The A&P Professor Science & Education Updates - Issue #161

Life Science

High-Tech Pacemaker Reads Body Signals, Dissolves After Use

Experimental Therapy May Be New Tool Against Pancreatic Cancer

White matter may be the key to understanding dementia, TBI, and numerous other neurological disorders.

Chemotherapy is an incredible tool for annihilating cancer cells, but our regular cells end up in the crossfire, which can result in life-altering side effects.

Being up to date on COVID-19 vaccines means having had three or four doses of the same shot at this point. Current boosters are the same formulations as the first authorized shots, based on the original strain of the coronavirus that emerged in late 2019. They do still protect against severe COVID-19, hospitalizations and deaths.

But as immunity wanes over time and new, more contagious SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, the world needs a long-term boosting strategy.

When it comes to reporting at-home tests, “there is no formal recommendation,” says Autumn Gertz, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital who works on COVID-19 surveillance. Without a federal program for reporting at-home tests, states are left to their own devices, and it’s confusing to make sense of where to report, which means that many people won’t. 

Alan Leshner, an expert in mental health research and policy (also the former chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of Science), wrote about the fallacy of blaming gun violence on mental illness in the wake of another mass shooting tragedy in 2019.

Among Leshner’s points are the fact that less than a third of the people who commit mass shootings have a diagnosable mental disorder.

Teaching & Learning

Taking those steps, I think, is a way for faculty members to help their future selves: It will make life just a little bit easier come fall. At the same time, I don’t want to lose sight of the context in which this effort is being made. It’s an incredibly difficult time to be an instructor.

How to make a college education less transactional and more developmental and transformational.

Many young Black girls face bullying, teasing, and unwanted touching of their natural hair by other youngsters. This has a negative effect on body image. Researchers address strategies to promote positive body image in young Black women and girls.

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