Trust in science is rising worldwide, according to a 3M-backed survey released Tuesday, and more people expect it to solve the world’s problems.
But the fifth annual 3M State of Science Index also showed many are worried that misinformation could lead to more public health crises, greater societal divisions and lack of action on climate change.
“It’s really good to see that trust in science is high, and that’s true in America and around the world, but misinformation threatens scientific credibility,” Jayshree Seth, 3M’s corporate scientist and chief science advocate, said in an interview. “It’s not simply a matter of communicating facts, data and evidence. We need to build that relationship with the public.”
Joe Biden has been accused of having “no idea” after he misunderstood a journalist’s question about the public health authority ‘Title 42’ and instead begun speaking about a Department of Justice appeal of airplane mask mandates.
This kind of data can help uncover how the structure and organization of the brain give rise to behavior, emotion and cognition, in sickness and in health.
NEW YORK – A collaboration between researchers at Columbia and the Icahn School of Medicine is embarking on a project that will generate comprehensive atlases of entire human brains and all their 180+ billion cells. This kind of data can help uncover how the structure and organization of the brain give rise to behavior, emotion and cognition, in sickness and in health.
Credit: Hillman Lab/Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute.
Obesity and its consequences on overall health have become a serious global problem. However, very few substances or drugs can fight obesity. In a recent study, Japanese researchers investigated the anti-obesity effects of tocotrienols, a subtype of vitamin E. Experiments showed that tocotrienols significantly reduce the weight gained by mice on a high-fat diet, while also lowering “bad” cholesterol levels. The results pave the way to efficient treatments for obesity.
Over the past few decades, obesity has become increasingly common throughout the entire world. Since obesity often causes other diseases, including diabetes and various cardiovascular disorders, it represents an alarming social problem in both developed and developing countries. Although most of us know that a balanced diet and plenty of exercise are the best ways to prevent obesity, having drugs to effectively treat it would still come in handy if necessary.
Unfortunately, there are very few known substances or drugs that can help prevent or treat obesity and its dreaded secondary diseases. One problem is that some of the mechanisms of obesity-induced diseases are unclear. For example, there is some evidence showing that obesity increases oxidative stress (oxidation) in the body. In turn, some scientists suspect that increased oxidation is the reason why obesity paves the way for neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Taking this into account, it might be helpful if potential drugs for treating obesity also had strong antioxidant functions.
Access to an online program that provides easily accessible, interactive, tailored healthy lifestyle and behavior change techniques is associated with better health-related quality of life among adult stroke survivors, according to new research from the University of Newcastle and Flinders University.
Stroke can lead to serious consequences for those that survive in terms of physical and cognitive disability. Improving lifestyle and health risk behaviors, including tobacco and alcohol use, physical activity, diet, depression, and anxiety, has the potential to significantly enhance stroke survivors’ quality of life.
Led by Dr. Ashleigh Guillaumier from the University of Newcastle and senior author Professor Billie Bonevski from Flinders University, the study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, undertook a randomized control trial to evaluate the online program Prevent 2nd Stroke (P2S), which encourages users to set goals and monitor progress across various health risk areas.
Cigarette smoking is overwhelmingly the main cause of lung cancer, yet only a minority of smokers develop the disease. A study led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and published online on April 11, 2022, in Nature Genetics suggests that some smokers may have robust mechanisms that protect them from lung cancer by limiting mutations. The findings could help identify those smokers who face an increased risk for the disease and therefore warrant especially close monitoring.
“This may prove to be an important step toward the prevention and early detection of lung cancer risk and away from the current herculean efforts needed to battle late-stage disease, where the majority of health expenditures and misery occur,” said Simon Spivack, M.D., M.P.H., a co-senior author of the study, professor of medicine, of epidemiology & population health, and of genetics at Einstein, and a pulmonologist at Montefiore Health System.
Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria — Dr. Erin Duffy, Ph.D., Chief of Research & Development, and Kevin Outterson, ESQ., Executive Director, CARB-X.
The Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X — https://carb-x.org/) is a global non-profit partnership accelerating antibacterial products to address drug-resistant bacteria, a leading cause of death around the world. 1.27 million deaths worldwide were attributed to resistant bacterial infections in 2019.
The CARB-X portfolio is the world’s most scientifically diverse, early development pipeline of new antibiotics, vaccines, rapid diagnostics and other products and represents the only global partnership that integrates solutions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening bacterial infections, translating innovation from basic research to first-in-human clinical trials.
Dr. Erin Duffy, PhD., is Chief of Research & Development at CARB-X and she has two decades of drug-discovery and problem-solving experience in the antibiotic arena. She was previously with Rib-X Pharmaceuticals (now Melinta Therapeutics) where in increasing roles she helped to build and sustain a team of researchers that translated the company’s scientific platform into next-generation and novel antibiotics that target the ribosome. Her team’s most recent achievements include the de novo design and optimization of a completely new class of antibiotics, the pyrrolocytosines, which were supported in part by CARB-X. Prior to Rib-X, Erin was the Associate Director of Innovative Discovery Technologies at Achillion Pharmaceuticals, responsible for building the structure and computational teams and platform for their antiviral efforts. She began her industrial career at Pfizer Central Research, in Groton, Connecticut, where she joined a team of computational and structural drug designers in multiple therapeutic areas. Erin was trained formally at Yale University, where she became a physical-organic chemist focused on defining computationally how small molecules interact and react in the group of Professor William L. Jorgensen. She expanded her experience to large molecules under the mentorship of Professor Axel Brunger, whose group at Yale was transitioning to a mix of computational and laboratory structural biology.
Kevin Outterson, ESQ., is Executive Director of CARB-X and is a global thought leader on business models for antibiotic development and use. He is Professor of Law and N. Neil Pike Scholar of Health and Disability Law at Boston University School of Law, where he leads multi-disciplinary teams to solve global health issues. Professor Outterson is the Executive Director and Principal Investigator of CARB-X and a partner in DRIVE-AB (aka Driving Reinvestment In Research And Development And Responsible Antibiotic Use) a project composed of 15 public and 7 private partners from 12 countries that is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) joint undertaking between the European Union and the European Pharmaceutical Industry Association (EFPIA). He also leads the Social Innovation on Drug Resistance program at Boston University.
“All too often we do not recognize the connection between the way we plan our cities and urban development and the health of the citizens who live in those communities. We must connect the dots.” — Dr. Mili Roy, Co-Chair, CAPE.
A physician’ for the environment group points out the connection between planning urban development and the health of its citizens.
