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June 29, 2020

Today in Brief

Carriers Without Symptoms

After prolonged efforts to contain the covid-19 virus, attempts to relax social distancing restrictions have resulted in spikes in the number of cases reported.  One of several reasons the cases were not seen before the relaxing of restrictions might of course be those people who are carriers of the disease but have no symptoms.  When such people return to ordinary social traffic other people might get infected who will show symptoms perhaps even severe.

It becomes vital to determine how long the virus can remain in people without showing symptoms.  It might be a very long time, even several years.  What that could mean is that even if restrictions are held in place five years, there could be a spike in cases when the restrictions are lifted even after all that time.  It is not known how long asymptomatic people might remain carriers, it could be longer than ten years.  That could mean severe spikes in cases when normal traffic resumes almost no matter when it does.

Explorers Face Information Costs

More mathematics news from The Town Voice, while some people still cling to the hope of a manned mission to Mars, the challenge is to bring back information robots haven't already.  The expense and risk of a manned mission to Mars would of course be many multiples of times higher than sending robots.  Some people would expect a corresponding increase in the value of information brought back.

Human Drivers Still Wanted

Perhaps not to Mars but on ordinary roads on Earth human drivers are still preferred.  The accident rate per miles driven by autonomus vehicles is still too high for the comfort of many people. It doesn't help that most "autonomous" vehicles are still not fully autonomous and might blame human error for software problems.  Rain and snow still pose very serious problems for computer software and technology.

   

   

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