Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Toy spotlights Prof. Lydia Bourouiba’s research examining coughing and sneezing. Bourouiba has found that “coughing, sneezing and even speaking will produce a small gas cloud that traps clusters of droplets of various sizes.”
MIT has been named to The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education’s list of the top private colleges in the Northeast.
CNBC reporter Cory Stieg spotlights the efforts of the MIT-Event team, which designed a low-cost ventilator based on a project started in an MIT course in 2010. “We very quickly realized that we actually had a duty to reprise this project and see if it could be done safely,” explains research scientist Nevan Hanumara.
Marketplace spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that examines how many people have been able to transition to working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic. The researchers found that “of those employed four weeks earlier, more than one-third had converted from commuting to working from home.”
Bloomberg reporter Eric Roston spotlights Prof. John Sterman and his work developing a climate change simulator called En-ROADS. “The simulator came together over nearly a decade, with hundreds of climate workshops involving thousands of people,” writes Roston.
In an article for Teen Vogue, Zach Schemerle explores the emergency grading policies set by different schools in response to the coronavirus pandemic. “MIT was among the first major institutions to give its grading policy a high-profile makeover, framing the national debate by implementing a type of pass/no record policy,” notes Schemerle.
Prof. Jonathan Parker speaks with Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan about how federal stimulus checks will help serve as a financial safety net for many recipients. “The purpose now is to make sure people survive,” says Parker. “We don’t want people going back to work right now.”
Los Angeles Times columnist Eric Sondheimer spotlights Archana Mohandas, who plans to attend MIT in the fall. “Running helped me balance my academics. Both went hand in hand. I don’t usually react to things, but it was definitely exciting,” says Mohandas of her acceptance to MIT.
An app developed by researchers from MIT, Harvard and other institutions allows people to self-report Covid-19 symptoms, reports NBC Boston. “We are generating models to be able to predict the emergence of new infectious hotspots to be able to get finer, more gradual details in terms of where the virus has spread to," explains Prof. Feng Zhang.
Writing for the Financial Times, research affiliate Ashley Nunes argues that a bailout for the airline industry should include transparency about how airlines price services. “I realise that fees may be integral to an airline’s survival and agree that airlines should be allowed to profit,” writes Nunes. “I also believe that prices set by airlines should bear some resemblance to the actual cost of operating the flight.”
Steve Lohr of The New York Times chronicles how a team in New York, inspired by the open-source ventilator design from the MIT E-Vent group, developed a lower cost ventilator now in production. Lohr writes that the “hurry-up engineering feat” relied on human networks, and the network of MIT professors, students and alumni in particular stands out.
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that a new low-cost ventilator, which was based on an open-source design developed by MIT researchers, has been approved by the FDA for emergency use. Adele explains that the device “was inspired by a prototype previously developed at MIT that modifies a hand-operated ventilator so that it can pump automatically.”
MIT researchers have transformed the protein structure of the novel coronavirus into music as part of an effort to better understand how the pathogen functions, reports Reuters. “You would need many different images, many different magnifications to see with your eyes, what your ears can pick up with just a couple of seconds of music,” explains Prof. Markus Buehler.
TechCrunch reporter Darrell Etherington writes that the Spiro Wave emergency ventilator, which is based on a design developed by MIT researchers, has been approved by the FDA. The prototype design was developed at MIT “as one way to alleviate the shortage that resulted from the COVID-19 crisis,” Etherington writes.
Members of a robotics team in Afghanistan are working to design a prototype ventilator with locally available components, and using a blueprint from MIT researchers to help inform their work, reports Tameem Akhgar for the Associated Press. “It will be excellent to see it tested and locally produced,” says Prof. Daniela Rus of the team’s effort.