ResearchPod

Dr Bradlee Heckmann and his team at the USF Health Neuroscience Institute in the US aim to develop new therapeutic avenues for treating neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Read their original article here: http://doi.org/10.4103/1673-5374.317958 Read more about their work in Research Features

A healthcare system that is preventative, collective and inclusive is far more resilient, and cheaper to run, than private for-profit schemes.  Such a preventative system will be much cheaper to invest in building now than waiting to repair our current frameworks after the next pandemic. However, we need a financial plan that is able to ensure this change  The Tao of Finance initiative from the Wo...

The WASTE FEW ULL project is developing and testing internationally applicable methods of identifying inefficiencies in a city-region’s food-energy-water nexus.   It is achieving this goal through an international network of industry/civic society-led Urban Living Labs (ULL) in four urban regions - UK ( Bristol ), Netherlands ( Rotterdam ), South Africa ( Cape Town ) and Brazil ( São Paulo ). Read...

In the face of increasing drug resistance, there is a pressing need to develop new antibiotic compounds. However, the effort of developing such new treatments can go unrewarded, so long as there are still cheaper options in current supply, even as their effectiveness wanes.  Olof Lindahl and Chantal Morel review the business interventions, stewardship policies and prescription practices available...

Until now, a great deal has remained unknown about the relationship between programmed cell death and bacterial infections. However, recent work by Dr CJ Anderson and Professor Kodi Ravichandran from VIB-UGent, Belgium, has shed new light on this topic and introduced a new layer to the complex host–pathogen interaction. Read more in Research Outreach Read the original article:  https://doi.org/10....

How should we design a new monetary tool that can cope with external shocks which might affect our economy in the Anthropocene?  The Tao of Finance initiative from the World Academy of Arts and Sciences proposes a Monetary Inflation Brake: a targeted,  upstream, resilient intervention that could save billions of dollars world wide. Read more about the Tao of Finance at the WAAS website, or read th...

Dr Henry Heng’s Genome Architecture Theory is a new paradigm questioning the status quo of genomic and evolutionary theories. He proposes that cancerous cells are so different in their genome architectures they’re akin to a different cellular species in the host, meaning a total rethink in how those cells are targeted and destroyed.  Read the original article:  doi.org/10.3390/genes13010101 Read m...

Today's cartoons a different experience from past generations, in which gratuitous violence was the primary concern of worried parents. But what if what they showed was more surreptitious in its influence on child behaviour, such as what cartoon characters ate? Dr Milia Tzoutzou and colleagues have catalogued cartoon characters interact with their food and how they judge each other - and them...

Consciousness and self awareness are tricky things to define in an all-encompassing way, and new research on the intricacies of cellular cognition is reshaping how we think about microorganisms and ourselves. Professor Nicholas Money of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio has argued for a new philosophy of cellular consciousness and suggests that, based on their ability to respond to external stimuli...

By leveraging your personal health data  with Artificial Intelligence, from blood samples to psychological surveys, it is possible to make accurate predictions on biological age and interventions to keep you at your best.  Fedor Galkin and Deepankar Nayak of DeepLongevity , a health data platform that looks to transform approaches to ageing and longevity, discuss the upcoming launch of their menta...

A state-of-the-art research and development centre in Daegu, Korea – K-MEDI hub – is creating a medical industry ecosystem for the research and development of new drugs and medical devices. At its Preclinical Research Centre, one strong research focus is evaluating the impact of stress on the welfare of laboratory animals in the context of preclinical research. The aim is to improve international...

An estimated 130 million adults are living with diabetes or prediabetes in the United States right now. So it might come as a shock that a fundamental concept of diabetes - that the condition is rooted in the role of the pancreas on blood sugar levels - might not be the whole truth.  Dr Michael Schwartz of the University of Washington researches the role of the brain in hunger, metabolism and home...

Is theism conducive to humility in thought? Can deeply religious people also be intellectually humble?  Dr Peter C Hill, professor of psychology at the Rosemead School of Psychology based at Biola University, and a team of colleagues challenge the idea that people who hold strong religious beliefs are low in intellectual humility. Read the original article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2021.19...

The move to from a reactive approach in medicine, when diseases or disturbances are treated once they are serious enough to present a problem, to a proactive, patient-centric attitude could be a paradigm shift in health care. Dr. Jürgen Riedel, and Prof Kourosh Saeb-Parsy of Oxford Immune Algorithmics join us to talk about a more precise, personalised, and preventative approach for immune health m...

Global issues such as climate change, social inequalities, and environmental breakdowns are borderless, meaning no country can tackle them alone. International collaboration will be essential in mitigating some of the worst effects of these pervasive issues.  Mr Tony Marshall, the founder, president, and CEO of Diverse Horizons, Inc., aims to build on international sustainable development goals by...

Prof. Stephen Hargarten from Medical College of Wisconsin discusses his experience of working in Emergency Room care, his research into harm reduction, social models to reduce the incidence, and risk and damage of violence in America. This podcast details why violence is not being included in medical education and offers an informed, science-based model, suggesting methods to integrate social trai...

Prof Robert Brent, Professor of Economics at Fordham University, discusses his new book on interventions for managing dementia, and cost-benefit approaches to life and healthcare. The book, Cost-Benefit Analysis and Dementia, is available here: https://bit.ly/RobertBrent

The New Personality Self-Portrait25 , or NPSP25 is the work of psychiatrist John M. Oldham, M.D., in longtime collaboration with mental health journalist and author Lois B. Morris, and more recently, psychologist Alok Madan, PhD.  The NPSP25 is an updated, internet-only version of a book first published in a 1990 by Oldham and Morris, called The Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love...

Dr Stanley Luck of Vector Analytics LLC has developed a novel parametric framework for multidimensional linear regression, following collaborative research and developments involving the identification of beneficial agronomic variation in maize. Read more in Research Outreach. Read the original article here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262148

 Mining, fracking and other georesource activities pose various environmental hazards - groundwater contamination, air pollution, and even significant earthquakes The EPOS Thematic Core Service for Anthropogenic Hazards (TCS AH) was created to facilitate global-scale open data access and research of anthropogenic hazards related to georesource exploitation.  Find more about TCS AH at their website...

Emeritus Professor Gregg Barak, is co-founder of the Journal of White Collar & Corporate Crime. Barak is also a three-time award-winning author and editor of books on crime, justice, media, violence, criminal law, corporate law, homelessness, and human rights. His book, Criminology on Trump , is available for preorder here Read more in Research Outreach 

 The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN set out the aims of ensuring the future of life on Planet Earth is clean, healthy, and rich in biodiversity. However, reaching these goals is expensive, requiring around an additional $5 Trillion per year over the next 15–20 years. So the question now is: How to finance our Future?  The Tao of Finance initiative from the World Academy of Arts...

Innovation is an important driver for increasing a firms profit margins. However, short-term expenses in the innovation process, with a short product life cycle common among highly innovative leaps, makes it very difficult to predict demand. This can make investors wary.  Dr. Sterling Huang and colleagues look into how the balance between a company and its investors can shift with successful innov...

Substance use disorders (SUD) are common within the population of people with HIV, and this can have a detrimental effect on their progression along the HIV care continuum. Despite this, SUD services are not currently integrated into AIDS service organisations as well as they might be. Dr Bryan Garner at RTI International and his team identified that integrating these services within community-bas...

Higher Education Institutions, or HEIs, have been forced to reconfigure their activities as a result of the pandemic. Based on new research, Prof Lloyd George Waller argues that the difference between the institutions’ success or otherwise in moving online depends on their digital readiness and resilience, which in turn depends on their digital transformation strategy. His book, "Digital Tran...