Items of Interest

What Causes Lift?

An surprising article in Scientific American describes how there is still no scientific consensus on how to fully describe how lift occurs around an aircraft wing. A combination of Bernoulli's Principle and Newton's Third Law describe most of what happens during lift. However, neither are fully emcompasing and newer theories that address why an area of low pressure is created above an airfoil are not universally accepted by scientists.

The COVID-19 Lightswitch Method

Researchers at Stanford created an interactive model to simulate the results of different long term COVID-19 intervention strategies. The models show that lifting strong social distancing measures too quickly (between 5 and 10 months) will result in a resurgence of cases that could overwhelm hospital capacity. One solution to this in the long term is the lightswitch method, where strong social distancing measures are turned on once a hospital capacity threshold is reached (e.g.

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