August 2023 Media Highlights
New York Times - Physicists move one step closer to a theoretical showdown - All eyes were on a computer screen as someone typed in a secret code to release the results. The first number that popped out was met with exasperation: a lot of concerning gasps, oh-my-God’s and what-did-we-do-wrong’s. But after a final calculation, “there was a collective exhale across multiple continents,” said Kevin Pitts, a physicist at Virginia Tech who was five hours away, attending the meeting virtually. The new measurement matched exactly what the physicists had computed two years prior — now with twice the precision.
Forbes - New Study Questions How Long Until “Failsafe” Is Spelled Using AI - And so the question becomes “How long until we’re there?” A new controlled-track study from Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) in association with Motive AI compared the alerts generated to assist drivers from three different providers for multiple, driver-distraction related scenarios (e.g., phone call, texting) as well as general unsafe behavior (e.g., seatbelt usage, rolling stop). “The study highlights significant performance differences between the AI-powered dashcam providers in alerting drivers of unsafe driving behaviors across multiple conditions and scenarios,” said Susan Soccolich, Senior Researcher, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
Forbes - How to ethically navigate content moderation in a user-generated world - A 2021 Virginia Tech research paper on The Psychological Well-Being of Content Moderators noted, “Human abilities still exceed state-of-the-art AI for many data processing tasks, including content moderation. While AI will continue to improve, the use of human computation enables companies to deliver greater system capabilities today.”
New Scientist - Plastic bags and bottles can be recycled into soap - “Plastic pollution is a major problem we face today,” says Greg Liu at Virginia Tech. So, he and his colleagues looked to see whether discarded polyethylene, a major contributor to pollution used in shopping bags and bottles, could be made into something more useful. Also picked up by Cosmos Magazine and several others.
The Scientist - Capturing the brain tumor microenvironment with tissue engineering - Researchers use 3D models to study multiple types of cancer, but most current GBM models focus on examining one element of the TME at a time. Jennifer Munson, a bioengineer at Virginia Tech, created a model of the human GBM TME that incorporated patient-derived GBM stem cells, human astrocytes and microglia, and a biophysical force involved in tumorigenesis called interstitial fluid flow.2 The researchers evaluated their model based on four key metrics of GBM behavior—tumor cell death, invasion, proliferation, and stemness.
New York Post - Mega Millions jackpot soars to $1.55B, largest in its history - Lottery tickets are “definitely not good investments,” said Matthew Kovach, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s economics department. “They’re not even investments … there’s an expectation you will always lose money.” Mega Million players were much more likely to be hit by a meteorite, or to befallen by tragedy on their way to buy the $2 ticket than to actually hit the jackpot, he explained. “Imagine you have to drive half a mile to buy your lottery ticket, so you have a 1 mile round-trip. It’s about 4 times as likely that you die in a car accident on the trip to buy your ticket than you are to win,” Kovach said.
Associated Press - The Mega Millions jackpot has soared to $1.55 billion. Here’s how hard it is to win - Lottery tickets are “definitely not good investments,” Matthew Kovach, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s economics department told The Associated Press last month. “They’re not even investments ... there’s an expectation you will always lose money.” (Also picked up by US News & World Report, ABC News, and many others)
NBC News - The ‘Flu Shot Cheerleader’ is back — with a warning about the anti-vaccine movement - In a 2010 survey from Virginia Tech, several students reported Desiree as a reason they distrusted the flu vaccines. “I had no idea that my story led to people not receiving a vaccine,” Desiree said. “I thought that people just thought I was crazy. But if I caused anyone to not receive a vaccine, or put their children at risk or themselves at risk? I feel an immense amount of guilt for that.”
IFL Science - In a 2010 survey from Virginia Tech, several students reported Desiree as a reason they distrusted the flu vaccines - Some answers to this question were revealed in a study that looked at the way snapping turtles can tell north from south, in a phenomenon known as spontaneous magnetic alignment. It was once thought to be a rare trait in the animal kingdom, but as Professor John Phillips from the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech told IFLScience, this is no longer the case.
Insider - More than 1,000 people died on Virginia's roadways last year, but a high-tech trial showed safer streets might be just a couple of years away - State and county transportation departments were positive about the trial, Nakagawa said. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute believes this proof of concept will "improve road safety by informing vehicles and pedestrians of possible traffic hazards when passing through an intersection," Mike Mollenhauer, the director of the technology-implementation division at the institute, said.
NPR - Ozempic seems to curb cravings for alcohol. Here's what scientists think is going on - That first bite triggers the release of dopamine inside the part of your brain that controls your motivation, says neuroscientist Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. "That dopamine essentially tells you, 'Hey, do that again!' Take another bite.' " Now imagine you're a beer lover and you take a big gulp of a cold IPA on a hot day. It also triggers a dopamine spike in the motivation center of the brain. "Dopamine in the striatum [the brain's motivation center] is the motivation and learning signal for everything. Not just for food," DiFeliceantonio says. "All addictive drugs increase dopamine there. That's a common thing."
New York Times - Covid Closed the Nation’s Schools. Cleaner Air Can Keep Them Open. Modern air-filtration systems can remove even the fine particulates that make smoke so unhealthy. And decades of research have suggested that improving air quality also can raise academic performance, increase test scores, bolster attention and memory, and decrease absences due to illness or other factors.
“We would not accept drinking water that is full of pathogens and looks dirty,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne transmission of viruses at Virginia Tech. “But we’ve been living with air that is full of pathogens and dirty.”
Science News Explores - A ‘mini cyclone’ helps detect coronavirus in the air - “They’ve demonstrated that it works,” says Linsey Marr. She’s an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. This new system can “detect [the] virus at low levels that we would be concerned about in the air,” she says. As part of studying how germs spread, Marr’s team is also developing a virus detector.
New York Times - Opinion: Why haven’t we made it safer to breathe in classrooms? - Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist and a professor at Virginia Tech, said it is “flat-out wrong” to imply that viruses were too small to be captured by HEPA filters. “HEPA filters,” she told me, “are good at removing all types and all sizes of particles in the air, including viruses,” echoing many other scientists who spoke with me.
New York Times - Mental Health Spending Surged During the Pandemic - The rise in use of mental health services reflects both receding stigma and a lowering of practical barriers to mental health visits, said Dr. Robert L. Trestman, the chairman of psychiatry at Virginia Tech’s Carilion School of Medicine, who oversees a psychiatric system in western Virginia. In his own system, Dr. Trestman said, the pandemic years brought an “incredible increase in billing” for patients with anxiety and depression.
Forbes - How Do You Figure Out What You Need To Retire? - “The typical American probably believes they need $4.3 million to retire because that is what trusted sources are telling them,” says Irene E. Leech, Associate Professor, Consumer Studies at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. “They do not trust that they will receive Social Security.”
Scripps News - Researchers turning food waste into biodegradable plastic (picked up by local outlets across the country) Amid the tall ceilings of a massive lab, innovation is bubbling to the surface. "We're trying to convert the food waste to bioplastic," said Drew Wang, the principal investigator of a new project at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Wang, along with Ph.D. student researchers Md Sazzadul Haque, Collins Ugwu and Xueyao Zhang, are looking at how to turn the food we throw out into a biodegradable plastic we can all use.