Wired reporter Sarah Zhang writes about a new proposal from Prof. Andrew Lo to use Wall Street to help lower health care costs. Zhang explains that Lo’s proposal would “theoretically make cures available to more patients, incentivizing the drug industry to make those instead of mitigators.”
Tech Insider’s Chris Weller reports on a new study by MIT researchers that examines how sneezes travel and spread viruses. The findings could help researchers “predict and prevent disease spread,” Weller explains. “If they know how quickly a pathogen spreads via sneeze, then they can learn more about the risks posed by the viruses themselves.”
MIT researchers used high-speed cameras to examine how sneezes travel, reports Gillian Mohney for ABC News. The researchers found that “instead of a uniform cloud of droplets, a single sneeze would fragment in the air similar to paint being flung onto a canvas.”
Prof. Ioannis Yannas was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame for his work with Dr. John Burke on regenerating human skin as a treatment for burn victims, writes Robby Berman for Slate. In a video accompanying the story, Yannas explains that his work was focused on “speeding up the rate of closing up these wounds.”
BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about Koko, an app developed by MIT researchers that allows users to crowdsource advice. “It’s really teaching people to think more flexibly about stressful situations,” said MIT alumnus and co-founder Robert Morris.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Jo Craven McGinty highlights a study by researchers from MIT and Harvard that calculated the damage caused by Volkwagen cheating on emissions standards tests. “We estimated the vehicles affected were driven 40.5 billion kilometers from 2008,” explains Prof. Steven Barrett.
MIT researchers have found that few incentives exist to encourage research on disease prevention, reports Austin Frakt for The New York Times. “R & D on cancer prevention and treatment of early-stage cancer is very socially valuable,” Profs. Heidi Williams and Ben Roin explain, “yet our work shows that society provides private firms…surprisingly few incentives.”
Lindsay Holmes writes for The Huffington Post about Koko, an application developed by MIT researchers to help users fight stress by crowdsourcing their questions and worries. “We want to take the same principles that keep our eyes glued to Facebook and Instagram 24 hours a day and redirect them to promote well-being,” explains founder Robert Morris.
Kelly Servick writes for Science about Prof. Rosalind Picard’s work developing wearable technology that monitors and manages a user’s stress levels. “It’s one thing to study all this,” says Picard. “It’s another to build it into a form that people can start changing their lives around.”
Popular Science reporter Alexandra Ossola writes that MIT researchers are examining how drops of fluid from a sneeze travel. Ossola explains that gaining a “better understanding of these drops form and spread could help researchers and engineers stop the spread of disease, especially in enclosed spaces."
MIT researchers have examined how droplets are formed in high-propulsion sneeze clouds, according to CBS Boston. “Droplets are not all already formed and neatly distributed in size at the exit of the mouth, as previously assumed in the literature,” explains Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
Prof. Lydia Bourouiba has modeled how droplets are formed after a person sneezes, reports Jonathan Webb for BBC News. “The process is important to understand because it determines the various sizes of the final droplets - a critical factor in how a sneeze spreads germs,” writes Webb.
MIT researchers have found that the high-velocity cloud created by the average human sneeze can contaminate a room in minutes, writes Robert Preidt for U.S. News & World Report. Sneeze droplets "undergo a complex cascading breakup that continues after they leave the lungs, pass over the lips and churn through the air," explains Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
Wired reporter Sarah Zhang reports on how MIT researchers developed a new computer model that they used to examine the public health impacts of Volkswagen cheating on emissions standards tests. Zhang explains that the researchers’ model “allows scientists to estimate the impact of extra NOx in any 50 km by 50 km square of the world.”
A new study by researchers from MIT and Harvard shows that pollution from Volkswagen vehicles could lead to premature deaths in the U.S., reports Tom Randall for Bloomberg News. “Volkswagen's deception allowed some 482,000 U.S. diesel cars to pass emissions tests even as they polluted as much as 40 times the legal limit,” writes Randall.