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How COVID-19 will change the way we design our homes
Pandemic-inspired housing innovation will collide with techno-acceleration.
August 09, 2020
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Coronavirus
COVID-19 is confounding planning for basic human needs, including shelter.
<p> Around the world, home builders are vigilantly reading tea leaves in the fog, trying to figure out how to survive (and even thrive in) an unfolding economic disaster. And we mourn the fallen, working to keep our loved ones healthy and safe.</p><p>COVID-19 has drawn a political dividing line in much of the world. It reminds me of something an American revolutionary, Samuel Johnson, said in 1775: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." In my story, the scoundrel is this virus – COVID-19.</p><p>Home builders construct the physical environments for families, who turn them into homes – homes we hope are filled with laughter, love, aspiration and celebration. Good housing is the cornerstone of strong communities.</p><p>Much of how COVID-19 impacts us will be determined by science, but not all. "The question of how the pandemic plays out is at least 50% social and political," Sarah Cobey, epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, told <em>Scientific American.</em></p><p>Just as the Spanish flu gave us the vanity room, which originated as a hand-washing basin immediately inside the front entry of a home, COVID-19 will influence innovation in home design.</p>
<p>
Open-plan, ever-larger houses have ruled the market for decades, even though family size has shrunk and middle-class real earnings have remained flat. U.S. households averaged 2.44 children in 1965 but 1.9 by 2015. With 128.6 million households, that's 7 million fewer children. Yet the average size of U.S. houses grew 62% from 1973-2015, from 1,660 square feet to 2,687. House size was still growing in 2018. In Canada, houses have also grown as families shrunk. In Europe, average house size has grown to 1,880 square feet (which Europeans will say astounds them).
</p><p>
Pandemic thinking will likely favour less-open spaces (though people will crave nature-positive spaces), perhaps reviving cozy dens to supplement living rooms. Spending may shift into less obvious enhancements of safety and comfort. Better interior insulation will enable quieter places. Screened-in porches and outdoor spaces, and new approaches to landscaping will help keep mosquitoes and other disease-bearing critters at bay. A bedroom, kitchen, living room area and bath that is a little removed from the core of the house will accommodate adult children now and elderly parents later (at Lennar, we call this the Next Gen Home). Split HVAC systems can prevent sickroom air from being pumped into everybody's space. Such mini-HVAC systems with no ductwork have become very affordable.
</p><p>
Home-based jobs call for better home offices (Lennar calls this the Next Gen Home Office). The infamous toilet flush in the background of U.S. Supreme Court by-telephone oral arguments underscored the perils of inappropriate home-work spaces. So do videos of children and pets interrupting conference calls or other tasks. A larger home-based work force will drive designers to balance job requirements with the privacy and safety of the family.
</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0NjM2Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTI4MDQ2MH0.aQZirj2jDCmwTn94E7cHku5Np1Sj3XYTd5U-cjHFJA4/img.png?width=980" id="7841f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ad162e4cbaa85f0a8bb886bcdc9ea738" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>Pandemic-inspired housing innovation will collide, however, with three critical forces that were already simmering pre-COVID and are now at a high boil.</p><ul><li><strong>Techno-Accelerations.</strong> The pandemic has accelerated the already-brisk integration of real and virtual activities, including remote work, remote health, and remote education. But electric and automated vehicle compatibility, delivery-enablement systems, frictionless purchasing and the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling the remote maintenance and repair of homes . . . all require fast bandwidth – faster even than 5G. It also requires security: in a geopolitical environment where surface attack areas have expanded, we all want military-grade cybersecurity.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Climate.</strong> As China began publicly grappling with deaths from COVID-19 in mid-January 2020, the World Economic Forum's "2020 Global Risks Report" was released. It warned that climate change makes more of the planet hospitable to infectious pathogens. Resilience is therefore the watchword of the remainder of the century. Energy and flood resilience, and smart insurance and other financing products that will encourage a great migration away from the coasts . . . these are the characteristics of the new urban morphology brought about by climate change.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Social Justice.</strong> While COVID-19 did not cause the social justice movement that swept many parts of the world this summer and the U.S. in particular, the virus amplifies economic burdens which, in turn, exacerbate the movement's root causes: income inequality is central to this dynamic. The Institute for Policy Studies found America's 400 richest people are worth $US3 trillion, more than all African-American households plus 25% of Hispanic households combined. There's little doubt these numbers err on the low side now. COVID-19 has wiped out the ready resources of many families and that will spark varying degrees of political reaction globally. Populist housing policies that threaten capital investment could deter home building and contribute to future housing crises. Inclusionary housing programmes that accelerate wealth creation among traditionally excluded populations, enable financing, inject innovation into housing use and urgently work toward housing security for vulnerable populations will underpin how governments reallocate precious housing-related subsidies.</li></ul><p>The ghosts of the 2008 financial crisis hang over the pandemic economy. But the 2008 crisis was housing-ignited. High-risk mortgages drove up the prices of houses buyers couldn't afford but bought anyway. This textbook housing bubble was buoyed by an irrational conviction that prices would keep rising and rising. Low interest and inflated housing values led millions to refinance or, in the U.S., extract home equity loans to pay for remodelling, cars, boats, campers, and bucket-list quests. The housing bubble popped and its bad ink seeped through world economic systems.</p><p>A 6 January 2020 <em>Washington Post</em> article opened with: "A strong job market and low mortgage rates should sustain the housing market in 2020. The problem will be finding enough homes for buyers. With unemployment hovering at a 50-year low and interest rates well below historical norms, the real estate industry is being dragged down by scarcity in housing stock…."</p><p>Within three months, U.S. unemployment had surged to historic levels (more than 23 million Americans were officially unemployed at the start of May, more than 30 million by the end) but that <em>Washington Post</em> article still holds true today. Low mortgage costs in the U.S. and the developed world continue to drive affordability. And the deficit in housing production inherited from the 2008 crisis still constrains supply while, at the same time, millennials all over the world are starting their families.</p>
<p>Sales of existing houses — normally about 90% of the U.S. market — have been eviscerated this year. New homes are favoured over resale, and de-urbanisation is occurring where it can. If new-home sales of the late spring and, as reported in the media, the early summer, continue, 2020 could be a fair year for new home builders. There's been a big jump in online sales of new homes, a global spike in online home-searching activity, and purchasing occurring often without buyers even walking through a house. A new, fully warranted home, bought without having to spend time with realtors and owners, has great appeal.</p><p>In the last century, vaccines and the public health movement largely eliminated dreaded contagious disease in much of the world. Industrialised countries have periodic outbreaks that remind us of this danger, among which, the HIV/AIDS, SARS, Zika, and West Nile viruses. Public health professionals tell us we could be entering an era in which mass urbanisation, climate change, stressed natural eco-systems and other factors will yield a pandemic (or something approximating one) every 7-10 years. This will force a reckoning with what it means to work together toward a better future. But we will also realise that we will all seek refuge in a home. Maybe knowing that will be our true last refuge.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/how-covid-19-will-change-what-we-call-home-ddfe95b686/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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DNA from an unknown ancestor found in modern humans
Our family tree is complicated, and some of the branches are still unlabled.
August 08, 2020
Shutterstock/backpacker79
Surprising Science
- A new study of the genomes of Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans suggests the three were interbreeding quite often.
- The study also found DNA from an unidentified, archaic human ancestor which we inherited from the Denisovans.
- Homo Erectus is the most likely source of this DNA.
<p>Modern Humans are the last members of the genus <em>Homo</em>. While we've managed to outlast an extensive list of cousins and genetic ancestors, their genetic heritage lives on through us. More than a few studies have reported that many people today can trace their ancestry back to the <a href="https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/sex-with-neanderthals-helped-modern-humans-survive-says-study" target="_blank">Neanderthals </a>and the <a href="https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/neanderthal-sex-lives" target="_blank">Denisovans</a>. </p><p>A new study suggests that the DNA of an even older ancestor lives in through us, and has some startling implications for the sex lives of our ancient <a href="https://www.inverse.com/science/super-archaic-ancestor-modern-genetics-study" target="_blank">ancestors</a>. </p>
<p class=""><br></p>
Some of our evolutionary relatives never really left, genetically speaking.
<p>The paper, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895" target="_blank"><em>Mapping gene flow between ancient hominins through demography-aware inference of the ancestral recombination graph</em></a><em>, </em>was published in PLOS Genetics. It's authors used a new statistical method to analyze the genomes of two Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and two modern humans.</p><p>The new method allowed the researchers to determine when segments of one individual's DNA are worked into the chromosomes of another. These occurrences are called "recombination events" and can be used to determine when specific genes entered our genome and provide evidence of where it came from. As an example of how this can be <a href="https://www.livescience.com/mystery-ancestor-mated-with-humans.html" target="_blank">used</a>, if Neanderthal DNA contained genes from another pre-human ancestor that they then passed to us, this method would identify it. </p><p>The analysis confirmed previous studies that showed that Modern Humans interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, this analysis suggests that some of this mixing took place between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, long before what previous studies had suggested. It also indicates that more instances of interbreeding occurred than previously suspected.</p><p>Most interestingly, the researchers noticed that one percent of the DNA in the Denisovans from an even more ancient human ancestor. Fifteen percent of the genes that this ancestor passed onto the Denisovans still exist in the Modern Human <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dna-ancient-unidentified-ancestor-humans.html" target="_blank">genome</a>. </p><p>Exactly who this ancestor was is remains unknown, but some clues point to who it was. The fact that this ancestor separated from the linage that would lead to modern humans about 1,000,000 years ago is the most useful one we currently have. This led the researchers to suggest Homo Erectus as the most likely candidate. </p>Who was Homo Erectus?
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="oZzgXq4d" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="0007d6c597f8cc6c95d9d3b5fae7c1ad"> <div id="botr_oZzgXq4d_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/oZzgXq4d-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/oZzgXq4d-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/oZzgXq4d-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> <p>The bane of all school teachers focusing on human evolution and the original "missing link," <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus" target="_blank">Homo Erectus</a> was the first human ancestor to leave Africa. They spread widely throughout the old world, with their remains found from Spain to Java. They resembled modern humans, though they were a tad shorter. They were the first to control fire, made tools, created artwork, and likely had rudimentary language.</p><p>It should be repeated that while Homo Erectus is the probable source of this ancient DNA, the jury is still out. We would have to sequence its genome to know for sure. </p><p>Studying human evolution leads us down some very strange roads. It is increasingly clear to us that wherever there was an overlap of human species, there was interbreeding and that a considerable amount of the genetic remnants of this endure to this day. While this might get in the way of the old view of evolution as a slow climb to the humanity, the pinnacle of biological achievement, it does provide us a richer view of who we are, where we come form, and where we might be going. </p>
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NASA finds “mushballs” and "shallow lightning” on Jupiter
Some of the most extreme weather in the Solar System just got stranger.
August 08, 2020
Shutterstock/berni0004
Surprising Science
- The Juno probe orbiting Jupiter has observed lightning at impossibly high points in the Jovian atmosphere.
- The findings, combined with other atmopsheric data, led to the creation of a new model of the atmosphere.
- The findings answer a few questions about Jupiter, but create many more.
<p>Since 2016, NASA's <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html" target="_blank">Juno probe</a> has been observing Jupiter's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and gravitational field. It has already managed to take fantastic images, discovered new <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-juno-navigators-enable-jupiter-cyclone-discovery" target="_blank">cyclones</a>, and analyze the gasses that make up the planet in the time it has spent investigating it. </p><p>This week, the probe was able to add another discovery to its name with the unexpected finding of lightning in the upper atmosphere of the Solar System's largest planet. </p>
<p class=""><br></p>
Shouldn’t be all that surprising really, the planet is named after the god of thunder….
<p>The findings are described in the study, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2532-1" target="_blank"><em>Small lightning flashes from shallow electrical storms on Jupiter</em></a><em>, </em>published in <em>Nature</em>. Previous missions to Jupiter, including Voyager 1, Galileo and New Horizons, all observed lightning, but without the benefits of the equipment on the Juno probe or more recent developments in models of the Jovian atmosphere.</p><p>In this case, the lighting is notable for how high it is occurring in the atmosphere. While previous observations suggested lightning in water-based clouds deep inside the gas planet, the new data suggests lightning exists in the upper atmosphere in clouds of water and ammonia. This lightning is dubbed "shallow lightning." </p><p>According to a <a href="https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/08/ammonia-sparks-unexpected-exotic-lightning-jupiter" target="_blank">press release</a> by Cornell University, where two of the scientists involved in the study hail from, the ammonia is vital in creating the lightning, as it functions as an "anti-freeze" of sorts to keep the water in the clouds from freezing. The collision of droplets of mixed ammonia and water with ice water particles creates the charge needed for lightning strikes. <br> <br> This is different from any process that creates lightning on Earth.</p><p>That wasn't the only bit of strangeness the probe noticed. While Juno saw plenty of ammonia near the equator and at lower levels of the atmosphere, it was hard-pressed to find much anywhere else. To explain this, researchers developed a new model of atmospheric mixing. They suggest that the ammonia at lower levels of the atmosphere rises into storm clouds, interacts with water to cause the aforementioned lightning, and then falls back down in the form of <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ammonia-rich-hail-jupiter-weather.html" target="_blank">hailstones</a>. </p><p>The scientists gave these ammonia and water ice hailstones the name "mushballs<a href="https://www.inverse.com/science/jupiter-mush-balls" target="_blank"></a>."</p><p>This model explains many things, including why Juno couldn't detect ammonia where it expected to: the mushballs would be more challenging to detect than ammonia or water vapor. The scientists further speculated that the weight of the mushballs pulls the ammonia to lower levels of the <a href="https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-juno-spacecraft-reveals-jupiters-unusual-electrical-storms-shallow-lightning-and-mushballs/" target="_blank">atmosphere</a> where it is detected in more significant amounts. </p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0MjYzNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzk5MTExMX0.LG0dhmlEmQbtVFmdY-s8wIieLt0ldFdtIsBpjNeewfQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="ea706" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="080d254387c43fd4f3210e48cbb6d388" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A NASA designed graphic demonstrating the weather systems theorized to create "mushballs." The liquid water and ammonia rises in the storm clouds until they reach points where the extremely low temperatures cause them to freeze. Freezing into semi-solid "mushballs" causes them to fall where they redistribute ammonia throughout the lower atmosphere.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/CNRS
How can we possibly know all of this?
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="DywYHLlW" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a2fd33c35687b126de47078bac6875d"> <div id="botr_DywYHLlW_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/DywYHLlW-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/DywYHLlW-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/DywYHLlW-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> <p>Juno relies on several pieces of equipment. The most relevant in this case is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_Radiometer_(Juno)" target="_blank">microwave radiometer</a>. This device uses microwaves, like the ones you cook with, to measure the Jovian atmosphere's composition. When microwaves hit water or ammonia particles, they begin to heat up. By hitting the planet with microwaves and then looking for changes in the particles' observed temperature, the probe can determine what chemicals are present.</p><p>The findings of these studies demonstrate that Jupiter's atmosphere is more complicated than previously thought. Given how we already knew about the storms larger than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot" target="_blank">Earth</a>, temperatures that swing between extremes in different layers of the atmosphere, and winds that blow at 100 meters per <a href="http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~showman/publications/ingersolletal-2004.pdf" target="_blank">second</a>, that is saying something.</p>
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