“Between the second half of January and the first half of February,” there were likely enough infected people in Boston “to generate local transmission,” said Alessandro Vespignani, the principal investigator behind the Northeastern model.

 That distribution matters because, say, adding a fifth gun to an already armed household isn’t the same as exposing an entire family to a new and potentially deadly weapon, explained Matt Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University.

“You’ve got to make driving, you know, the worst option in order to change things,” says Joan Fitzgerald, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Boston’s Northeastern University.

“You’ve got to make driving, you know, the worst option in order to change things,” says Joan Fitzgerald, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Boston’s Northeastern University.

The pantyhose creates a snugger fit around the wearer’s face, sealing in the loose edges of the masks, said Loretta Fernandez, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University and one of the study’s authors.

Preliminary results from a study by researchers at Northeastern University show that sewn fabric masks can in some cases approach the filtration efficiency of commercially produced masks.

The data sets and models that scientists and officials work with to try to track or predict the spread of COVID-19 are woefully incomplete or misunderstood, argues Scarpino, a physics professor at  Northeastern University in Boston.

Dr. Alessandro Vespignani is the director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. 

A new study from Northeastern University, which has not yet been peer reviewed, suggests that wrapping a layer of nylon tights around the outside of homemade face masks offers even better protection. 

According to NPR, research conducted at Northeastern University found that adding an outer layer of nylon pantyhose to DIY face masks (or ones you’ve purchased online) improves protection and, in some cases, matched or exceeded the efficacy of surgical masks, especially because the additional fabric keeps the mask tight to your face.

For researchers and practitioners who’ve been tracking the virus’s spread, the earlier deaths in Santa Clara County are proof that there were “invisible chains of transmission” occurring in various U.S. cities in mid-January, says Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University.

Researchers at Northeastern University made their findings public this week, even though their work has yet to be peer-reviewed. NPR writes that it “was posted Wednesday on the scientific preprint site medRxiv and on the university’s website in the interest of sharing information quickly in the midst of a pandemic.” The news station also spoke […]