President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday afternoon, a move that would give him authority to use $40 billion allocated by Congress for disaster relief to address the coronavirus crisis. From a report: Cases in the U.S. have climbed past 1,700, even with sporadic and spare testing, and the death toll has risen to 41. Mr. Trump, according to a senior administration official, is expected to invoke the Stafford Act, a law that empowers the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster response and aid state and local governments. The president had indicated in recent days that he had been briefed on the law and could use it to address the pandemic, and Democratic lawmakers like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have been pressing him to invoke it. "We have very strong emergency powers under the Stafford Act," Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. "I have it memorized, practically, as to the powers in that act. And if I need to do something, I'll do it. I have the right to do a lot of things that people don't even know about." Mr. Trump further said that he is waiving off the interest on student loan debt until further notice.

"Iranian authorities began digging a pair of trenches for victims just days after the government disclosed the initial outbreak," writes Slashdot reader schwit1. "Together, their lengths are that of a football field." The Washington Post reports: Two days after Iran declared its first cases of the novel coronavirus -- in what would become one of the largest outbreaks of the illness outside of China -- evidence of unusual activity appeared at a cemetery near where the infections emerged. At the Behesht-e Masoumeh complex in Qom, about 80 miles south of Tehran, the excavation of a new section of the graveyard began as early as Feb. 21, satellite images show, and then rapidly expanded as the virus spread. By the end of the month, two large trenches -- their lengths totaling 100 yards -- were visible at the site from space (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). According to expert analysis, video testimony and official statements, the graves were dug to accommodate the rising number of virus victims in Qom.

A senior imagery analyst at Maxar Technologies in Colorado said the size of the trenches and the speed with which they were excavated together mark a clear departure from past burial practices involving individual and family plots at the site. In addition to satellite imagery, videos posted on social media from the cemetery show the extended rows of graves at Behesht-e Masoumeh and say they are meant for coronavirus victims. The imagery analyst, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work, also pointed to an image showing what appears to be a large white pile of lime, which can be used to manage decay and odor in mass graves. Iranian health officials have in recent weeks confirmed the use of lime when burying coronavirus victims.

A new study reports that iron rain likely falls through the thick, turbulent air of WASP-76 b, a bizarre "ultrahot Jupiter" that lies about 640 light-years from the sun, in the constellation Pisces. Space.com reports: WASP-76 b zips around its host star once every 1.8 Earth days, an orbit so tight that the gaseous planet is "tidally locked," always showing the star the same face. Temperatures on this dayside climb above 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius) -- hot enough to vaporize metals -- whereas the nightside is a much cooler (but still ridiculous) 2,730 F (1,500 C), researchers said. WASP-76 b was discovered in 2013. The alien planet is about as massive as Jupiter but nearly twice as wide, likely because the massive radiation loads the exoplanet receives from its host star puff up its atmosphere considerably. (And one quick note about the object's distance: Some sources say that WASP-76 b is about 390 light-years away, but that number is inaccurate, Ehrenreich said. He and his colleagues calculated WASP-76 b's distance using data from Europe's ultraprecise star-mapping spacecraft Gaia.)

Europe and Russia have decided to push back the launch of their joint robotic rover to Mars until 2022, rather than launch this year as originally planned. More testing is needed on the vehicle's parachutes ahead of the launch, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and there isn't enough time to get all of that work done before the launch window in July and August. The Verge reports: This is the second major delay for the rover, which is a critical piece of the ExoMars mission -- a partnership program between ESA and Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos aimed at figuring out if Mars ever hosted life. Originally, the rover, named after the famous chemist Rosalind Franklin, was meant to launch in 2018, but it was pushed until 2020 due to delays in delivering the scientific payloads. Now, the parachutes needed to land the vehicle on Mars are to blame. Last year, two high-altitude drop tests here on Earth damaged the parachutes, with some even tearing while they inflated. ESA wants to do two additional parachute tests ahead of the mission, but they won't occur in time to allow a summer launch to happen.

Additionally, some of the electronics inside the vehicle that carries the rover down to the surface need to be returned to their suppliers for troubleshooting. The final software for the mission is also delayed, and engineers don't have enough time to test it out before the summer. And if that wasn't enough, Jan Worner, the director general of ESA, admitted that the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic is playing a role in the delay. [...] Now, the earliest option to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover is 2022, thanks to how Earth and Mars orbit the Sun. The two planets only skim close by one another every 26 months, giving scientists a limited window to launch spacecraft to the Red Planet. With a launch window opening up this summer, multiple countries including the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates are launching spacecraft to Mars. But since ExoMars cannot make the deadline, the next opportunity to launch is between August and October 2022.

While ESA and Roscosmos wait for 2022, the rover will go into storage, and engineers will lubricate the vehicle over the next two years to maintain all of its components. In the meantime, the Russian Proton rocket that will launch the rover and the vehicle's European carrier spacecraft are all ready to go and have no issues. So the Rosalind Franklin rover should be ready to go by 2022 if the upcoming tests go well.

An anonymous reader writes: The coronavirus appears able to linger in the air for up to three hours and on plastic and stainless steel surfaces for two to three days, according to laboratory tests run by a team of federal and academic scientists in the US. It's unclear whether the virus would behave the same way in the real world. The new study, published Tuesday, was uploaded to MedRxiv, a repository of early-stage scientific papers that have not yet been peer reviewed.

The new tests found that the ability of the novel coronavirus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, to stay in the air and on surfaces was highly similar to that of SARS, which is also caused by a coronavirus, according to the paper, which was done by researchers from the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, UCLA, and Princeton University. The scientists ran a battery of tests with a strain of SARS-CoV-2. They sprayed it into a rotating drum and measured how long it stayed in the air: three hours. They also deposited small amounts on plastic and stainless steel (up to two to three days), copper (up to four hours), and on cardboard (24 hours). The CDC says person-to-person contact is believed to be the main way the new virus is transmitted, though transmission through contaminated objects and surfaces "may be possible."

Currently, the agency advises staying at least six feet away from people who are coughing and sneezing, and cleaning and disinfecting touched surfaces in household common areas, from sinks to light switches to tables.

China's National Health Commission said on Thursday that the country has passed the peak of the coronavirus epidemic and that the number of new cases is declining. The officials noted that medical treatment work will remain the top priority and that work to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus will continue. From a report: The coronavirus outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, in December 2019. China has dealt with more than 80,900 cases, 3,100 deaths and more than 63,000 recoveries, according to DXY.cn, which compiles data from the National Health Commission and regional government sources. Reuters noted that Chinese authorities recorded eight new infections in Hubei, which marks the first time since the outbreak that the province recorded a daily tally of fewer than 10. As the number of new infections fall, Hubei will lift certain travel restrictions and will allow some industries to resume production. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said in other countries. The outbreak has spread across the globe with more than 134,000 infections and more than 4,900 deaths, causing the World Health Organization on Wednesday to declare the outbreak a pandemic.

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government's response to the contagion, Reuters is reporting, citing four Trump administration officials. From the report: The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus. Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said. "We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go," one official said. "These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary." The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification. "This came directly from the White House," one official said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is on her way out and her power is waning, but in her typically low-key, no-nonsense manner, the German leader on Wednesday laid out some cold, hard facts on the coronavirus in a way that few other leaders have. From a report: Two in three Germans may become infected, Ms. Merkel said at a news conference that reverberated far beyond her country. There is no immunity now against the virus and no vaccine yet. It spreads exponentially, and the world now faces a pandemic. The most important thing, the chancellor said, is to slow down the spread of the coronavirus to win time for people to develop immunity, and to prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.

"We have to understand that many people will be infected," Ms. Merkel said. "The consensus among experts is that 60 to 70 percent of the population will be infected as long as this remains the situation." Ms. Merkel's estimates were probably a worst-case scenario, though not wildly out of line with those of experts outside Germany. Her warning provided a stark contrast to the crimped pronouncements of many other world leaders, among them President Trump, who has mostly played down the contagion. In a televised address Wednesday night, Mr. Trump took a somber tone as he suspended travel from Europe, excluding the United Kingdom, for 30 days.

President Trump announced he will restrict travel from Europe to the U.S. for the next 30 days in a bid to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The "strong but necessary" restrictions will not apply to the UK, where 460 cases of the virus have now been confirmed. "To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States," Mr Trump said in a televised speech from the Oval Office. "The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight," he added. The BBC reports: Mr Trump also announced plans to provide billions of dollars in loans to small businesses, in an attempt to stymie the effect of the coronavirus outbreak on the US economy. He also urged Congress to pass major tax relief measures as part of an "aggressive and comprehensive effort" to combat the virus. "We are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people," he said. Earlier today, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 virus is now officially a pandemic.

Globally, the virus has swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4,000 people. There are 1,135 confirmed cases of the virus across the U.S., with 38 deaths.

UPDATE 2:22 AM UTC: Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have tested positive for the coronavirus. Also, the NBA announced it has suspended its season "until further notice" after a player on the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus.

According to research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, permanent magnets akin to those used on refrigerators could speed the development of fusion energy. Phys.Org reports: In principle, such magnets can greatly simplify the design and production of twisty fusion facilities called stellarators, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. PPPL founder Lyman Spitzer Jr. invented the stellarator in the early 1950s. Most stellarators use a set of complex twisted coils that spiral like stripes on a candy cane to produce magnetic fields that shape and control the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Refrigerator-like permanent magnets could produce the hard part of these essential fields, the researchers say, allowing simple, non-twisted coils to produce the remaining part in place of the complex coils.

Rare earth magnets have surprising and useful properties. They generate quite powerful fields for the magnets' small size, and these are "hard" fields that are almost unaffected by other fields nearby. These magnets could thus provide what physicists call the "poloidal" part of a spiraling stellarator field, while simple round coils could provide the "toroidal" part that makes up the rest of the field. Permanent magnets are always "on" in sharp contrast to the standard electromagnetic coils that stellarators and tokamaks use. Such coils create magnetic fields when an electric current runs through them -- current that requires power supplies that permanent magnets do not need. Other advantages of the use of permanent magnets to simplify stellarator coils include: Lower cost than hand-crafted electromagnets; Creation of ample space between the simplified coils to facilitate maintenance; Ability to reposition the magnets to create a variety of shapes for the magnetic fields; and Reduced engineering and manufacturing risks. Permanent magnets have disadvantages, too. "You can't turn them off," physicist Per Helander said, which means they can pull in anything they can attract within range. They also produce limited maximum field strength, he said. Nonetheless, such magnets "can be great for creating experiments on the way to a reactor," he added, "and stronger permanent magnets may become available."

Washington state and San Francisco are banning large gatherings to help reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The bans are a way to create social distancing, which may help people avoid coming into contact with others who might be sick. The Verge reports: Gatherings of more than 250 people in the Seattle area are prohibited through the end of March, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced. Gatherings of more than 1,000 people will be banned in San Francisco for two weeks, according to the office of San Francisco Mayor London Breed. "This order applies to gatherings for social, spiritual and recreational activities," said Inslee's announcement about Washington's ban. "These include but are not limited to: community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events; parades; concerts; festivals; conventions; fundraisers and similar activities."

Washington's ban covers Seattle and its surrounding areas: King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Washington currently has more than 260 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, which is the highest number in the US, and of the 24 confirmed deaths, many of them have been in or near Seattle. It's "very highly likely" that the ban will be extended beyond March, Inslee said in a news conference. San Francisco's ban also affects sporting events like Golden State Warriors games. The team announced that it will play upcoming home games without fans. Events scheduled through March 21st at the Chase Center, the stadium where the Warriors play, have been postponed or moved to a new location. Santa Clara County, home to many tech companies like Apple and Google, banned gatherings of 1,000 people or more on Monday.

The Washington, DC Department of Health recommended today that "non-essential" mass gatherings of 1,000 or more be postponed or canceled. Meanwhile, New York created a "containment area" for New Rochelle, a city in New York where a cluster of coronavirus cases have been reported. Schools, churches, and synagogues will be closed, and large indoor gatherings will be banned.

Google is stepping up its measures against the coronavirus outbreak. From a report: The tech giant will recommend that its workers across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa work from home starting on Thursday March 12, Business Insider has learned. This comes a week after Google advised US workers in its Washington state and California offices to work from home, as well as those in its 8,000-strong Dublin office in Ireland. Google then widened that to all 11 of its offices in North America. Google has around 100,000 employees in total, most of whom are based in North America. Google has yet to report any confirmed cases of the virus in its US staff, but a worker in its Zurich office tested positive at the end of February. A Dublin worker also reported flu-like symptoms, but tested negative for COVID-19. The tech giant also announced last week that it was suspending in-person job interviews.

The COVID-19 viral disease that has swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4,000 people is now officially a pandemic, the World Health Organization announced Wednesday. From a report: "This is the first pandemic caused by coronavirus," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Eight countries -- including the U.S. -- are now each reporting more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19, caused by the virus that has infected more than 120,000 people worldwide. A severe outbreak in Italy has now caused more than 630 deaths and the country's case total continues to rise sharply. It's now at 10,000 cases, second only to China. There are 9,000 cases in Iran, and more than 7,700 in South Korea. Those countries are all imposing drastic measures in an attempt to slow the virus, which has a higher fatality rate for elderly people and those with underlying health conditions.

The latest event to be cancelled as a result of the spread of the novel coronavirus is, ironically, a scientific meeting on coronaviruses. From a report: On March 9, the official meeting of the International Nidovirus Symposium, was postponed to 2021. The meeting, which happens only once every three years, was set to take place this May 10 to 14 in the Netherlands. "We started noticing that people were hesitating to register due to all the uncertainty," said Marjolein Kikkert, a microbiologist at the Leiden University Medical Center who was leading the conference's planning committee, in an email to Quartz. "The expanding outbreak in Europe in the last week made us feel we should take responsibility and set the good example as coronavirologists to not further spread the virus ourselves."

"Nidovirus" is an order of viruses that includes coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus going around now), SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome, which emerged in 2003), and MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, which emerged in 2012). The order also includes arteriviruses, a group that can infect horses, pigs, monkeys, and mice; and roniviruses, a group that can infect shellfish. The 14 previous nidovirus symposiums have functioned like any other scientific meeting: Attendees would present research, find collaboration opportunities, and get to know other members of a relatively small field within microbiology.

Apple Watch will add the ability to detect blood oxygen levels for the first time, 9to5Mac has learned based on an exclusive look at iOS 14 code snippets. From the report: Blood oxygen levels between 95 and 100% are considered healthy; blood oxygen levels below 80% may lead to compromised heart and brain functionality. Risk of respiratory or cardiac arrest is common after continued low blood oxygen saturation. To that end, Apple is developing a new health notification based on the vital measurement. When Apple Watch detects low blood oxygen saturation below a certain threshold, a notification will trigger alerting the user similar to current heart rate notifications.

It's unclear at this point what hardware and software will be required for blood oxygen detection and notifications. It's possible future Apple Watch Series 6 hardware will be required for the new health feature. It could also come to all or newer Apple Watch models with watchOS 7 in the fall. The original Apple Watch hardware is believed to be capable of measuring blood oxygen levels through the built-in heart rate monitor. Apple upgraded the heart rate monitor with Apple Watch Series 4, adding electrocardiogram features, but Apple Watch hasn't offered blood oxygen measurement features yet. Other hardware and software features have also been leaked, such as details about an upcoming iPad Pro with three cameras and Apple's Tile-like item trackers, called AirTags.

PSO J030947.49+271757.31 is the most distant blazar ever observed, originating when the universe was less than 1 billion years old, almost 13 billion years ago. Phys.Org reports: PSO J0309+27, for short, was discovered by a team of researchers led by Silvia Belladitta, a Ph.D. student at the University of Insubria, working for the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan, under the supervision of Alberto Moretti and Alessandro Caccianiga. While they suspected that the object was distant, and observations from the Swift Space Telescope showed that its X-ray power matched that of other blazars, it was the observations obtained with the optical Multi-Double Object Spectrographs (MODS) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) that confirmed it as a record-breaking distant blazar, the farthest observed in the known universe.

"The spectrum that appeared before our eyes confirmed first that PSO J0309+27 is actually an active galactic nuclei (AGN), or a galaxy whose central nucleus is extremely bright due to the presence in its center of a supermassive black hole fed by the gas and the stars it engulfs," says Belladitta, first author of the paper describing the discovery, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "In addition, the data obtained by LBT also confirmed that PSO J0309+27 is really far away from us, according to the shift of the color of its light toward red or redshift with a record value of 6.1, never measured before for a similar object." PSO J0309+27 has therefore proved to be the most powerful persistent radio source in the primordial universe, within the first billion years since its formation. Observations taken by the XRT telescope on board the Swift satellite have also made it possible to establish that, even in X-rays, PSO J0309+27 is the brightest cosmic source ever observed at these distances.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The second person ever to be cured of HIV is still free of active virus more than two years on, a study published by medical journal The Lancet HIV revealed on Tuesday. Two and a half years ago, Adam Castillejo -- previously identified as the "London patient" -- finished HIV antiretroviral therapy. He underwent a stem cell transplant to treat lymphoma and his donor carried a mutation known as CCR5-delta 32, which made him resistant to HIV. Researchers said that in treating his lymphoma, they believe Castillejo, now 40, was cured of HIV.

"Our findings show that the success of stem cell transplantation as a cure for HIV, first reported nine years ago in the Berlin patient, can be replicated," said Ravindra Gupta, lead author of the study and a professor in University of Cambridge's clinical microbiology department. Unlike the Berlin patient -- identified later as Timothy Ray Brown -- Castillejo underwent only one stem-cell transplantation instead of two and did not have radiotherapy to his entire body as part of his treatment. Castillejo represents a step toward a less intensive treatment approach, the authors said. Still, given the invasive nature of the experimental treatment, the authors caution its widespread use.

In a letter to the MIT community, President L. Rafael Reif says the university is moving all classes online for the rest of the semester to slow the spread of COVID-19. Here's an excerpt: The overall plan is this:

1. All classes are cancelled for the week of Monday, March 16 through Friday, March 20. Because the following week is spring break, this will allow faculty and instructors two weeks to organize a full transition to online instruction.
2. Online instruction, which some units are already experimenting with this week, will begin for all classes on Monday, March 30, and continue for the remainder of the semester.
3. Undergraduates should not return to campus after spring break. Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. Please see below for details on graduate students.
4.Classes will continue this week as we continue to prepare for this transition.

We are taking this dramatic action to protect the health and safety of everyone at MIT -- staff, students, post-docs and faculty -- and because MIT has an important role in slowing the spread of this disease. As at any residential college, our residence halls and FSILGs put students in close quarters. What's more, the intense and free-flowing collaboration MIT is known for comes with close contact and shared spaces, equipment and supplies. These characteristics, which we cherish in normal times, increase the risk of COVID-19 spreading on our campus. Our plan follows directly from state health guidance that universities take steps to reduce the density of the population on campus and increase social distancing. By doing so, we are doing our part to reduce the spread of the disease overall, while directly reducing risk for our own community -- for departing students, of course, but equally for those of us who continue to work on campus.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Two cybersecurity company employees who attended an annual industry conference last month in San Francisco have tested positive for the coronavirus. At least one is seriously ill with respiratory issues. One of the workers at Exabeam Inc. is a 45-year-old engineer who began experiencing symptoms when he returned home to Connecticut from California on Feb. 28 after attending the RSA cybersecurity conference, his wife said in an email. His condition deteriorated the following week and he was hospitalized in respiratory distress on March 6, she said. The man was placed into a medically induced coma and is now on a ventilator in "guarded condition."

The individual is predisposed for pneumonia due to an underlying heart condition, his wife said. Bloomberg is withholding the man's name to protect his privacy. The second person, who is unidentified, also worked at Exabeam and attended RSA, the Foster City, California-based company said Tuesday in a statement. "While we cannot confirm whether they contracted COVID-19 prior to, at or after the conference, if you came into contact with our staff, please be vigilant in monitoring yourself for symptoms," Exabeam said. The company said it instituted a work-at-home policy for its offices in Foster City and Atlanta.

To combat resistant bacteria and refill the trickling antibiotic pipeline, scientists are getting help from deep learning networks. From a report: Once-powerful antibiotics are losing their efficacy at a disconcerting pace as bacteria evolve immunity to our drugs. At least 700,000 people around the world now die each year from infections that could formerly be treated with antibiotics. A report last year from the United Nations Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance warned that if no new major advances are made by 2050, mortality could leap to 10 million deaths a year. What makes this prognosis all the more dire is that the antibiotic pipeline has slowed to a trickle. In the past two decades, only a few new antibiotics have been found that kill bacteria in novel ways, and rising resistance is a problem for all of them. Meanwhile, traditional methods of identifying antibiotics by screening natural compounds continue to come up short. Because of this, some researchers are now turning from the wet lab to silicon power in hopes of finding an answer.

In the February 20 issue of Cell, one team of scientists announced that they -- and a powerful deep learning algorithm -- had found a totally new antibiotic, one with an unconventional mechanism of action that allows it to fight infections that are resistant to multiple drugs. The compound was hiding in plain sight (as a possible diabetes treatment) because humans didn't know what to look for. But the computer did. Using computers and machine learning to make sense of mountains of biomedical data is nothing new. But the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by James Collins, who studies applications of systems biology to antibiotic resistance, and Regina Barzilay, an artificial intelligence researcher, achieved success by developing a neural network that avoids scientists' potentially limiting preconceptions about what to look for. Instead, the computer develops its own expertise.