Reuters reporter Nancy Lapid writes that researchers from MIT and other institutions have found that Covid-19 can infect cells in the inner ear, which “may help explain the balance problems, hearing loss and tinnitus, or ringing in the ears experienced by some COVID-19 patients.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that Covid-19 may impact the inner ear, affecting hearing and balance, reports Robert Preidt for HealthDay News. “Their results suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the inner ear, specifically hair cells that are crucial for hearing and balance,” writes Preidt. “To a lesser degree, the coronavirus can infect Schwann cells, which insulate neurons.”
Biobot Analytics, a startup founded by Mariana Matus ‘18 and Newsha Ghaeli ‘17, has raised $20 million in funding for its work with wastewater epidemiology, reports Carey Goldberg and Janet Wu for Bloomberg News. “This past year, wastewater epidemiology changed from being an obscure niche area of science to becoming a central pillar of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Matus. “And now, in the later stages of the pandemic, it’s becoming a central pillar of preparing for the next pandemic.”
Noubar Afeyan ’87, a member of the MIT Corporation, speaks to Guy Raz of NPR’s How I Built This podcast about his journey toward co-founding Moderna and becoming a part of history through the rapid creation and production of vaccines for the Covid-19 pandemic. “The reality is when you have a pandemic and you’re a public company and you have material data, our sense was that we at a high level had to put that [information] out there,” says Afeyan. “One of these things we learned, because none of us had been in this situation before, is that we are going to get criticized no matter what we did. So, we just had to do what we thought was right.”
Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with David Pogue of CBS Sunday Morning about what’s causing the current supply chain breakdowns. "The underlying cause of all of this is actually a huge increase in demand,” says Sheffi. “People did not spend during the pandemic. And then, all the government help came; trillions of dollars went to households. So, they order stuff. They order more and more stuff. And the whole global markets were not ready for this."
President L. Rafael Reif and Linda Henry, CEO of Boston Globe Media Partners, took part in a wide-ranging fireside chat during the inaugural Globe Summit, touching upon everything from the urgent need to address the climate crisis to MIT’s response to Covid-19, the Institute’s approach to AI education and the greater Boston innovation ecosystem. “This is such an important global issue,” says Reif of climate change. “It’s the most serious challenge we have in our times.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that more people started walking during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, but how much they walked was correlated to their income levels, reports Arianna MacNeill for Boston.com. The researchers found “people in higher-income areas walked more during the pandemic, while people in lower-income areas – including neighborhoods with more BIPOC and those suffering from long-term illnesses like diabetes and obesity – walked less,” writes MacNeill.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Visiting Prof. Susan J. Blumenthal and research scientist David Kong underscore the need to reimagine America’s public health infrastructure. “A new multidisciplinary academic field of public health technology should be established to integrate diverse expertise in public health, technology, engineering, data analytics, and design to help build the products, programs, and systems necessary to modernize the nation’s public health infrastructure and ready it for 21st-century challenges and opportunities,” they write.
Prof. Justin Reich speaks with Mashable reporter Chris Taylor about the need to rethink the future of education and how kids learn. “There are going to be more interruptions in schooling in the future,” says Reich. “More fires, more floods, more freezing, more pandemic events, more tropical diseases migrating. The West will continue to have terrible fires. When it’s unsafe to travel, kids should be able to switch to remote learning for a week or two.”
Nuria Oliver PhD ’00 speaks with Wired reporter Willem Marx about her work developing a data gathering system to help combat Covid-19 in Valencia, Spain. Olivier and her team developed “a powerful predictor that's been road-tested during a time of unprecedented strain, and continues to be used across Valencia," writes Marx. "They have also created a system that can suggest a small number of specific, effective pandemic-related policies or interventions that a government can make.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Sara Castellanos spotlights Prof. Markus Buehler’s work combining virtual reality with sound waves to help detect subtle changes in molecular motions. Castellanos notes that Buehler and his team recently found, “coronaviruses can be more lethal or infectious depending on the vibrations within the spike proteins that are found on the surface of the virus.”
In an article for Fortune, Prof. Amy Glasmeier and Alison Omens of JUST Capital underscore the importance of paying workers a living wage. “Those companies that will thrive in both the current and post-pandemic economy will be those that prioritize their workers—not just in their rhetoric but in paying them a living wage,” they write.
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. David Autor explores how the current labor shortage provides an opportunity to improve the quality of jobs in the U.S. “The period of labor scarcity, then, is an opportunity to catalyze better working conditions for those who need them most,” writes Autor.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Kara Miller of GBH’s Innovation Hub about the impact of Covid-19 on the future of work.
Postdoc Freddy Nguyen, former co-director of the MIT Hacking Medicine hackathon, speaks with Forbes contributor Michelle Greenwald about how transitioning to virtual hackathons during the Covid-19 pandemic shed light on how to improve hackathons going forward. "One of the benefits of being virtual was that it allowed participants from around the globe that normally couldn’t afford the airfare or time to go to overseas, to take part,” writes Greenwald. “As a result, there were more participants, more diversity of thought, and a wider range of mentors involved, comporting well with MIT’s belief that great ideas can come from anywhere.”