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Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and demographer studies infectious diseases at UCI Irvine, is shown near his home in Irvine on Wednesday, March 17, 2021. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Its the kind of prediction you might find in a fortune cookie. Pinned to the top of Andrew Noymers Twitter feed, dated Jan. 31, 2020, it says: Duck tape your underpants. 2020 is going to be a wild ride.

It contradicted messaging from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, just days before: Americans should not worry for their own safety. And from the soon-to-be beloved Dr. Anthony Fauci, just days after: COVID-19s danger to the U.S. is just minuscule.

Noymer, an epidemiologist and demographer at UCI Irvine who studies infectious diseases, was already on the edge of his seat. 2019-novel-coronavirus *is* more frightening than SARS +certainly more than MERS b/c spreading more countries more quickly +appears to have an appreciable case fatality rate, Noymer tweeted on Jan. 30, kicking off 240-character brawls with other scientists who insisted flu posed a greater risk.

After a year of global pandemic and its attendant horrors, Noymer and the rest of us can look back at an agonizing, astounding year where science took center stage and delivered a bedazzling, if imperfect, performance. As the world awaits an encore the promise of more scientific breakthroughs for other life-threatening diseases Noymer can savor the three sweetest words in the English language: You were right.

This was a new coronavirus that we had never seen before and the entire population was tabula rasa, a blank slate, he said. Thats a big deal. Everyone on the planet was immunologically nave which is a mouthful, but it means we had no resistance to it. Therefore, it was going to run through the whole population before it was over. And thats whats happening.

The stars of the 2020 science show were, of course, vaccines especially those based on mRNA technology, which essentially turns a persons cells into tiny drug manufacturing plants.

Heretofore, the quickest vaccine ever developed was for the mumps, at a speedy four years. In 2020, advanced technology birthed multiple vaccines in about the time it takes a human baby to gestate. The three with emergency approval from the FDA are 100 percent effective in preventing severe disease and death something nearly inconceivable a short year ago.

I approached the mRNA vaccines, like most things we critique in science, with skepticism, said Philip L. Felgner, director of UC Irvines Vaccine Research and Development Center and Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility. The results provided by the vaccine developers seemed too good to be true, almost complete protection after one injection within 14 days.

UCI Medical Center started vaccinating health care workers on Dec. 16. Felgners lab tracked the presence of antibodies in their blood over time. It was 13% at the start and up to 78% by late January. And by the end of February after 10,000 health care workers had been vaccinated 93% were seropositive, and their antibody levels are even higher than those whove recovered from COVID-19.

This exceeds the 80% herd immunity threshold, Felgner marveled. The pace of our effective response to this pandemic is astonishing and a testament to the preparedness afforded the national and international investment in science.

This achievement is the product of unprecedented global cooperation among scientists who were once fierce competitors, a life-or-death urgency that has researchers sharing early findings online long before the traditional slog through peer-review and journal publication, the pivot of researchers in far-flung fields to coronavirus research, the existence of a sturdy technology just waiting for its moment in the spotlight, and billions of public dollars thrown at the effort in a war footing.

Combined, weve learned these things can vastly accelerate scientific progress.

This has never happened before. People dont fully appreciate how positive it is its under-celebrated, under-recognized, under-reported, said Maja Matari, interim vice president of research at USC, a distinguished professor of computer science, neuroscience and pediatrics and founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center.

Scientists are literally saving the world. Why isnt everyone celebrating that?

In some ways, our systems of science have worked brilliantly, said Ted Porter, a distinguished professor who specializes in the history of science at UCLA. But not in all ways.

The development and deployment of COVID-19 tests was, at least early on, a scientific, logistical and regulatory flop. Messaging about how to prevent the disease was inconsistent and confusing, partly because not very much was known, partly because it became politicized. The search for effective treatments never quite captured the public imagination or as much of the public purse as did the race for vaccines.

And the worlds first social media pandemic proved a double-edged sword.

The speed at which knowledge could be shared, that was quite an impressive thing, said Richard Carpiano, a public health scientist and medical sociologist at UC Riverside. Preprints would go up and wed see robust debates among the experts who were able to engage with the public on social media to explain things and answer questions. Its amazing how quickly epidemiologist became a household word.

But some scientists sped out of their lanes of expertise, seeking publicity and self-aggrandizement. Junk research grabbed attention and funding, wasting time and money. A basic lack of science literacy became disturbingly apparent as some claimed mRNA changes your DNA (it does not; mRNA simply instructs your cells to manufacture a protein in this case, a copy of the spike protein from the coronavirus so your immune system can recognize and attack the real thing).

When we went into lockdown, the two thoughts that came into my head which now look incredibly nave were that, finally, wed have an appreciation in our nation of the public health system and what it can do, and that maybe this will suck the wind out of the anti-vax movement once and for all, Carpiano said.

The opposite appears to have happened, with vaccine skeptics sowing fear and doubt in a vastly wider audience. The 800-pound gorilla here is the extent to which disinformation and misinformation circulate as fast as they do, Carpiano said.

The pandemic really has brought to the fore how we think about expertise, how we trust institutions and science, he said. It raises questions about how scientists, as a community, can do better in communicating with the public. Its not enough for scientists to have Twitter accounts. We need to think about scientific knowledge, science education, in the 21st century.

Will the stunning success of COVID-19 vaccines reinforce the notion that technology will always save us? Carpiano worries. Our nation needs serious pandemic planning and a more effective and equitable public health system, he said.

Some feel there was unnecessary panic, and we may have suffered self-inflicted wounds.

I was never worried that this virus would be a threat to the vast majority of the population given the initial data, and that the average human immune system is equipped to defeat virtually any new pathogen, said Egest J. Pone, project scientist in UC Irvines Vaccine Research & Development Center.

I find it unfortunate that the COVID-causing virus was renamed SARS-CoV-2 rather than remaining under the original name 2019-nCov the virus does not cause severe acute respiratory syndrome in the vast majority of infected people.

That early data showed that mortality for people younger than 65 was comparable to flu and non-COVID pneumonia, while mortality in older people particularly those over 75 was much higher. That made perfect sense: the vast majority younger people have a strong immune repertoire, but thats greatly diminished at lifes end, Pone said.

Therefore, besides the availability of vaccines, the best response learned from this pandemic is improved infection control measures masks, temperature checks at places with large numbers of frail individuals, including nursing homes and hospitals, he said.

Porter, of UCLA, wonders how history will judge this moment. Is it going to look like a storm in a teapot in another 10 years? he asked. If the next epidemic and there might be one soon is similar enough that we could apply the lessons of this one to it, would we do it? I do not know the answer. Im not confident.

Many feel that progress cant help but continue.

At UC Irvines Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology, director Lbachir BenMohamed is pushing the next frontier a preemptive, pan-coronavirus vaccine designed to squash everything from COVID-19 to the common cold.

At USC, researchers are pulling overnight shifts so work can proceed with proper distancing. Proposals continue to flow in and millions in grants are awarded with the expectation that data be shared. Undoubtedly, the research networks forged both at USC and worldwide during the pandemic will continue and lead to other critical discoveries that can save lives, Matari said.

Theres more funding for vaccine and antibody research, with cancer in its sites. Many immunologists suspect that the most significant cure for cancer and autoimmune diseases will come from antibodies, vaccines or immune cells that turn the tide, shoring up weakened or dysfunctional immune systems, Pone said.

COVID-19 isnt going away. Its likely to become manageable, like the flu so long as the global vaccination picks up speed. Everyone needs to be vaccinated to stop the virus from mutating into more dangerous variants, said Noymer (who knows that its duct tape, not duck tape, but wrote the way people speak). Its a chance for the world to act globally and think locally.

Perhaps the biggest lesson of this pandemic year is that science isnt a monolith or an ossified set of facts. Its not something that you believe in, the way you believe in God. Its a method, Noymer said. A method by which we test hypotheses.

And its vital, Matari said. We need a citizenry that understands the role of science and appreciates it in the context of their own lives, their own futures, their own ability to survive what nature throws at us. If we dont take the lessons of the pandemic and act on them, itll be worse next time and there will be a next time.

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Pandemic provided a crash course in science. What lessons have we learned? - The Whittier Daily News

Everyone has an opinion about social media, whether its about its merits, headaches, or even potentially dangerous consequences. The complexities of social media was the subject of the latest Critical Conversations series at WPI titled Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The conversation, held virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, March 9, and moderated by Jean King, Peterson Family Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, included a multi-disciplinary panel of faculty and staff: Nima Kordzadeh, assistant professor, Foisie Business School; Carol Stimmel, adjunct instructor, Global School; Kyumin Lee, associate professor, Computer Science & Data Science; Adrienne Hall-Phillips, associate professor, Foisie Business School; and Lori Ostapowicz-Critz, associate director, Academic Strategy Library.

King noted that the idea of each conversation is to shed light on a topic for students, faculty, and staff to go deeper once the panel ends. This is really an umbrella approach, she said.

Impact of social media on society

In this latest conversation, panelists sought to answer the question What impact does social media have on people and our larger society? and spoke about topics such as fake news, deception, and social medias influence on global communities and on consumer and personal behavior.

Stimmel kicked off the panel, saying that answering the question what is social media? does not go far enough, failing to capture the transformative nature of social media. While many people think about social media as a tool to create and share content, it can go so far as having a revolutionary impact on the world, noting the Arab Spring protests that resulted in several regime changes in the Middle East in the early 2010s, in which social media played a central organizing role. At the same time, social media companies are gathering personal data, and propaganda and hate speech flow through these same channels, she pointed out. Stimmel posited another question: How does social media define us? As individuals and communities?

From his expertise in computer science, Lee presented several countermeasures for handling misinformation shared on social media, including building a model that can automatically detect the probability of a post containing information that is valid or fake, as well as ways to support fact-checkers and users who may be too busy to check if information in a post is valid.

Theres no doubt that misinformationor fake newshas exploded across the social media platforms with serious implications, Ostapowicz-Critz said. Unfortunately, people often do not have sufficient skills or the tools to navigate the volumes and volumes of misinformation theyre going to encounter. She spoke about what resources the WPI library offers students and how library staff strive to empower students by giving them fundamental skills and training needed to combat misinformation shared on social media. Students, she said, need to be able to assess the authority and expertise of sources and to be savvy information seekers and lifelong learners.

Social media and health care

Kordzadeh talked about the intersection of social media and health care, specifically, how misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has spread on social media, including inaccurate advice about the disease, its prevention, and vaccinations. He cited one study that indicated false information is 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth. Humans are acting as misinformation engines, which is a problem, he said.

Looking at how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help detect misinformation raises some philosophical and ethical questions, such as who should decide what information is true or false, and what types of speech should be allowed on social media. Answering a question from King, he noted that as humans we are always looking for information that confirms our beliefs. At the end of the day, he said, social media users should be mindful and think twice before sharing news online.

Being mindful of information sharing

Its our responsibility to make sure were using social media in the right way, Hall-Phillips said, challenging us to think about how we use social media each day, and whether were using it for good or bad. We owe it to ourselves to be a little bit more mindful about what type of information we are sharing, she said, noting that something we share or retweet could be harmful to some population or could contain misinformation.

A positive of social media, she said, is that it can be a place for people to find and build community and a place to source solutions to a particular problem.

Winston Soboyejo, senior vice president and provost at WPI, shared his thoughts at the end of the conversation, saying that social media is an area rich with possibilities. He added that its been a pleasure to be a fly on the wall and listen to the conversations we had and to be part of the critical conversations that are going on at WPI in areas that really require deep thought.

The next Critical Conversations event will take place April 7 around the subject of student mental health. For more information about the series, visit http://www.wpi.edu/about/critical-conversations.

-Melanie Thibeault

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Critical Conversations Panel Dissects the Impact of Social Media - WPI News

A year ago, as we contemplated the prospect of weeks or months sheltering in place, we thought up a novel community service project. People were stuck at home. Could we help them use their free time to learn a valuable new skill? Could we teach an online course for thousands centered around real human community? For each of us, computer science is the closest thing in the world to real magic. Even more than studying it, we love to share it. We and a team of colleagues set out to turn Stanfords introductory coding class, CS106A, into a massive virtual community: Code in Place.

Two months later, the results were in: 10,000 students from 120 countries embraced the joy of coding through the course. Students who had never before attempted to code were implementing projects in Python, including tools to model dynamics of the COVID pandemic, analyze DNA, conduct sentiment analysis from Twitter and create a choose-your-own-adventure film. A handful of students kick-started new careers in computer science, and several became professional teachers. A student from Italy called it, the most enjoyable, mentally stimulating and rewarding experience I have ever encountered. Our secret ingredient was the community of 908 section leaders who volunteered their time to give students live weekly, interactive support in small, virtual groups for 40 minutes. Section leaders joined from over 350 cities on six continents, spoke more than 30 different languages, and came from every walk of life. We think this model can change the way we think about teaching and learning at scale.

This year, we plan to replicate and build on the success of Code in Place to give even more students a potentially life-changing experience. In order to scale the course to the public in a way that maintains its magic, we are looking for volunteer mentors to serve as section leaders. This is where you come in. If you know basic Python and are excited to share your knowledge with others, we invite you to join us in our effort to make high-quality computer science education accessible to all. We are accepting applications to section lead until March 25. Teaching obligations will run for five weeks, from April 19 until May 21. Your time commitment will be around five hours per week. And dont worry, you dont have to do any grading. Many more details and FAQs are at this link. Most importantly, each new volunteer means 10 more students from around the world learn to love coding.

We predict that the number of people in the world eager to teach is proportional to the number of people eager to learn. That is a powerful concept; it means that if we can create platforms that connect teachers with students, training and community, we can provide high-quality, human-personalized education almost without limitation.

We asked our volunteer section leaders from last year why they joined us and what they got from the experience. Here are a few themes that stuck with us:

The pandemic has shown us the virtues and limitations of virtual education. We are all asking what we will carry forward from our pandemic lives into the post-pandemic world. For us, an indelible memory of this year was seeing a community of thousands form out of nowhere around a shared love of coding. We believe that sort of community is something worth carrying forward beyond the end of our socially distanced lives, and we invite you to join us.

If you are passionate about teaching, programming, or both, and if you have an internet connection stable enough for a video call, you can apply to teach at this link by Friday, March 25 anywhere on Earth. Check out the announcement to learn more. If you have any questions please email codeinplacestaff@gmail.com or DM us on Twitter: @sectionleadcs.

This is an opinion and analysis article.

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How We Got More Than 10000 Students from 120 Countries to Embrace the Joy of Coding - Scientific American

Why would we want to compute with DNA? Well, first, we are fast approaching the limit of how small we can make computers. So some scientists are turning to the designs in nature for help:

The issue with transistors is that they now exist at the scale of a few nanometers in sizeonly a few silicon atoms thick. They cant practically be made any smaller than they are now.

If they get any smaller, the electrical current flowing through the transistor easily leaks out into other components nearby or deforms the transistor due to heat, rendering it useless. You need a minimum number of atoms to make the transistor work and weve functionally reached that limit.

In 1994, Leonard Adleman used computing with DNA to offer a solution for the infamous Traveling Salesman problem, which computers typically cannot solve, though live amoebas can.

Heres the Traveling Salesman problem:

Given a collection of cities and the cost of travel between each pair of them, the traveling salesman problem, or TSP for short, is to find the cheapest way of visiting all of the cities and returning to your starting point. In the standard version we study, the travel costs are symmetric in the sense that traveling from city X to city Y costs just as much as traveling from Y to X.

The simplicity of the statement of the problem is deceptive the TSP is one of the most intensely studied problems in computational mathematics and yet no effective solution method is known for the general case.

Why is the Traveling Salesmans problem so hard?

With only four cities, the solution is only three possible routes. But as the number of cities increases, the number of possible answers increases exponentially: for six cities, that would be 360 routes; for eight cities, that number swells to 2520. The TSP is classified as an NP-hard problem (non-deterministic polynomial-time hardness), meaning that as the number of cities grows, the time needed for a conventional computer to solve it grows exponentially as well, due to its increased complexity.

In computer science lingo, it becomes an NP-Hard problem: Solving it could quickly require more runtime than the expected lifespan of the universe. Thats because of the way computers process calculations.

So how do amoebas solve such a problem with no brain and little effort? Were not sure but a team from Keio University in Tokyo offers some thoughts,

While the idea of such an amoeba-based computing system might seem dubious at first, what is remarkable is that the time it takes the system to calculate optimal solutions to the TSP grows in a linear fashion, even though the number of possible answers is amplified exponentially, and the amoeba seems to do so by processing information in parallel, rather than serially, though the team still isnt quite sure what exactly makes this system work the way it does.

The mechanism by which how the amoeba maintains the quality of the approximate solution, that is, the short route length, remains a mystery, study lead author Masashi Aono told Phys.org. It seems that spatially and temporally correlated movements of the branched parts of the amoeba located at distant channels are the key. Each of these branches is oscillating its volume with some temporal memory on illuminated experiences. Groups of the branches perform synchronization and desynchronization for sharing information even though they are spatially distant.

Put visually:

In sum, no one knows why amoebas solve the problem much more easily than computers but it might have something to do with the difference between DNA and silicon chips.

What are the general advantages of computing using DNA? It may get past the problem of doing only a single logical operation at a time:

There is no limit to the power that DNA computing can theoretically have since its power increases the more molecules you add to the equation and unlike silicon transistors which can perform a single logical operation at a time, these DNA structures can theoretically perform as many calculations at a time as needed to solve a problem and do it all at once.

DNA also features economical storage methods:

Because there are four building blocks in DNA, rather than the binary 1s and 0s in magnetic hard drives, the genetic storage method is far more dense, explains John Hawkins, another co-author of the new paper. A teaspoon of DNA contains so much data it would require about 10 Walmart Supercenter-sized data centers to store using current technology, he tells Popular Mechanics. Or, as some people like to put it, you could fit the entire internet in a shoe box.

Its also thought to present fewer long-term storage problems:

Beyond that, DNA requires virtually zero maintenance once its stored. After all, fossils preserve DNA sequences after spending millions of years underground. DNA storage doesnt require any energy, eitherjust a cool, dark place to hang out until someone decides to access it. But the greatest advantage, Hawkins says, is that our ability to read and write DNA will never become obsolete.

How DNA computing works:

What are the problems with DNA computing? The principle current difficulty has been slow speed in practice:

Even though it took moments for Adlemans solution to the traveling salesman problem to be encoded into his DNA strands in the test tube, it took days of filtering out bad solutions to find the optimal solution he was looking forafter meticulous preparation for this single computation.

However, the speed is improving as the system is better understood>

DNA-based computing is still very much a project under development. But employing the designs already provided in nature, instead of inventing our own, may help us solve some practical problems more easily.

You may also enjoy: There is a glitch in the description of DNA as software: In contemporary culture, we are asked to believe in an impressive break with observed reality that the code wrote itself.

Continued here:

Is Computing With DNA the Wave of the Future? - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence