Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with New York Times reporters Stephanie Saul and Reid J. Epstein about the likelihood of fraud occurring with mail-in voting. “What we know can be boiled down to this: Voting fraud in the United States is rare, less rare is fraud using mail ballots,” says Stewart.
Wired reporter Andy Greenberg features Private Kit: Safe Paths, an app developed by MIT researchers that used GPS location data to help track the spread of Covid-19. Greenberg notes that the “next iteration of the app will build in the ability to sort all the recorded locations of any users diagnosed as Covid-19 positive into 'tiles' of a few square miles, and then cryptographically 'hash' each piece of location and time data.”
STAT reporter Casey Ross writes that MIT researchers are developing a contact tracing app that uses differential privacy to help protect the identity of users while tracking the spread of Covid-19. “The app could allow users to understand their exposure risks and help authorities identify emerging clusters and warn the public to avoid certain areas,” writes Ross.
A team of researchers from MIT, BioBot Analytics (an MIT startup), and other institutions found evidence in wastewater that were likely more people infected with Covid-19 than the reported cases in that area, reports Shraddha Chakradhar for STAT. Chakradhar notes that, “wastewater sampling could offer a community-level picture of how the disease has spread.”
A new study by MIT researchers found that 34% of respondents in the U.S. have switched to remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Jane Margolies for The New York Times. “The tools people found are working pretty well,” says Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson of the digital infrastructure for remote work.
Atlantic reporter Derek Thompson spotlight how Prof. Ramesh Raskar is developing a new app that “uses GPS to create maps showing the movements of people recently diagnosed with COVID-19.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Sparshott spotlights a working paper by Prof. Jeffrey Harris that outlines evidence the coronavirus curve is flattening in New York City. Three contributions include “officials providing ‘consistent, clear, accurate and timely information,’ which leads to changes in behavior without government coercion, mandatory stay-at-home orders, and the growing number of people who personally know someone diagnosed with Covid-19.”
Prof. Julie Shah writes for Harvard Business Review about how computer science can be applied to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. “We believe the answer lies in computation,” writes Shah and her co-author Neel Shah. “We need to put as much data and computing power into the problem as we can, and now.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Bird writes that a new paper by researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve found that “during the 1918 flu pandemic in the U.S., cities with stricter lockdowns actually seemed to emerge with less-severe economic consequences.”
A team of MIT researchers won this year’s STAT Madness competition for their work developing a technology to detect tiny ovarian tumors, reports Elizabeth Cooney for STAT. Prof. Angela Belcher explains that her research group is developing imaging instruments to “see deep inside the body to find tiny tumors or early events in the disease process, which could help surgeons or physicians diagnose or intervene with treatment.”
ABC News contributor Dr. Nancy Anoruo spotlights BioBot, an MIT startup that uses wastewater to track the spread of disease. "We hope to use this kind of data to stop outbreaks before they reach epidemic levels so we will never find ourselves again in a situation like we are in today,” explains Prof. Eric Alm.
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart and his colleagues examine the feasibility of allowing participants in the 2020 election to vote by mail. “Many voters who might otherwise not have the opportunity will be happy to cast their ballots at home this November,” writes Stewart. “But rushing to put it into place nationwide would surely bring some unpleasant and unintended consequences.”
Popular Mechanics reporter Daisy Hernandez spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new peptide that “may have the ability to disengage and block COVID-19 from entering our cells.”
MIT researchers have translated the structure of the coronavirus into music, reports Vineeth Venugopal for Science. “The new format can help scientists find sites on the protein where antibodies or drugs might be able to bind—simply by searching for specific musical sequences that correspond to these sites,” Venugopal explains.
An analysis of data from the 1918 flu pandemic by MIT and Federal Reserve researchers finds cities that committed earlier and longer to social distancing measures fared better economically, reports Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui for The New York Times. Stricter interventions “actually make it safer for economic activity to resume, and they mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic itself on mortality,” explains Prof. Emil Verner.