An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon plans to hire an additional 100,000 employees in the U.S. as millions of people turn to online deliveries at an unprecedented pace and Americans continue to reorient their lives to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. Amazon plans to deploy the new workers to fuel its sprawling e-commerce machine and is raising pay for all employees in fulfillment centers, transportation, stores and deliveries in the U.S. and Canada by $2 an hour through April. In the U.K., it will go up $2.45 per hour and approximately $2.24 an hour in many EU countries, according to the company. Amazon now pays $15-per-hour as a starting wage to workers in its fulfillment centers around the U.S.

The tech giant's decision to go on a hiring spree and boost worker pay shows the dual challenge companies such as Amazon face as they seek to meet surging demand for food and key household items and also take care of employees at the front lines of the pandemic. Amazon employed nearly 800,000 full and part-time employees as of Dec. 31. More customers are turning to online shopping for everything from grocery delivery to paper towels, cleaning supplies and daily needs. Amazon, which also owns grocery store chain Whole Foods, was one of the companies Mr. Trump mentioned Sunday during his update on the coronavirus outbreak. Amazon accounts for 39% of all online orders in the U.S., according to eMarketer, and is shouldering a lot of those needs. Last week, Amazon asked employees at its New York and New Jersey offices to work from home. This came soon after the company told employees at its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle area to work from home, following reports that an Amazon employee in Seattle tested positive for the virus.

"On Wednesday, Amazon expanded its sick-leave policy to include part-time warehouse workers and set up a relief fund, with an initial $25 million for delivery partners such as drivers and others affected by the outbreak," adds The Wall Street Journal. "The company earlier eased its policy for unpaid time off, offering workers the option to take unlimited unpaid time off through the end of March without penalties."

New submitter andywest shares a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration attempted to persuade a German firm developing a possible vaccine for coronavirus to move its research work to the United States, German officials said, raising fears in Berlin that President Trump was trying to assure that any inoculation would be available first, and perhaps exclusively, in the United States. The offer arose from a March 2 meeting at the White House that included the chief executive of the German firm CureVac, Daniel Menichella. President Trump briefly attended the meeting and Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the White House coronavirus task force, was also there. White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But two senior American officials said that some of the German news accounts first reporting the story were overblown, particularly with regard to any effort by the United States to secure exclusive access to a vaccine. The Trump administration has spoken with more than 25 companies that say they can help with a vaccine, one of the American officials said, and is open to speaking with others. Any solution, he said, would be shared with the world.

Nevertheless, Germany's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said that Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has a famously testy relationship with Mr. Trump, will lead a crisis meeting with ministers on Monday that will include discussion of a German defense strategy for the firm. Asked by a reporter to confirm that the U.S. administration had tried to take over a German company researching vaccines, Seehofer responded that he had heard about the effort "from several members of the government and it will be discussed tomorrow in the crisis team." Another official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the company was offered a "large sum" of money.

According to the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, which first reported the story on Sunday, Mr. Trump offered CureVac roughly $1 billion in exchange for exclusive access to the vaccine. The newspaper quoted an unnamed German government source who said Mr. Trump wanted the resulting vaccine "only for the United States." But another German official, reached by The New York Times, said it was unclear whether the administration simply wanted the research work, and for any resulting production to be on American soil.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Already exhausted from testing for monkeypox and Lassa fever, Nigerian molecular bio-engineer Nnaemeka Ndodo had to work well past midnight earlier this month to find out if six Chinese construction workers were infected with the coronavirus. Ndodo had to collect samples from a hospital an hour away in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, then wait for six hours to get the results in what's one of only five laboratories able to test for the virus in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with about 200 million people. In about three months' time, U.K.-based Mologic Ltd., in collaboration with Senegalese research foundation Institut Pasteur de Dakar, could shorten that wait to 10 minutes with a test that will help a continent with the world's most fragile healthcare system cope with the pandemic.

Using technology from home pregnancy and malaria tests, its saliva and finger-prick kit could be ready for sale by June for less than $1 apiece. In Africa, they will be manufactured in Senegal by diaTropix, a newly built diagnostics manufacturing facility run by the director of the Pasteur Institute, Amadou Alpha Sall, who has led training around the continent for coronavirus testing. The current Covid-19 tests, known as PCR tests, detect the genetic material of the pathogen in a laboratory process that can take several hours and cost over $400 in some private facilities. Mologic and the Institut Pasteur have joint capacity to produce 8 million tests a year and plan to sell them directly to African governments as well as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and the WHO, Fitchett said. Mologic is seeking to acquire a manufacturing facility to produce an additional 20 million tests annually, initially in the U.K. and later in Africa.

Six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area will be placed under a shelter-in-place directive by public health officials in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus, a move that will close virtually all businesses and direct residents to remain at home for the next three weeks. Los Angeles Times reports: San Mateo Mayor Joe Goethals said he believed that the order, announced in a pair of news conferences Monday afternoon, put the six counties -- San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda -- on perhaps the most restrictive public health footing anywhere in the U.S. since the outbreak of the potentially deadly coronavirus. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that, effective at midnight, city residents would be required to stay at home "except for essential needs" and that all but essential businesses and public services would be asked to closed, starting at midnight Monday. The order will remain in place through April 7.

Only police and fire departments, hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations, banks and pharmacies and restaurants serving take-out and delivery customers will be allowed to remain open under the shelter-in-place order, officials said. Residents will be able to go to grocery stores and other essential services, but Goethals urged residents not to rush, adding that stores will remain fully stocked. The San Francisco Bay Area is the region hit hardest by coronavirus in the state. More than 250 cases have been reported in the six Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara, with more than 100 in Santa Clara County. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott says violation of the health order could be enforceable as a misdemeanor, however "that is an absolute last resort," Scott said. "This is not about a criminal justice approach to a public health issue. We are asking for voluntarily compliance."

UPDATE: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has ordered statewide cancelations of events with 25+ people. All Oregon restaurants and bars are restricted to carry-out only. Anyone who doesn't comply will be subject to a Class C misdemeanor.

Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus. From a report: Netanyahu's Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed, despite concerns from civil-liberties advocates that the practice would raise serious privacy issues. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement. Netanyahu announced his plan in a televised address late Saturday, telling the nation that the drastic steps would protect the public's health, though it would also "entail a certain degree of violation of privacy." Israel has identified more than 200 cases of the coronavirus. Based on interviews with these patients about their movements, health officials have put out public advisories ordering tens of thousands of people who may have come into contact with them into protective home quarantine. The new plan would use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history of an infected person's movements before they were diagnosed and identify people who might have been exposed.

Willy English shares a report from CNBC: The president of France on Monday said he was ordering people in the country to stay at home for up to 15 days because of the coronavirus outbreak. President Emmanuel Macron said people should leave their homes only for essential duties, beginning midday Tuesday. Macron said he was taking the drastic step of limiting people's movements in France to reduce the risk of contamination from the virus. He said any violation of the edict would be punished. Macron also announced he was calling off the second round of municipal elections in light of his order. Macron's announcement came as Canada's leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, announced that he was closing the country's borders to foreigners, with the exception of U.S. citizens.

When the coronavirus pandemic started worsening in the U.K. last week, Jennie Lan knew where she would feel safest: China. From a report: The graduate student at University College London was worried Brits weren't taking precautions, such as wearing face masks. "People here didn't attach a great significance to the coronavirus," Ms. Lan said. On Tuesday, she will fly to China to stay with her parents, who live in a district with no reported infections. "The local government controlled it well," she said. Weeks ago, people fled China to dodge the new coronavirus. Now it has flipped. People are headed to China because they believe it is the safest place in the world. Apple has reopened all stores in its Chinese market, but said Friday it would close those everywhere else for two weeks.

A Chinese soccer-league team from Wuhan, where the virus was discovered, planned to leave its temporary base in Spain because of worsening conditions there to return to China. Jack Ma, billionaire founder of Chinese online-retail giant Alibaba, recently pledged to donate 1 million masks and 500,000 virus test kits -- to the U.S. Previously focused on people within the country as potential virus carriers, China's National Health Commission said Monday that preventing imported cases is now a priority. Beijing's municipal government said Sunday that people coming into the city from abroad must quarantine at designated hotels and sites for 14 days, its latest step to protect the capital.

Canada is closing its borders to non-citizens because of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday. From a report: "We can still slow the spread of this virus," Trudeau said at a press conference. "It is time to take every precaution to keep people safe." Canada will make some exceptions to the closure of its borders, including for U.S. citizens. "We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents," Trudeau said. "This measure will carve out some designated exceptions, including for air crews, diplomats, immediate family members of Canadian citizens and, at this time, U.S. citizens."

The first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus will receive an experimental dose on Monday, Associated Press has reported. From the report: The National Institutes of Health is funding the trial, which is taking place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The official who disclosed plans for the first participant spoke on condition of anonymity because the move has not been publicly announced. Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine. Testing will begin with 45 young, healthy volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna. There's no chance participants could get infected from the shots, because they don't contain the virus itself. The goal is purely to check that the vaccines show no worrisome side effects, setting the stage for larger tests.

This week saw dramatic responses to the coronavirus pandemic. At least two different U.S. states have ordered all bars and restaurants to close, according to the AP, while "officials elsewhere in the country said they were considering similar restrictions." America's Center for Disease Control is now urging the entire country to "cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more." At least two more states have postponed their presidential primary elections -- and lots of people now seem to be avoiding movie theatres.

Meanwhile, earlier this week GitLab released its first "Remote Work Report," arguing that "it's undeniable that the future of work will be remote."

But what are you doing? Are you working remotely? (And is the rest of your company?) Are you buying groceries during off-peak hours? Staying home to watch Frozen 2?

We're all in this together -- so let's hear about the experiences of Slashdot readers. Share your own stories in the comments.

How are you handling the coronavirus?

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: Why were two apparently unexploded bombs sticking out of a lava tube on Hawaii's Mauna Loa? That's what Kawika Singson, a photographer, wondered in February when he was hiking on Mauna Loa, the colossal shield volcano that rises 55,700 feet from its base below the sea to its summit. Singson had stumbled upon relics of one of volcanology's more quixotic disaster response plans. These devices, described in more detail recently in the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's Volcano Watch blog, were two of 40 dropped by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1935 in an attempt to stop lava from plowing into Hilo, the most populous town on the island of Hawaii.

While Hilo was spared as the lava flow naturally lost its forward momentum, it wasn't the last time that humanity tried to fight volcanic fire with fire of its own. History is filled with schemes to stop molten kinetic rock, and the ineffective 1935 bombing and others show that lava flows are very rarely "a force we humans can reckon with," said Janine Krippner, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program...

That December, a pond of lava breached its levees and advanced on Hilo at a rate of a mile per day. Fearing it would reach the town and its watershed, Thomas Jaggar, the founder and first director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, called on the Army Air Corps. On Dec. 27, 10 Keystone B-3 and B-4 biplane bombers struck the lava flow, targeting its tubes and channels. Half these bombs were packed with 355 pounds of TNT. The other half were not explosive, and instead designed to emit smoke so the pilots could see where the bona fide bombs landed. Singson found one of those inert devices last month.

On Jan. 2, 1936, the lava flows ceased. Jaggar was convinced the bombing worked, but other experts thought it was a coincidence. Pilots did spot several imploded lava tubes, but their collapses were insufficient to block the flow of lava.

A similar operation was attempted in 1942, again to not much effect.
The conclusion reached by the Times' reporter? "Dense, superheated lava does whatever it wants."

"However small the probability of seeing a signal from E.T. is, those chances are soon going to be a lot better than they have been in the past," reports Smithsonian magazine: Sure, after decades of listening, there is still no message. But with more data to sift through, and new technologies with superior search capabilities, odds of hearing from E.T. are rapidly improving. If the probability in the decade 2011 - 2021 were x percent, it's going to be 1,000 times x in the following decade, says Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. (SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.) The reason for E.T. optimism stems largely from several new projects in the works, enhanced with advanced methods for discerning an actual message hidden in the static of cosmic cacophony...

Jill Tarter, chair emeritus for SETI Research at the pioneering SETI Institute, described new search projects in the works at the institute, including Laser SETI. It's a plan to train 96 cameras at a dozen locations around the world to keep a constant vigil for "intelligent" optical signals from space... [And] recent developments in artificial intelligence research should soon make machine learning an effective tool in the E.T. search, Tarter said at the AAAS meeting. "The ability to use machine learning to help us find signals in noise I think is really exciting," she said. "Historically we've asked a machine to tell us if a particular pattern in frequency and time could be found. But now we're on the brink of being able to say to the machine, 'Are there any patterns in there?'"

So it's possible that an artificially intelligent computer might be the first earthling to discern a message from an extraterrestrial. But then we would have to wonder, would a smart machine detecting a message bother to tell us? That might depend on whom (or what) the message was from. "I think there's something particularly romantic," said Siemion, "about the idea of machine learning and artificial intelligence looking for extraterrestrial intelligence which itself might be artificially intelligent."
The article also notes that SETI researchers "have long agreed that if a signal is detected, no response would be made until a global consensus had been reached on who will speak for Earth and what they would say.

"But that agreement is totally unenforceable..."

The World Health Organization believes air pollution kills seven million people each year.

But will this year be different? Forbes reports: The global lockdown inspired by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has shuttered factories and reduced travel, slashing lethal pollution including the greenhouse gases that are heating the climate. The lockdown may save more lives from pollution reduction than are threatened by the virus itself, said François Gemenne, director of The Hugo Observatory, which studies the interactions between environmental changes, human migration, and politics.

"Strangely enough, I think the death toll of the coronavirus at the end of the day might be positive, if you consider the deaths from atmospheric pollution," said Gemenne, citing, for example, the 48,000 people who die annually in France because of atmospheric pollution and the more than one million in China... "More than likely the number of lives that would be spared because of these confinement measures would be higher than the number of lives that would be lost because of the pandemic," Gemenne said in an appearance on France 24's The Debate.

The discrepancy in how we react to these divergent threats should give us pause, Gemenne said, to consider why it is that we respond so strongly to one with less lethality and so weakly to one with more.

Microsoft recently added a COVID-19 tracking map at Bing.com. But they're not the only ones visualizing data on infection rates...

Founded in 2008, BibBase offers a free web service that lets scientists create a page of their publications that can then be embedded into other web sites. Now long-time Slashdot moglito describes BibBase's newest project: Slashdot readers might be interested in a tool that we at BibBase.org have created for tracking the evolution of COVID-19 in different countries and regions. It is based on the same data the Johns Hopkins map uses, but allows tracking individual regions (to the degree the data is up to date).

[Disclaimer: Most of us aren't data-vetting scientists. Consider the below just one possible grass-roots interpretation of the data.]

Using this web app it is for instance possible to see that some countries have been able to break the exponential growth in cases. This preselection for instance shows China, South Korea, Norway, and Italy on a log-scale. It is visible from this that after China, also South Korea has been able to curb the spread, and now Norway is showing signs of that as well. In contrast, Italy still seems nowhere near the turning point.

We hope that this tool can help people as well as decision makers understand the relative effectiveness of the approaches used by these countries to curb the spread. We believe it also shows the importance of testing (which has been very good in South Korea). More importantly perhaps to readers, we feel that this is a sign of hope that it is possible to get this under control and that everyone should feel motivated to abide by the strict self distancing we are all trying to enforce.

Signs of hope seem rare these days, so we wanted to share this.
The BibBase blog has more information, noting that "the current data set seems to be missing data from the U.S. until just recently, which reflects in unreasonably abrupt increases in the charts for the U.S. and its states."

An anonymous reader quotes UPI: Scientists have developed a technique for repairing damaged DNA. The breakthrough, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, could pave the way for new therapies for cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

The accumulation of DNA damage is responsible for aging, cancer and neurological diseases like motor neuron disease, also known as ALS.

Until now, scientists have struggled to find ways to repair this kind of damage. However, researchers have discovered a new protein called TEX264 that can combine with other enzymes to find and destroy toxic proteins that bind to DNA and trigger damage.

Scientists are hoping to identify ways to use TEX264 and its protein relatives to repair the DNA damage linked with disorders like cancer and ALS. New therapies inspired by the latest research could also be used to repair the purposeful DNA damage caused by chemotherapy.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes SlashGear: NASA wants the public to help it track very-low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellites and the potential light pollution issues they may cause. The space agency launched a public science project that anyone can participate in, stating that it only requires a tripod, smartphone, and the use of a website that reveals when satellites will be overhead. Similarly, the European Space Observatory is also tracking these satellites for the same reason.

VLEO satellites like the Starlink clusters from SpaceX have raised concerns from astronomers and some space agencies over their potential for disrupting night sky observations. These satellites are fairly bright in the twilight sky, appearing like bright dots or streaks in images, depending on the camera's shutter speed duration and some other factors.

DevNull127 writes: MIT has a long-standing tradition. High school seniors who've been accepted into next year's class at MIT are informed on Pi Day (March 14th — that is, 3/14). And each year there's also a slick video touting the URL where students can check whether they've been admitted. (Last year's video documented a massive project that involved 30 sacks of charcoal plus several hundred pounds of — no, that would be telling...)

But in 2018 Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill appeared in a Star Wars-themed video titled "The Last Dean." (The 2017 video had also paid homage to another Disney franchise...) So for 2020, MIT's video returned again to their version of Star Wars universe.

Congratulations to the class of 2024! Even America's National Security Agency got into the Pi Day fun this year, daring readers on Twitter to try to crack the code hidden in this sentence:

"Now, I make a tasty delicious or hidden treat and share messages decrypted through numbering..."

schwit1 quotes the International Business Times: Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche announced Friday it had received emergency approval from U.S. regulators for a new and much faster test for diagnosing the deadly new coronavirus...

The test can be run in high volumes on fully automated equipment, Roche said, suggesting it could provide more results far faster than other tests available. "We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10," Thomas Schinecker, head of Roche's diagnostics unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Widespread testing is essential in the race to rein in the spread of the virus, which has so far infected more than 130,000 people and killed nearly 5,000 worldwide. The new Roche tests, which will also now be available in markets that accept the European CE-mark certification, are run on Roche's widely available cobas 6800/8800 systems and can provide results within 3.5 hours, the company said.

In a 24-hour period, the largest machines can provide results on up to 4,128 tests, it said.
Fierce Biotech points out that "emergency use" of the test was quickly approved by U.S. regulators within 24 hours: In addition to the one-day approval, the FDA said it did not object to Roche pre-shipping its COVID-19 tests to laboratories ahead of time, so they could be used immediately following the authorization...

The test is designed to detect nucleic acid strands of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from nasal or oral swabs. However, the company said negative results do not preclude an infection and should be combined with clinical observations and the patient's history and contact with the disease...

"Roche is committed to delivering as many tests as possible and is going to the limits of our production capacity," the company said in a statement, and it expects to have millions of tests available per month.

Stanford University announced strict new rules for undergraduates after a student tested positive for COVID-19: "The university already went to online classes last week," notes the Los Angeles Times. Now, noting county-wide restrictions on gatherings of more than 100 people, the university has also changed its dining hall procedures, and students "will be given pre-filled to-go containers and bottled or canned drinks. Students will then need to leave the dining hall and eat outdoors, in their dorm room or elsewhere."

In addition, all other students have been asked to leave campus, reports SFGate, though "International students who cannot go home, students who have known health or safety risks, and students who are homeless can still remain on campus if a request is submitted."

And the provost is also asking instructors to make winter quarter final exams optional for undergraduate students.
In other news, Slashdot reader RobinH notes that the FIRST Robotics Competition has suspended its entire season and canceled its championships.

Using a single lens that is about one-thousandth of an inch thick, researchers have created a camera that does not require focusing. Phys.Org reports: "Our flat lenses can drastically reduce the weight, complexity and cost of cameras and other imaging systems, while increasing their functionality," said research team leader Rajesh Menon from the University of Utah. "Such optics could enable thinner smartphone cameras, improved and smaller cameras for biomedical imaging such as endoscopy, and more compact cameras for automobiles." In Optica, The Optical Society's (OSA) journal for high impact research, Menon and colleagues describe their new flat lens and show that it can maintain focus for objects that are about 6 meters apart from each other. Flat lenses use nanostructures patterned on a flat surface rather than bulky glass or plastic to achieve the important optical properties that control the way light travels.

"This new lens could have many interesting applications outside photography such as creating highly efficient illumination for LIDAR that is critical for many autonomous systems, including self-driving cars," said Menon. The researchers say the design approach they used could be expanded to create optical components with any number of properties such as extreme bandwidth, easier manufacturability or lower cost.