Map Reveals Hidden U.S. Hotspots of Coronavirus Infection

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April 02, 2020

Dear Reader, While social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, do you feel starved for human contact? According to a new study, our need to connect is apparently as fundamental as our need to eat. The findings show both loneliness and hunger share signals deep in a part of the brain that controls basic impulses for reward and motivation. In the United States, most attention on the spread of COVID-19 is focused on New York and other large cities. But state-level data may be hiding hotspots in less populous areas like parts of Georgia and Mississippi. Check out our lead story to view new maps that reveal some surprising patterns in infection rates at the county level after adjusting for population size. Today's news also includes details on NASA's next solar mission and an update on the status of this year's United Nations climate summit. Important information for our print subscribers

Sunya Bhutta, Senior Editor, Audience Engagement @sunyaaa

Public Health Map Reveals Hidden U.S. Hotspots of Coronavirus Infection By adjusting for population, researchers have identified rural areas in several states that could be disproportionally affected by COVID-19 By Tanya Lewis

Engineering High-Tech Ghost Ships Will Set Sail sans Sailors Maritime technology groups are building robotic vessels to cross the oceans By Eric Tegler

Behavior & Society The Loneliness of the "Social Distancer" Triggers Brain Cravings Akin to Hunger A study on isolation's neural underpinnings implies many may feel literally "starved" for contact amid the COVID-19 pandemic By Lydia Denworth

Space NASA's Next Solar Mission Will Use Six Spacecraft to Make One Giant Telescope Launching no earlier than July 2023, the SunRISE mission will study the origins of solar storms By Meghan Bartels,SPACE.com

Climate U.N. Postpones Global Climate Summit Over Pandemic Concerns Countries were expected to ramp up their emissions reductions goals at the November meeting, now delayed until 2021 By Jean Chemnick,E&E News

Behavior & Society Polling Shows Signs of Public Trust in Institutions amid the Pandemic The ongoing effort to fight COVID-19 wins broad support, even across partisan divides By Cary Funk

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Chalk in Bread Causes Kidney Stones Originally published in June 1968 | April 2020

QUOTE OF THE DAY "There are a lot of areas in the South where the population is a lot smaller, but the proportion of people who have [COVID-19] is a lot greater. So that can cause potential challenges, because even though there are less people who have the virus, there are also correspondingly fewer hospital beds, [intensive care units] or ventilators." Marynia Kolak, Assistant Director of Health Informatics, University of Chicago's Center for Spatial Data Science

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