This scientist made a Google Doc to educate the public about airborne coronavirus transmission

How we can make the election safe 

Sponsored by Amazon Web Services The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology 10.02.20 Good morning! Today: we talk to the scientist who made a Google Doc to teach us about airborne coronavirus transmission, and we're launching a new newsletter on how to make the election safe. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. This scientist made a Google Doc to educate the public about airborne coronavirus transmission The evidence that the coronavirus spreads through the air has been mounting for months. However, the official guidance from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control is still that droplets are the main route of transmission. In fact, the CDC changed its website last month to acknowledge airborne transmission as a route for covid-19 infections, then removed the new guidance just days later, saying it had been posted in error. An official told CNN that it “wasn't ready to be posted." All clear? Back in July, a group of 239 experts sent an open letter to the WHO imploring it to acknowledge airborne transmission. Three months later, and the WHO’s guidance has changed subtly but still only suggests airborne transmission plays a limited role.  Rather than wait for officialdom to catch up, one of those signatories, Jose-Luis Jimenez, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied aerosols for 20 years, decided to go straight to the public with the latest advice on how to protect themselves and the people around them. He convened a group of nine other experts in the field to create this open access Google Doc offering comprehensive advice on what you need to know about aerosol transmission, from best practices for masks to whether it’s safe to travel by airplane. We spoke to him about why he created the document, and the response he’s had so far. Read the full story.  How we can make the election safe MIT Technology Review is launching the Outcome, a pop-up newsletter focused on the security and integrity of the election. It will cover topics such as misinformation, voting machines, and cybersecurity, but above all it will ask the same questions of the election that we ask of every technology: Is it working as intended? How are power and money shaping it? How is it being used and misused? What are its strong and weak points? Is it, ultimately, safe? The Outcome will come to your inbox several days a week, and we expect to keep it running it past Election Day, at least until there’s a result. The lead writer is Patrick Howell O’Neill, our senior editor for cybersecurity, but many of our staff across the newsroom will weigh in.  We’d love to hear from you, whether it’s about a fight over the placement of ballot drop boxes in your electoral district, a heartwarming story about volunteers helping people vote safely, or some surprising piece of political advertising you came across in your Facebook feed. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and all the usual places, or you can sign up here to get the Outcome and join the conversation about how to make the election safe again. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + This is just guaranteed to make you smile.   + A newly unearthed recording of Ella Fitzgerald in Berlin in 1962 has just been released.   + An exact 3D-printed replica of Michelangelo’s David is being created in time to be put on display at the next world fair. (NYT $)   + A clever way to stop your cat climbing all over your laptop.   + Why people still love Gilmore Girls.   + The stationary cyclers have moved their bikes outside.   + A court in Ireland has ruled that Subway’s bread is not actually bread. Sponsor Message Be more than cloud trained. Get AWS Certified from home. Earn an AWS industry-recognized credential from the comfort of your home. Explore our certifications for those in cloud practitioner, architect, developer, and operations roles, as well as our Specialty certifications in specific technical areas. Learn more here The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Trump has Covid-19 The news came just after his close adviser Hope Hicks tested positive. (NYT $)   + Loss of smell may be a clearer symptom of covid-19 than a cough. (BBC)   + How to spot the risks of indoor dining. (NYT $)   + Hundreds of millions of Chinese people are preparing to travel for the National Day holiday. (CNN)  2 New animators are finding fame on TikTok And they’re having a lot of fun while they’re at it. (The Verge)   3 What is a “successful” vaccine? 💉 No one is yet testing them head to head, and every pharma company has different metrics to test theirs. (Wired $)   4 Amazon says nearly 20,000 of its workers have caught covid-19 It’s welcome transparency but still a far cry from disclosing actual cases in real time, which is crucial to break the chain of transmission. (NBC)   + Amazon has big plans for its palm-scanning technology. (The Verge)  5 A Russian operation posed as a right-wing news site to target US voters The Internet Research Agency is up to its usual tricks again. (Reuters)   + How Facebook and Twitter are preparing for post-election threats. (NPR)  6 New York and New Jersey have launched contact tracing apps They could help dampen down the rising new wave of cases. (CNBC)   + Some people using England and Wales’ app are receiving notifications in error. (Sky)  7 Facebook and Twitter missed their chance to clamp down on QAnon  Much of it comes down to Silicon Valley’s fierce refusal to act as an “arbiter of truth.” (WP $)   + How a far-right group in Arizona evolved from Facebook to a mass movement. (The Arizona Republic)   + The membership of anti-mask groups on Facebook has jumped sharply in the last  two months. (NYT $)  8 Could remote learning put kids off computers? 🖥️ They were fun when I was growing up. For children they’re now increasingly associated with school. (Slate)   9 How the brain copes with the unknown 🧠 In short, not very well. But we can learn to live with it. (Axios)   10 Your regular reminder that the Internet of Things is wildly unsecure  Your coffee machine should not be able to demand a ransom. (Wired $) What are the next big innovations–and how can they help us solve the world's toughest challenges? In just 2 weeks, join us virtually at our flagship event, EmTech MIT, as we bring together leaders, researchers, and innovators from across the globe to find out. Register now. Take a stand “We’re not dead but we’re not living.” —New Jersey-based Melanie Montano, who runs a Slack support group for covid-19 “long-haulers”, tells the Washington Post what it’s like to suffer symptoms for months on end. Please send animations to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Leading with Innovation. Join us online, October 19-22. *View this in a browser *Edit email preferences   |   *Unsubscribe from all emails Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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