New Scientist Australian Edition 16-May-20

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Dear reader, I hope this finds you well. These are difficult times – for individuals, companies and nations. These are also terrible times for many charities, whose donations may have dried up, and who may no longer be able to operate as they once did. For the people or the wildlife depending on those charities, locally and across the globe, things may be worse still. This is why we are launching a project called Signal Boost. The idea is simple: if you are a charitable organisation involved in science, technology, medicine or conservation, and you would like to speak directly to New Scientist readers, then you can have a page in the magazine to advertise what you do and why that is worthy of support, free of charge. Simply email…

THE coronavirus pandemic might feel like the biggest crisis most of us have ever faced, but you have already been living with a bigger one: climate change. There has been a lot of excitement about the falling levels of air pollution being seen in many countries because of lockdowns to tackle the virus. Already, people are talking about using the pandemic as an opportunity to redesign city streets, providing more space for cyclists and pedestrians while reducing the emphasis on cars. Could this be the start of a green revolution? Maybe. It would be fantastic to make climate lemonade from virus lemons, but we need to go much further than a few cycle lanes. An analysis published by the Carbon Brief website last week found that, while there has been…

WITH fewer than 100 active confirmed coronavirus cases, New Zealand has almost eliminated the virus. As a result, restrictions were eased further this week, but the country will still be feeling the effects of the covid-19 pandemic for some time yet. New Zealand was swift to respond to the pandemic, introducing some of the strictest measures in the world on 25 March – a time when the country had recorded only 205 cases and no deaths. Under the nation’s lockdown measures, schools, universities and almost all businesses were shut. People could only leave their homes for essential reasons like buying food, exercising or accessing medical care, and the nation’s borders were closed to travellers. These measures have been highly effective, with only 1497 covid-19 cases and 21 deaths recorded in…

IN THE UK, essential workers are now among those being sent home testing kits for coronavirus. This involves swabbing the inside of your own nose and the back of your throat, but how useful are the results? Studies from early in the outbreak in China have suggested that swabs taken by healthcare professionals may give a 30 per cent “false negative” rate, where infected people are told they don’t have the virus (NEJM, doi.org/ggmzsp; medRxiv, doi.org/dvfr). This has prompted claims that self-testing will give even more false negatives and could raise the risk of infected people spreading the virus. No test is perfect – swabbing technique and analysis errors can lead to inaccurate results. There is no defined false negative level at which covid-19 tests become worthless. “It depends what…

AS NATIONS gradually reopen after lockdowns, authorities are using uncrewed aerial vehicles to enforce social distancing rules. In India, police have turned to drones to monitor curfews and the distance between people outside during the day. Each is fitted with a camera and an artificial intelligence that can detect humans within a range of between 150 metres and 1 kilometre. If it spots people breaking curfew it alerts the police. The system can also calculate the physical distance between two or more individuals and let the police know if people get too close to one another. “Previously, the police had no idea of where people were gathering, so now they are able to view larger areas,” says Amarjot Singh at Skylark Labs, the firm that developed the drones in use in…