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CO-LABS is hosting a conversation with COVIDCheck Colorado - learn about the options they provide for COVID-19 testing in Colorado for businesses, government agencies, schools and related non-residential organizations. Zoom Webinar: FREE, audience will not be on-screen. Thursday, October 29, 2020 1:30 - 2:00 pm UPDATE - WATCH THE VIDEO of the conversation: In collaboration with a variety of public health leaders and partners, COVIDCheck Colorado provides employers a comprehensive approach to fast, accurate and affordable COVID-19 testing, symptom tracking and contact tracing tools as a key component of their health and safety plans to reopen. COVIDCheck Colorado provides an integrated platform where employees can sign up for a regularly scheduled appointment to get tested for COVID-19 at a designated site and receive rapid results. Those who test positive for COVID-19 will receive a phone call from a telehealth provider who will offer support and guidance on self-isolation. As required by law, all positive cases will be reported to local public health agencies and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Those who have been exposed to the virus will be notified in accordance with the state’s contact tracing protocol and health privacy practices.

A new, three-year study funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will study tree canopies using data from NASA satellites and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Program. The biochemistry, physiology, and orientation of foliage is a key driver of productivity in forests. By studying the ecosystem and canopy structure, researchers can learn how trees grow, how trees provide different habitats for various animals, and what factors affect how trees “breathe” and exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. In addition, the research will provide better understanding of baseline vegetation chemistry and forest health, and can help in the early detection of invasive species. It can also help reveal how the chemical properties of leaves and tree canopy structures affect remote sensing observations. “The goal of the research is to understand the linkages between canopy structure and the leaf traits that influence photosynthetic capacity,” said NEON’s Keith Krause, who is leading the research. “This should allow us to improve our interpretation of remote sensing data and to better map and monitor rates of productivity in forest ecosystems.” NASA’s Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science program, will be led by scientists from Battelle, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the University of New Hampshire using data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) program. Researchers will use two existing NEON sites for the study —the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts and the Bartlett Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. Field measurements and remote sensing data from the sites will be augmented with simulations of realistic forests where trade studies will be performed to better understand how changes in leaf chemistry and canopy structure affect the remote sensing signals.

The Wildfire SAFE app incorporates real-time data from sources that include the U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System, U.S. Drought Monitor drought conditions, weather data, and vegetation conditions to provide targeted information on any wildfire in the continental United States. The app was designed in consultation with fire managers to ensure that the data being provided will fulfill management needs and that the user interface is easy to use across all platforms—desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. Wildfire SAFE contains all the information a fire manager needs when deciding how to allocate resources, both equipment and personnel, as well as keeping personnel safe, while working to contain a wildfire. The app is located at https://wfsafe.technosylva.com/. The Wildfire SAFE supporting documentation and webinar is available at https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/tools/wildfiresafe Read more (PDF download) About the Wildfire SAFE App ● Wildfire SAFE incorporates real-time data from sources that include the U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System, U.S. Drought Monitor drought conditions, weather data, and vegetation conditions to provide targeted information on any wildfire in the continental United States. ● Wildfire SAFE was designed in consultation with fire managers to ensure that the data being provided will fulfill management needs and that the user interface is easy to use across all platforms—desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. ● Fire managers will find the app useful when determining how to prioritize incidents and deploy firefighting resources if fire crews in a given area are ill or have travel restrictions due to COVID-19. William (Matt) Jolly, a research ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Fire Sciences Laboratory, led the team that developed Wildfire SAFE. The inspiration for the Wildfire SAFE app, he says, “It grew out of the need to deliver fire danger information to firefighters and decision makers in a more readily consumable fashion.” Jolly says the app wouldn’t be what it is without the partnership with Technosylva. Powering the app are fire danger forecasts linked to datasets containing terrain information, drought conditions from the U.S. Drought Monitor, and satellite-derived vegetation conditions. It is essentially all the information a fire manager needs when deciding how to allocate resources, both equipment and personnel, as well as keeping personnel safe, to contain a wildfire. LEAD SCIENTIST William (Matt) Jolly is a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. His research focuses on fire ecology and the effects of wildfire on the environment. Jolly can be contacted at matt.jolly@usda.gov or connect with him at https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/people/mjolly

Scientists at Colorado State University’s Infectious Disease Research Center are now studying COVID-19 antibodies and their possible effects on patients infected with the disease. The Food and Drug Administration recently authorized convalescent plasma research as a way to treat COVID-19. Izabela Ragan, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of biomedical sciences at CSU, wrote in an email to The Collegian that antibodies are proteins the immune system produces to fight off invaders like bacteria and viruses. Ragan wrote that antibodies will find, attach to and stop the invader’s ability to replicate and spread. “Once bound to the antigen, antibodies activate other aspects of the immune response to help destroy the invader,” Ragan wrote. “Our immune system produces several types of antibodies like IgG, IgA and IgM; each has a unique job, but they work together to attack.” Read more>>>

Presented on Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 by Jose Jimenez: Description: In this webinar, we will summarize some of the recent scientific information that has been accumulating to support that COVID-19 transmission occurs via the airborne exposure route; crowded, poorly ventilated environments are particularly at risk. We will also discuss what can be done in buildings during pandemics to minimize airborne transmission risk. Presenter Bio: Jose Jimenez specializes in atmospheric chemistry, field measurements, aerosol mass spectrometry, and advanced instrument development. He holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and amongst many accolades, he is the 5th most cited scientist worldwide in the geosciences. See the video on YouTube. Read more at CIRES

A new video from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory illustrates the lab's vision for the future. From improving grid resilience through our autonomous energy grid research to NREL's partnership with Southern California Gas Company to convert excess renewable energy into pipeline quality methane, the video highlights how NREL is finding solutions to today's and tomorrow's energy challenges.

CO-LABS in the news: October 14, 2020 article excerpt from the Daily Camera in Boulder regarding impacts of COVID-19 on the technology industry in Boulder, Colorado included this reference: "...Dan Powers, director of CO-LABS Inc., an organization that works with and between the numerous federal labs in the state and, among other things, assists them with technology transfer to private industry, said the labs have been hit especially hard by the coronavirus because of risk mitigation protocols within federal agencies. “They’ve been quite hobbled in some cases,” he said. The inability for people to get on site and use the testing capabilities of the labs has affected the ability to move technology forward, he said. Accessible COVID testing — rapid testing — is critical to the labs, he said, and necessary to get back to normalcy." COVID Check Colorado, a program that is setting up rapid testing sites around Colorado, may help, suggested Janine Ledingham, Northern Colorado regional director for Manufacturer’s Edge. She said $12 tests are now available in multiple locations. See the full article>>> UPDATE: CO-LABS arranged a 20-minute webinar to review the options from COVIDCheck Colorado, see that here.

The evidence that the coronavirus spreads through the air has been mounting for months. However, the official guidance from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control is still that droplets are the main route of transmission. Back in July, a group of 239 experts sent an open letter to the WHO imploring it to acknowledge airborne transmission. Three months later, the WHO’s guidance has changed subtly but still only suggests airborne transmission plays a limited role. Rather than wait for officialdom to catch up, one of those signatories, Jose-Luis Jimenez, a chemistry professor at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied aerosols for 20 years, decided to go straight to the public with the latest advice on how people can protect themselves and those around them. He convened a group of nine other experts in the field to create this open-access Google Doc - read from the MIT Technology Review why he created the document, and the response he’s had so far.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology Public Safety Communications Research Division hosts a webinar: 5G for Public Safety, October 21, 2020, 11:00 am - noon MST. Hear an overview of what 5G will bring to public safety, security challenges and opportunities, relevant 5G use cases and more. More info. Speakers include: (see their full details here.) Jeff Cichonski is an Information Technology Specialist working with a broad array of technologies at NIST; working in the Applied Cybersecurity Division of the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL). Lisa Soucy leads the Advanced Communications Research Group (ACRG) for PSCR, within the Communication Technology Laboratory (CTL) at NIST. Sam Ray is an Electronics Engineer with PSCR at NIST's Communication Technology Laboratory. Richard Rouil is a researcher working in the Wireless Networks Division at NIST.

The fast-warming Arctic has started to transition from a predominantly frozen state into an entirely different climate, according to a comprehensive new study of Arctic conditions. Weather patterns in the upper latitudes have always varied from year to year, with more or less sea ice, colder or warmer winters, and longer or shorter seasons of rain instead of snow. But the new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) finds that the Arctic has now warmed so significantly that its year-to-year variability is moving outside the bounds of any past fluctuations, signaling the transition to a “new Arctic” climate regime. "The rate of change is remarkable," said NCAR scientist Laura Landrum, the lead author of the study. "It's a period of such rapid change that observations of past weather patterns no longer show what you can expect next year. The Arctic is already entering a completely different climate than just a few decades ago." In the new study, Landrum and her co-author, NCAR scientist Marika Holland, find that Arctic sea ice has melted so significantly in recent decades that even an unusually cold year will no longer have the amount of summer sea ice that existed as recently as the mid-20th century. Autumn and winter air temperatures will also warm enough to enter a statistically distinct climate by the middle of this century, followed by a seasonal change in precipitation that will result in additional months in which rain will fall instead of snow. For the study, Landrum and Holland used hundreds of detailed computer simulations as well as observations of Arctic climate conditions. The vast amount of data enabled them to statistically define the climate boundaries of the “old Arctic” – or how much variability can naturally occur from year to year – and then to identify when human-caused warming will push the Arctic beyond those natural bounds and into a new climate. Read More>>>

Topic: Smart Agriculture: Driving Innovation in Rural America Date:   Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Time:  2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET Overview: Farmers and ranchers use smart technologies to improve yields, reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and improve decision making. Join BroadbandUSA on September 16, 2020, to take a deep dive into the technologies being implemented to further these precision agriculture techniques. Speakers will also provide an update on the Precision Ag Connectivity Taskforce, co-chaired by USDA and the Federal Communications Commission, as well as an overview of the latest innovations from the Global City Teams Challenge Smart Agriculture and Rural SuperCluster, which encourages collaboration on innovative ag tech and rural projects. Speakers: · Chad Rupe, Administrator, Rural Utility Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture · Dennis Buckmaster, Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University; Co-Chair, GCTC Smart Agriculture and Rural SuperCluster · Megan Nelson, Economic Analyst, American Farm Bureau Federation Moderators: · Jean Rice, Senior Broadband Program Specialist, BroadbandUSA, NTIA · Karen Archer Perry, Senior Policy Analyst, BroadbandUSA, NTIA Please pre-register for the webinar using this registration link. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Want to access past Practical Broadband Conversations webinars? Visit our webinar archives for past presentations, transcripts and audio recordings.

A new @DroughtGov report, Drought and Outdoor Recreation: Impacts, Adaptation Strategies, and Information Gaps in the Intermountain West, describes the future viability of many businesses—particularly small businesses—in the industry is threatened by their drought vulnerabilities and the region’s projected increases in drought severity and frequency. In 2019, the National Integrated Drought Information System partnered with the University of Colorado’s Masters of the Environment Graduate Program to research drought information needs of the outdoor recreation industry in the Intermountain West Drought Early Warning System (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), with the goal of addressing information needs and strengthening the industry’s drought resilience. While the project focused on the Rocky Mountain states, much of the information presented can apply to other regions. For this project, Masters of the Environment graduate students worked with NIDIS to research drought impacts on and information needs of water-based outdoor recreation businesses, with a focus on the following subsectors: ski resorts snow-based sports (e.g., dog sledding, Nordic skiing) lake-based sports (e.g., boating, paddle boarding) fishing rafting small retailers. Between May and August 2019, 112 water-based outdoor recreation businesses (ski resorts, snow-based, fishing, rafting, lake-based, and small retailers) were interviewed and surveyed to determine how drought impacts their operations, adaptation strategies employed to mitigate negative drought impacts, and drought information needs to reduce the vulnerability of the industry. This research report presents the research methods and findings, including the following detailed information for each subsector: how drought impacts business operations adaptation strategies of the businesses current drought and weather information use drought information needs. This report also seeks to provide NIDIS with recommendations for addressing drought information gaps of outdoor businesses with the aim of addressing those gaps and increasing the resilience of this industry in the Intermountain West. READ MORE>>>