Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on science and technology
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected innumerable scientific and technical institutions globally, resulting in lower productivity in a number of fields and programs.
As a result, the report documents some of the ways in which scientists, inventors, and governments used science to meet society's needs during the early stages of the pandemic.
In the paper, What the COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals About the Evolving Landscape of Scientific Advice, the authors present five countries' case studies (Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Ghana, and New Zealand).
For example, the innovation agencies of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay have issued calls for research proposals with an expedited approval process through early April 2020.
The UNESCO study of publication trends in 193 countries on the topic of new or re-emerging viruses that can infect humans covered the period from 2011 to 2019 and now provides an overview of the state of research prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
[16] The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) closed all of its six sites in Europe (Barcelona, Grenoble, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Hinxton, and Rome).
Observations from the Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay program, which uses in-flight measurements from the fleets of 43 airlines, have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent depending on the region.
Data from other automated systems have been virtually unaffected, although WMO has expressed concern that repairs and maintenance may be affected eventually.
It was noted that pandemic-related declines in clinical trials raised concerns about the potential negative impact on the development of new cancer therapies and the extent to which these findings could be applied to other diseases.
The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, another consortium of Microsoft, six universities (including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the first consortium), and the National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Illinois, operating under the auspices of C3.ai, founded by Thomas Siebel, is pooling supercomputing resources for drug discovery, developing medical protocols, and improving public health strategies, and awarded large grants through May 2020 to researchers proposing to use AI for similar tasks.
[39][40] In March 2020, the Folding@home distributed computing project launched a program to support medical researchers around the world.
The researchers announced that using Rosetta@home, they were able to "accurately predict the atomic-scale structure of an important coronavirus protein weeks before it could be measured in the lab.
The partnership is a distributed computing project that "will automatically run a simulated experiment in the background [of connected home PCs] that will help predict the efficacy of a particular chemical compound as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
[47][48][49] Some examples of such projects are listed below: The scientific community has held several machine learning competitions to identify false information related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some examples are listed below: NASA announced the temporary closure of all visitor complexes at its field centers until further notice and asked all non-critical personnel to work from home if possible.
[70] NASA's emergency response framework varied based on local virus cases around its agency's field centers.
The difficult manoeuvre, which uses Earth's gravity to adjust BepiColombo's trajectory as it cruises towards Mercury, was performed by a very small number of engineers and with due regard to social distancing and other health and hygiene measures required by the current situation.
[80] Tucson, Arizona-based World View announced on April 17, 2020, that it had terminated new business initiatives and laid off an unspecified number of employees to reduce cash outflows.
[81] OneWeb filed for bankruptcy on March 27, 2020, following a cash crunch due to difficulties in raising capital to complete construction and deployment of the remaining 90 percent of the network.
The company had already laid off approximately 85 percent of its 531 employees, but said it would maintain operational satellite capabilities while the court restructures it and new owners for the constellation were sought.
[84] Major companies such as SpaceX and Boeing were not economically affected, except that they took extra precautions and security measures for their employees to limit the spread of the virus in their workplaces.
[88][89] The pandemic has caused a huge strain on internet traffic, with BT Group and Vodafone seeing a 60 and 50 percent increase in broadband usage, respectively.
In addition, Sony has begun to slow down PlayStation game downloads in Europe and the United States to maintain the traffic levels.
Teleconference companies such as Zoom Video Communications have seen a sharp increase in usage, accompanied by technical issues such as bandwidth overcrowding and social problems such as Zoombombing.
Many EU areas have the potential to enable investment in the digital transformation of firms by expanding access to faster internet.
[110][114] Across sub-regions, Russian companies reported the highest rate of digital transformation, with more than half of them beginning or growing online activity, products delivery, and remote work.
