Why does Black America have more COVID-19 deaths? Racism.

The expression of “When white America gets a cold, Black America gets the flu” has always rung true, but for many people, rarely has it resounded as significantly as it has during the coronavirus pandemic. 

This expression has shifted from words to reality, time and again, with stark disparities in education, housing, voting, employment, healthcare, and the criminal legal system.

The flu became even more pronounced when two Black men were kicked out of a Nashville Walmart for wearing protective masks — a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and mandated in some cities and states) to slow the spread of this public health crisis.

READ MORE: Black men told to leave Walmart for wearing masks

And with recent race-based data showing the percentages of infections and deaths in communities of color compared with those who test positive or die from COVID-19 in white communities, a troubling truth has emerged: structural racism has turned the flu into a death sentence for many Black Americans. 

Medical workers take in patients at a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to collect and publish racial demographics of the people who are being tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. Local leaders and editorial boards like the Baltimore Sun are pushing for the same.

The data we now have is clear: Black Americans are dying more from COVID-19 than any other population. 

READ MORE: Coronavirus is hitting Black America at a staggering rate

In Chicago, even though the city’s population is just 30 percent Black, a recent report found that 70 percent of people who died from the virus are Black. Detroit, where Black people make up 80 percent of the city’s population, has significantly increased Michigan’s overall death rate by 40 percent. In Milwaukee County, which is just 27 percent Black, 81 percent of those who test positive are Black. 

The picture in the South is no less grim. In Louisiana, Black people comprise more than 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths in a state that is approximately one-third Black. Roughly 33 percent of the state’s 512 deaths have occurred in Orleans Parish where Black people make up more than 60 percent of the population. Public health officials tracking the coronavirus have seen similarly disproportionate impacts on Black Americans in other cities and states.

That’s not because of race, but racism. The distinction matters. 

Voters wait in line to enter a polling place at Riverside University High School on April 07, 2020 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

READ MORE: Lousiana’s COVID-19 deaths were 70 percent Black residents

If we’d let social media tell it, young Black people are testing positive compared to other communities because we are socially distancing less in an effort to have fun with our friends and loved ones. While this may be true for a very small subset, this argument goes out the window when we understand the mental, physical, and emotional harm inflicted by structural racism — especially in healthcare. 

Black communities are not intentionally socially distancing less than other communities. Those who work essential jobs or are in the gig economy are disproportionately Black. For these communities, social distance is a privilege reserved only for those who can do so while still earning a living. 

Essential workers put their lives on the line and are often unpaid. They are not just nurses, doctors, and firefighters — they are also janitors, home health aides and social workers, Uber and Lyft drivers, grocery store employees, fast food workers, and package handlers. These jobs require more in-person contact. In most cities, low-wage and essential workers are people of color and are particularly susceptible to the devastating health impacts of COVID-19.

A U.S.Postal Service worker wears a face mask and gloves while crossing a downtown street as the coronavirus pandemic continues on March 24, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a ‘stay at home’ order for California’s 40 million residents in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Black communities (and Black queer families, especially) live in the south where states have not expanded Medicaid access. This dramatically impacts our access to health care. According to Kaiser Family Foundation, “the South has relatively higher numbers of poor, uninsured adults than in other regions, has higher uninsured rates, and more limited Medicaid eligibility than other regions, and accounts for the majority (9 out of 14) of states that opted not to expand Medicaid.”

READ MORE: LGBTQ community uniquely impacted by COVID-19, research shows

As a result, more than 9 in 10 people that fall within the coverage gap reside in the south. 

Experts also underscore initial research showing a high prevalence of COVID-19 among those experiencing pre-existing conditions. Studies have shown this is largely due to the fact that people of color often live in food deserts and receive lower quality life-saving and preventive medical care.

This is to say nothing of the rampant environmental racism; unemployment and underemployment; housing instability, and criminalization that Black communities have experienced for generations. A global health pandemic coupled with a haphazard healthcare system creates a perfect storm for structural racism to exact its deadly toll.

As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the global health expert who sits on Trump’s coronavirus task force, made it clear at the White House press conference on Tuesday: “It’s not that (Black Americans) are getting infected more often, it’s that, when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions…wind them up in the ICU.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (R), director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, while flanked by President Donald Trump during the daily coronavirus task force briefing in the Brady Briefing room at the White House on March 31, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

He added, “Public health officials have known that conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma disproportionately affect African Americans. Unfortunately, when you look at the predisposing conditions that lead to a bad outcome with coronavirus, the things that get people into ICUs that require incubation that often lead to death, they are just those very comorbidities.”

These problems are particularly pronounced at the intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and poverty as we know LGBTQ+ people of color are more likely to lack health insurance coverage, have asthma, smoke cigarettes, live in poverty, and be criminalized. Each factor has an impact on contracting COVID-19.  

As such, local and state governments must consider proactive policy solutions, not carceral practices that instill fear and panic. As mayors and governors issue stay-at-home orders, many have attached criminal penalties on those who do not comply and the severity of enforcing these is quite alarming. 

From Kansas City, Missouri’s stay-at-home order to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina’s joint proclamation to the order in my current home in Maryland, lawmakers in each have proposed or warned of a fine, misdemeanor charge, or other criminal penalties for those who violate stay-at-home orders. 

Concerns around enforcement are particularly salient for Black Americans, other people of color, and other system-impacted communities (e.g. incarcerated folks, LGBTQ+ people, and sex workers) that have experienced overcriminalization and arrests as the primary response to substance use and mental health emergencies, among other health issues. 

An ambulance driver pauses outside of Mount Sinai Hospital which has seen an upsurge of coronavirus patients on March 31, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Criminalization itself is a public health crisis and is deeply rooted in the fabric of the United States. Calling law enforcement on people who violate stay-at-home orders — intentionally or not — is not a solution. Arresting and jailing people from marginalized communities will not flatten COVID-19’s curve. Instead, it will put people who are at high risk together and will only serve to spread the virus further. 

COVID-19 has displayed a very bright light on the structural racism Black Americans have experienced for centuries. We desperately need to get to the root of the public health disparities we see every day in communities of color — especially in Black communities.

Because once the COVID-19 curve is flattened, young folks from Black communities will still face the same unnecessary barriers to quality health care that sickened and — in many cases — killed their parents and grandparents. 

Without reforming these structures, the burden will continue to fall to individuals who must work with incredibly limited resources and little support to find a cure for a deadly flu caused by their own country’s institutions. 

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(Photo: Courtesy of Preston Mitchum)

Preston Mitchum is the Director of Policy with URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity. URGE is a multistate reproductive justice organization powered by young people in the South and Midwest.

The post Why does Black America have more COVID-19 deaths? Racism. appeared first on TheGrio.

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Coronavirus in South Africa: Lockdown extension condemned

Extending restrictions until the end of April will create an economic disaster, the opposition says.

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Coronavirus in South Africa: Lockdown fears for Johannesburg residents

Residents in Johannesburg discuss the challenges they face two weeks into South Africa's lockdown.

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Coronavirus: Great apes on lockdown over threat of disease

Fears are growing that gorillas, orangutans and others apes could contract the virus.

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14 Tips for Acing Your Next Videoconference Job Interview

Prospective boss wants to video-chat over Zoom? Here's how to make an impression when your F2F is not IRL.

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First sighting of mysterious Majorana fermion on a common metal

Physicists at MIT and elsewhere have observed evidence of Majorana fermions — particles that are theorized to also be their own antiparticle — on the surface of a common metal: gold. This is the first sighting of Majorana fermions on a platform that can potentially be scaled up. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are a major step toward isolating the particles as stable, error-proof qubits for quantum computing.

In particle physics, fermions are a class of elementary particles that includes electrons, protons, neutrons, and quarks, all of which make up the building blocks of matter. For the most part, these particles are considered Dirac fermions, after the English physicist Paul Dirac, who first predicted that all fermionic fundamental particles should have a counterpart, somewhere in the universe, in the form of an antiparticle — essentially, an identical twin of opposite charge.

In 1937, the Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana extended Dirac’s theory, predicting that among fermions, there should be some particles, since named Majorana fermions, that are indistinguishable from their antiparticles. Mysteriously, the physicist disappeared during a ferry trip off the Italian coast just a year after making his prediction. Scientists have been looking for Majorana’s enigmatic  particle ever since. It has been suggested, but not proven, that the neutrino may be a Majorana particle. On the other hand, theorists have predicted that Majorana fermions may also exist in solids under special conditions.

Now the MIT-led team has observed evidence of Majorana fermions in a material system they designed and fabricated, which consists of nanowires of gold grown atop a superconducting material, vanadium, and dotted with small, ferromagnetic “islands” of europium sulfide. When the researchers scanned the surface near the islands,  they saw signature signal spikes near zero energy on the very top surface of gold that, according to theory, should only be generated by pairs of Majorana fermions.

“Majorana ferminons are these exotic things, that have long been a dream to see, and we now see them in a very simple material — gold,” says Jagadeesh Moodera, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Physics. “We’ve shown they are there, and stable, and easily scalable.”

“The next push will be to take these objects and make them into qubits, which would be huge progress toward practical quantum computing,” adds co-author Patrick Lee, the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Physics at MIT.

Lee and Moodera’s coauthors include former MIT postdoc and first author Sujit Manna (currently on the faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi), and former MIT postdoc Peng Wei of University of California at Riverside, along with Yingming Xie and Kam Tuen Law of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

High risk

If they could be harnessed, Majorana fermions would be ideal as qubits, or individual computational units for quantum computers. The idea is that a qubit would be made of combinations of pairs of Majorana fermions, each of which would be separated from its partner. If noise errors affect one member of the pair, the other should remain unaffected, thereby preserving the integrity of the qubit and enabling it to correctly carry out a computation.

Scientists have looked for Majorana fermions in semiconductors, the materials used in conventional, transistor-based computing. In their experiments, researchers have combined semiconductors with superconductors — materials through which electrons can travel without resistance. This combination imparts superconductive properties to conventional semiconductors, which physicists believe should induce particles in the semiconductor to split , forming the pair of  Majorana fermions.

“There are several material platforms where people believe they’ve seen Majorana particles,” Lee says. “The evidence is stronger and stronger, but it’s still not 100 percent proven.”

What’s more, the semiconductor-based setups to date have been difficult to scale up to produce the thousands or millions of qubits needed for a practical quantum computer, because they require growing very precise crystals of semiconducting material and it is very challenging to turn these into high-quality superconductors.

About a decade ago, Lee, working with his graduate student Andrew Potter, had an idea: Perhaps physicists might be able to observe Majorana fermions in metal, a material that readily becomes superconductive in proximity with a superconductor. Scientists routinely make metals, including gold, into superconductors. Lee’s idea was to see if gold’s surface state — its very top layer of atoms — could be made to be superconductive. If this could be achieved, then gold could serve as a clean, atomically precise system in which researchers could observe Majorana fermions.

Lee proposed, based on Moodera’s prior work with ferromagnetic insulators, that if it  were placed atop a superconductive surface state of gold, then researchers should have a good chance of clearly seeing signatures of Majorana fermions.

“When we first proposed this, I couldn’t convince a lot of experimentalists to try it, because the technology was daunting,” says Lee who eventually partnered with Moodera’s experimental group to to secure crucial funding from the Templeton Foundation to realize the design. “Jagadeesh and Peng really had to reinvent the wheel. It was extremely courageous to jump into this, because it’s really a high-risk, but we think a high-payoff, thing.”

“Finding Majorana”

Over the last few years, the researchers have characterized gold’s surface state and proved that it could work as a platform for observing Majorana fermions, after which the group began fabricating the setup that Lee envisioned years ago.

They first grew a sheet of superconducting vanadium, on top of which they overlaid nanowires of gold layer, measuring about 4 nanometers thick. They tested the conductivity of gold’s very top layer, and found that it did, in fact, become superconductive in proximity with the vanadium. They then deposited over the gold nanowires “islands” of europium sulfide, a ferromagnetic material that is able to provide the needed internal magnetic fields to create the Majorana fermions.

The team then applied a tiny voltage and used scanning tunneling microscopy, a specialized technique that enabled the researchers to scan the energy spectrum around each island on gold’s surface.

Moodera and his colleagues then looked for a very specific energy signature that only Majorana fermions should produce, if they exist. In any superconducting material, electrons travel through at certain energy ranges. There is however a desert, or “energy gap” where there should be no electrons. If there is a spike inside this gap, it is very likely a signature of Majorana fermions.

Looking through their data, the researchers observed spikes inside this energy gap  on opposite ends of several islands along the the direction of the magnetic field, that were clear signatures of pairs of Majorana fermions.

“We only see this spike on opposite sides of the island, as theory predicted,” Moodera says. “Anywhere else, you don’t see it.”

“In my talks, I like to say that we are finding Majorana, on an island in a sea of gold,” Lee adds.

Moodera says the team’s setup, requiring just three layers — gold sandwiched between a ferromagnet and a superconductor — is an “easily achievable, stable system” that should also be economically scalable compared to conventional, semiconductor-based approaches to generate qubits.

“Seeing a pair of Majorana fermions is an important step toward making a qubit,” Wei says. “The next step is to make a qubit from these particles, and we now have some ideas for how to go about doing this.”

This research was funded, in part, by the John Templeton Foundation, the U.S.  Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S.  Department of Energy.

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Reducing delays in wireless networks

MIT researchers have designed a congestion-control scheme for wireless networks that could help reduce lag times and increase quality in video streaming, video chat, mobile gaming, and other web services.

To keep web services running smoothly, congestion-control schemes infer information about a network’s bandwidth capacity and congestion based on feedback from the network routers, which is encoded in data packets. That information determines how fast data packets are sent through the network.

Deciding a good sending rate can be a tough balancing act. Senders don’t want to be overly conservative: If a network’s capacity constantly varies from, say, 2 megabytes per second to 500 kilobytes per second, the sender could always send traffic at the lowest rate. But then your Netflix video, for example, will be unnecessarily low-quality. On the other hand, if the sender constantly maintains a high rate, even when network capacity dips, it could  overwhelm the network, creating a massive queue of data packets waiting to be delivered. Queued packets can increase the network’s delay, causing, say, your Skype call to freeze.

Things get even more complicated in wireless networks, which have “time-varying links,” with rapid, unpredictable capacity shifts. Depending on various factors, such as the number of network users, cell tower locations, and even surrounding buildings, capacities can double or drop to zero within fractions of a second. In a paper at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, the researchers presented “Accel-Brake Control” (ABC), a simple scheme that achieves about 50 percent higher throughput, and about half the network delays, on time-varying links.

The scheme relies on a novel algorithm that enables the routers to explicitly communicate how many data packets should flow through a network to avoid congestion but fully utilize the network. It provides that detailed information from bottlenecks — such as packets queued between cell towers and senders — by repurposing a single bit already available in internet packets. The researchers are already in talks with mobile network operators to test the scheme.

“In cellular networks, your fraction of data capacity changes rapidly, causing lags in your service. Traditional schemes are too slow to adapt to those shifts,” says first author Prateesh Goyal, a graduate student in CSAIL. “ABC provides detailed feedback about those shifts, whether it’s gone up or down, using a single data bit.”

Joining Goyal on the paper are Anup Agarwal, now a graduate student at Carnegie Melon University; Ravi Netravali, now an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California at Los Angeles; Mohammad Alizadeh, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering (EECS) and CSAIL; and Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor in EECS. The authors have all been members of the Networks and Mobile Systems group at CSAIL.

Achieving explicit control

Traditional congestion-control schemes rely on either packet losses or information from a single “congestion” bit in internet packets to infer congestion and slow down. A router, such as a base station, will mark the bit to alert a sender — say, a video server — that its sent data packets are in a long queue, signaling congestion. In response, the sender will then reduce its rate by sending fewer packets. The sender also reduces its rate if it detects a pattern of packets being dropped before reaching the receiver.

In attempts to provide greater information about bottlenecked links on a network path, researchers have proposed “explicit” schemes that include multiple bits in packets that specify current rates. But this approach would mean completely changing the way the internet sends data, and it has proved impossible to deploy. 

“It’s a tall task,” Alizadeh says. “You’d have to make invasive changes to the standard Internet Protocol (IP) for sending data packets. You’d have to convince all Internet parties, mobile network operators, ISPs, and cell towers to change the way they send and receive data packets. That’s not going to happen.”

With ABC, the researchers still use the available single bit in each data packet, but they do so in such a way that the bits, aggregated across multiple data packets, can provide the needed real-time rate information to senders. The scheme tracks each data packet in a round-trip loop, from sender to base station to receiver. The base station marks the bit in each packet with “accelerate” or “brake,” based on the current network bandwidth. When the packet is received, the marked bit tells the sender to increase or decrease the “in-flight” packets — packets sent but not received — that can be in the network.

If it receives an accelerate command, it means the packet made good time and the network has spare capacity. The sender then sends two packets: one to replace the packet that was received and another to utilize the spare capacity. When told to brake, the sender decreases its in-flight packets by one — meaning it doesn’t replace the packet that was received.

Used across all packets in the network, that one bit of information becomes a powerful feedback tool that tells senders their sending rates with high precision. Within a couple hundred milliseconds, it can vary a sender’s rate between zero and double. “You’d think one bit wouldn’t carry enough information,” Alizadeh says. “But, by aggregating single-bit feedback across a stream of packets, we can get the same effect as that of a multibit signal.”

Staying one step ahead

At the core of ABC is an algorithm that predicts the aggregate rate of the senders one round-trip ahead to better compute the accelerate/brake feedback.

The idea is that an ABC-equipped base station knows how senders will behave — maintaining, increasing, or decreasing their in-flight packets — based on how it marked the packet it sent to a receiver. The moment the base station sends a packet, it knows how many packets it will receive from the sender in exactly one round-trip’s time in the future. It uses that information to mark the packets to more accurately match the sender’s rate to the current network capacity.

In simulations of cellular networks, compared to traditional congestion control schemes, ABC achieves around 30 to 40 percent greater throughput for roughly the same delays. Alternatively, it can reduce delays by around 200 to 400 percent by maintaining the same throughput as traditional schemes. Compared to existing explicit schemes that were not designed for time-varying links, ABC reduces delays by half for the same throughput. “Basically, existing schemes get low throughput and low delays, or high throughput and high delays, whereas ABC achieves high throughput with low delays,” Goyal says.

Next, the researchers are trying to see if apps and web services can use ABC to better control the quality of content. For example, “a video content provider could use ABC’s information about congestion and data rates to pick the resolution of streaming video more intelligently,” Alizadeh says. “If it doesn’t have enough capacity, the video server could lower the resolution temporarily, so the video will continue playing at the highest possible quality without freezing.”

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Evaluating the global energy system

For Naga Srujana Goteti, a postdoc at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), finding a meaningful career has required starting from scratch — three times. She first worked as a software engineer after earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, but after just one year in the role, she felt like something was missing. Her father, a civil engineer, encouraged her to look for meaning and opportunity in the energy space.

Goteti dropped her software engineering position to perform energy audits on buildings as an intern at a small startup, where a visiting professor inspired her to move from India to Thailand to pursue a master’s degree in energy. After completing her graduate program, she still wasn’t quite sure where she could best apply her interdisciplinary background. She ended up joining an oil and gas company to work on pipelines.

“I really enjoyed the salary, of course, but after one year, I went back to my original question of, ‘What’s the purpose of this?’ I wasn’t finding any meaning in the work I was doing,” she says.

She quit her oil and gas job, desperately seeking leads on research opportunities in clean energy. At one point, she was cold-emailing “at least 30 professors per day.” Her efforts paid off when a team at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) informed her that they were seeking someone with an electrical engineering background, plus experience with energy and sustainability, to join them on a special project. Goteti fit the bill and came to the United States to pursue her PhD in sustainability.

“After getting my PhD at RIT, I really wanted to work on an interdisciplinary team that was focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions by looking at multiple renewable energy pathways, instead of just one,” she says. This quest led her to MITEI.

Goteti has teamed up with Tapajyoti (TJ) Ghosh, a chemical engineer from India, and Maryam Arbabzadeh, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) practitioner from Iran — an interdisciplinary group of postdocs who came to MIT to work on a novel energy assessment tool called the Sustainable Energy System Analysis Modeling Environment (SESAME).

Many of the energy assessment tools that exist today zero in on only one slice of the energy pie. They offer a granular analysis of solar, wind, or nuclear, but rarely look at multiple pathways together, which limits the ability of policymakers and industry professionals to see the real-time impacts of various technologies across the energy landscape as a whole.

“Today, we are facing a dual challenge: satisfying growing energy demand while reducing emissions,” says Emre Gençer, a research scientist at MITEI and leader of the SESAME project. “The composition and operation of energy systems determine our ability to meet this challenge. We developed SESAME to study all energy sectors at the pathway and system levels.”

SESAME, which has been under development at MIT since 2017, enables users to understand the impact of all relevant technological, operational, temporal, and geospatial variables to the evolving energy system. Several existing LCA models require expert help in order to parse the data in a way that is useful for policymakers and industry. The SESAME tool aims to bridge that divide, so that experts and laypeople alike can understand today’s energy landscape and make informed decisions about the best paths forward.

Gençer spent almost a year assembling the perfect team of postdocs to help expand the tool.

MITEI’s SESAME team is now about 20 people strong, including postdocs Arbabzadeh, Ghosh, and Goteti, plus a mix of undergraduates, graduate students, research scientists, and PhD candidates from across MIT.

“The multidisciplinary nature of this project requires a strong mix of research backgrounds,” says Gençer. “We weren’t just looking within one specific discipline to build the SESAME team. We were very intentional about bringing together researchers with experience in different areas such as engineering, environmental studies and sustainability, and economics.”

MITEI’s goal is to develop SESAME as an open-source web application — one that incorporates energy case studies from around the globe and takes into account heterogeneity of data across regions. These expansion directions are where Arbabzadeh, Ghosh, and Goteti come in.

Pathways to MITEI

As a child, Tapajyoti Ghosh visited oil fields and gas facilities across India with his father — “an oil and gas man.” He remembers wondering, “What’s going to happen when all the oil is gone?” His interest in the environmental impacts of society’s dependence on fossil fuels and finding sustainable alternatives came later.

Ghosh earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2014 from Jadavpur University in Kolkata (India), after which he came to the United States for a PhD program at Ohio State University.

“I had no idea what research direction I was interested in,” he says. “I spent the first semester of my PhD program deciding what I wanted to focus on.” But then a conversation with his professor set Ghosh down the energy path by introducing him to sustainable engineering.

“Sustainable engineering focuses on trying to reduce negative environmental impacts that are caused by engineering processes not considering the external impacts of their activities,” he says. “I was interested in figuring out how we can make our engineering processes take environmental impacts into account during the design process, while also helping industry make profits.”

He came to MITEI for the opportunity to work on SESAME, which he saw as a groundbreaking environmental impact assessment tool that will help industry and policymakers. He hopes to return to India someday to become faculty at a university there.

“Completing my postdoctorate at MIT will have a huge impact on my future,” he says. “I received several offers from other universities and research centers, but for me, the lure was getting to be at MIT. I feel like I’m in the Hollywood of academia.”

Ghosh’s role at MITEI is to literally “open SESAME” — he is working to convert the tool from a MATLAB application, which is a proprietary programming language developed by MathWorks, to an open-source web application, which will make SESAME available for all to use. This is a Herculean effort; the SESAME platform was designed with a modular structure to allow the analysis of a very large number of conventional and novel pathways — more than 1,000 energy pathways are embedded in the framework, capturing about 90 percent of energy-related emissions data. SESAME’s framework provides multiple functionalities for various energy stakeholders in a single tool. For example, those working in industry or policy can compare technology options, perform technology and system scenario analysis, or explore the impacts of market and policy dynamics; or energy experts can see comprehensive cross-technology comparisons. Ghosh needs to translate all of this into Python coding language for the open-source version of the tool.

“I’m also working with an undergraduate student to gather additional environmental impact data that we can add to the tool, and adding new pathways for analysis,” he says. Some of those new pathways include the production of ammonia, cement, iron, and steel.

Maryam Arbabzadeh received her bachelor’s in electrical engineering, with a focus on power systems, from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) in Iran.

“That’s where I started learning about renewable energy. I did my undergraduate thesis on wind energy and developing tools so users could suggest the most effective locations for installing wind turbines,” she says.

When it came time for her master’s degree, Arbabzadeh knew she wanted to continue studying electrical engineering, with a focus on energy systems. She came to the United States to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo), which sparked her interest in finding ways to reduce the negative environmental impacts of power generation.

“At SUNY Buffalo, I took classes on sustainable energy systems and climate change, and that’s where I first discovered that one of the main sources for environmental emissions is the electricity sector/power grid. I became really interested in learning about that aspect of electricity production,” she explains.

From there, she applied to multidisciplinary programs for her PhD, landing at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability to work on an energy storage project.

“My PhD advisors were looking for someone with a background in electrical engineering and who was also interested in learning about energy and life-cycle analysis, so it was perfect for me,” she says. “My dissertation mainly focused on energy storage and technologies, but at a high level — all about the optimization of the power grid and how addition of emerging technologies such as energy storage would affect the grid.”

She was drawn to the SESAME project because, during her experiences as an LCA practitioner and power systems modeler, she faced a number of challenges when it came to gathering all the disparate pieces of data she needed in order to form a comprehensive energy picture.

“It is interesting for me to develop a tool that can bring together all of these pieces from different sectors — power, transportation, et cetera — and that will allow policymakers and energy modelers to use the tool to do a system analysis for themselves,” she says.

SESAME currently contains data from North American case studies. Arbabzadeh’s portion of the project, which is funded by the International Energy Agency Gas and Oil Technology Collaboration Program, involves identifying international case studies that can be incorporated into SESAME to help the tool expand beyond the United States. “Emre asked me to focus specifically on examining global perspectives, so it has been fascinating for me to see how our analysis might apply to other locations.” So far, Arbabzadeh has focused her efforts on identifying potential case studies, including Norway/Northwest Europe and Singapore. 

“In contrast to the United States, Norway’s energy sector is already clean because a huge amount of its power generation comes from hydro, with some support from wind and thermal,” she says. Norwegian exports to continental Europe can enable displacement of coal with natural gas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Oil and gas production is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Norway, followed by industry and transportation,” Arbabzadeh says. She is working with an undergraduate student to examine the production activities and their associated emissions from about 90 oil and gas fields across Norway. These emissions can be more than offset by planned innovative offshore CO₂ capture and sequestration projects that will permanently store CO₂ captured from various sources across Europe.

This information could help Norway and other oil and gas producers from around the world to learn about how they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their processes and associated systems.

Arbabzadeh’s interest in contributing to the SESAME tool spans beyond professional motivation: “Personally, I want to make an impact. I was very interested in coming to MITEI to work on this tool because when it becomes available, it will really make a difference in various sectors and will be so useful for stakeholders working across the energy space.”

Her work on the tool complements that of Goteti, who has been charged with capturing the heterogeneity of the data from across the United States, starting with power systems. “This is a major challenge, because it requires cross-linking all of the databases across the country so that they can be integrated into the SESAME platform,” says Goteti. “I’m aiming to automate this process so that it can be used in SESAME as part of our analysis to show, for example, how California is different from Texas.”

Arbabzadeh and Goteti use similar research models for their respective parts of the project.

“There is a weird disconnect between different types of energy researchers. LCA people look at energy models differently from complex energy system modelers. Complex energy system models typically examine one area in minute detail, while LCA looks across the spectrum,” says Goteti. “SESAME fills the operations versus lifecycle gap in many of today’s models by offering all energy experts a holistic approach to analyzing all of the systems together.”

Collaborating to “open SESAME”

When asked how their roles work together, they offer a deceptively simple explanation: “TJ is working on the framework and gives us direction in terms of what specific data the tool needs, and that’s what Srujana and I try to collect,” says Arbabzadeh.

The reality of the scope of the work with which they’ve each been charged, and the level of collaboration that is required in order to meet those goals, is much more complex. The interdependent nature of their work requires that they check in with each other daily, as progress on the project relies on results from each person. The information Ghosh receives from Goteti and Arbabzadeh is integral to the SESAME expansion; and, in turn, Goteti and Arbabzadeh rely on direction from Ghosh in order to procure the data and to provide it in a SESAME-compatible format.

The team is also working to incorporate other environmental impact categories in the model — beyond just greenhouse gas emissions, which the tool currently focuses on. They are hoping to include factors such as water impacts, air pollutants, and land use.

Although they have different research backgrounds, Goteti explains, “We have a common thread of experience with LCA, so we have a basic understanding of what the SESAME team is doing across the board, even though we may not know what each other is working on at a granular level.”

In addition to supporting each other as they bring their various areas of expertise to bear on their work at MITEI, they have found support from MITEI and from the MIT postdoc community as a whole.

“MITEI is a unique center where people talk to each other about what they are working on, even to others outside their project. Research scientists, postdocs, and students sit together to discuss our research, and we actually provide each other with valuable input,” remarks Goteti. “There’s not a tunnel view of your own projects; everyone is open to helping others, which is not the case at more corporate places, where it’s a spirit of ‘my project versus your project.’”

Arbabzadeh concurs: “In addition to collaboration on research, I was surprised to learn how postdocs are acknowledged here at MIT. There are a lot of professional development resources and even a career advisor specifically for postdocs! It was unique for me to see how postdocs are treated here.”

Both Goteti and Ghosh also value the proximity to leading faculty, within MITEI and across MIT. “Getting inside access to faculty is a big deal for me, coming from India,” says Goteti.

“I feel fortunate to have a peek into this very exclusive world. These kinds of opportunities — being able to engage with the world’s leading researchers, CEOs, et cetera — were just not available to me at my previous institutions,” says Ghosh. “The founder of Zipcar sits right across from my cubicle! There is a Nobel Prize-winning lab on the floor below ours.”

Each member of the trio will present results from their portions of the SESAME tool expansion at various conferences and has contributed to a series of journal articles about the tool, which they anticipate will be published over the coming year.

Contributing to the low-carbon energy transition

Coming from different backgrounds, Arbabzadeh, Ghosh, and Goteti are united by their desire to devote their areas of expertise to pushing forward cutting-edge clean energy solutions.

Ghosh would like to answer the questions he’s had since his childhood, first sparked by his visits to oil fields with his dad. “What’s going to replace the world’s dependence on fossil fuels? What is the cleanest form of energy that humans can depend on for a long amount of time? Is it going to be Tony Stark’s arc reactor or some nuclear fusion reactor like a tokamak, or just solar and wind, or some other miracle solution? I’m interested in answering futuristic questions like these,” says Ghosh.

Arbabzadeh is focused on using her experience to solve environmental challenges for the benefit of our planet and its future inhabitants. “During my master’s degree work, I learned about the negative environmental impacts of electricity production, and wondered: ‘How can we improve this? I have the skills and knowledge, but how can I do more?’” adds Arbabzadeh. “Trying to solve these challenges is exciting for me. I think the energy sector is very important in terms of climate change, and the decarbonization of power production is an area where we can truly make a positive impact for future generations.”

In energy, Goteti has found the meaningful work that she craved for all those years; there will be no more starting over. “Governments collapse because of energy; economies are driven by energy —  I think energy is the backbone for so many things that we don’t realize,” says Goteti. “That excites me a lot. As a kid, I was never into politics, but now I watch the news all the time and understand that everything is related. At the end of the day, it’s all about energy.”

Support for the SESAME tool has been provided by ExxonMobil and the International Energy Agency Gas and Oil Technology Collaboration Program. The SESAME online beta is expected in mid-2020. Sign up to become a beta user at sesame.mit.edu.

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Covid-19 Symptoms (Coronavirus): What to Do If You Might Have It

Stay calm. Here's our guide to what symptoms you should look out for, and how to respond if you've been exposed.

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Coronavirus Tips and Supplies Guide: What to Buy (and Avoid) to Shelter in Place

Don't: hoard toilet paper and medical masks. Do: make sure you have plenty of food, water, and indoor activities.

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Sint Maarten prime minister’s ‘stop moving’ coronavirus order goes viral

Jemele Hill shared a clip of St. Maarten’s PM Silveria Jacobs addressing the coronavirus pandemic and now the stern message has gone viral.

Leaders from the Council of Ministers held a press briefing on April 1 to discuss the impact the novel coronavirus has had on Sint Maarten. When it was Jacobs’ turn to speak, she got straight to the point. She ordered people to just stay home.

American leaders: C’mon everybody, please stay inside. It’s important.

The Caribbean: pic.twitter.com/oopMyRT0lG

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) April 9, 2020

“We can stop [the spread of the virus],” she said. “Stop moving. Simply stop moving.”

READ MORE: Hospital worker said he beat coronavirus with Caribbean homemade remedy

In addition to practicing social distancing, Jacobs mentioned that people needed to make do with what they already had at home to eat.

“If you do not like the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal. Eat oats. Sardines. You’re supposed to have a two week supply for hurricanes and at the beginning of this, I said prepare your disaster kit as if you would for a hurricane,” she said of the island which was hit by Hurricane Irma in 2017.

“That meant some people went out and bought toilet paper and water. The water’s not going to stop. The toilet paper is still in stores. What you need is food.”

March 29 meeting (Credit: Government of Sint Maarten)

Jacobs said that if the residents didn’t restrict their movements, she’d have no other choice but to mandate a lockdown. She’d been asking, begging and pleading for the past month as there is not an endless amount of kits available for COVID-19 testing. There are also only ICU beds.

“There are people taking chances. There are people still hanging out at bars. There are people still going through the back door and doing their hair and 3 or 4 people in there,” she said.

“When we decided to allow barbershops and salons to be open, it was with an appointment process. My hair was done. So, people were saying, ‘Oh she just wants her hair to be done.’”

READ MORE: 41 MTA transit employees have died of the coronavirus

Jacobs explained that she usually goes to someone’s home to have her hair braided and they had high hygiene practices.

“Can you guarantee that with every single person who is out there doing hair or have a barbershop? Every contact with a barber or a person in a salon is a possibility to contract and spread the virus,” she said, noting a salon owner who had a fever.

Jacobs added that she’d be compared to Desi Bouterse, the Suriname president who got 20 years in jail ordering the murders of his political opponents. She’d been called all kinds of names for trying to close the border on March 22.

“Someone told me, ‘You’re starting to sound like the Suriname general,’” she said. “But it looks as if, at times, that is what is needed: a tough, hard exterior for people to listen.”

Many on social media related to the tough love.

This hits a little harder with the Ether. pic.twitter.com/SnlmU3w05V

— Blair Adams (@digitalb) April 9, 2020

“When she said “if I have to” I felt every last word. Had a childhood flash back lol,” one user wrote.

Jacobs’ comments begin at the 23:00 mark.

 

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Essential Workers Could Get Up To $25,000 In Hazard Pay Under Senate Proposal

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, many states have issued mandatory lockdowns, causing all residents to stay at home, closing down all non-essential businesses to contain the spread of the virus. Although many companies have closed their doors, essential workers, including grocery store workers, nurses, and deliverymen, are on the frontlines battling the worst of the pandemic while exposing themselves to infection. Now Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and other Democrats are proposing to give doctors, nurses, and other essential workers up to $25,000 in hazard pay as part of phase four of the coronavirus relief bill.

Essential workers may be able to get a $25,000 raise soon if a new plan from Senate Democrats passes. The plan would lead to the creation of a COVID-19 “Heroes Fund” to “reward, retain, and recruit essential workers,” Senate Democrats said in a statement this week.

The fund would provide $25,000 for “pandemic premium pay increase for essential frontline workers” until the end of 2020. Workers would get an additional $13 per hour on top of their regular wages, capped at $25,000. The full raise would be available to people making less than $200,000 per year; those making more would be capped at $5,000.

The fund would also provide a one-time $15,000 hiring bonus to “attract and secure” a workforce to fight the coronavirus. It would apply to people who enlist as healthcare or home-care workers or first responders where “severe staffing shortages” are “impeding the ability to provide care during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“As the COVID pandemic has reached alarming new levels, our health care system is strained to the max, our economy is strained to the max. Doctors and nurses, medical personnel of all types are putting their lives on the line every single day to fight this disease and save others,” Schumer said on a conference call introducing the proposal according to The Hill. “For these Americans, working from home is not an option. Social distancing is not an option.”

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More Than 200 Inmates at Cook County Jail Infected With Coronavirus

Cook County Jail in Chicago is home to the highest number of coronavirus cases in a single area in the entire country.

According to Black News, the jail currently has 355 cases since the pandemic started, including 238 inmates and 115 staff members. The jail is the country’s largest with more than 4,500 inmates and the number of infected could increase even more as a vast majority of inmates have yet to be tested.

The inmates that tested positive have been isolated and 17 inmates who have significant symptoms have been hospitalized.

“I’m confident we’re going to get through this,” Sheriff Thomas J. Dart told the New York Times, “but I could really use some more definition about how long the virus can last in an environment like this.”

Prisons are one of the most vulnerable places for the coronavirus. Many jails across the U.S. are overcrowded and littered with unsanitary conditions. Add in the lack of healthcare and prisons are like a petri dish for the virus.

According to the New York Board of Corrections, 273 inmates, 321 employees, and 53 health workers, have tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began. It was also reported that Michael Tyson, a 53-year-old man who was jailed for a technical parole violation on Rikers Island, died on Sunday at Bellevue Hospital.

Law enforcement agencies across the country have begun releasing inmates that were convicted of low-level crimes in an effort to keep coronavirus cases down. New York City has released more than 900 inmates in recent days due to the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a March 31 press briefing.

“It is a very complicated dynamic, it’s one that we’ve literally never, dealt with before,” the mayor said last week.

At the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan, 33 inmates in the facility have tested positive for coronavirus. So far, two inmates have died from the virus including one who passed away Thursday. There are 262 prisoners who have tested positive across the state.

Prisons aren’t the only institutions that risk infection. More than 700 employees at a Detroit hospital have tested positive for coronavirus. Healthcare workers and low-wage workers, including many essential workers at supermarkets, warehouses, and plants, are among the most vulnerable to be infected because they cannot telecommute and are forced to interact with the public.

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World Health Organization head targeted with racism, death threats

The World Health Organization has been on the front lines of the corona pandemic since word of a novel coronavirus starting coming out of China in January. The Ethiopian head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a microbiologist who has been leading the organization since 2017.

He is the first African to hold the position.

READ MORE:  Trump, Congress weigh more stimulus checks for Americans 

This week, Ghebreyesus revealed that he’s been getting death threats while at the helm of the organization, reported CNBC.com.

“I can tell you personal attacks that have been going on for more than two, three months. Abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, Black or Negro. I’m proud of being Black, proud of being Negro,” he said on a conference call from Geneva where WHO has its headquarters.

“I don’t care, to be honest … even death threats. I don’t give a damn.”

He did single out Taiwan as a source of some of the insulting rhetoric, to which the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, said were “baseless.” She asked that Ghebreyesus apologize and then invited him to her country.

Ghebreyesus was also critical of suggestions made by scientists on French television that a vaccine should be first tried out in Africa. He said it reflected a “colonialist” mentality and insulted the entire Black community.

The WHO leader said he hoped that countries could come together and leave differing ideologies and political differences behind to combat the virus.

READ MORE: Coronavirus is hitting Black America at a staggering rate

“Please quarantine COVID politics. That’s what we want. We don’t care about personal attacks,” he said. “We care about the life passing every single minute unnecessarily because we couldn’t unite to fight this virus.”

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Joel Osteen to host virtual Easter with Kanye, Mariah Carey and Tyler Perry

Joel Osteen is bringing out some celebrity star power this Easter service for a virtual service we won’t soon forget.

Kanye West, Tyler Perry, and Mariah Carey are on board to participate in Osteen’s Easter service. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the broadcast will be streamed in its entirety online to respect social distancing requirements to keep everyone safe. Even Osteen is reportedly not giving his Easter message from his Lakewood Church in Houston, instead opting to come to viewers remotely from his home, according to Deadline.

READ MORE: Kanye West set to appear at Joel Osteen’s megachurch, faces backlash

Osteen told TMZ that Carey contacted him about taking part in a special salute to health care professionals who are our doing heroic work on the battle against COVID-19. She’s reportedly going to sing her hit song Hero via webcam.

“I have known Mariah from years past, and we’d talked about doing some things,” Osteen told TMZ. “They actually contacted us because she wanted to show some support and honor to the first responder… and do her part to bring hope and uplift the nation.”

INDIO, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 21: Kanye West performs Sunday Service during the 2019 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for Coachella)

Osteen said he wasn’t clear what Kanye West would be doing, but TMZ sources say the Jesus Is King rapper, along with his Sunday Service choir, will be broadcasting a performance from L.A.

Perry is expected to offer up words of hope and encouragement to Osteen’s global viewers.

During special prayer segments at the church, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña will reportedly be featured, Deadline reported.

Two weeks ago, American Idol alum, Katharine McPhee and her husband, David Foster, performed a cover of Carey’s Hero for medical personnel in a video on social media.

Been a lamb all my life, thanks for lifting our spirits in the toughest times – even 25+ years later, @MariahCarey. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/4ktDUn8VXK

— Kat McPhee (@katharinemcphee) March 22, 2020

“Been a lamb all my life, thanks for lifting our spirits in the toughest times – even 25+ years later, @MariahCarey,” McPhee captioned the video.

She later responds to her own video saying, “We dedicate this to all the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers – the actual heroes – who are tirelessly helping all of us in these times of despair. Much love! X”

READ MORE: Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ hits No. 1 for first time since 1994 release

Carey shared the video on Twitter, captioning it “Appreciate you so much!! Thank you for singing my song so beautifully (and of course bravo to the maestro David Foster on the piano) Take care and stay safe!”

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Coronavirus: WHO chief and Taiwan in row over 'racist' comments

Taiwan rejects accusations by the UN health body's head that racist slurs against him originated there.

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Lies About Covid-19 Might Be Deadly, But They're Not Unique

When this is over, a return to “normal” for content moderation would be a huge mistake. 

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Basketball Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Gives 900 Safety Goggles to UCLA

Those long arms are still dunking but this time it’s in the name of coronavirus relief! Former UCLA Bruin player, Lew Alcindor, who is better known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has come through by supplying 900 safety goggles to his alma mater, according to CBS News.

Abdul-Jabbar, who was known for his rich basketball career from playing at Power Memorial Academy in high school in New York City to his time playing college ball at UCLA to his Hall of Fame career playing for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers, was just as famous for wearing protective goggles. The Los Angeles Lakers legend donated 900 pairs of safety goggles to UCLA Health Tuesday to assist the healthcare professionals so that they stay protected on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I would like to do my part, so I am going to use my influence and have my team source quality medical products, such as protective eyewear goggles like these. You guys should have all the best equipment while you’re on the front lines. Thank you for all you do,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

UCLA Health tweeted a photograph of Dr. Eric Esrailian accepting the gracious donation from Abdul-Jabbar.

Eric Esrailian, MD (@esrailian) accepts a generous donation of protective goggles from Kareem Abdul Jabbar (@kaj33) to help with the continued need to replenish our supplies of PPE to protect our front-line heroes. Read more: https://t.co/iStDPcQxe1 #TeamLA #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/oqq2JbyeW3

— UCLA Health (@UCLAHealth) April 7, 2020

To which Abdul-Jabbar responded that he was glad to be able to help the medical community:

I’m a Bruin through and through and I’m glad to lend any help that I can to the medical community who is doing everything they can to save lives – we appreciate you & we are with you !!!

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@kaj33) April 7, 2020

“On behalf of UCLA Health, I am honored and grateful to accept the generous donation of protective goggles from our friend, the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,” Esrailian tells CBS.

“We are incredibly grateful for the recent outpouring of financial support and donations of supplies during this unprecedented time.”

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If You’re Snacking Too Much While You Stay at Home, Nutritionist JJ Smith Has the Solution

With the coronavirus pandemic spreading across the country, the majority of Americans are under state orders to stay at home.

Our normal routines have been upended, gyms are closed, and we’re spending more time than ever inside—and it’s affecting not only our mental well-being but our physical health as well.

“The truth of the matter is people are sitting on their ass eating a lot of food gaining a lot of weight,” says JJ Smith, nutritionist, certified weight loss expert, and bestselling author of 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse.

“So they’re actually trying to get back on track, because they’re developing some bad eating habits during this pandemic.”

Smith’s assessment may sound harsh but it comes without judgment, as she admits that she’s also struggled to eat healthy during these unprecedented times.

“I got to get it together too, because I’ve been snacking a lot more. I have pretty good eating habits, pretty disciplined, but I am so far off track.

“I’m eating cereal and bologna and bacon and hot dogs. And that’s it,” she continues. “Everything I don’t eat [normally] was the only thing I was eating and it was just really crazy stuff.”

The stress and the lack of movement have been like a double whammy that compounds the constant snacking while we stay at home.

“I’m telling you the snacks are really problematic,” she says. “And it’s like, snacking out of boredom, and not being able to do things socially with family and friends, or just sitting in the house feeling the anxiety around the pandemic.”

Smith realized that she probably wasn’t the only one worried about staying slim and healthy during self-quarantine. And she decided to do something about it.

“I wondered if anybody else was struggling with their eating habits right now. And I reached out, and so many people were. So I created this ConFINEment Body Challenge with my followers.”

The Challenge is a free, monthlong program and 49-page e-book that teaches participants how they can detox at home, how to eat clean, and how to make sure they keep their bodies moving—even if it’s just around the house.

“It’s probably the most free information I ever gave,” Smith says. “People are already under enough anxiety and stress and it’s not about making money at this time, it’s about coming together and trying to provide support and whatever expertise you have. That’s what I’ve provided my expertise on, on weight loss and health.”

That expertise is clearly needed, with 80,000 people signed up to do the ConFINEment Body Challenge in its first week alone.

“It’s something to do every day for the next 30 days, so that we don’t lose all the progress we’ve been making over the years,” Smith says. “We are not going to fall off track during the quarantine time.”

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Aretha Franklin’s former lover, Willie Wilkerson, dies of coronavirus at 72

Aretha Franklin’s former love interest and longtime friend, Willie Wilkerson, Jr. has died from the COVID-19 virus.

Wilkerson, 72, died on Wednesday at Ascension Providence Hospital in Rochester, where he was taken on March 30, his family told the Detroit Free Press.

READ MORE: REST IN POWER: Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin dies at 76

A former Detroit firefighter, Wilkerson met Franklin in the late 1980s after going to one of her shows, where he had a front-row seat. As he was “hooting and hollering” while ‘Retha sang the roof off the place, the singer “started a conversation with him,” said Reginald Amos, a retired deputy chief with the Detroit Fire Department.

That conversation continued after the show, as they learned that they were practically neighbors. Both Franklin and Wilkerson had apartments in Detroit’s Riverfront Towers. They soon became an item and were ultimately engaged to be married in 2012, although they had many relationship starts and stops along the way. In an interview with Jet, Franklin described them as a “fiery match.”

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 13: Aretha Franklin and William Wilkerson attend the BET Honors 2012 Pre-Honors dinner at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)

In an old Free Press story, the newspaper referred to Wilkerson as “a strapping Vietnam War veteran with a love of Cadillacs (Cadillac Willie is one of his nicknames)” and “a sturdy, steady presence at Franklin’s side.”

Although the two would never marry, they stayed good friends. As Franklin’s health deteriorated in 2018 before she died of pancreatic cancer, Wilkerson remained “very close to her, visiting her right to the end,” one of his daughters, Tequila Wilkerson, told the newspaper.

“And they talked all the time on the phone,” she added.

And they also traveled a lot together, according to another one of Wilkerson’s daughters, Sandra Evangelista of Wilsonville, Oregon.

Willie Wilkerson Jr. was born in Detroit and is a Vietnam War vet, serving with the U.S. Marine Corps, his family told the newspaper. When he returned from war, he started working as a fire engine operator with the Detroit Fire Department.

Even in his final weeks, Wilkerson kept his sense of humor, making nurses and other health care workers laugh, said his third daughter, Tanya Wilkerson Thompson of Grand Blanc.

“He was definitely a funny guy. He just had an infectious spirit. He could come to my son’s basketball games and he was just that guy that everybody could walk up to and feel like you knew him,” Thompson told the Free Press.

READ MORE: ‘Respect’ and ‘Genius: Aretha’ release dates delayed by coronavirus

Wilkerson is survived by his wife, Doris Ogburn, whom he married last year, his three daughters, a son, John McGovern of Portland, Oregon, and 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the family is undecided as to whether they’ll hold a funeral for him, but are asking that donations in his memory be made to the Michigan Humane Society, 30300 Telegraph Road Suite 220 Bingham Farms, MI 48025; or via www.michiganhumane.org, since he loved his canine friends.

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Philadelphia rapper and former Ford model Chynna dead at 25

Philadelphia rising rap star Chynna, who started as a model, has sadly died at the age of 25.

Chynna, whose full birth name was Chynna Rogers, died at her home in Philadelphia on Wednesday, her manager John Miller told PEOPLE magazine. Miller didn’t disclose the cause of Chynna’s death.

READ MORE: Nicki Minaj becomes first female rapper to amass $100M

In a statement to PEOPLE, the rapper’s family said simply: “Chynna was deeply loved and will be sorely missed.”

In December, she had recently released the four-track EP in case i die first. The music was dark and heavy and draws listeners in on her vibe: “S*it don’t last forever, do it?/S*it ain’t ‘bout forever, is it doe?/I’m just sad you didn’t get it doe,” as she raps on one track, ASMR.

When she was 14, Chynna was signed by Ford Models and began modeling. While she was still a teenager, she was mentored by A$AP Yams, who died five years ago. This link to A$AP Mob helped her gain rap cred from the start. She released 2013’s hit track Selfie and a year later, “Glen Coco.” In 2015, she put out I’m Not Here. This Isn’t Happening and Music 2 Die 2 in 2016, according to Pitchfork. 

She told Pitchfork her music was for “angry people with too much pride to show how angry they are.”

Chynna was open about her previous addiction to opiates in some of her music, and also in interviews. “It got to the point where I had to do something just to be able to get on stage and do my job. I didn’t like that,” she told Pitchfork in an interview. 

It is not known if drugs played a part in her death, her friend Quinta Brunson left a cryptic message that made many think that she was referring to Rogers.

Just lost another friend to drugs. I’m not going to be quiet about it. I’m tired of drug culture. Everything about it. Everything attached to it. I know there’s a bigger picture. But i don’t care right now. I’m so tired. And sad.

— quibi brunson (@quintabrunson) April 9, 2020

pic.twitter.com/xQaLGXTtLa

— quibi brunson (@quintabrunson) April 9, 2020

And I will love you forever, and we are going to change this world for you. https://t.co/rONXUHbm3e

— quibi brunson (@quintabrunson) April 9, 2020

While she does not mention Chynna by name, the close proximity of the texts and Rogers’ history, allowed many fans to connect the dots.

READ MORE: Rapper Rakim publicly mourns the loss of Eric B’s daughter

Upon learning of her death, celebrities took to Twitter and posted their memories and tributes to the rapper.

Rapper Vince Staples posted on his Instagram that he needed everyone to know that she was “too special for words.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

I don’t like doing this when my people go but I think everybody needs to know that you were special. Too special for words. Stay outta trouble lil cuh.

A post shared by @ vincestaples on Apr 8, 2020 at 6:23pm PDT

“Chynna you were f—— hilarious bro… today was our last exchange of jokes & those I will miss the most. I can’t believe it idk how to. I love you. So very much. My heart is officially iced,” Kehlani tweeted.

chynna you were fuckin hilarious bro… today was our last exchange of jokes & those i will miss the most. i can’t believe it idk how to

i love you. so very much.

my heart is officially iced.

— Kehlani (@Kehlani) April 9, 2020

Rapper Kari Faux tweeted “I love u, Chynna. Forever, my rap game Laura Croft.”

i love u, Chynna 🖤🦇
forever, my rap game Laura Croft pic.twitter.com/6RG0V7SRGj

— LOWKEY SUPERSTAR (@KARIFAUX) April 9, 2020

“Chynna deserved way more love. We need to make sure to give folks their flowers while they are here to see them. This hurts so bad cause I know she was f—— next man. Her music and vision was raw as f—,” Dom McLennon, a member of Brockhampton, tweeted.

Chynna deserved way more love. We need to make sure to give folks their flowers while they are here to see them. This hurts so bad cause I know she was fuckin next man. Her music and vision was raw as fuck.

— dom from hartford (@DomMcLennon) April 9, 2020

 

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The Rise and Spread of a 5G Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory

From an interview with an obscure Belgian doctor to apparent arson attacks in the UK, the unfounded claim that the pandemic is linked to 5G has spread unlike any other.

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Fighting Covid-19 Shouldn't Mean Abandoning Human Rights

Democracies everywhere have tried to build legal protections for privacy and basic freedoms. But surveillance aimed at addressing the pandemic could dismantle them.

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5 Best Smart Light bulbs (2020): Lifx, Philips, Wyze, and More

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Black Party Supply Business to Gift Families with Decorations to Celebrate Birthday’s During COVID-19

COVID-19 has changed life as many people know it. Nevertheless, life goes on. While large social gatherings have been prohibited across the nation, people are finding unique ways to celebrate special moments like anniversary’s, tying the knot, baby showers, and birthdays. Yet for some, funding celebratory moments can be a challenge due to the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. In response, Tabitha Salomon, founder and CEO of Party Dash, created the “Spread Joy” relief program to allow parents to donate party supplies to families in need.

According to Slackline, the events and party supplies industry is down 55% and is in the top 15 fastest-declining categories due to the pandemic.

Salomon launched Party Dash at the beginning of 2020—and she is already giving back so that parents can host fun virtual or household parties and bring their children joy. One hundred percent of profits from the program will go to the COVID-19 relief effort.

We spoke with Salomon about her journey into entrepreneurship and her mission to spread joy during these uncertain times.

Meet Tabitha Salomon

What led you to create Party Dash?

I’m that friend who constantly brings communities of people together. I believe that events and parties are a pathway to connection. About two years ago, I was working at Google and I thought perhaps there’s a fun opportunity to add value in the space by doing something novel or to do something that perhaps hadn’t been done well before. I started to talk to other people like myself who love to get people together for milestone events like your kids’ birthday parties, your friend’s baby shower, etc. I kept hearing over and over again that busy parents would find it frustrating because they’re visiting three to five stores on average to piecemeal party supplies together when they walk to a store or a party store, it was usually chaotic and overwhelming.

In one of those conversations, I had a mom say to me, ‘I feel like someone’s thrown up on me when I walk into a party store. I will never forget that. That is such a visual description of how bad the experience is. Oftentimes, products are outdated and poor quality. So, when I was thinking about how we’re going to bring ‘party back to life’, our vision was to essentially make curated boxes that are conveniently shipped to that busy parent’s door. And we took it a step further by saying let’s also think about being a conscious brand. Today, our products are sustainably sourced. Over 80% of the products on our platform are biodegradable. And, we’re always looking for a mission to give back to our community.

Spreading Joy During Uncertain Times

Party Dash’s space party decorations (Image: Courtesy of Party Dash)

People are hosting virtual parties on Zoom and social media platforms like Instagram Live. Even though we’re living in this moment of uncertainty, tell us more about your decision to help families get in the spirit of celebrating during these times.

Most party suppliers are essentially like, ‘Hey, we’re just gonna like not sell for the next couple of months because people aren’t having parties.’ And we thought, No! If anything, it’s when people are living with fear, anxiety, and doubt is when we should be the light.  We should give people a reason to get together and celebrate. And we should be the conduits of those celebrations. So, it’s not that people stop celebrating, it’s how they celebrate that looks different.

To your point, we’re seeing a huge spike in virtual parties that are being done. I was on a call yesterday with a group of five moms who had just finished planning or about to start planning kids’ birthday parties. And they were telling me that they love the fact that they can still make it feel festive.

Knowing that we’re a part of that makes me and my team feel really good about what we’re doing. Essentially, we’re just trying to spread joy and a time that’s full of anxiety and fear.

Spread the Good News

Party Dash’s unicorn decoration set (Image: Courtesy: Party Dash)

How can families apply to be selected as beneficiaries of the Spread Joy campaign?

For the next two months, applications will be open. We’re seeing a lot of nonprofits, like the Boys and Girls who are a partner of ours, are getting involved. Essentially what they’re doing is they’re emailing everyone in their communities because they know those parents are usually a bit more low-income. And when income is cut in their household even more—things like this [parties] are the first things to go.

if you have to choose between celebrating and putting a smile on your kid’s face for that one special day or putting food on the table, that’s a really terrible decision and options to choose from as a parent. So, we’re saying to that particular parent, ‘You don’t have to choose anymore, we got your back. We’re going to support you and help you to turn this into a festive and memorable experience for your kid’s birthday.’

We’re also thinking a lot about the folks that are on the front lines. The nurses and the health techs who are working around the clock fighting COVID-19. When people get home, the last thing they want to do is go online and shop or go on Pinterest and put the boards together. Or, go on Amazon and piecemeal their event together.

Now, all they have to do is spend two minutes applying for this. And then we’ll ship out the box that fits that particular theme or occasion that their kid loves. We’re really thinking about these two communities and others who’ve been negatively affected. And again, with this mission of helping to spread joy.

Apply

If you’d like to donate to the cause and spread joy or benefit from the program, click here to get involved and or apply.

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