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By Moa Petersén, Lund University and Lena Halldenius, Lund University 

Around the world, cards and apps are the default way to pay – but nowhere is the transition away from cash more obvious than in Sweden. The Bank of Sweden notes that the amount of cash in circulation in the country has halved since 2007.

Part of this is due to a unique Swedish law that prioritises “freedom of contract” above any legal requirement to accept cash. In other words, it is up to businesses – including banks – whether they take cash. Public transport, stores and services typically do not accept cash as payment, and there is no infrastructure for paying bills over the counter.

The transition to cashlessness accelerated when a group of banks created the mobile payment app Swish in 2012. By 2017, Sweden was using less cash than other European countries. Today, more than 80% of the population has a Swish account.

For most Swedes, the cashless economy is swift and convenient. As long as you have a bank account and can access the technology, you probably live a cashless life already. But for the few people who still depend on cash, life is getting harder.

Our recent research how this affects the worst-off groups in Sweden’s cashless society. Our interviewees live in poverty-induced cash dependence, meaning they rely on cash payments because they are unbanked, lack credit or cannot afford digital technology.

While it is difficult to measure just how many people depend on cash, older people, particularly, are struggling to pay bills digitally.

Some of those we interviewed are homeless or have mental health issues. Others live on a very low income. The obstacles they face are both practical and cultural. They feel like delinquents, undervalued and locked out of participating in much of daily life.

Being cash-dependent in Sweden

If cash is the only money you have or the only money you can manage without help, you are confined to “cash bubbles”. Cash works like a local currency, isolated from the rest of the economy.

In the cash bubble, you can buy necessities and go to no-frills cafes, but you can’t pay for parking and you can’t pay bills without help. Volunteers at local community groups told us that they spend most of their time doing people’s banking for them.

A Ukrainian refugee, who can’t get a bank account because of their migration status, worried about a bill from the local health clinic that they had no technical means of paying.

Homeless people who sleep in cars can’t use the cashless parking meters, so an illicit market has emerged where people with smartphones and bank accounts pay for their parking at a substantial extra cost. It’s expensive to be digitally poor.

Our interviewees felt left behind in a society that does not care about their ability to participate. With a mix of shame, anger and resignation, they described everyday humiliations. One woman saved up to buy her grandchild a gift she wanted, only to be told at the till – grandchild in hand – that they didn’t accept her money. “I felt like a thief,” she told us.

Sweden’s cashless transition

Swedes are known to be early and uncritical adopters of technology – this has become part of the country’s self-image. In 2017, business researchers predicted that cash would be irrelevant in Sweden by March 2023. It didn’t quite happen, but near enough.

Over the last 150 years, technological innovations and entrepreneurship have propelled the country from severe poverty to being one of the richest in Europe.

The Swedish case is even more special due to the pervasive role of banks in the payment and identification infrastructure. Banks created the widely used payment app Swish, and also issue the electronic ID needed to access public services like the tax authority and benefits for illness, disability and unemployment.

Consequently, if you are not a bank customer, you can’t access these public services.

During the pandemic, fears of contamination made handling physical money seem like a health hazard. “I hate cash. It’s dirty,” as one Swedish tech entrepreneur put it.

All of these factors combined have led to a modern Swedish society where digital money is good and cash is associated with crime and dirt. For people who still depend on cash payments, this stigma adds to their sense of being left out.

In Sweden, as in many other countries, a fully cashless economy feels inevitable in the coming years. But as we have found, people who rely on cash due to poverty are left without the means to manage independently or even to pay their bills.

This is not just a practical issue, but an emotional one. There is a sense of loneliness, of loss of community and human connection in the digital economy. As one of our interviewees said: “It’s not just cashlessness. I feel that human beings have disappeared. We live like robots; click here, click that. Digitisation has made people lonely.”

About the Author:

Moa Petersén, Associate Professor in Digital Cultures, Lund University and Lena Halldenius, Professor of Human Rights Studies, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Toshi Hirabayashi, Georgia Institute of Technology and Yaeji Kim, University of Maryland 

The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on reentering the atmosphere after over a decade.

On a clear night, the sky is full of bright objects – from stars, large planets and galaxies to tiny asteroids flying near Earth. These asteroids are commonly known as near-Earth objects, and they come in a wide variety of sizes. Some are tens of kilometers across or larger, while others are only tens of meters or smaller.

On occasion, near-Earth objects smash into Earth at a high speed – roughly 10 miles per second (16 kilometers per second) or faster. That’s about 15 times as fast as a rifle’s muzzle speed. An impact at that speed can easily damage the planet’s surface and anything on it.

WISE, NEOWISE’s predecessor mission, imaged the entire sky in the mid-infrared range.
NASA/JPL/Caltech/UCLA

Impacts from large near-Earth objects are generally rare over a typical human lifetime. But they’re more frequent on a geological timescale of millions to billions of years. The best example may be a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid that crashed into Earth, killed the dinosaurs and created Chicxulub crater about 65 million years ago.

Smaller impacts are very common on Earth, as there are more small near-Earth objects. An international community effort called planetary defense protects humans from these space intruders by cataloging and monitoring as many near-Earth objects as possible, including those closely approaching Earth. Researchers call the near-Earth objects that could collide with the surface potentially hazardous objects.

NASA began its NEOWISE mission in December 2013. This mission’s primary focus was to use the space telescope from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to closely detect and characterize near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets.

NEOWISE contributed to planetary defense efforts with its research to catalog near-Earth objects. Over the past decade, it helped planetary defenders like us and our colleagues study near-Earth objects.

Detecting near-Earth objects

NEOWISE was a game-changing mission, as it revolutionized how to survey near-Earth objects.

The NEOWISE mission continued to use the spacecraft from NASA’s WISE mission, which ran from late 2009 to 2011 and conducted an all-sky infrared survey to detect not only near-Earth objects but also distant objects such as galaxies.

The spacecraft orbited Earth from north to south, passing over the poles, and it was in a Sun-synchronous orbit, where it could see the Sun in the same direction over time. This position allowed it to scan all of the sky efficiently.

The spacecraft could survey astronomical and planetary objects by detecting the signatures they emitted in the mid-infrared range.

Humans’ eyes can sense visible light, which is electromagnetic radiation between 400 and 700 nanometers. When we look at stars in the sky with the naked eye, we see their visible light components.

However, mid-infrared light contains waves between 3 and 30 micrometers and is invisible to human eyes.

When heated, an object stores that heat as thermal energy. Unless the object is thermally insulated, it releases that energy continuously as electromagnetic energy, in the mid-infrared range.

This process, known as thermal emission, happens to near-Earth objects after the Sun heats them up. The smaller an asteroid, the fainter its thermal emission. The NEOWISE spacecraft could sense thermal emissions from near-Earth objects at a high level of sensitivity – meaning it could detect small asteroids.

But asteroids aren’t the only objects that emit heat. The spacecraft’s sensors could pick up heat emissions from other sources too – including the spacecraft itself.

To make sure heat from the spacecraft wasn’t hindering the search, the WISE/NEOWISE spacecraft was designed so that it could actively cool itself using then-state-of-the-art solid hydrogen cryogenic cooling systems.

Operation phases

Since the spacecraft’s equipment needed to be very sensitive to detect faraway objects for WISE, it used solid hydrogen, which is extremely cold, to cool itself down and avoid any noise that could mess with the instruments’ sensitivity. Eventually the coolant ran out, but not until WISE had successfully completed its science goals.

During the cryogenic phase when it was actively cooling itself, the spacecraft operated at a temperature of about -447 degrees Fahrenheit (-266 degrees Celsius), slightly higher than the universe’s temperature, which is about -454 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius).

The cryogenic phase lasted from 2009 to 2011, until the spacecraft went into hibernation in 2011.

Following the hibernation period, NASA decided to reactivate the WISE spacecraft under the NEOWISE mission, with a more specialized focus on detecting near-Earth objects, which was still feasible even without the cryogenic cooling.

During this reactivation phase, the detectors didn’t need to be quite as sensitive, nor the spacecraft kept as cold as it was during the cryogenic cooling phase, since near-Earth objects are closer than WISE’s faraway targets.

The consequence of losing the active cooling was that two long-wave detectors out of the four on board became so hot that they could no longer function, limiting the craft’s capability.

Nevertheless, NEOWISE used its two operational detectors to continuously monitor both previously and newly detected near-Earth objects in detail.

NEOWISE’s legacy

As of February 2024, NEOWISE had taken more than 1.5 million infrared measurements of about 44,000 different objects in the solar system. These included about 1,600 discoveries of near-Earth objects. NEOWISE also provided detailed size estimates for more than 1,800 near-Earth objects.

Despite the mission’s contributions to science and planetary defense, it was decommissioned in August 2024. The spacecraft eventually started to fall toward Earth’s surface, until it reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up on Nov. 1, 2024.

NEOWISE’s contributions to hunting near-Earth objects gave scientists much deeper insights into the asteroids around Earth. It also gave scientists a better idea of what challenges they’ll need to overcome to detect faint objects.

So, did NEOWISE find all the near-Earth objects? The answer is no. Most scientists still believe that there are far more near-Earth objects out there that still need to be identified, particularly smaller ones.

To carry on NEOWISE’s legacy, NASA is planning a mission called NEO Surveyor. NEO Surveyor will be a next-generation space telescope that can study small near-Earth asteroids in more detail, mainly to contribute to NASA’s planetary defense efforts. It will identify hundreds of thousands of near-Earth objects that are as small as about 33 feet (10 meters) across. The spacecraft’s launch is scheduled for 2027.

About the Author:

Toshi Hirabayashi, Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Yaeji Kim, Postdoctoral Associate in Astronomy, University of Maryland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By John Duah, Auburn University 

A cluster of people talking on social media about their mysterious rashes. A sudden die-off of birds at a nature preserve. A big bump in patients showing up to a city’s hospital emergency rooms.

These are the kinds of events that public health officials are constantly on the lookout for as they watch for new disease threats.

Health emergencies can range from widespread infectious disease outbreaks to natural disasters and even acts of terrorism. The scope, timing or unexpected nature of these events can overwhelm routine health care capacities.

I am a public health expert with a background in strengthening health systems, infectious disease surveillance and pandemic preparedness.

Rather than winging it when an unusual health event crops up, health officials take a systematic approach. There are structures in place to collect and analyze data to guide their response. Public health surveillance is foundational for figuring out what’s going on and hopefully squashing any outbreak before it spirals out of control.

Tracking day by day

Indicator-based surveillance is the routine, systematic collection of specific health data from established reporting systems. It monitors trends over time; the goal is to detect anomalies or patterns that may signal a widespread or emerging public health threat.

Hospitals are legally required to report data on admissions and positive test results for specific diseases, such as measles or polio, to local health departments. The local health officials then compile the pertinent data and share it with state or national public health agencies, such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When doctors diagnose a positive case of influenza, for example, they report it through the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System, which tracks respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses. A rise in the number of cases could be a warning sign of a new outbreak. Likewise, the National Syndromic Surveillance Program collects anonymized data from emergency departments about patients who report symptoms such as fever, cough or respiratory distress.

Public health officials keep an eye on wastewater as well. A variety of pathogens shed by infected people, who may be asymptomatic, can be identified in sewage. The CDC created the National Wastewater Surveillance System to help track the virus that causes COVID-19. Since the pandemic, it’s expanded in some areas to monitor additional pathogens, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and norovirus. Wastewater surveillance adds another layer of data, allowing health officials to catch potential outbreaks in the community, even when many infected individuals show no symptoms and may not seek medical care.

Having these surveillance systems in place allows health experts to detect early signs of possible outbreaks and gives them time to plan and respond effectively.

Watching for anything outside the norm

Event-based surveillance watches in real time for anything that could indicate the start of an outbreak.

This can look like health officials tracking rumors, news articles or social media mentions of unusual illnesses or sudden deaths. Or it can be emergency room reports of unusual spikes in numbers of patients showing up with specific symptoms.

Local health care workers, community leaders and the public all support this kind of public health surveillance when they report unexpected health events through hotlines and online forms or just call, text or email their public health department. Local health workers can assess the information and escalate it to state or national authorities.

Public health officials have their ears to the ground in these various ways simultaneously. When they suspect the start of an outbreak, a number of teams spring into action, deploying different, coordinated responses.

Collecting samples for more analysis

Once event-based surveillance has picked up an unusual report or a sudden pattern of illness, health officials try to gather medical samples to get more information about what might be going on. They may focus on people, animals or specific locations, depending on the suspected source. For example, during an avian flu outbreak, officials take swabs from birds, both live and dead, and blood samples from people who have been exposed.

Health workers collect material ranging from nose or throat swabs, fecal, blood or tissue samples, and water and soil samples. Back in specialized laboratories, technicians analyze the samples, trying to identify a specific pathogen, determine whether it is contagious and evaluate how it might spread. Ultimately, scientists are trying to figure out the potential impact on public health.

Finding people who may have been exposed

Once an outbreak is detected, the priority quickly shifts to containment to prevent further spread. Public health officials turn into detectives, working to identify people who may have had direct contact with a known infected person. This process is called contact tracing.

Often, contact tracers work backward from a positive laboratory confirmation of the index case – that is, the first person known to be infected with a particular pathogen. Based on interviews with the patient and visiting places they had been, the local health department will reach out to people who may have been exposed. Health workers can then provide guidance about how to monitor potential symptoms, arrange testing or advise about isolating for a set amount of time to prevent further spread.

Contact tracing played a pivotal role during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, helping health departments monitor possible cases and take immediate action to protect public health. By focusing on people who had been in close contact with a confirmed case, public health agencies could break the chain of transmission and direct critical resources to those who were affected.

Though contact tracing is labor- and resource-intensive, it is a highly effective method of stopping outbreaks before they become unmanageable. In order for contact tracing to be effective, though, the public has to cooperate and comply with public health measures.

Stopping an outbreak before it’s a pandemic

Ultimately, public health officials want to keep as many people as possible from getting sick. Strategies to try to contain an outbreak include isolating patients with confirmed cases, quarantining those who have been exposed and, if necessary, imposing travel restrictions. For cases involving animal-to-human transmission, such as bird flu, containment measures may also include strict protocols on farms to prevent further spread.

Health officials use predictive models and data analysis tools to anticipate spread patterns and allocate resources effectively. Hospitals can streamline infection control based on these forecasts, while health care workers receive timely updates and training in response protocols. This process ensures that everyone is informed and ready to act to maximize public safety.

No one knows what the next emerging disease will be. But public health workers are constantly scanning the horizon for threats and ready to jump into action.

About the Author:

John Duah, Assistant Professor of Health Services Administration, Auburn University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.