." Other scientists agree with Fauci. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group has been trying to put an end to handshakes for nearly three decades. He suggests tilting or bowing your head to greet another person like people did many decades ago. "When men greeted other people [back in the day], they raised tor tipped their hat," he says. Bruce Farber, chief of infectious diseases at Northwell Health in New York, thinks Americans need to start implementing other ways to great each other "like [with] a head bob or wave of a hand. This act would maintain proper distance, avoid contact and potential spread of COVID-19," Farber says.

Peter Pitts, former FDA associate commissioner, says shaking hands transmits germs and viruses "as swiftly as kissing and hugging" and until we develop a vaccine against COVID-19, the new normal will have to be "verbal greetings and long-sleeved elbow bumps." He adds: "The social theme song for right now is 'I wanna, but better not, hold your hand.' Love doesn't conquer all."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available. In the Philadelphia suburbs, Montgomery County has a drive-through site that has tested 250 people a day since March 21. "It has been a very successful site. We are hoping by the time it closes Friday afternoon that we will have tested a little over 5,000 individuals," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, who chairs the commission in the county of more than 825,000 people. Arkoosh says the site, located on a local college campus, will shut down Friday. Similar announcements have been made in Colorado Springs, Colo., and nearby Philadelphia.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells NPR, "Many of the Community-Based Testing Sites (CBTS) are not closing, but rather transitioning to state-managed sites on or about April 10." The agency and a spokesperson for FEMA say the CBTS program originally included 41 sites. It was intended as a stop-gap to bring testing to critical locations, especially for health care facility workers and first responders. "The transition will ensure each state has the flexibility and autonomy to manage and operate testing sites within the needs of their specific community and to prioritize resources where they are needed the most," the HHS spokesperson said.

Foxconn's Wisconsin plant, the controversial recipient of billions of dollars in tax subsidies and the focus of several investigations, will produce ventilators with medical device firm Medtronic. From a report: The partnership was announced by Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak in an interview with CNBC, who said that Foxconn will be manufacturing ventilators based on its PB-560 design in the next four to six weeks. Foxconn's Wisconsin plant was first announced way back in 2017 as a $10 billion LCD factory. It was labeled the "eighth wonder of the world" by President Trump, but Foxconn's plans for the site appear to have changed repeatedly over the years. At various points, Foxconn has said that it would build a smaller LCD factory, no factory at all, or that it would produce other items like a robot coffee kiosk. Now, it appears the factory will, in part at least, produce ventilators, after its planned opening next month.

"Soil gets its characteristic earthy smell from certain chemicals produced primarily by soil-dwelling bacteria called Streptomyces," reports New Scientist. But as for why these bacteria produce these odors, researchers at the Swedish University of Agriculture Science in Alnarp discovered that the smell seems to attract invertebrates that help the bacteria disperse their spores. From the report: Paul Becher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp and his colleagues set up field traps in woodland containing colonies of Streptomyces. They thought that the smell may act as a signal to other organisms that they are poisonous, because some bacteria like Streptomyces can be toxic. Instead, the smell -- which comes from gases released by Streptomyces, including geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) -- seems to attract invertebrates that help the bacteria disperse their spores. Becher and his team found that springtails -- tiny cousins of insects -- that feed on Streptomyces were drawn to the traps containing the bacterial colonies, but weren't drawn to control traps that didn't contain Streptomyces. By comparison, insects and arachnids weren't attracted to the traps containing Streptomyces. The findings have been reported in the journal Nature Microbiology.

NASA has selected a lunar-crater radio telescope idea to receive funding through its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency announced on Tuesday. The Phase I award goes to projects in very early stages of development. CNET reports: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the mind behind the moon dream. Making it happen would require sending robots to the far side of the moon and using the machines to deploy a wire mesh over a crater. Bandyopadhyay's proposal lists the benefits of locating a telescope on the far side of the moon, including that "the moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the lunar-surface telescope from radio interferences/noises from Earth-based sources, ionosphere, Earth-orbiting satellites, and sun's radio-noise during the lunar night."

The moon telescope project is one of 23 concepts that received part of a $7 million investment through NIAC. The Phase I award consists of $125,000 to fund a nine-month study of the idea. Other concepts include investigating solar sails, lunar landing pads and a robotic explorer for Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA pointed out that these projects will mostly require a decade or more of technology development, and that they are not official NASA missions.

Tekla Perry writes: In 2001, a rapid, easy-to-use, PCR-based testing system for biological testing was still in prototype form when letters containing anthrax spores started arriving in the mailboxes of journalists and senators. Its creators at startup Cepheid quickly adapted it to test for anthrax, and now it is used to run that test as part of U.S. mail sorting systems. The tool, now called GeneXpert, is also installed in health care facilities around the world. And cartridges to allow these systems to test for COVID-19 -- the first rapid such test approved in the U.S. -- are rolling out. The technology relies on microfluidics, and takes about 45 minutes to run an extremely accurate and sensitive test. Cepheid co-founder Kurt Petersen, now an angel investor, explains how it works. "The test cartridge contains microfluidic channels; these are made out of plastic using high-precision injection molding," explains Petersen. "All the chemicals needed for the process are stored in chambers within the system. In the center of the cartridge, a rotary valve turns to open different pathways, while a tiny plunger -- like a syringe -- moves fluids in and out as needed.

So, the plunger pulls the sample into the center, the valve rotates, and the plunger pushes it into another region of the cartridge to do an operation on it. The system can do that multiple times, moving the sample to different regions with different chemicals, extracting RNA, mixing it with the reverse transcriptase that synthesizes complementary DNA that matches the RNA, and eventually pushing it into PCR reaction tube, where rapid heating and cooling speeds up the process of copying the DNA. Each new copy of the DNA gets a fluorescent molecule attached, which allows an optical system to determine whether or not the targeted gene sequence is in the sample."

According to a study published Monday by the CDC, people in the United States under the age of 18 are far less likely to fall ill with COVID-19 or require intensive care, compared with older Americans. NPR reports: The study looked at about 149,000 infections for which age was known that were reported in the U.S. through April 2. Of those, 2,572 were among people under the age of 18. That's less than 2% of total cases, even though that age group makes up 22% of the U.S. population. The CDC cautions that most reports of coronavirus cases among children are incomplete, which adds uncertainty to the report's specific numbers.

Relatively few children with COVID-19 ended up in the hospital, and fewer still required intensive care. But hospitalization status was known in only 29% of cases involving children. Based on the partial data analyzed in this study, between 5.7% and 20% of sick children end up in the hospital, and 2% or fewer end up in intensive care, the paper says. For adults ages 18-64, the proportion hospitalized was between 10% and 33%, and 1.4% to 4.5% required intensive care. Hospital admission was most common with children under the age of 1 or young people with underlying health conditions, the CDC report says. The study observed three deaths among the population it covered. The authors conclude: "Because persons with asymptomatic and mild disease, including children, are likely playing a role in transmission and spread of COVID-19 in the community, social distancing and everyday preventive behaviors are recommended for persons of all ages to slow the spread of the virus, protect the health care system from being overloaded, and protect older adults and persons of any age with serious underlying medical conditions."

Last August, Slashdot reader bobstreo tipped us off to an interesting story where an astronaut accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station, in what may have been the first allegation of a crime committed in space. We have now learned that the spouse has been indicted on charges of lying to federal authorities. USA Today reports: Summer Worden, 44, made false statements to NASA's Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Trade Commission, according a statement from U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick. A federal jury in Houston returned the two-count indictment in late February, but it was unsealed Monday. Worden married Anne McClain, a decorated astronaut who was once set to be part of NASA's first all-female spacewalk, in 2014 and filed for divorce in 2018. In 2019, Worden filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming McClain had stolen her identity while on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, although she saw no signs anyone had moved or used funds in the account, The New York Times reported. Worden's parents brought a separate complaint to NASA's Office of the Inspector General that described a "highly calculated and manipulative campaign" designed to win custody of the couple's child.

Through her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, McClain told The Times she had accessed the account but said she did so to ensure that the family's finances were in order and that there was enough money in the account to care for their child, who was born a year before they met. She said she was never told to stop using the account and continued to use the same password she had throughout the relationship. The indictment says Worden maintained multiple accounts at USAA Federal Savings Bank and she shared access to those accounts "with a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army on detail to NASA's Johnson Space Center." She lied about when she opened the account that had allegedly been improperly accessed and when she reset her login credentials in a complaint filed with the FTC in March 19, 2019, according to the indictment. Worden also allegedly made another false statement in an interview with NASA's Office of the Inspector General in July. If Worden is convicted, she could face up to five years in prison on each count and a maximum fine of $250,000. She is expected to make an initial court appearance April 13.

What better way to celebrate World Health Day than by threatening to withhold funding for the World Health Organization. That's exactly what President Trump said he was considering today at Tuesday's coronavirus press briefing. The New York Times reports: "We're going to put a hold on money spent to the W.H.O.; we're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see," Mr. Trump said, accusing the organization of having not been aggressive enough in confronting the dangers from the virus. "They called it wrong. They call it wrong. They really they missed the call." Mr. Trump appeared to be particularly angry at the W.H.O. for issuing a statement saying it did not support his decision on Jan. 31 to restrict some travel from China because of the virus. At the time, the group issued a statement saying that "restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions."

"Don't close your borders to China, don't do this," Mr. Trump said, paraphrasing the group and accusing the organization of "not seeing" the outbreak when it started in Wuhan, China. "They didn't see it, how do you not see it? They didn't see it. They didn't report it. If they did see it, they must have seen it, but they didn't report." In fact, the W.H.O. repeatedly issued statements about the emergence of the virus in China and its movement around the world. The budget for the W.H.O. is about $5 billion and comes from member countries around the world. "In 2017, the last year for which figures were available, the United States was required to spend $111 million based on the organization's rules, but sent an additional $401 million in voluntary contributions," reports The New York Times.

Trump said his government will investigate the organization and that "we will look at ending funding." It's unclear if he's planning to eliminate all funding, or only some.

Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates. From a report: In an analysis of 3,080 counties in the United States, researchers at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in air known as PM 2.5 were associated with higher death rates from the disease. For weeks, public health officials have surmised a link between dirty air and death or serious illness from Covid-19, which is caused by the coronavirus. The Harvard analysis is the first nationwide study to show a statistical link, revealing a "large overlap" between Covid-19 deaths and other diseases associated with long-term exposure to fine particulate matter. "The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes," the authors wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime -- notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty -- allows the use of such resources. This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon and asteroid resources.

The new executive order makes things even more official, stressing that the United States does not view space as a "global commons" and sees a clear path to off-Earth mining, without the need for further international treaty-level agreements. The executive order, called "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources," has been in the works for about a year, a senior administration official said during a teleconference with reporters today. The order was prompted, at least in part, by a desire to clarify the United States' position as it negotiates with international partners to help advance NASA's Artemis program for crewed lunar exploration, the official added. (Engagement with international partners remains important, the official said.) "As America prepares to return humans to the moon and journey on to Mars, this executive order establishes U.S. policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage the commercial development of space," Scott Pace, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the U.S. National Space Council, said in a statement today.

Autonomous shuttles are being used to move COVID-19 tests from a Jacksonville, Florida testing site to a nearby Mayo Clinic processing location, in what the medical nonprofit is calling a "first" for the U.S. But as is often the case with autonomous vehicle pilot programs, there's a catch: during each run made to and from the clinic, the self-driving shuttles are being trailed by an SUV driven by a human. The Verge reports: The SUV can be spotted in a video released by the Mayo Clinic, after one of the Mayo Clinic workers loads the cooler of tests onto the self-driving shuttle. The SUV then follows the shuttle across the Mayo Clinic's campus, where the batch of fresh tests is swapped for another cooler. Four of these vehicles have made the same run back and forth each day since March 30th. In a statement provided to The Verge, Joe Moye, the CEO of autonomous vehicle operator Beep, said the Jacksonville Transportation Authority is providing the chase vehicles to "ensure no traffic or pedestrians would potentially impact the delivery path of the COVID-19 samples and supplies." That's despite the fact that the Mayo Clinic's press release says the routes the shuttles are running "are isolated from pedestrians, traffic and staff."

A representative for Beep, which worked with the Mayo Clinic, JTA, and self-driving shuttle builder Navya on the pilot, says that putting the tests in the attendant-less shuttle instead of in an SUV or truck being driven by a human helps limit any potential exposure to the novel coronavirus. And judging from the distance covered in the video released by the Mayo Clinic, it does look like using some sort of vehicle -- autonomous or not -- would indeed help speed up the delivery of the tests to the processing site. Another benefit, according to Moye, is that the shuttle helps keep many Mayo Clinic staff as free as possible, since they would otherwise have to transport the samples themselves.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: Surveys conducted by scientists at Australia's James Cook University and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority show that a summer of extreme heat has caused the reef, which is a World Heritage Site, to suffer a mass bleaching of unprecedented scale. Corals from the far north to the southern tip of the 1,400 mile-long ecosystem are experiencing severe impacts. It was also one of the reef's worst mass bleaching episodes in terms of intensity, second only to 2016, which killed half of all shallow-water corals on the northern Great Barrier Reef. Unlike the summer of 2016, when an intense marine heat wave coincided with one of the strongest El Nino events on record, this past summer brought a bleaching event without any assistance from the Pacific climate oscillation.

As heat built across the reef in February, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority began reporting pockets of bleaching in the far north toward the end of the month. By early March, vast swaths of the ecosystem had accumulated eight or more "degree heating weeks," a metric scientists use to describe recent cumulative heat exposure. At this threshold, reef scientists expect to see widespread bleaching and mortality from thermal stress, according to NOAA. Researchers decided to conduct aerial and waterborne surveys to assess the extent of the damage. The surveys, which took place during the last two weeks of March, quickly confirmed the reef has undergone its third mass bleaching event in the past five years. "This year, some 35 percent of the 1,036 reefs the scientists surveyed experienced moderate bleaching, while a quarter were severely bleached," the report adds. "Scientists saw severe bleaching on coastal reefs from Torres Strait in the far north to the southern border of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, at levels only eclipsed during 2016."

What's troubling to see is bleaching in the south, which has managed to escape the previous two events. "In the northern and central Great Barrier Reef, these corals were largely annihilated by bleaching in 2016-17, transforming vast swaths of the reef into a 'highly altered, degraded system,'" reports The Washington Post, citing a 2018 paper in the journal Nature. "Now the south seems poised to slide into a similar ecological disrepair."

Tesla has provided a behind-the-scenes look at its ventilator design process, which involves using parts from its vehicles. TechCrunch reports: Like Ford and General Motors, Tesla engineers are building its vent with parts for its vehicles. The reason is simple: car parts are available. Automotive companies obsessively stage parts for final assemble. Without doing so, having a shortage on, say, door handles can shut down a production line. In this thought, Tesla engineers say in this video they are trying to use as many car parts as possible. For instance, Tesla's ventilator uses the Model 3 infotainment system to power a Model 3 vehicle computer, which in turn, controls an air flow manifold. A suspension air tank is used as a oxygen mixing chamber. Among other parts, the team is also employing a Model 3 touchscreen as a controller. You can watch the behind-the-scenes video here.