June 2023 Media Highlights

New York Times - What wildfire smoke, gas stoves and Covid tell us about our air Guest essay by Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, where she studies the airborne transmission of viruses. Marr was also mentioned on CNN, Bored Panda and other clips listed below on this topic.  

NBC News - New York City has the worst air quality in the world as smoke from Canadian wildfires rolls in There are options to reduce smoke levels of indoor air, according to Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and one of the world’s leading aerosol experts.  

Washington Post - Smoke brings a warning: There’s no escaping climate’s threat to health “It’s unfortunate a mask became so politicized during the pandemic,” said Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech. “A good-quality mask … will definitely protect your health and reduce your exposure.”  

NPR - Staying safe in smoky air is particularly important for some people. Here's how.If you have cracks under the doors where the air is coming in, Linsey Marr, an aerosols expert at Virginia Tech, suggests rolling up a towel to block it. If you have an air purifier, "run it on high so that you are filtering your indoor air as much as possible," Marr says.   

USA Today - Visual explainer: More wildfire smoke in our futures, experts say. How you can prepare your home. Because staying indoors is your best protection from toxic smoke, experts recommend giving your house a wildfire checkup. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech Linsey Marr says, "The overall goal is to keep the outdoor air outside and to clean the indoor air as much as possible."   

Washington Post - Titan’s experimental design drew concern even before its doomed dive Carbon fiber is a relatively new material for deep sea applications, said Stefano Brizzolara, professor in ocean engineering at Virginia Tech. Traditionally, vessels are made of steel and titanium, which can better withstand pressure and keep water out.  

CBS News- What may have led to "catastrophic implosion" of Titanic sub? The Coast Guard confirmed Thursday they'd found debris that indicated the missing sub that was exploring the wreck of the Titanic had suffered a "catastrophic implosion," killing all five on board. Stefano Brizzolara, an ocean engineering expert and co-director of the Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics, joined CBS News to talk about what may have caused the implosion.  

ABC News (Australia) - What we know about the 'catastrophic implosion' that killed five men aboard the Titanic submersible Implosion is an explosion in reverse, according to Professor Stefano Brizzolara, the co-director of Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics.  

CNN Indonesia - Apa Itu Catastrophic Implosion Penyebab Kapal Selam OceanGate Meledak? (Google translation) "This is because the material [Titan] is not as ductile as metal alloys and therefore catastrophically explodes," Professor Stefano Brizzolara, co-director of the Virginia Tech Center for Ocean Autonomy and Robotics, told ABC News.  

CBS News - A look at Titanic wreck ocean depth and water pressure — and how they compare to the deep sea as a whole Stefano Brizzolara, co-director of the Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics, says failure of the sub's pressure hull probably caused the implosion. "You must consider that at 4,000 meters depths, the pressure is 400 times what we experience at sea level," he told CBS News. That's about 13,000 feet, or nearly 2.5 miles.  

New York Post - Structural issues with Titan sub hull could have caused implosion: expert Virginia Tech ocean engineering professor Stefano Brizzolara suggested the sub’s pressure hull could have had a defect that may have fractured under the pressure and sparked an implosion.  

New York Times - Scientists discover a virgin birth in a crocodile That’s what appears to have happened in the case of the crocodile, said Warren Booth, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who has studied the eggs. Dr. Booth is an entomologist whose main focus is bedbugs, but he has an extensive sideline in identifying parthenogenesis. Sequencing of the parthenogenetic crocodile’s genome suggests that its chromosomes differ from the mother’s at their tips, where there’s been a little reshuffling of her DNA — a telltale sign of polar body fusion. Story also picked up by NPR/The World,  Vanity Fair  (France), HuffPost, Live Science, New Scientist, Insider, Sky News, Newser, The Telegraph, Newsweek, Interesting Engineering and many many more.  

CBS News - A virgin crocodile made herself pregnant in a first for her species, researchers say Researchers have identified the first known case of a crocodile making herself pregnant — and producing a fetus that was genetically identical to herself. The findings were published Wednesday by a team led by evolutionary biologist Warren Booth from Virginia Tech in Biology Letters, a journal published by the Royal Society. Also picked up by AOL.  

Smithsonian - Scientists record the first ‘virgin birth’ in a crocodile The new discovery hints at the possibility that dinosaurs and pterosaurs—the extinct relatives of both birds and crocodiles—may have also been capable of reproducing in this way. Researchers will “never be able to prove they could do it,” but the evidence suggests it’s “very likely,” as study co-author Warren Booth, an entomologist at Virginia Tech, tells the New York Times’ Veronique Greenwood.  

BBC News - 1. Crocodile found to have made herself pregnant, 2. How 18-year-old crocodile give herself belle 3.Virgin birth: Costa Rican crocodile has baby with herself The crocodile who laid the egg was obtained when she was two years old and was kept apart from other crocodiles for its entire life. Because of this, the park's scientific team contacted Belfast-born Dr Warren Booth, now working at Virginia Tech in the US. He has been studying virgin births, known scientifically as parthenogenesis, for 11 years.  

Washington Post - An isolated crocodile laid eggs. She impregnated herself, scientists say. “It’s not been documented, but this has been happening since crocodiles evolved,” Booth, an urban entomology professor at Virginia Tech, told The Washington Post. “We just haven’t had the understanding to determine what it has been.”  

Healthday via U.S. News & World Report - Obesity might permanently blunt brain's responses to sugary, fatty foods "The leap forward in this study is that they're showing this is happening in humans, too, but the response is completely blunted in people with obesity," said Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, a neuroscientist at Virginia Tech's Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, in Roanoke, Va. She is co-author of a commentary published with the study June 12 in the journal Nature Metabolism

Washington Post - Why ditching plastic is harder than it seems Paper, which is recyclable, is generally thought of as one of the most environmentally sustainable materials, said Laszlo Horvath, an associate professor and director of the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design at Virginia Tech.  

Washington Post - How cities are trying to stop their land from sinking “If you make this managed aquifer recharge operational when the water is available during, for example, wet seasonal floods, that water can be treated and injected into the ground to be stored there,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, who works in remote sensing engineering and environmental security at Virginia Tech. “You reverse the subsidence … and you save the waters for the next year or year after that.”  

Washington Post - As Amazon HQ2 opens its doors, neighbors brace for a transformation Perhaps most notably, Virginia Tech is building a $1 billion graduate campus in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard neighborhood that is meant to train students who might then go on to software engineering jobs at Amazon or other tech companies. Raytheon and Boeing last year announced they would also be moving their respective headquarters to Arlington.

Money - Dollar scholar asks: Is the fed about to stop raising interest rates? The first thing to realize is that nobody knows exactly what’s next, according to David Bieri, an associate professor of economics at Virginia Tech. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been playing it coy, saying at a May news conference that “a decision on a pause was not made,” though “we may not be far off.” Bieri says one complicating factor is that the Fed has a dual mandate: to promote a healthy economy (slash labor market) and maintain stable prices.  

Nerdwallet - As Fed pauses rate hikes, Mortgage rates could stabilize (Also picked up by MSN Money and many other news outlets) David Bieri, an economist and associate professor at the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs, compares raising the funds rate to using the brakes on a car — but with a twist. "The problem with hitting that brake is imagine you're driving a car and you will only find with a certain amount of delay whether the brakes are actually gripping," he explains.

New York Times - Russia and Saudi Arabia’s oil partnership shows strain Ariel Ahram, a Middle East expert at Virginia Tech, said the Middle Eastern producers had been hoping that demand from China would increase as it emerged from its Covid lockdowns, but they have been disappointed. As oil prices have tumbled below what they were when Russia invaded Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and its allies have to keep Russia in the fold. Also picked up by Economic Times.   

New York Times - Iowa Building’s flaws were well documented before deadly collapse Roberto T. Leon, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, said most brick structures from the early 1900s were safe, but that they were built at a time before rigorous building codes. Because of construction techniques that differ from those used today, and because detailed building plans might no longer be available, doing more than a cursory inspection of such structures can be both pricey and time-consuming.  

CBS Evening News - Clément Vinauger interviewed about his latest research  Transcript: A recent study by Virginia Tech found certain soaps with a floral or fruity scent made people even more attractive to mosquitoes, and on average, more than 60% of what sells after you wash comes from soap, rather than natural body odors. What can we do to keep mosquitoes away? Online Link.  

National Geographic - You really are a mosquito magnet. Here's what you can do ...(Paywall) ... three out of four soaps actually increased mosquito attraction,” says Clément Vinauger, a neuroethologist at Virginia Tech and a co-author of the study.  

TIME - Researchers are working on at-home tests for Lyme disease “The numbers for pedestrian fatalities and injuries through crashes on the roadway are increasing,” said Mike Mollenhauer, who leads a team at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute studying how effective AI technology could be to help warn drivers, and pedestrians, about potential dangers.

New York Times - The new war on bad air When the Spanish flu pandemic arrived in 1918, officials expanded the approach, said E. Thomas Ewing, a historian at Virginia Tech. Some conventional classrooms began operating with their windows open, temporary open-air hospitals appeared and newspapers advertised doctor-endorsed “winter window screens.” Also in Spanish.  

New York Times - Collective force of head hits, Not just the number of them, Increases odds of C.T.E. Steve Rowson, who studies helmet impacts and concussion risk at Virginia Tech, said the study’s emphasis on the force and number of hits that players sustain fits with how scientists understand brain injuries.  

Associated Press via WWNY- Tropical Storm Bret spins toward eastern Caribbean (Picked up by dozens of top news outlets) Virginia Tech meteorologist Stephanie Zick said she expects to see a higher than average number of storms rapidly intensify this season given warmer sea surface temperatures. She also noted that flooding from tropical systems that make landfall has caused the most deaths in the past 10 years.   

Forbes - TJ Jermoluk and Jim Clark team up to launch beyond identity zero trust authentication platform He went to Virginia Tech when he was 15 where he graduated with a degree in computer science and earned his master’s a year later. From there he would go on to work for Bell Labs, which at the time aggregated some the world’s best engineering talent, including Nobel Prize winners, exposing Jermoluk to the idea of “creative” engineering.

New Scientist - Clever design makes sticky tape that's strong but easily removed There are two main types of adhesives: strong ones that are hard to remove, such as duct tape, and those that can be easily peeled off, such as sticky notes. What is missing is an adhesive that combines the properties of the two – one that is robust but easily removed when needed, says Michael Bartlett at Virginia Tech.  

Science Times - Engineered adhesive tape based on Kirigami designed to be strong but easily removed Combining these properties in one material could dramatically change the course of adhesives and maximize their applications in various industries. Creating such kinds of bonds can now be possible through the research study by Michael Bartlett, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech.  

New Atlas - Ancient tech boosts tape's adhesive strength, but leaves it easy to peel In the case of the tape, a Virginia Tech team led by Assoc. Prof. Michael Bartlett cut rows of U-shaped slits into sheets of commercially available adhesive tape, then stuck those sheets to various surfaces.