Dear Physics Community,

Pablo and Matt sent a  very interesting paper about pulse oximetry and its potential value in identifying people with COVID-19 before there are symptoms.  I’ve sent the paper to experts and will wait to see.  There is also an interesting series of posts by Tomas Pueyo here about coping long term.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Where 160 sq. ft./person in labs comes from – Earlier this week, I reported that safe density in labs needed 160 sq. ft./person and I got a lot of emails about it. I asked at the 8 am meeting and Krystyn Van Vliet explained it comes from analyzing the layout of labs at MIT.  Because of lab benches, cabinets, and equipment, the accessible floor area is much smaller than the total floor area and the stuff in the room has the effect of forcing people closer together.  The 160 sq. ft. comes from the average space needed per person to prevent incursions inside 6 ft. between people.

The same was then applied to classrooms, where I do not think it applies very well.  To get occupancy, the projected floor area is divided by 160 sq. ft..  10-250, floorplan here, is steeply sloped and the projected area is about 40′ x 64’=2,560 sq. ft., for occupancy of 16 people.

Opinion – Pres. Reif’s op-ed in the Globe.

Physics Department

LIGO – Science reports on a heavy/light black hole merger here.

Bright black holes – why?  They’re supposed to the black, but they aren’t.

Los Endos

Jesse Wodin was an undergrad who UROPed with me.  Then he went to Stanford and got a Ph.D. with Giorgio Gratta working on AMO and particle physics.  Now he works at a cool company called SRI that does a lot of government-related research and he asked me to advertise some positions for SRI here.  If you are interested, let me know and I will put you in touch with Jesse.

Peter