A new app created by MIT researchers helps maps the spread of Covid-19 by tracking a person’s location and interactions, reports Courtney Linder for Popular Mechanics. The data, which is encrypted to protect user privacy, “lets you know if you've likely come into contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.”
Financial Times reporter Chris Nuttall spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new app that aims to help curb the spread of Covid-19 by tracking “where you have been and who you have crossed paths with — and then shares this personal data with other users in a privacy-preserving way.”
Scientific American Ron Cowen explores Prof. Markus Buehler’s work generating music that represents the vibrations and folding patterns of amino acids. “Just like in a painting, the new protein sounds are like a new color palette that could be invented—colors no one has ever seen—but which can now be used to create art,” Buehler says.
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson spotlights how Tangible Media Group researchers have developed interactive systems that could allow people in separate locations to physically interact with the same object. “You could literally play catch with someone through inFORM, tossing a ball into their hands,” writes Wilson.
Popular Science spotlights the Koch Institute’s Image Awards, which aims to highlight visuals produced through life science and biomedical research at MIT. “The array of photos on cancer and brain research strike a chord, effectively demonstrating the biggest challenges—and possibilities—in understanding how life works.”
Writing for WBUR, MIT graduate student Nicole Bustos argues that the U.S. should make diagnostic testing, treatments and vaccines for Covid-19 free. “A federal directive requiring free access to diagnostic tests, treatment and the eventual vaccine will reduce the spread of the virus within communities,” writes Bustos and her co-authors.
WBUR’s Barbara Moran reports that the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is working with state officials to begin processing Covid-19 diagnostic tests. Moran notes that Broad scientists have been working to adapt the Institute's clinical testing facility “to accurately perform the existing COVID-19 test on a large scale.”
To slow the spread of Covid-19, the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Stanford argue for big institutional actions, even some that feel uncomfortably extreme: “Public health experts tell us that as a society, the steps we take this week will have an immense impact on determining whether this crisis becomes a catastrophe.”
Looking for educational and entertaining screen-time options for kids who are currently at home due to school closures caused by the spread of Covid-19? Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Gamerman recommends Scratch - a free programming language developed by MIT researchers that allows children to program their own interactive stories, games and animations.
BBC News reporter Corinne Purtill writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that workers with niche skills often end up earning more than their peers. The researchers found that, “even within roles with the same job title, employees who managed to stake claim to specific job tasks unique to the organisation typically had an advantage in pay.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Steven Rosenberg spotlights MIT startup XtalPi, a pharmaceutical-technology company using AI technologies to identify potential vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. “Since the outbreak, XtalPi has used its platform to study the virus at the molecular level to assess potential mutations that can make the virus more likely to spread or harder to fight off,” writes Rosenberg.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Financial Times reporters Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson and Brendan Greeley about how the spread of coronavirus might impact the global economy. Autor predicts the service industry could be particularly affected, noting that, “it’s not just that people feel less spend-y right now, it’s that they’re terrified to be in those places.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Robert McMillan spotlights MIT’s tradition of releasing admissions decisions on Pi Day. “We love all our ratios equally, and while to some people tau makes more sense mathematically, to everyone pi is more delicious,” says Stuart Schmill, dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes about Glisten, a startup co-founded by alumna Sarah Wooders that uses “computer vision to understand and list the most important aspects of the products in any photo.”
Prof. Lydia Bourouiba speaks with Wired Roxanne Khamsi about her work investigating how pathogens spread. Khamsi explains that Bourouiba has found that “coughs and sneezes, which they call ‘violent expiratory events,’ force out a cloud of air that carries droplets of various sizes much further than they would go otherwise.”