ResearchPod

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections and contribute to antibiotic use and the healthcare burden each year. Women are more susceptible, and oestrogen receptors have been found to play a key role played by in the aetiology of UTIs and other diseases

Dr Rashmi Kaul and Dr Anil Kaul, of the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University, US, hope that by increasing understanding of the links between oestrogen and UTIs it may be possible to develop alternative therapies.

Read more in Research Features

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imbio.2020.152020

Despite the shocking levels of gun violence in the USA and in the Americas, medical practitioners are taught little more than dealing with the direct biologic outcomes of bullets. Understanding gun violence as a disease requires examining complex behavioural health, environmental, and social issues not commonly imbedded in medical school curricula.

Leading American emergency physician and gun violence researcher Stephen Hargarten and colleagues from the Medical College of Wisconsin are calling for change. They have provided guidelines on how medical school curricula can evolve and strengthen future physicians’ understanding of this patient and community disease burden.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2021.1906254

With a predicted global population of 9 billion by 2050, there is a need for increased, sustainable food production.  Additionally, climate change will have an effect on soil and crop health, due to changes in weather patterns and disease distribution. 

Dr  Philippe  Rolshausen at the University of California in Riverside specialises in tree crops, viticulture and plant pathology. In today's podcast, he explains the role plant microbiomes , and how increased understanding of small changes in plant environments is helping to improve crop health.

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaa053

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection globally, more than 80% of sexually active people will be infected at some point. It can cause genital warts and several types of cancer. Although a vaccine against HPV infection has been available since 2006, vaccination rates in the US remain low.

This has led to Roanna Kessler and John Gentile, at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, accepting the challenge of improving vaccination awareness and increasing vaccination rates among college students.

Read more in ResearchOutreach

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.32907/RO-129-2520902226

Tumour hypoxia occurs when cancer cells lack oxygen, and is associated with decreased effectiveness of radiotherapy treatments. One way to counteract hypoxia is to increase the dose of radiation we use to kill cancer cells, a technique called dose escalation.  However, many side effects have been reported due to surrounding organs being damaged by off-target radiation.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, led by Dr Giovanni Fattori, have been investigating the clinical potential of hypoxia-guided radiotherapy with protons in advanced-stage lung cancer treatments.

Read the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13014-021-01914-2

Transferring human consciousness into a machine has long been a popular motif in science fiction, but for now, seems like a far-off dream. However, Prof Masataka Watanabe at the University of Tokyo believes we’re on the cusp of making mind uploading a reality.

Prof Watanabe proposes a new type of brain‒machine interface that is capable of fully reconstructing transhemispheric connectivity, leading to a ‘seamless’ mind uploading procedure while the brains owner is still alive.

Read more about this work in Research Features.

Read Prof Watanabe's original publication "From Biological to Artificial Consciousness": https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91138-6

The Navier–Stokes equations are important for science and engineering, since they describe the motion of fluids.  However, these equations can not describe the physical responses of fluids with a complex microstructure.

Michal Bathory, Miroslav Bulíček, and Josef Málek, Charles University, Czech Republic, have developed a robust mathematical theory for viscoelastic fluids. Which could serve as an analytical framework, to quantify errors between exact and computed solutions for these models.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.1515/anona-2020-0144

Understanding how living cells work is difficult due to the number of varied and complex processes occurring in them. This complexity can be elucidated by breaking these processes down and focusing on a particular mechanism. One approach is to use mathematical equations – the basis of computational modelling.
 
Dr Susan Mertins, the founder and CEO of Biosystem Strategies LLC, in the USA, is exploring how ordinary differential equations and machine learning can be applied to cancer data for biomarker discovery and drug development, leading to improvements in personalised medicine.

Read more in Research Outreach

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.805592

Southeast Asia mirrors global trends; people are living longer and there is a growing elderly population, and disease prevention is a key contributing factor.  There’s also been a rise use of digital technology; for healthcare, digital innovation offers a way to improve care for millions of people.

Start-ups are a vital part of this digital health ecosystem, and Dr Hoe Siu Loon of Singapore Management University has examined the state of start-ups and digital technology applications in Southeast Asia to provide advice for organisations intending to pursue health-tech initiatives in the region.

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.7545/ajip.2022.11.2.183

There are many factors involved in the reception of Ukrainian refugees, and the response from governments and civil society has been, mildly put, remarkable. The role of sports clubs in the reception of refugees is gaining increasing recognition.

Research by Tony Mickelsson Blomqvist, a PhD student at the School of Social Sciences at Södertörn University in Sweden, demonstrates the role of these clubs, in Sweden, as an important arenas for integration and improving refugee wellbeing.

Read some of their latest work here: https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2022.2155218