# life: the landscape of a 'patchwork' pandemic (caused by 1or2 'achoo' from Wuhan)

<< There was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. finally crested and began descending sharply, never happened. Instead, America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths. The graphs were more mesa than Matterhorn—flat-topped, not sharp-peaked. >>

<< What’s happening is not one crisis, but many interconnected ones. As we shall see, it will be harder to come to terms with such a crisis. It will be harder to bring it to heel. And it will be harder to grapple with the historical legacies that have shaped today’s patchwork. >>

Ed Yong. America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further. The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different ways, making the crisis harder to predict, control, or understand. May 20, 2020. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/patchwork-pandemic-states-reopening-inequalities/611866/

# behav: persistent neuronal firing during flight in flies, like a pulsating gambler who has to decide quickly

<< A general principle of sensory systems is that they adapt to prolonged stimulation by reducing their response over time. >>

<< as opposed to most sensory and visual neurons, and in particular to the motion vision sensitive neurons in the brains of both flies and mammals, the descending neurons show little adaption during stimulus motion. (..) the optic-flow-sensitive descending neurons display persistent firing, or an after-effect, following the cessation of visual stimulation, consistent with the lingering calcium signal hypothesis. >>

AA results << show a combination of adaptation and persistent firing in the neurons that project to the thoracic ganglia and thereby control behavioral output. >>

Sarah Nicholas, Karin Nordstrom. Persistent Firing and Adaptation in Optic-Flow-Sensitive Descending Neurons. Curr Biol. doi: 10.1016/ j.cub.2020.05.019. May 28, 2020.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30658-8

Revealing how flies make decisions on the fly to survive. Flinders University. May 28, 2020

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-revealing-flies-decisions-survive.html

Also

the flexible mental maps of flies. FonT. Nov 21, 2019. 

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/2019/11/brain-flexible-mental-maps-of-flies.html

<< Considerando invece l' immagine classica della "mosca nella bottiglia", >>  in: 2066 - voli a casaccio. Notes. (quasi-stochastic poetry). Oct 01, 2006.

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2006/10/2066-voli-casaccio.html

# life; aprops of 'extreme swing' (4) ... IT exists, IT doesn't; IT will return, IT will not;

<< "i tamponi eseguiti negli ultimi dieci giorni hanno una carica virale infinitesimale rispetto a quelli eseguiti su pazienti di un mese, due mesi fa". Il presidente del Consiglio Superiore di Sanità (..) esprime "sorpresa e sconcerto" >>

Per il primario del San Raffaele, il coronavirus "dal punto di vista clinico non esiste più". AGI. May 31, 2020 utd 21:03 

https://www.agi.it/cronaca/news/2020-05-31/coronavirus-non-esiste-piu-zangrillo-8780102/ 

Also

keyword 'extreme | swing' in FonT

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=extreme|swing

keyword 'estremo | swing' in Notes (quasi- stochastic poetry)

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/search?q=estremo|swing

# gst: apropos of unexpected Hopfion tangles

<< a certain geometrical structure of knots, which scientists call a Hopfion, manifests itself in unexpected corners of the universe, ranging from particle physics, to biology, to cosmology. >>

<< In a recent theoretical study, (..) (AA) discovered the presence of the Hopfion structure in nano-sized particles of ferroelectrics. >>

<< The Hopfion is a very abstract mathematical concept, (..) but the structure shows up in hydrodynamics, electrodynamics and even in the packing of DNA and RNA molecules in biological systems and viruses. >> Valerii Vinokur

<< When we visualized the polarization, we saw the Hopfion structure emerge, (..) We thought, wow, there is a whole world inside of these nanoparticles. >> Igor Luk'yanchuck.

Savannah Mitchem. Novel insight reveals topological tangle in unexpected corner of the universe. Argonne National Laboratory. May 26, 2020.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-insight-reveals-topological-tangle-unexpected.html

Luk’yanchuk I., Tikhonov Y., et al. Hopfions emerge in ferroelectrics. 

 Nat Commun 11, 2433. doi: 10.1038/ s41467-020-16258-w. May 15, 2020.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16258-w

# math; a weird phenomenon, the Banach-Tarski paradox, how to create two balls by reassembling one in 3-D space.

<< A famous geometrical theorem called the Banach-Tarski paradox says that if you have a ball in 3-D space and split it into a few specific pieces, there is a way to reassemble the parts so that you create two balls. (..) When the two new balls are created, they will both be the same size as the first ball. >>  Thomas Britz. 

Sherry Landow. The mystique of mathematics: 5 beautiful math phenomena. University of New South Wales. May 20, 2020.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-mystique-mathematics-beautiful-math-phenomena.html    

Banach–Tarski paradox

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach-Tarski_paradox

# life: how social media could act to dehumanize the 'dehumanizable' ...

<< Fundamentally, we wanted to examine how online platforms can normalize hatred and contribute to dehumanization, (..) We found that the language used in these Facebook interactions hewed very closely to three stages we see in Terrell Northrup's theory of intractable conflict (..) One stage is the threat (..) A second stage is distortion (..) A third stage is rigidification >> Jessica Jameson.

Matt Shipman. How social media platforms can contribute to dehumanizing people. North Carolina State University. May 20, 2020

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-social-media-platforms-contribute-dehumanizing.html     

Tal Orian Harel, Jessica Katz Jameson, Ifat Maoz. The Normalization of Hatred: Identity, Affective Polarization, and Dehumanization on Facebook in the Context of Intractable Political Conflict. Social Media + Society. doi: 10.1177/ 2056305120913983. May 12, 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120913983   

Also

keyword 'facebook' in FonT:

https://flashontrack.blogspot.com/search?q=facebook

# gst: predict stability in a collapsing ring

<< it is possible to predict the stability of a collapsing ring by counting its kinks. (..) (AA) group describes experiments they conducted that involved placing an elastic ring over a soap film and recording what happens when the ring collapses. >>

Bob Yirka. Counting kinks in a collapsing ring to predict stability. May 20, 2020.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-kinks-collapsing-stability.html   

Finn Box, Ousmane Kodio, et al. Dynamic Buckling of an Elastic Ring in a Soap Film. Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 198003. 13 May 13, 2020.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.198003   

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.11009