Across the globe, COVID-19 has infected more than 18 million people to date and has killed hundreds of thousands — and the United States has been hit especially hard. Although the U.S. comprises just 4.2% of the global population, it accounted for approximately 33% of all reported infections by the end of April. However, the majority of U.S. states eventually imposed stay-at-home orders, and those orders appear to have significantly slowed the spread of the disease for the nation as a whole.

These findings, co-authored by Joe Silva, a PhD student in Health Services Research, along with a state-by-state breakdown of how quickly COVID-19 spread before and after lockdown orders, were published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases on Saturday, Aug. 1. Read more.

Using X-ray-based technology developed at Brown University, researchers, including lead author Morgan Turner, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, uncover shared subsurface movement patterns between birds and dinosaurs, adding a new dimension of fossil track diversity. “This is the first study that’s really shown how the bird foot is moving below ground, showing the patterns of this subsurface foot motion and allowing us to break down the patterns that we're seeing in a living animal that has feet similar to those of a dinosaur,” said Turner. Read more.

A team of Brown University physicists, including doctoral Physics student Yiou Zhang, has developed a new type of compact, ultra-sensitive magnetometer. The new device could be useful in a variety of applications involving weak magnetic fields, the researchers say. “Nearly everything around us generates a magnetic field — from our electronic devices to our beating hearts — and we can use those fields to gain information about all these systems,” said Gang Xiao, chair of the Brown Department of Physics. The new device is detailed in a paper published in Applied Physics Letters. Read more.