David Pogue of the PBS show NOVA examines Professor Paula Hammond’s work developing a new type of vaccine that delivers a DNA patch via tiny microscopic needles. Using DNA as the vaccine is a “very unique but also very powerful” approach, Hammond explains.
Dietary changes can alter human gut bacteria, Mary Elizabeth Dallas reports in a U.S. News & World Report article on a new MIT study on the role of bacteria in the digestive tract. “These fluctuations could lead to monitoring systems that might help detect and ease flare-ups for people with certain chronic illnesses, such as inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease),” Dallas writes.
New York Times reporter Gina Kolata examines new findings from researchers at the Broad Institute that provide evidence that triglycerides are a cause of heart attacks.
A Slate video by Paca Thomas features new MIT research that shows particles from coughs and sneezes travel much farther than previously thought.
Washington Post reporter Fred Barbash reports on new MIT research that shows the importance of covering up coughs and sneezes. Researchers found that droplets from coughs and sneezes form a gas cloud that can travel further than previously thought.
“Researchers found that a droplet just a millionth of a meter in size (100 micrometers) can travel five times farther than previously thought, and a droplet just 10 micrometers in size can travel 200 times farther than previously thought,” writes Huffington Post reporter Amanda Chan of new research on coughing and sneezing.
“A new study from MIT that could change the way building ventilation systems are designed found that the germs stay airborne in gas clouds, spreading the droplets throughout an entire room,” writes Boston Herald reporter Jordan Graham of the MIT study on coughing and sneezing.
“In a new study, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, researchers report that coughs and sneezes have “associated gas clouds that keep their potentially infectious droplets aloft over much greater distances than previously realized”,” writes Boston Magazine reporter Melissa Malamut about a new MIT on how coughs and sneezes spread disease.
Boston Globe reporter Deborah Kotz highlights research from Professor John Bush and Professor Lydia Bourouiba that shows virus droplets expelled through a cough or sneeze travel five to 200 times farther than they would as individual particles.