Tuesday, August 18, 2020
A team of University of Arizona scientists is developing a solar-powered desalination system that uses less energy and could provide more water for arid regions like Arizona. Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Department of Energy, the system recovers water from the “concentrated waste streams” formed from other types of desalination like reverse osmosis. When reverse osmosis occurs, 20 to 50 percent of the water that enters the system remains as a concentrated waste stream. This new solar-powered desalination system also uses photovoltaics and membrane distillation to capture water as efficiently as possible.
"The benefit of using both CSP (concentrated solar power) and PV (photovoltaics) is that we can double the energy efficiency compared to existing thermal desalination systems that just use PV or CSP," said Kerri Hickenbottom, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering and principal investigator for the project. "This off-grid system will use renewable energy resources to transform the way we manage high-salinity concentrate typically considered as waste streams."
The team is conducting their research at the UA Optical Sciences Center’s solar testbed. The system employs membrane distillation, which creates a temperature gradient to separate contaminants. The photovoltaics, which is the technology used in solar panels, convert the sun's light directly into electricity using semiconductor material. This means the system can serve off-grid areas, such as Native American reservations.
"You lose efficiency when you go from one form of energy to another, so using the solar energy to generate electricity and to heat the water directly is how we plan to be about twice as efficient as existing systems," Hickenbottom said.
The researchers have submitted their technology for the American-Made Challenges Solar Desalination Prize, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The four-phase competition, which offers more than $9 million in prizes, is designed to advance the development of solar-driven thermal desalination technologies. As part of the challenge, the team created a 90-second video about the project.
Pima County had seen 19,976 of the state’s 194,920 confirmed cases.
A total of 4,529 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Aug. 18 report.
The number of hospitalized COVID cases continues to decline. ADHS reported that as of Aug. 17, 1,167 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state, the lowest that number has been since June 6, when 1,079 people were hospitalized. That number peaked at 3,517 on July 13.
A total of 960 people visited ERs on Aug. 17 with COVID symptoms. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7.
A total of 427 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds on Aug. 10. The number in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13.
Trump traveling to AZ today
President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Yuma today to highlight progress on the border wall.
“President Trump’s return to the Grand Canyon State is yet another reminder that voters have an easy choice this November," said Trump Victory Spokesperson Emma Hall. "As Joe Biden hides behind Zoom to push his extreme immigration policies that prioritize illegal immigrants over Americans, President Trump has fought to secure the U.S. border, dismantle sanctuary cities, and protect communities across Arizona.”
Arizona Democratic Party Chair Felecia Rotellini pointed to Yuma’s high incidence of COVID-19, as the border town has 5,169 confirmed cases of coronavirus for every 100,000 people, which is the highest concentration of any metro area in the country.
“No matter how hard he tries, Trump can’t distract from how badly his broken promises have failed Arizonans and left working families across the state demanding new leadership,” Rotellini said. “Arizonans need leaders with a plan to contain the virus and rebuild our economy—not another photo op or bus tour.”
City of Tucson offering rental assistance, grants for those affected by pandemic
The City of Tucson has allocated $4.5 million of federal CARES Act funding for an emergency rent and utility assistance program available to city residents.
To be eligible for the financial assistance, participating renters must have been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the household income cannot exceed $68,400.
The City of Tucson has allocated $4.5 million of federal CARES Act funding for an emergency rent and utility assistance program available to city residents.
To be eligible for the financial assistance, participating renters must have been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the household income cannot exceed $68,400.
One application will be accepted per household, and each household can receive up to $2,500 to cover up to three months of late or upcoming rent or utility payments that were incurred after March 1, 2020.
All applicants will need to provide copies of their identification, bills, proof of income and other household information. The city’s Housing and Community Development department is partnering with several nonprofit organizations to administer these funds, including Primavera, Interfaith Community Services, Catholic Community Services and the International Rescue Committee.
Representatives from one of these agencies will contact applicants within five days for a phone interview and may ask for additional information. The funds will be sent directly to each applicants’ landlord and/or utility company.
“Keeping Tucsonans safe and healthy in their homes is the most important thing as many of our residents have been greatly impacted financially by this pandemic,” said Housing and Community Development Director Liz Morales in a press release.
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Monday, August 17, 2020
The Trump administration is predicting years of dramatically reduced international demand for U.S. visas, and planning for drastic budget cuts to visa services worldwide as a result, according to an internal memo seen by ProPublica.
The projections made by the U.S. State Department in a memo signed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday contrast with the rosier outlook expressed repeatedly by President Donald Trump. As recently as Aug. 5, Trump predicted that the coronavirus “will go away” and that a vaccine will be available before the end of the year. But internally, the memo shows, the government is planning for the pandemic to drastically reduce international travel to the U.S. through at least 2022.
The memo projects steep reductions, in particular, to non-immigrant visas. Trump has issued restrictions on some categories of non-immigrant visas, citing the economic impacts of the pandemic, but the majority of non-immigrant visas processed by the State Department are temporary visas for business travel and tourism.
That could lead to cuts to equipment expenditures and, perhaps, to smaller sports programs that depend on revenue from football in the fall and basketball in the winter.
High school sports in Arizona have been stopped, revived and delayed again under state orders and limits issued by the Arizona Interscholastic Association, the governing body for high school sports. But the situation is fluid, similar to that of college and professional sports pondering whether it’s possible to have a 2020 season at all.
“You miss hearing the sounds of the gym and the weight room,” said Pete Jelovic, athletic director at Centennial High School in Peoria. “Even when school starts, the passing periods or the lunch periods, you hear all of those things and you get to interact and you build up towards events.
“We miss having that interaction on our campus and that routine, and just the daily things that happen on a high school campus. We would like to get back to normal as quickly as possible, but we also have to do it safely.”
This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans.
Guards in an immigrant detention center in El Paso sexually assaulted and harassed inmates in a “pattern and practice” of abuse, according to a complaint filed by a Texas advocacy group urging the local district attorney and federal prosecutors to conduct a criminal investigation.
The allegations, detailed in a filing first obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, maintain that guards systematically assaulted at least three people in a facility overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — often in areas of the detention center not visible to security cameras. The guards told victims that no one would believe them because footage did not exist and the harassment involved officers as high-ranking as a lieutenant.
According to the complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and shared with prosecutors, several guards “forcibly” kissed and touched the intimate parts of at least one woman. She faces deportation next week — meaning investigators could lose a key witness. Her attorneys have requested that immigration officials pause her deportation pending a review of the matter.
And it’s not just Arizona. Contact tracing has “largely failed in the United States” because of long waits for test results and the speed at which the novel coronavirus that causes the disease has spread, the New York Times reported July 31.
Contact tracing allows public health officials to determine how many people were exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The investigative method has been used to successfully control the spread of measles, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Since the novel coronavirus was detected in China late last year, contact tracing has proven effective in reducing the spread of the illness in China, South Korea, Germany and other countries.
“It’s a tried and true method that lowers spread of infectious diseases, and it would be useful for COVID-19 if it’s done right,” said Will Humble, a former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services who now heads the Arizona Public Health Association, which represents health workers and organizations.
For contact tracing to be effective, the patient should be interviewed within 24 hours of testing positive, CDC guidelines say. After the patient identifies where he or she has been and the people with whom they’ve had contact, health officials attempt to reach each of those contacts.
At times, she attended five or more events in a single day, traveling across the 27,000-square-mile reservation to speak to elementary school students and attend conferences.
“You really hit the ground running,” Parrish recalled. “There’s no event too small. There’s no event too big.”
But in March, as COVID-19 swept through the Southwest, Parrish suddenly went from visiting elders and delivering motivational speeches to distributing food, supplies and information to Navajo families hit hard by the novel coronavirus that causes the deadly disease.
In the months since, Navajos have turned to Parrish for information, encouragement and aid as the virus killed at least 462 Navajos and sickened more than 9,000 others.
“I had a voice as Miss Navajo,” she said. “I never had a second thought about helping.”
Pima County had seen 19,743 of the state’s 194,005 confirmed cases.
A total of 4,506 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Aug. 17 report.
The number of hospitalized COVID cases continues to decline. ADHS reported that as of Aug. 16, 1,182 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state, the lowest that number has been since June 6, when 1,079 people were hospitalized. That number peaked at 3,517 on July 13.
A total of 990 people visited ERs on Aug. 13 with COVID symptoms, the fourth time that number has dipped below 1,000 since June 19. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7.
A total of 430 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds on Aug. 10. The number in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13.
AZ Extending Unemployment Benefits for Some Arizonans
Gov. Doug Ducey announced Friday that Arizona would accept the extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits being offered by the Trump administration.
Trump signed an executive order funding the extra $300 in unemployment dollars after the federal government’s payment of an $600 a week expired at the end of July and negotiations with congressional leaders to extend the program collapsed.
While Trump had initially called for states to provide $100 a week in unemployment benefits in order to quality, Ducey will not be required to do so.
Hundreds of thousands of gig workers and others involved in non-traditional jobs, who were eligible for the $600 a week under the expired federal program will not be eligible for this program.
City of Tucson Offering Grants to Residents Impacted by COVID Crisis
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Tucson received about $95 million from the federal CARES Act. Mayor Regina Romero and the city council members recently approved $3 million of that funding to be distributed to local workers and families that have been negatively impacted by the crisis.
The grant program, named the “We Are One | Somos Unos Resiliency Fund” will focus on individuals and households that have not received any state or federal COVID-19 relief money and whose income does not reach Pima County’s self-sufficiency standard.
The self-sufficiency standard measures how much money an individual or family needs to earn to be able to meet their basic needs with no public or private financial assistance. In 2018, the self-sufficiency standard for a single adult in Pima County was $9.66 per hour or $1,700 per month. For a household with two adults and two young children, the standard was $13.22 per hour for both adults, or $4,711 per month.
On July 24, the expanded federal unemployment benefits that were provided in response to COVID-19 expired, leaving many households across the country vulnerable to financial instability.
The City of Tucson is partnering with the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona, who will administer the grants and begin accepting applications at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 19 until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 9.
Get Tested: Pima County Has Several Testing Centers, Including Pop-Up Sites This Week
The Pima County Health Department has rolled out new pop-up COVID-19 testing sites that are available in areas of the county that have had limited testing availability.
Through their partnership with the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, Pima County will offer a minimal contact testing operation for free at the following times and locations. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged and can be completed at www.pima.gov/covid19testing.
Today the pop-up testing will be in north-central Tucson from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at
Rillito Racetrack, 4502 N. First Ave.
Upcoming pop-up test sites include:
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18
Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road
South Tucson
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 19
Tucson Rodeo Grounds, 4823 S. 6th Avenue
Participants can access their test results by logging into www.doineedacovid19test.com within a few days. The county expects to complete 20,000 tests through these events.
Pima County has teamed up with the City of Tucson to open a third testing center at the Udall Center, 7200 E. Tanque Verde Road. Tests are available Tuesday through Sunday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The new center, which requires a nasal swab, joins a similar facility at Kino Event Center, 2805 E. Ajo Way. A third center at the northside Ellie Towne Center, 1660 W. Ruthrauff Road, involves a saliva test designed by ASU.
All three centers offer easy-to-schedule appointments—often with same-day availability—and you get results in less than 72 hours.
Schedule an appointment at pima.gov/covid19testing.
The centers are also tied into Pima County’s developing contact tracing operation, which aims to be able to identify potential clusters and warn people if they have been in contact with someone who is COVID-positive.
If you’re interested in a test to determine if you’ve already had COVID-19, the UA has expanded a free COVID-19 antibody testing program to include 15 new categories of essential workers considered at high risk for exposure. The antibody test, developed by researchers at UA Health Sciences, determines who has been exposed to and developed an immune response against COVID-19.
In addition to healthcare workers and first responders, the test program is now open to educators, childcare workers, agriculture, grocery and foodservice workers, hospitality employees, solid-waste collection workers, transportation services workers and members of the National Guard. More information and registration for the test is available at covid19antibodytesting.arizona.edu.
—with additional reporting from Kathleen B. Kunz, Austin Counts, Jeff Gardner and Tara Foulkrod
