Supervised Self-Driving Shuttles Are Moving COVID-19 Tests In Florida (theverge.com) 20
Autonomous shuttles are being used to move COVID-19 tests from a Jacksonville, Florida testing site to a nearby Mayo Clinic processing location, in what the medical nonprofit is calling a "first" for the U.S. But as is often the case with autonomous vehicle pilot programs, there's a catch: during each run made to and from the clinic, the self-driving shuttles are being trailed by an SUV driven by a human. The Verge reports: The SUV can be spotted in a video released by the Mayo Clinic, after one of the Mayo Clinic workers loads the cooler of tests onto the self-driving shuttle. The SUV then follows the shuttle across the Mayo Clinic's campus, where the batch of fresh tests is swapped for another cooler. Four of these vehicles have made the same run back and forth each day since March 30th. In a statement provided to The Verge, Joe Moye, the CEO of autonomous vehicle operator Beep, said the Jacksonville Transportation Authority is providing the chase vehicles to "ensure no traffic or pedestrians would potentially impact the delivery path of the COVID-19 samples and supplies." That's despite the fact that the Mayo Clinic's press release says the routes the shuttles are running "are isolated from pedestrians, traffic and staff."
A representative for Beep, which worked with the Mayo Clinic, JTA, and self-driving shuttle builder Navya on the pilot, says that putting the tests in the attendant-less shuttle instead of in an SUV or truck being driven by a human helps limit any potential exposure to the novel coronavirus. And judging from the distance covered in the video released by the Mayo Clinic, it does look like using some sort of vehicle -- autonomous or not -- would indeed help speed up the delivery of the tests to the processing site. Another benefit, according to Moye, is that the shuttle helps keep many Mayo Clinic staff as free as possible, since they would otherwise have to transport the samples themselves.
A representative for Beep, which worked with the Mayo Clinic, JTA, and self-driving shuttle builder Navya on the pilot, says that putting the tests in the attendant-less shuttle instead of in an SUV or truck being driven by a human helps limit any potential exposure to the novel coronavirus. And judging from the distance covered in the video released by the Mayo Clinic, it does look like using some sort of vehicle -- autonomous or not -- would indeed help speed up the delivery of the tests to the processing site. Another benefit, according to Moye, is that the shuttle helps keep many Mayo Clinic staff as free as possible, since they would otherwise have to transport the samples themselves.
Chinese Coronavirus (Score:1, Interesting)
Chinese culture accelerated the propagation of the coronavirus from China to the rest of the world. An analysis [nytimes.com] published by the New York Times explains how the Chinese tendency to hide the truth allowed the coronavirus to spread quickly.
Get more info [blogspot.com] about Chinese culture.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Chinese culture accelerated the propagation of the coronavirus from China to the rest of the world. An analysis [nytimes.com] published by the New York Times explains how the Chinese tendency to hide the truth allowed the coronavirus to spread quickly.
Get more info [blogspot.com] about Chinese culture.
Complete and utter bullshit
This is the official "travels + evolution" tree for the virus at WHO compiled using the same software which was originally written by IBM for the Human Genome project and is now used to track flu pandemics: https://nextstrain.org/ncov [nextstrain.org]
You will need a computer to browse this properly, it does not work on a tablet. Mouseover on top of junctions, it will give you statistical confidence, location and dates. If you are surfing on a mobile I have some of the more interesting facts o
Re:Chinese Coronavirus (Score:5, Insightful)
Any program is data driven.. Garbage in = garbage out.
It's not about the modeling, it's about the data. China is obviously NOT telling the WHO (or the rest of the world) the whole truth. China is/was on the bleeding edge of this, and having accurate data from them is critical for the success of the computer models.
The modeling is fine, nobody is questioning the validity of the modeling.. What we are questioning is the data driving the models.
Re: (Score:2)
Any program is data driven.. Garbage in = garbage out.
It's not about the modeling, it's about the data. China is obviously NOT telling the WHO (or the rest of the world) the whole truth.
The data is the actual RNA sequences from all over the world.
1. Only a small fraction of it is Cinese. Most are samples from elsewhere - that is how an "evolutionary travel tree" is built.
2. It takes a special kind of idiot to imagine that Chinese, Russian or someone else can have ultra special evil overlord powers and change the mutations in the RNA of viruses sequenced from samples in Chile, Italy or Britain.
3. This method as a "tracing who and where released this" as well as "where did it get in"
Re: (Score:1)
For some reason when Western countries have poor quality data it's just general incompetence but when China has it they are lying bastards.
Look at the news today - no deaths in a single day in China due to COVID-19. But it's getting more play in the West than it is in China, because the Chinese government knows the limitations of its data collection and isn't going to shout it from the rooftops just yet. Meanwhile we are getting daily stats from our countries as if they mean something.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems pretty irrelevant to me at this point in time exactly how the disease started or whether China is lying about some statistic. I don't think they collected data completely honestly, I also don't think the rest of the world is being very accurate about data collection. Also, I don't really care beyond the fact that countries need to test more, I have come to the conclusion though that many countries can't yet test more because they simply don't have enough of the right equipment to do so. It's not su
Re: (Score:2)
The NextStrain visualisaiton graph does not show that.
It shows the earliest incidence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan on 24 and 26 December 2019.
The earliest strain outside China is in Thailand, on 8th January.
But if you mean the extrapolation, then the earliest divergence for the European strains (grey branch) is still in January.
Re: (Score:2)
The method gives dates for inferred mutations, their likely locations as well as confidence intervals (as expected from statistics).
One of the first LOCATIONS outside China is as of Today Belgium - Grey green branch, mean at 10th of January, Earliest possible date 15th of Dece
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I saw the Belgium part. The mean date is still consistent with the Wuhan outbreak.
From what I recall, Patient zero for the UK was someone who went to ski in the Alps, and came back and spread it. It would not be surprising if a Belgian was there too.
Oh, and I read your blog post. Very interesting, and refutes the Chinese ambassador the US tweets of it being a US army thing (it might as well be 5G mobile networks!)
Regarding Canada, the early cases in BC were from China. So were the ones in Ontario. The
Re: (Score:2)
From what I recall, Patient zero for the UK was someone who went to ski in the Alps, and came back and spread it. It would not be surprising if a Belgian was there too.
UK is pretty bad - samples are present on nearly every evolutionary branch. We got it from EVERYWHERE and up to a couple of days ago UK was computed as the Europe entry point, not Belgium.
Thanks for the links. I will have a look at them later today.
Re: (Score:2)
Many Canadian provinces should be the same.
As I said, there were waves from China, Iran, Egypt (tourism), then a whole bunch from the USA.
Here is an epidemiological report for Ontario [ontario.ca], Canada's most populous province. Towards the end, you will see where infections came from. It will be different in Quebec as well as British Columbia (who seem to be on their way to quash this virus).
And to top it off, Ontario has the lowest testing r
Test material in transit??? (Score:3)
On another hand, COVID19 is a good excuse to get this setup so it is in place for other samples which have more sample material and higher exposure potential.
Sorry, I'm not impressed... (Score:2)
I worked in a aircraft rework facility back in the mid 80's and we had an autonomous delivery vehicle that ran around the place delivering and picking up parts.
It followed a wire which was inserted in a slot cut in the concrete floor. It would make stops at specific stations based on distance traveled, where the parts would be loaded and unloaded and then proceed when a button was pushed. It avoided hitting things using a contact sensor and IR proximity sensor that would make it stop, if the obstruction d
Re: (Score:2)
Aren't they doing it backwards? (Score:2)