Quartz reporter Nicolás Rivero highlights a study co-authored by Prof. David Rand that examines the effectiveness of labeling fake news on social media platforms. “I think most people working in this area agree that if you put a warning label on something, that will make people believe and share it less,” says Rand. “But most stuff doesn’t get labeled, so that’s a major practical limitation of this approach.”
A new took developed by MIT researchers uses neural networks to help identify Covid-19, reports Alyse Stanley for Gizmodo. The model “can detect the subtle changes in a person’s cough that indicate whether they’re infected, even if they don’t have any other symptoms,” Stanley explains.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that MIT researchers have built a new AI model that can help detect Covid-19 by listening to the sound of a person’s cough. “The tool is detecting features that allow it to discriminate the subjects that have COVID from the ones that don’t,” explains Brian Subirana, a research scientist in MIT’s Auto-ID Laboratory.
MIT researchers have developed a new AI model that could help identify people with asymptomatic Covid-19 based on the sound of their cough, reports CBS Boston. The researchers hope that in the future the model could be used to help create an app that serves as a “noninvasive prescreening tool to figure out who is likely to have the coronavirus.”
Fox News reporter Kayla Rivas features Prof. Richard Larson’s work developing a new algorithm that could be used to help more accurately pinpoint sources of Covid-19 infections in sewer systems. The algorithm could be used to help “toggle between normal testing to an emergency schedule to locate asymptomatic cases fast before they infect others.”
Biobot Analytics, an MIT startup, is testing sewage in regions across the U.S. as part of an effort to detect where the coronavirus is circulating “even before people start showing up at hospitals and clinics and before they start lining up for Covid-19 tests,” writes Maggie fox for CNN.
MIT researchers have developed a heated, reusable mask that could help filter out viruses such as Covid-19, reports Kayla Rivas for Fox News. “The contraption is said to slow particles down and inactivate viruses in mere seconds by the mesh and temperatures reaching 90°C, or 194°F,” writes Rivas.
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Scott Sheffield argues that “circuit breakers” – strict closures for limited periods of time - could be used to help reduce Covid-19 infections. Sheffield and his co-authors explain that circuit breakers could “interrupt viral spread and bring case counts down without the long-lasting social and economic pain of extended lockdowns.”
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that the economic damage from Covid-19 is more widespread nationwide than mortality impacts, reports Roni Caryn Rabin and Gina Kolata for The New York Times. “Health crises concentrated in one part of the country and one age group may have substantial economic spillovers that are felt throughout the rest of the country and on other age groups,” the authors wrote.
STAT reporter Elizabeth Cooney spotlights a new working paper by Profs. Martin Bazant and John Bush that explores the risk of airborne transmission of Covid-19. “Depending on ventilation, mask use, air filtration, and other variables, any indoor space may carry either low or high risk of transmission,” Bazant explains.
In an article for the Cambridge Chronicle, Maya Johnson describes MIT’s efforts to mitigate Covid-19 transmission on campus. “Our main goal is to know where the virus is and make sure that we can prevent our community from getting the virus,” says Suzanne Blake, director of MIT Emergency Management. “Public health and safety is our number one priority for students.”
Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Kara Miller of GBH’s Innovation Hub about his research examining the impact of social media on everything from business re-openings during the Covid-19 pandemic to politics.
MIT Prof. Charles Stewart III and Stanford Prof. Nathaniel Persily write for The Washington Post about a new survey they conducted that finds “registered voters harbor worries about voting in this election that diverge in predictable ways, given their partisan affiliations. Despite these worries, most are confident that their ballots will be counted accurately.”
AP reporter Mark Pratt writes that the Broad Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital are launching a “six-month study of 10,000 people to help them better understand the prevalence of COVID-19 in the area and to help identify potential surges during the fall and winter.
The Broad Institute and Brigham and Women’s are launching a large-scale research study aimed at testing people for Covid-19 at home, reports Travis Anderson and Emily Sweeney for The Boston Globe. The initiative will “provide information on the prevalence of the virus in the area and could offer an early warning sign of a surge of new cases in the fall and winter,” Sweeney and Anderson explain.