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Also Cancelled Over Coronavirus: FIRST Robotics Competition and Stanford's Final Exams (stanford.edu) 19

Posted by EditorDavid from the social-isolation dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Also Cancelled Over Coronavirus: FIRST Robotics Competition and Stanford's Final Exams More

Also Cancelled Over Coronavirus: FIRST Robotics Competition and Stanford's Final Exams

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  • This all started from someone eating bat salad one day.

  • It truly is a debilitating pandemic ... (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @03:49PM (#59830772)

    ... this coronaphobia.

    Every coronaphobist deserves to be rounded up and extradited to Italy or Wuhan, and publicly shamed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hoarders yes. Coronophobists no. A healthy social distancing will make the transmissions die out sooner rather than later and is overall better for everyone.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Indeed, hoarders are annoying, but there's special place in hell for every asshat that ran out and bought a truckload of water and toilet paper in hopes they could profit from it.
    • This isn't baseless fear. The mortality rate is substantially higher than that of the flu. See https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext [thelancet.com]. This also has a higher estimated base reproduction rate than the flu. In many ways this is a very serious illness. Part of the importance here is that we're trying to "flatten the curve." The typical trend of an epidemic if you graph the number of cases over time is to have a single peak and then have the number decrease over time

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Yes, it's serious because we have no treatment for it. We had the same issue for the flu as well until we came up with a treatment for it. (Think of all the major diseases and we can treat them now - Spanish Flu, Black Plague, etc - we can now treat)

        But once it's under control, the death rate will decrease, likely to that similar of other coronaviruses.

        Think of it this way - Measles had a death rate of around 5%, now it's around 0.1%. Even anti-vaxxers get the benefit of the lowered death rate because of tr

    • Every coronaphobist deserves to be rounded up

      Yes, the answer to all problems for the socialists is to kill the right people. Or is it the wrong people?

      You can understand how I would be confused, when you seem mad at people who don't take Coronavirus seriously, and then you say that "Coronophobists", or literally the people most afraid of Coronavirus, out and kill them (we all know what you mean when you say "send them to a death zones of Italy and Wuhan", though even there you kind of failed since Wuhan is

      • Yes, the answer to all problems for the socialists is to kill the right people. Or is it the wrong people?

        No, it's the right people. Like you.

  • Difficult for FRC teams (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @06:40PM (#59831154) Homepage
    For those of you not familiar with the FIRST robotics competition, teams have about 2 months to build a 125 lb (56kg) robot for competition. High school students work beside adult technical mentors to prototype, design, build, and program it. Top teams are showing up almost every day of the week and all weekend, and spending over $100,000 in some cases (including entry fees, parts, travel and accommodation). Some schools adapt their curriculum around the competition and team members can take a class where they spend time working on the robot. While we all understand the decision to suspend the season, there's no guarantee that the season will continue and it's hitting teams really hard. Most people I know can't believe how much time gets put in during a season. The mentors take time off work and away from their families. Companies support teams by custom making their parts. To commit all that time without a payoff of seeing it compete... It's tough.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Namlak ( 850746 )

      I'm a coach and mentor for 599 Robodox and my son is a senior on the team this year, so it's extra tough.

      We also qualified for VEX Worlds which has been canceled as well.

      It's brutal for coaches, mentors, and students. All the time designing, fabricating, building, programming and we didn't even get to play one comp (we would have been competing next weekend). And all the fundraising and the whole business side of things, too.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Yeah, is just not the same. It's true that it's about more than just the robots, but the core of it is getting to see what you built out there on the field. The software is actually a small fraction of it. I'd say mechanical stuff is 75 percent of the solutions. This year in particular, trying to get the balls to intake, store, and shoot correctly is incredibly challenging, and it's mostly about the mechanical side. You can't simulate damaged balls, etc.

    • I am a judge and it is totally brutal. 600,000 students who built robots for a purpose will never see them perform that purpose. Its like building a satellite and missing your launch window - you know that nothing can be done, but you just want to cry. It is terribly disappointing.

      Somewhere in here - FIRST was established to mirror the enthusiasm that people have for high school sports into engineering fields - regionals, nationals, team mascots, team bus, mass gatherings, team theming, etc. The FIRST c

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