Americans Warned To Start Planning For Spread In U.S. : Shots – Health News : NPR

Coronavirus: Americans Warned To Start Planning For Spread In U.S. : Shots – Health News : NPR

Federal health officials issued a blunt message Tuesday: Americans need to start preparing now for the possibility that more aggressive, disruptive measures might be needed to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S.

The strongly worded warning came in response to outbreaks of the virus outside China, including in Iran, Japan, South Korea and Italy, which officials say have raised the likelihood of outbreaks occurring stateside.

"It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen — and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters during a briefing.

Building Shadow Analysis Program

Building Shadow Analysis Program

Earlier this week I wrote a small PHP script for analysis of the shadow cast by buildings on the surrounding landscape. To obtain sun position and altitude, it relies on SunCalc PHP which must be included in the script. It goes throughout the year, churning out how much of a shadow a building will produce each hour, in feet and direction. Additionally, the script will calculate the maximum point the shadow will be cast as a set of coordinates.

<?php
// The current values entered into this script currently are for the Empire Plaza.
$latitude =  42.64915; 
$longitude = -73.75950; 
$height =  610;

$start = strtotime("January 1, 2020 12 AM");
$end = strtotime("December 31, 2020 11 PM");

include("suncalc.php");

// Compass as a Reference
$compass = array(
			'north', 'north-northeast', 'northeast',
			'east-northeast', 'east', 'east-southeast',
			'southeast', 'south-southeast', 'south',
			'south-southwest', 'southwest',
			'west-southwest', 'west', 'west-northwest',
			'northwest', 'north-northwest');

function newPos($lat, $lng, $dist, $dir) {
    // Earth Radius in KM
    $R = 6378.14;
    
    // distance in feet to KM
    $d = (($dist * 0.3048) / 1000);

    // Degree to Radian
    $lat1 = $lat * (M_PI/180);
    $lng1 = $lng * (M_PI/180);
    $brng = $dir * (M_PI/180);

    // Really Complicated Math (TM) that works based on the HAVERSINE formula from 
    // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7222382/get-lat-long-given-current-point-distance-and-bearing
    $lat2 = asin(sin($lat1)*cos($d/$R) + cos($lat1)*sin($d/$R)*cos($brng));
    $lng2 = $lng1 + atan2(sin($brng)*sin($d/$R)*cos($lat1),cos($d/$R)-sin($lat1)*sin($lat2));

    # back to degrees
    $lat2 = $lat2 * (180/M_PI);
    $lng2 = $lng2 * (180/M_PI);

  return "$lat2,$lng2";
}

$output = "Month,Day,Hour,Sun Angle,Sun Position,Sun Pos Name,Shadow Length,Shadow Direction,Shadow Dir Name,Orginal Lat, Original Lng, Maximum Shadow Lat, Maximum Shadow Lng\n";
for ($time = $start; $time &amp;lt; $end; $time += 60*60) { // get sun position for time $timeObj = new DateTime(); $timeObj-&amp;gt;setTimestamp($time);
	
	$sc = new AurorasLive\SunCalc($timeObj, $latitude, $longitude);
	$sunPos = $sc-&amp;gt;getSunPosition($timeObj);

	// don't include any time when sun is below the horizon
	if ($sunPos-&amp;gt;altitude*(180/M_PI) &amp;lt; 0) continue; // add month, day, hour $output .= date('n,j,G,',$time); // get sun altitude $output .= $sunPos-&amp;gt;altitude*(180/M_PI).',';
	
	// get sun position
	$output .= 180+$sunPos-&amp;gt;azimuth*(180/M_PI).',';
	$output .= $compass[round((180+$sunPos-&amp;gt;azimuth*(180/M_PI))/ 22.5) % 16].',';	
	
	// shadow length
	$output .= $height/tan(deg2rad($sunPos-&amp;gt;altitude*(180/M_PI))).',';
	
	// shadow direction
	$shadowDir = $sunPos-&amp;gt;azimuth*(180/M_PI) + 360;
	if ($shadowDir &amp;gt; 360) $shadowDir -= 360;
	
	$output .= $shadowDir.',';
	$output .= $compass[round($shadowDir/ 22.5) % 16].',';

	// building latitude and longitude
	$output .= "$latitude, $longitude,";
	
	// maximum extent of shadow
	$output .= newPos($latitude, $longitude, $height/tan(deg2rad($sunPos-&amp;gt;altitude*(180/M_PI))), $shadowDir).",";	
	
	$output .= "\n";	
}

echo $output;

Here is an example output:

Month,Day,Hour,Sun Angle,Sun Position,Sun Pos Name,Shadow Length,Shadow Direction,Shadow Dir Name,Orginal Lat, Original Lng, Maximum Shadow Lat, Maximum Shadow Lng
1,1,8,4.370562595888,127.16997476055,southeast,7981.2630997694,307.16997476055,northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.662350867593,-73.783180446551,
1,1,9,12.464234785715,138.47001937172,southeast,2759.6833421566,318.47001937172,northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.654806428356,-73.766311948646,
1,1,10,18.826346377511,151.18871989968,south-southeast,1789.1660233981,331.18871989968,north-northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.653442385927,-73.762710054908,
1,1,11,22.92597731207,165.29270254371,south-southeast,1442.2476816852,345.29270254371,north-northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652969571748,-73.76086316453,
1,1,12,24.317973645092,180.27827074558,south,1349.8710413416,0.27827074557518,north,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652845989302,-73.7594755931,
1,1,13,22.827705402895,195.24737437252,south-southwest,1449.1706789769,15.247374372522,north-northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652978239559,-73.758081165062,
1,1,14,18.641667869753,209.31025239405,south-southwest,1808.2272087538,29.310252394054,north-northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.653467170112,-73.756204500047,
1,1,15,12.211118961179,221.98033545934,southwest,2818.7133569306,41.980335459338,northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.654887013398,-73.752480800429,
1,1,16,4.0670753820534,233.23837174035,southwest,8579.0650125467,53.238371740354,northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.663205632648,-73.733908619093,
1,2,8,4.3645441749857,127.03353849744,southeast,7992.3115188513,307.03353849744,northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.662327567958,-73.783255965565,
1,2,9,12.476443037614,138.33095911417,southeast,2756.8958218911,318.33095911417,northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.654788550435,-73.766323694576,
1,2,10,18.860737296743,151.04916237459,south-southeast,1785.6561891219,331.04916237459,north-northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.653428213262,-73.762717935368,
1,2,11,22.985140372821,165.15894624042,south-southeast,1438.1068136859,345.15894624042,north-northwest,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652956261035,-73.760871335783,
1,2,12,24.401639825801,180.15947237405,south,1344.6352402431,0.15947237405339,north,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652831682677,-73.759486067027,
1,2,13,22.932215921968,195.15131682951,south-southwest,1441.810083379,15.151316829514,north-northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.652960530629,-73.7580970562,
1,2,14,18.761308368827,209.23956034287,south-southwest,1795.8375075952,29.239560342872,north-northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.653440556697,-73.756234277101,
1,2,15,12.340240887742,221.93268535805,southwest,2788.302504508,41.932685358049,northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.654829364851,-73.752562956502,
1,2,16,4.2013827926665,233.20922777897,southwest,8303.8756666826,53.209227778967,northeast,42.64915, -73.7595,42.662764126188,-73.734739101558,

Egg Highlighted

Why Positive Earth?

Why Positive Earth?

"What is the rational for a positive ground system? Is there an advantage of one system over the other? My car has a positive ground".

The short answer is, there is no functional reason why any car needs to have positive earth. The real reasons are rather twisted, based in prior historical tradition, so now you get a history lesson.

Next Time – Tuesday February 25

Today’s sunrise was at 6:37 am. The next time the sun will rise later then today πŸŒ„ is in 12 days on Sunday, March 8.

The average high for today is 37 degrees. 🌑 The next time it will be on average cooler then today is in 293 days on Monday, December 14 when the average temperature will be 36 degrees.

Today’s sunset will be at 5:38 pm. The next time the sun will set earlier then today πŸŒ† is in 250 days on Sunday, November 1.

The average low for today is 20 degrees. 🌑 The next night it will be on average cooler then tonight is in 300 days on Monday, December 21 when the average temperature will be 19 degrees.

Westkill Mountain from Hunter