As the events surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak unfold, its understandable that you might begin to feelincreasingstress.

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Informationis rapidly changing andcan be confusing, overwhelming and even scary.You may experience fear andspikesin anxiety. But even if youremanaging your anxiety levelswell, theres still so much more to deal with.

Whether its dealing with at-risk family membersor patients,a roller coaster economy,trying to juggle work,keeping kids occupiedor homeschoolingwhile schools are closed, or simply adjusting to a new, unfamiliar situation, stress can easily pile up and negatively impact you both physically and mentally.

Clinical psychologist Amy Sullivan, PsyD, ABPP,stresses the importance of planning coping activities. America is the engine of ingenuity, she says.Lets be innovative. This is a time where we can really be creative and come uppositive coping skills.

Exercise regularly.While gyms are closed and social distancing guidelines are in place, its still possible to get inaerobic exercise, like walking,running, hiking or playing with your kids/pets,allcan help release endorphins (natural substances that help you feel better and maintain a positive attitude). And there are other exercises you can do in the comfort of your own home. Dr. Sullivan recommends yogaand stretchingas one way to both exercise your body and calm your mind and itseasy to do by yourself.

Maintain a healthy diet.Stress canadversely affectboth your eating habits and your metabolism. The best way to combat stress or emotional eating is to be mindful of what triggers stress eating and to be ready to fight the urge. If you are someone who is prone to emotional eating, know your triggers, know what stresses you out and be prepared, Dr. Sullivan says. Keepinghealthy snackson hand will help nourish your body, arming yourself nutritionally to better deal with your stress. Helping to regulate your blood sugar throughout the day is going to keep your body stable and your emotions on a much better playing field, Dr. Sullivan says.

Take a break.As humans we want control over our lives and in this situation, so we have to learn to manage lack of control, says Dr. Sullivan.While its important to stay informed of the latest news and developments, the evolving nature of the news can get overwhelming. Find a balance of exposure to news that works for you. This is particularly important for our children. We need to limit their exposure to the media and provide age-appropriate information to them.Whenever reasonably possible, disconnect physically and mentally.Play with puzzles, a board game, do a treasure hunt, tackle a project, reorganize something, or start a new book that is unrelated to coronavirus coverage.

Connect with others.I cant stress enough how important connection is during times of uncertainty and fear, Dr. Sullivan says. Fear and isolation can lead to depression and anxiety. We need to make a point to connect with others regularly. Reach out to family members, friends and colleagues regularly via phone, text, FaceTime or other virtual platforms. Make sure that you are checking on those that are alone. Check in regularly with your parents, grandparents and your children.

Get sleep and rest.The ever-changing news environment can create a lot of stress, stress that gets amplifiedwhen you dont get enough sleep. Its especially important now to get therecommended amount of sleepto help you stay focused on work and on managing the stress the current outbreak can bring. Dr. Sullivan recommends avoiding stimulants like alcohol, caffeine and nicotine before bed. If you still find yourself too stressed to sleep, consider developing a new pre-bedtime routine, including a long bath or a cup of caffeine-free herbal tea. And planning for tomorrow earlier in your day can help alleviate stress related to whats to come.

Following these steps to manage stress and add a sense of normalcy can go a long way to help you cope with the ever-changing environment and help keep those around you, especially children, calm and focused.If you are not able to manage your anxiety or depression on your own, reach out to a behavioral medicine provider for an in-person or virtual visit. Take care of yourself and others around you, says Dr. Sullivan.

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5 Ways to Manage Stress During the Coronavirus Outbreak - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic

Were living in a time of high anxiety. There is more than enough to worry about pertaining to our own physical and mental health and financial security. And theres another widely experienced stressor that many of us didnt anticipate: the anxiety that sets in when someone you know doesnt understand the severity of the coronavirus outbreakespecially when its a close friend or member of your own family.

This applies to people of any age. Though we recently wrote about how to talk to parents, grandparents and older relatives about the coronavirus, some young people have also been ignoring warnings from public health experts and traveling to places like Daytona Beach for spring break. (Spring break destinations are, at the best of times, optimal places for spreading germs, thanks to being crammed in hotel rooms, sharing cups and all that making out.) People disagree with us all the time, so why is this such a stressor? Lifehacker spoke with several mental health experts about how to deal with stress and anxiety you may face after experiencing someones lackadaisical attitude about COVID-19, and why it makes us anxious in the first place.

Regardless of why someone is indifferent about the outbreak, a casual conversation about public health can quickly turn into a stressful argument when you find out that theyre not taking this seriously. According to Dr. W. Nate Upshaw, a psychiatrist and medical director of NeuroSpa TMS, there are two ways why a situation like this could be stressful. It could cause a general concern that people are not taking the outbreak seriously, he tells Lifehacker. Talking to a friend or loved who thinks this way may remind you that there are others not taking the threat seriously, which can be stressful. The other way this can cause anxiety is the real possibility that someone not following recommended protocols might infect you or someone you love.

Along the same lines, Dr. Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist, tells Lifehacker that part of what stresses us out is that when people dont consider the coronavirus as a serious threat it could seriously place a burden on those around them, as a lax attitude on any single persons part increases the chance of transmission and severe illness or death for that individual and to anyone who comes in contact with that person.

It can also cause a fight-or-flight anxiety response in those who are following all the public health guidelines because it prompts a person to question their own judg ment, Linda Snell, a therapist at New Method Wellness explains. It can lead to feelings of invalidation regarding your own response to the seriousness of the coronavirus, which creates feelings of doubt. Doubt can lead to an ongoing need for reassurance, causing one to feel anxious in the absence of reassurance, she tells Lifehacker. Conformity is a form of reassurance. Here are six suggestions from mental health professionals for how to manage your anxiety in these situations.

The coronavirus outbreak hasnt been easy for Dr. Steven Rosenberg, a psychotherapist and behavioral specialist. My fianc is not taking the coronavirus seriously, he tells Lifehacker. She actually said to me that she really doesnt know why there is such a fuss. This is coming from a woman who worries about everything. He has found that bringing himself back to the moment during stressful conversations has helped.

I saw that my anxiousness was seeing everyone getting sick with the virus in my mind, he says. I just brought myself back to the present tense and got away from negative anticipation of the future, he says. When I came back to the moment, I felt amazingly better...Be mindful of what you are doing in the now! Be in control of yourself in the moment. It feels better.

When you try to talk to someone about the coronavirus and they are unfazed about the whole thing, you can at least check in with them about their general health. If you have a friend, family member or colleague who you dont think is taking sufficient precautions, remind them of the importance of keeping themselves psychologically and physically strong so they can be resistant to the coronavirus, Dr. Carole Lieberman, a board certified psychiatrist and public health expert tells Lifehacker. Encourage them to eat well, take vitamins, get enough sleep and exercise, wash their hands and do things to decrease their stress every day, she explains. When you have done as much as you can to help them focus on these basic foundations of their health, it will relieve your anxiety, too.

At this point, you may have already tried talking to the person in question about the gravity of the situation and may be beyond the point where anything you can say will make a difference. But if you havent, Upshaw recommends attempting to educate the person. There are many credible articles on news outlets and government websites that you can share with them, he says. Upshaw uses the analogy of preparing for a hurricane when talking to people about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak:

Preparing for a hurricane is a good analogy to use when explaining why people should prepare for the COVID-19 virus. When a hurricane warning is issued, there is a need to prepare in advance, while everything around you looks and seems quite normal. We can look at the damage of past hurricanes, however, to see that the need to prepare is real...We know that COVID-19 has affected the elderly more, and especially those with compromised health, so even though things do not yet look bad in this country, they should follow the recommendations of experts and authorities to avoid catching or spreading COVID-19. It can be hard for people to wrap their minds around this issue. Likening it to a situation they already have familiarity with can make it easier to understand.

When people are faced with family members or social situations where anxiety is running high because of their loved ones lax attitude about COVID-19, Manly says that its important to have solid boundaries as to what is expected. These can include requesting that those coming into your home wash their hands, use sanitizer or refrain from contact with you if they are coughing or ill in any way. Strong boundaries will help reduce unwanted or inappropriate behaviors and also increase a personal sense of safety and calm, she explains. Solid boundaries actually reduce anxiety for all concerned, as it is important for all of us to have structure and clarity as to what is expected.

Another tactic Manly suggests is to tell people who arent taking the coronavirus seriously thats stressing you out in the nicest way possible. As some people do not realize that their behavior is stressful to others, it can be important to state this in a kind, honest way, she says. Of course, this may not be the easiest option, but some people do genuinely want to know if theyre doing something thats upsetting other people. It may not change their mind about the pandemic, but they may adjust their behavior or methods of communication with you to decrease the anxiety.

As we discussed above, when people dont take a threat as seriously as we do, it can result in feelings of invalidation. Snell recommends focusing on your own self-validation instead of seeking reassurance and validation from others. This is the practice of accepting your own internal experience, your thoughts and your feelings without criticizing or judging yourself for having those feelings, she explains. Self-validation is not accepting your feelings as facts, but instead just sitting with your emotions without reacting to them. The ability to validate your thoughts and feelings will help you decrease your anxiety, allow you to calm yourself and assist you with managing your emotions in a more effective way.

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How to Deal With the Anxiety Caused by Coronavirus Pandemic Deniers - Lifehacker

Self-care is the new healthcare.

Self-care is any activity that we do in life in order to take care of our physical, mental, and emotional health.

Taking care of yourself is the same as self-care.

The challenge is identifying the different things that we need to do individually that make up the best way to take care of ourselves.

There are many reasons you should never avoid or opt out of taking care of yourself.

One, you are worth it. You deserve to be healthy.

Two, it promotes a healthy work/life balance. Your life should not be all work, make sure to leave room for me time.

Other reasons to start taking care of yourself are managing stress, to live instead of exist, and for better overall physical health.

All you have to do is go for a light jog, meditate, take a break when you need it, laugh heartily at least once daily, avoid emotional eating, learn to say no, and stop over thinking.

These are ways to start taking care of yourself today.

Self-care is preventative care, and more employers are finding value in promoting self-care practices.

According to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), 10 percent of visits to the doctors office are unnecessary. Those appointments cost employers billions of dollars in lost productivity and unnecessary health care costs.

It is hard for employees to be engaged and productive when they are unhealthy and unengaged. And, unengaged and unproductive employees hurt companies in the long run.

Some companies have formal wellness or well-being programs in place, but for the ones who dont, its good to brainstorm around the idea of promoting more self-care practices.

Different things a company can do to support employee self-care without spending more money or adding more programs include making ergonomics a top priority. This includes things like good lighting, chairs that provide good posture, and quiet spaces to concentrate.

Companies can also promote stop doing goals, which instead of adding more on to a to-do list, promote a list of things employees should stop doing. This activity has been proven helpful in changing the attitude and behavior in the workplace.

All employers should encourage the use of health insurance wellness benefits like physicals, shots, vaccinations, and screening tests. Other self-care practices to promote in the workplace include planning healthier company-sponsored meals, promote sleep, offer stress and time management courses, practice mindfulness, promote more and frequent employee recognitions, and provide flexible work schedules.

A lot of value can be found in preventative self-care.

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The new healthcare | News, Sports, Jobs - timesobserver.com

"One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them."

Martin Luther King

"To think that we can have viable human economy by destroying the Earth economy is absurd. Indigenous people still live in a universe, but we dont- we live in an economic system."

Thomas Berry, "The Mystique of the Earth"

The coronavirus did not manifest from nowhere. Our sadistic treatment and manipulation of animals for centuries has come back to haunt us. It is time for humanity to absorb the lessons of the animal world.

From the Orient the world has inherited a civilization upending event, this coronavirus feeding on the human strain. It is perhaps not acoincidencethat it has manifested at the very time the UN is trying to form a Convention onBiological Diversity to protect what remains of the organic world. The contagion is the karmic result of our own ignorance and disregard of other species that began in China and that has visited us before. As Erin Sorrell, microbiologistat Georgetown, exclaims, 70 percent of zoonotic diseases come from wildlife.

As the 2003 SARSvirusalready proved. Then the culprit may have been Asian palm civets. Todays pandemicmay have been caused bypangolins. The scale-covered mammals are kept in caged conditions in markets in Asia in criminally appalling realities, reserved for dinner menus. Most animals in these markets are dying and thirsty and kept in squalidcontainers moved and shipped around asif they were simplecommodities. The conditions are a nightmare and have even prompted many Chinese to close the animal trade. How we treat animals affects entire ecosystems and habitats, the only real wealth we as a species have. Chinas ban on wild animal markets may well be the one silver lining in this ensuing global tragedy, but it should become a permanent ban, not a temporary palliative, becauseother viruses may well ensue in the notdistantfuture given climate changeisuponus.

Major conservation groups have also pleaded for Vietnam to take stringent measures to close its wildlife markets. Vietnam's prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the ministry of agriculture and rural development to ban the consumption of wildlife. We can only hope these initiatives manifest quickly and foster a new relationship to what remains of the Mekong basin's wildlife. Vietnam's actions will hopefully prevent not only new outbreaks in the future but also keep even more potentially virulent viruses from overwhelming the globe.

Wall Street has had the jitters, tens of millions in China have been as impacted as when the Mongol Golden Horde swept into the Middle Kingdom in the 13th century. But whatever deaths have overtaken our species in the last few months, deaths that number in the thousands, we should not forget the root source of this scourge, humanitys revolting disregard, manipulation, and outright slaughter of our fellow beings, the animals of earth.

The deafening silence of absent species marks our time as singular. Whatextinctions are happening will become more impactful than WWI, WWII or the Great Depression combined, because now we have an enormous, almost unfathomable ecological tab to reckon with, and not just the folly of an economic system run amuck. The entire spectrum of natures syllabus is being played out. Our relationship with the sentient world will have to reverse or we perish. The coronavirus is the tip of the iceberg.

Animals were always considered cardinal spiritual, sentient and even intellectual beings in the lives of indigenous peoples and many civilizations past. But as colonial and technological powers overran the world, indigenous peoples were treated no better than the buffalo, or whale orpangolinor bat. And now our disregard of the others bears a karmic component we cannot ignore.

The criminal neglect and dismantling of Nature over the last century has led us to a point where globalization itself will have to be rapidly reappraised. Wall Street may have lost some ground,but the mounting possible extinction toll is many magnitudes more vital than the arbitrary machinations of the Dow.The death toll on millions of acres of rainforests lost, coral reefs bleached and species eradicated the world over has brought us to this point. It is the invisible aura of loss we have inherited. It is the karma our species is inheriting. The locust invasion of east Africa is a Biblical cohort to the virus of East Asia. Now our entire immune system as a species and that of the planet is under siege.

Paul Shepard, the eloquent ecologist who wrote triumphantly about the importance of animals, wrote in The Others: How Animals Made Us Human, People are asked to rely on faith in the invisible and intangible, repudiating the beasts on which primal peoples depend as intermediaries, embodying spirits, affirming death, giving form to the mystery of the multiple truths of mortal existence, and acting as vehicle to other realms. It is not coincidental that this Christian- based society has so neglected its first teachers, the animals, for several thousand years and put so much faith in invisible gods and the afterlife, intangibles that have divorced us from life and the very soil on which we depend for our survival.

We have in Henry Hestons words become cosmic outlaws. If we lose the animals, we will become inconsolable orphans. This most minute but insidious of beings, the coronavirus is a wake-up call to our unconscious selves. We have wrapped ourselves in a cocoon of technological, synthetic and decorative cultural achievement burdened with pride that strains and depletes our full values as sentient beings. In the process we have ignored the suffering and sentience of others. The physiologist Rene Dubos once wrote that humans could adapt to starless skies, treeless avenues, shapeless buildings, tasteless bread, joyless celebrations, spiritless pleasures to a life without reverence for the past, love for the present, or poetical anticipations of the future, but it is questionable that man can retain his physical and mental health if he loses contact with the natural forces that have shaped his biological and mental nature.

How we converse and conduct ourselves in the next year or two will morph into a different realm of relating, and hopefully into a more respectful species. We may need to grow roots under our feet once again and cultivate what Levi Strauss calledan ecological civicism. We may need more than a pause from the pace of globalization that began to convulse the world two generations ago. Will we return to the same numbers game of outlandish growth, and greed when already much of the pollution from northern China seems to have dissipated from the map? Is not our entire fixation on profit a psychic numbing that has divorced us from ecological coherence?

Maybe the coronavirus is a warning sign, the first real test of our global community that has emerged from the Pandoras box of an increasingly incorrigible species. Amazon-size ecosystems are in jeopardy. This insidious half live, half un-live being called corona has taken over our sleep and waking life like an alien invasion. Let us be grateful the next time we see a flock of birds flying miraculously overhead, or the next time we see a koala holding on to a branch for dear life, or the next time we see a dolphin dancing over the waves. And know these beings did not have to die a merciless, hapless, sick death in some market of central China where this virus originated.

The virus has given us a fever, yes, just as we have imposed a fever on the climate of the earth. Milan Kundera in the Unbearable Lightness of Being reminds us in one of the most poignant lines ever written,Humanitys true moral test, its fundamental test, which is deeply buried from view, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

And it is possible that the coronavirus may be just another contagion in a long line of lessons we will have to inherit from our fellow creatures.Recently a wolfs head was discovered by mammoth tusk hunters in Siberia dating from 30,000 years ago. What viruses are embedded in its flesh? What strains will invade our civilization like ghosts from a forgotten Pleistocene seeping out from under the crying and collapsing torrent of glaciers up north, seeping slowly onto our shores? Will we learn the lesson that thepangolin, one of the most trafficked and severely abused mammals on earth, the one that has filled so many markets in Asia, is teaching us now across the time zones of the world? Will we make sure now that it does not go extinct? Even its exquisite plates, the only armored mammal on Earth, could not protect itself from the diabolic hunger of our species. Will the coronavirus humble us to the reality that humans make up just .01 percent of life on Earth?Will we have to absorb a virus so virulent, so complete in its ability to create havoc from the melting permafrost in the Arctic that humanity will become irreparably crippled?

The coronavirus in its all-pervasive pandemonium is a wake-up call, not just to our well-being and souls but also how we had better conduct ourselves towards the other species of this Earth, they who enable life as we know it. The coronavirus is a karmic test that we need to pass, so that we as a species can transcend our conduct on this planet we have maligned and mistreated for far too long.

One immensely vital and fragile bioregion that promises potentially lethal pathogens is the Arctic. The great thaw at the top of the world, with ice melting at an extraordinary rate, with polar bears, whales and many other beings having to survive the immune breakdown of the region, is the main reason Shell and other mining and fossil fuel industries should stay clear from the region. Five years ago French scientists discovered a "giant virus" in a 30,000- year-old sample of permafrost in Siberia that had retained its infectivity. If we industrialize these areas and ride roughshod over the roof of the world we risk waking up pathogens we thought we had eradicated or help foster the spread of things even worse than smallpox, said researcher Jean Michel Claverie.

Jean Malaurie, the remarkable French geologist and explorer of the Arctic who fought for the preservation of the Inuit from the contrivances and pollution of Western man, once expounded, "Men of science, like men of state have a duty imposed by ethics. The Earth is living: it can and will avenge itself: already there are portents. The Earth has no time left for man's ignorance, arrogance, sophistry and madness."

Learn more aboutCyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson's work at their website.

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Coronavirus should be a wake-up call to our treatment of the animal world - The Hill

Obviously riders and engineers work obsessively to develop and fine-tune their machinery, but when the lights go out on Sunday afternoon the rider must ride around any problems and imperfections if he wants to win the race.

Thats why Mrquez often makes the difference when conditions are at their trickiest, usually at the beginning or end of races.

When the race starts, riders often find grip is different to how it was in practice, because the Moto2 race has made the track slippery or track temperature is different. While other riders take half a dozen laps to adjust to the conditions, Mrquez instantly adapts his cornering lines, how he uses the throttle and so on.

Its the same in the final laps, when the rider who feels happiest skating around on the brink is going to be hard to beat. Once again Mrquez feels the tyres and adjusts his bike inputs to search for what grip is left in the tyres. Then he uses all of that and a little bit more, elbows always at the ready.

Few understand this better than fellow RC213V rider Cal Crutchlow. Marc is so special he can ride around anything, so he rides around problems like theyre not there, says the Briton.

Who else can do this?

Fabio Quartararo can. Some people say the 20-year-old Frenchman rides like Jorge Lorenzo. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesnt. When theres plenty of grip he glides through the corners, but when the grip goes hes perfectly happy with the bike bouncing across the kerbs and kicking this way and that.

When will we see Quartararo and Mrquez race again? No one knows. Each passing day of the coronavirus crisis makes racing in the near future seem less and less likely. Already its difficult to see MotoGP taking to the grid before the late summer or autumn. And perhaps that possibility will seem ludicrously optimistic in the coming days and weeks.

Then once the main wave of infection has passed, which circuits, promoters, sponsors, teams and airlines will be left standing?

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MotoGP Why Mrquez rules MotoGP's Triple M era The master of riding by the seat of - Motor Sport

If not the most deadly, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is one of the most contagious diseases to have hit our green planet in the past decades. In little over three months since the virus was first spotted in mainland China, it has spread to more than 90 countries, infected more than 185,000 people, and taken more than 3,500 lives.

As governments and health organizations scramble to contain the spread of coronavirus, they need all the help they can get, including from artificial intelligence. Though current AI technologies arefar from replicating human intelligence, they are proving to be very helpful in tracking the outbreak, diagnosing patients, disinfecting areas, and speeding up the process of finding a cure for COVID-19.

Data science and machine learning might be two of the most effective weapons we have in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak.

Just before the turn of the year, BlueDot, an artificial intelligence platform that tracks infectious diseases around the world, flagged a cluster of unusual pneumonia cases happening around a market in Wuhan, China. Nine days later, the World Health Organization (WHO)released a statementdeclaring the discovery of a novel coronavirus in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan.

BlueDot usesnatural language processingandmachine learning algorithmsto peruse information from hundreds of sources for early signs of infectious epidemics. The AI looks at statements from health organizations, commercial flights, livestock health reports, climate data from satellites, and news reports. With so much data being generated on coronavirus every day, the AI algorithms can help home in on the bits that can provide pertinent information on the spread of the virus. It can also find important correlations between data points, such as the movement patterns of the people who are living in the areas most affected by the virus.

The company also employs dozens of experts who specialize in a range of disciplines including geographic information systems, spatial analytics, data visualization, computer sciences, as well as medical experts in clinical infectious diseases, travel and tropical medicine, and public health. The experts review the information that has been flagged by the AI and send out reports on their findings.

Combined with the assistance of human experts, BlueDots AI can not only predict the start of an epidemic, but also forecast how it will spread. In the case of COVID-19, the AI successfully identified the cities where the virus would be transferred to after it surfaced in Wuhan. Machine learning algorithms studying travel patterns were able to predict where the people who had contracted coronavirus were likely to travel.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) (Image source:NIAID)

You have probably seen the COVID-19 screenings at border crossings and airports. Health officers use thermometer guns and visually check travelers for signs of fever, coughing, and breathing difficulties.

Now,computer vision algorithmscan perform the same at large scale. An AI system developed by Chinese tech giant Baidu uses cameras equipped with computer vision and infrared sensors to predict peoples temperatures in public areas. The system can screen up to 200 people per minute and detect their temperature within a range of 0.5 degrees Celsius. The AI flags anyone who has a temperature above 37.3 degrees. The technology is now in use in Beijings Qinghe Railway Station.

Alibaba, another Chinese tech giant, has developed an AI system that candetect coronavirus in chest CT scans. According to the researchers who developed the system, the AI has a 96-percent accuracy. The AI was trained on data from 5,000 coronavirus cases and can perform the test in 20 seconds as opposed to the 15 minutes it takes a human expert to diagnose patients. It can also tell the difference between coronavirus and ordinary viral pneumonia. The algorithm can give a boost to the medical centers that are already under a lot of pressure to screen patients for COVID-19 infection. The system is reportedly being adopted in 100 hospitals in China.

A separate AI developed by researchers from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan EndoAngel Medical Technology Company, and the China University of Geosciences purportedly shows 95-percent accuracy on detecting COVID-19 in chest CT scans. The system is adeep learning algorithmtrained on 45,000 anonymized CT scans. According to a preprint paperpublished on medRxiv, the AIs performance is comparable to expert radiologists.

One of the main ways to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is to reduce contact between infected patients and people who have not contracted the virus. To this end, several companies and organizations have engaged in efforts to automate some of the procedures that previously required health workers and medical staff to interact with patients.

Chinese firms are using drones and robots to perform contactless delivery and to spray disinfectants in public areas to minimize the risk of cross-infection. Other robots are checking people for fever and other COVID-19 symptoms and dispensing free hand sanitizer foam and gel.

Inside hospitals, robots are delivering food and medicine to patients and disinfecting their rooms to obviate the need for the presence of nurses. Other robots are busy cooking rice without human supervision, reducing the number of staff required to run the facility.

In Seattle, doctors used a robot to communicate with and treat patients remotely to minimize exposure of medical staff to infected people.

At the end of the day, the war on the novel coronavirus is not over until we develop a vaccine that can immunize everyone against the virus. But developing new drugs and medicine is a very lengthy and costly process. It can cost more than a billion dollars and take up to 12 years. Thats the kind of timeframe we dont have as the virus continues to spread at an accelerating pace.

Fortunately, AI can help speed up the process. DeepMind, the AI research lab acquired by Google in 2014, recently declared that it has used deep learning to find new information about the structure of proteins associated with COVID-19. This is a process that could have taken many more months.

Understanding protein structures can provide important clues to the coronavirus vaccine formula. DeepMind is one of several organizations who are engaged in the race to unlock the coronavirus vaccine. It has leveraged the result of decades of machine learning progress as well as research on protein folding.

Its important to note that our structure prediction system is still in development and we cant be certain of the accuracy of the structures we are providing, although we are confident that the system is more accurate than our earlier CASP13 system, DeepMinds researchers wroteon the AI labs website. We confirmed that our system provided an accurate prediction for the experimentally determined SARS-CoV-2 spike protein structure shared in the Protein Data Bank, and this gave us confidence that our model predictions on other proteins may be useful.

Although its too early to tell whether were headed in the right direction, the efforts are commendable. Every day saved in finding the coronavirus vaccine can save hundredsor thousandsof lives.

This story is republished fromTechTalks, the blog that explores how technology is solving problems and creating new ones. Like them onFacebookhere and follow them down here:

Published March 21, 2020 17:00 UTC

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Why AI might be the most effective weapon we have to fight COVID-19 - The Next Web

Reader survey We hear a lot these days about IT automation. Yet whether it's labelled intelligent infrastructure, AIOps, self-driving IT, or even private cloud, the aim is the same.

And that aim is: to use the likes of machine learning, workflow automation, and infrastructure-as-code to automatically make changes in real-time, eliminating as much as possible of the manual drudgery associated with routine IT administration.

Are the latest AI/ML-powered intelligent automation solutions trustworthy and ready for mainstream deployment, particularly in areas such as storage management?

Should we go ahead and implement the technology now on offer?

This controversial topic is the subject of our latest reader survey, and we are eager to hear your views.

Please complete our short survey, here.

As always, your responses will be anonymous and your privacy assured.

Sponsored: Webcast: Why you need managed detection and response

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Are machine-learning-based automation tools good enough for storage management and other areas of IT? Let us know - The Register

In a briefing on Monday, research leaders across tech, academia and the government joined the White House to announce an open data set full of scientific literature on the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, known as CORD-19, will also add relevant new research moving forward, compiling it into one centralized hub. The new data set is machine readable, making it easily parsed for machine learning purposes a key advantage according to researchers involved in the ambitious project.

In a press conference, U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios called the new data set the most extensive collection of machine readable coronavirus literature to date. Kratsios characterized the project as a call to action for the AI community, which can employ machine learning techniques to surface unique insights in the body of data. To come up with guidance for researchers combing through the data, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine collaborated with the World Health Organization to come up with high priority questions about the coronavirus related to genetics, incubation, treatment, symptoms and prevention.

The partnership, announced today by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, brings together the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Microsoft Research, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the National Institutes of Healths National Library of Medicine, Georgetown Universitys Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Kaggle AI platform, owned by Google.

The database brings together nearly 30,000 scientific articles about the virus known as SARS-CoV-2. as well as related viruses in the broader coronavirus group. Around half of those articles make the full text available. Critically, the database will include pre-publication research from resources like medRxiv and bioRxiv, open access archives for pre-print health sciences and biology research.

Sharing vital information across scientific and medical communities is key to accelerating our ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Head of Science Cori Bargmann said of the project.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative hopes that the global machine learning community will be able to help the science community connect the dots on some of the enduring mysteries about the novel coronavirus as scientists pursue knowledge around prevention, treatment and a vaccine.

For updates to the CORD-19 data set, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will track new research on a dedicated page on Meta, the research search engine the organization acquired in 2017.

The CORD-19 data set announcement is certain to roll out more smoothly than the White Houses last attempt at a coronavirus-related partnership with the tech industry. The White House came under criticism last week for President Trumps announcement that Google would build a dedicated website for COVID-19 screening. In fact, the site was in development by Verily, Alphabets life science research group, and intended to serve California residents, beginning with San Mateo and Santa Clara County. (Alphabet is the parent company of Google.)

The site, now live, offers risk screening through an online questionnaire to direct high-risk individuals toward local mobile testing sites. At this time, the project has no plans for a nationwide rollout.

Google later clarified that the company is undertaking its own efforts to bring crucial COVID-19 information to users across its products, but that may have become conflated with Verilys much more limited screening site rollout. On Twitter, Googles comms team noted that Google is indeed working with the government on a website, but not one intended to screen potential COVID-19 patients or refer them to local testing sites.

In a partial clarification over the weekend, Vice President Pence, one of the Trump administrations designated point people on the pandemic, indicated that the White House is working with Google but also working with many other tech companies. Its not clear if that means a central site will indeed launch soon out of a White House collaboration with Silicon Valley, but Pence hinted that might be the case. If that centralized site will handle screening and testing location referral is not clear.

Our best estimate is that some point early in the week we will have a website that goes up, Pence said.

The rest is here:

With launch of COVID-19 data hub, the White House issues a call to action for AI researchers - TechCrunch

The latest report titled, Global Machine Learning in Retail Market 2019 by Company, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2024 unveils the value at which the Machine Learning in Retail industry is anticipated to grow during the forecast period, 2019 to 2024. The report estimates CAGR analysis, competitive strategies, growth factors and regional outlook 2024. The report is a rich source of an exhaustive study of the driving elements, limiting components, and different market changes. It states market structure and then further forecasts several segments and sub-segments of the global market. The market study is provided on the basis of type, application, manufacturer as well as geography. Different elements such as opportunities, drivers, restraints, and challenges, market situation, market share, growth rate, future trends, risks, entry limits, sales channels, distributors are analyzed and examined within this report.

Exploring The Growth Rate Over A Period:

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Top industry players assessment: IBM, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, SAP, Intel, NVIDIA, Google, Sentient Technologies, Salesforce, ViSenze,

Product type assessment based on the following types: Cloud Based, On-Premises

Application assessment based on application mentioned below: Online, Offline

Leading market regions covered in the report are: North America (United States, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

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Emerging Trend of Machine Learning in Retail Market 2019 by Company, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2024 - Bandera County Courier

By Davide Zilli, Client Services Director at Mind Foundry

Today in so many industries, from manufacturing and life sciences to financial services and retail, we rely on algorithms to conduct large-scale machine learning analysis. They are hugely effective for problem-solving and beneficial for augmenting human expertise within an organization. But they are now under the spotlight for many reasons and regulation is on the horizon, with Gartner projecting four of the G7 countries will establish dedicated associations to oversee AI and ML design by 2023. It remains vital that we understand their reasoning and decision-making process at every step.

Algorithms need to be fully transparent in their decisions, easily validated and monitored by a human expert. Machine learning tools must introduce this full accountability to evolve beyond unexplainable black box solutions and eliminate the easy excuse of the algorithm made me do it!"

Bias can be introduced into the machine learning process as early as the initial data upload and review stages. There are hundreds of parameters to take into consideration during data preparation, so it can often be difficult to strike a balance between removing bias and retaining useful data.

Gender for example might be a useful parameter when looking to identify specific disease risks or health threats, but using gender in many other scenarios is completely unacceptable if it risks introducing bias and, in turn, discrimination. Machine learning models will inevitably exploit any parameters such as gender in data sets they have access to, so it is vital for users to understand the steps taken for a model to reach a specific conclusion.

Removing the complexity of the data science procedure will help users discover and address bias faster and better understand the expected accuracy and outcomes of deploying a particular model.

Machine learning tools with built-in explainability allow users to demonstrate the reasoning behind applying ML to a tackle a specific problem, and ultimately justify the outcome. First steps towards this explainability would be features in the ML tool to enable the visual inspection of data with the platform alerting users to potential bias during preparation and metrics on model accuracy and health, including the ability to visualize what the model is doing.

Beyond this, ML platforms can take transparency further by introducing full user visibility, tracking each step through a consistent audit trail. This records how and when data sets have been imported, prepared and manipulated during the data science process. It also helps ensure compliance with national and industry regulations such as the European Unions GDPR right to explanation clause and helps effectively demonstrate transparency to consumers.

There is a further advantage here of allowing users to quickly replicate the same preparation and deployment steps, guaranteeing the same results from the same data particularly vital for achieving time efficiencies on repetitive tasks. We find for example in the Life Sciences sector, users are particularly keen on replicability and visibility for ML where it becomes an important facility in areas such as clinical trials and drug discovery.

There are so many different model types that it can be a challenge to select and deploy the best model for a task. Deep neural network models, for example, are inherently less transparent than probabilistic methods, which typically operate in a more honest and transparent manner.

Heres where many machine learning tools fall short. Theyre fully automated with no opportunity to review and select the most appropriate model. This may help users rapidly prepare data and deploy a machine learning model, but it provides little to no prospect of visual inspection to identify data and model issues.

An effective ML platform must be able to help identify and advise on resolving possible bias in a model during the preparation stage, and provide support through to creation where it will visualize what the chosen model is doing and provide accuracy metrics and then on to deployment, where it will evaluate model certainty and provide alerts when a model requires retraining.

Building greater visibility into data preparation and model deployment, we should look towards ML platforms that incorporate testing features, where users can test a new data set and receive best scores of the model performance. This helps identify bias and make changes to the model accordingly.

During model deployment, the most effective platforms will also extract extra features from data that are otherwise difficult to identify and help the user understand what is going on with the data at a granular level, beyond the most obvious insights.

The end goal is to put power directly into the hands of the users, enabling them to actively explore, visualize and manipulate data at each step, rather than simply delegating to an ML tool and risking the introduction of bias.

The introduction of explainability and enhanced governance into ML platforms is an important step towards ethical machine learning deployments, but we can and should go further.

Researchers and solution vendors hold a responsibility as ML educators to inform users of the use and abuses of bias in machine learning. We need to encourage businesses in this field to set up dedicated education programs on machine learning including specific modules that cover ethics and bias, explaining how users can identify and in turn tackle or outright avoid the dangers.

Raising awareness in this manner will be a key step towards establishing trust for AI and ML in sensitive deployments such as medical diagnoses, financial decision-making and criminal sentencing.

AI and machine learning offer truly limitless potential to transform the way we work, learn and tackle problems across a range of industriesbut ensuring these operations are conducted in an open and unbiased manner is paramount to winning and retaining both consumer and corporate trust in these applications.

The end goal is truly humble, honest algorithms that work for us and enable us to make unbiased, categorical predictions and consistently provide context, explainability and accuracy insights.

Recent research shows that 84% of CEOs agree that AI-based decisions must be explainable in order to be trusted. The time is ripe to embrace AI and ML solutions with baked in transparency.

About the author:

Davide Zilli, Client Services Director at Mind Foundry

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The rest is here:

Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Humble and Honest in the Ethics-First Era - Datamation