News - The Brown Daily Herald

Science & Research

Some Brown undergraduate students expressed preferences for COVID-19 testing procedure, frequency in summer survey

By Claire Liu | November 11

For Brown students in Providence this semester, semi-weekly testing has become the norm: Scheduled online twice a week, booking and receiving a COVID-19 test has become as commonplace as checking a dining hall’s menus before picking up dinner. Before the semester began and these testing procedures ...

Science & Research

‘This is a very challenging time’: Teaching, researching, parenting amid COVID-19

By Rahma Ibrahim | November 8

As students log onto Zoom to watch their professors lecture, faculty’s children also slink behind screens, their needs posing challenges to faculty’s academic and research responsibilities. Six University faculty members spoke to The Herald about challenges posed by the pandemic, particularly ...

Science & Research

Patient Voting strove to increase voting access for those hospitalized

By Shilpa Sajja | November 5

Patient Voting, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization, has worked to reduce barriers to voting for hospitalized patients by increasing awareness and access to voting information. During the 2016 election, Kelly Wong, now a fourth-year resident in emergency medicine at the Alpert Medical School, ...

Science & Research

MyCOVIDRisk app considers user behavior to calculate risk of contracting COVID-19

By Jared Zhang | November 4

As the threat of COVID-19 infection continues to loom over everyday activities, two University researchers created a free and accessible app called MyCOVIDRisk to help people quantify their risk of infection from specific activities and use that information to mitigate risk through their behavior. “We’ve ...

Science & Research

University of Michigan’s Yukiko Yamashita discusses the mechanisms of long-term genomic maintenance

By Henry Dawson | October 28

Elementary schoolers learn that DNA is the instruction manual for life — the immutable blueprints that cells follow to build proteins and stay alive. But DNA is a physical molecule which can change over time. So how do cells, especially the ones which produce offspring, ensure that these blueprints ...

Science & Research

Ainissa Ramirez ’90 pens ‘The Alchemy of Us’

By Cate Ryan | October 27

As a student at Brown, Ainissa Ramirez ’90 would spend countless hours studying at her usual spot on the fifth floor of the Sciences Library. Perched five stories above Thayer Street, she would review her engineering or chemistry material until her friends reliably found her and walked her to the ...

Science & Research

Dean Jha: ‘It's really critical that we take a moment and just reflect’

By Rahma Ibrahim | October 26

Dean of the School of Public Health Ashish Jha spoke with The Herald Oct. 23 to reflect on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past week. He spoke to climbing case numbers and related current events in Rhode Island, including Rhode Island’s release of vaccination plans Oct. 16 and the external ...

Zhang_Courtesy-of-NASA_JPL-Caltech_R.-Hurt

Science & Research

Brown researchers contribute critical components to EXCITE telescope

By Jared Zhang | October 25

Beyond the bounds of Earth’s solar system, exoplanets revolve in space and are the target planets of ongoing research efforts, including those of Professor of Physics Gregory Tucker. Tucker is leading a team of Brown students to build key parts of the Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope, aptly referred ...

Science & Research

From within the Vatican walls: Brown professor unveils insights into the history of the pope during the Holocaust

By Claire Liu | October 22

On the morning of March 2, a group of researchers gathered outside of a gate in Vatican City. They were waiting to view the archives of Pope Pius XII — a collection of millions of documents, which had been sealed since the end of his pontificate in 1958 and have only now been opened to scholars under ...

Science & Research

New U. Cancer Center aims to expand research, serve broad patient community

By Cate Ryan | October 18

The creation of the Cancer Center at Brown University was announced last month and is aimed at promoting research into the biological foundations, community impact and clinical treatment of cancer. “This is the first time we have organized our cancer research effort within the structure of a Cancer ...

Science & Research

Cress Health provides mental wellness through mobile application

By Shilpa Sajja | October 13

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to fill hospitals with patients, healthcare workers battle the virus while trying to maintain their own mental health. Cress Health, a mental wellness company, seeks to help address burnout among healthcare workers. The company was co-founded by student entrepreneurs ...

Science & Research

Connecting through the screen during COVID-19

By Claire Liu | October 8

The college experience is an innately social one, drawing students, faculty and all community members to interact together. Now, with health and safety concerns at the forefront, physically communing on campus and forming relationships in person have been restricted. Social life has transitioned online, ...

Science & Research

From Brown to Broad and back again: the journey of the COVID-19 swab test samples

By Rahma Ibrahim | October 4

Each week, the University and its testing partners process over 10,000 samples, most of which are collected on campus, then shipped beyond the state to laboratories in Massachusetts. Despite the distance, results circle back to students in about a day. University administrators and organizations involved ...

Science & Research

‘We’re facing a tipping point:’ Cybersecurity in the age of COVID-19

By Claire Liu | October 1

In the rush to transition many aspects of our daily lives online — attending virtual lectures, working a full-time job from home and communicating over social media — one issue has risen to the forefront of local and global concerns: cybersecurity. “We’re facing a tipping point in terms of ...

Science & Research

COVID-19 blood-based treatment clinical trials come to Rhode Island

By Kathleen Meininger | October 1

Rhode Island Hospital has teamed up with researchers at Johns Hopkins University to test the effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy as a potential early treatment for COVID-19. These multicenter clinical trials have commenced in Rhode Island to investigate whether this therapy could help reduce ...

Science & Research

TeleHealth Access for Seniors provides senior citizens with smart devices to access health care, contact family

By Marlene Goetz | September 29

TeleHealth Access for Seniors, a nonprofit, provides smart devices to low-income and elderly patients across the country, helping them remain connected with health services, as well as family and friends. “We found a problem with a lot of seniors not having access to their doctors because they ...

Science & Research

Predicting outcomes of COVID-19: Brown professors describe the ‘art’ of drawing the curve in epidemiological modeling

By Emilija Sagaityte | September 28

Picture thousands of undergraduate students unpacking their bags at an isolated Brown University campus free from outside contact amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In this simplified scenario, a certain number of these students are carrying stowaway SARS-CoV-2 particles. Others have yet to be exposed to the ...

Science & Research

Brown and Rhode Island Department of Health use interviews, mobile app for contact tracing

By Claire Liu | September 22

From personal logs to phone applications and software, many methods of contact tracing are being put to use at the University, state and national levels to track COVID-19 infections. Contact tracing is a key strategy for preventing further spread of COVID-19 by individuals that have been exposed, according ...

Meininger_-courtesy-of-Noah-Hoffman-the-Alameda-fires-1

Science & Research

‘Everything moved so fast’: Ravaging wildfires burden Brown students studying out west

By Kathleen Meininger | September 21

Noah Hoffman ’22, a Resumed Undergraduate Education student, was relaxing at his home in Medford, Oregon Sept. 8, preparing for the first day of a new semester. Little did he know that less than 24 hours later, the southern Oregon Almeda fire would force him and his partner to pack their belongings ...

Zhang_-HAEFA_courtesy-of-Health-and-Education-for-All

Science & Research

Nonprofit organization founded by Brown professor receives nomination for 2020 Nobel Peace Prize

By Jared Zhang | September 21

Associate Professor of Surgery Ruhul Abid is one of 318 candidates in the world to receive a nomination for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for his nonprofit organization Health and Education for All. As part of HAEFA’s many efforts, the nonprofit has partnered with other organizations this year to combat ...

Science Research 614B34956Cbe4