The Academic Minute

On Houston Methodist Week: A simple blood draw alongside imaging could benefit cancer patients in the future.

Maen Abdelrahim, chief of gastrointestinal medical oncology, explains why.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Abdelrahim earned his PharmD, followed by a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and subsequently an MD from Texas A&M University. He completed his residency at Baylor College of Medicine and a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Duke University.As Chief of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at Houston Methodist Neal Cancer Center, Medical Director of the Cockrell Center for Advanced Therapeutics (CCAT) Phase I Program, and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, Dr. Abdelrahim is leading efforts to shape the strategic direction of GI and transplant oncology. He integrates cutting-edge clinical trials with patient-centered care to drive transformative outcomes. Under his leadership, CCAT has established a robust pipeline for early-phase clinical trials, including novel CAR T cell therapies for gastrointestinal cancers such as cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) and colorectal cancer (CRC). He oversees the design, scientific review, and execution of these trials while fostering multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation across oncology and research teams.

Transcript:

For patients who’ve had a liver transplant to treat liver cancer, one of the biggest fears is recurrence, the cancer returning. Our team set out to see whether a blood test could help us catch that earlier, and with fewer invasive procedures. The test is called circulating tumor DNA, ctDNA. It picks up tiny fragments of cancer DNA that tumors shed into the bloodstream. We made this test personalized: we first analyze each patient’s own tumor tissue to identify its unique genetic fingerprint, then we design a blood test that watches for that exact fingerprint after transplant. In our study, we followed 38 liver transplant recipients with hepatocellular carcinoma or cholangiocarcinoma, two of the most common forms of liver cancer. We tested these patients with ctDNA alongside our usual surveillance tools: imaging scans and standard tumor-marker blood tests. Over the course of the study, we confirmed cancer recurrence by imaging in six patients. Three of them also had a positive ctDNA result. And importantly, when the ctDNA test came back positive, it was right, we saw no false positives, meaning a positive result reliably confirmed real recurrence. I led this study alongside my colleagues, here in our GI oncology program. We believe catching recurrence sooner can change outcomes for transplant patients, who often have limited treatment options once cancer returns. This is the first study to test this approach prospectively, and we’re continuing to study it on a larger scale before it becomes standard practice. But it points to a future where a simple blood draw could work alongside imaging to give our patients, and their doctors, more confidence, and maybe more time.

Read More:

[Houston Methodist] - Using ctDNA to Detect Recurrence & Guide Management of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

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On Houston Methodist Week: Is epilepsy more prevalent in certain regions of the country?

Weichuan Dong, assistant research professor of cardiology, examines whether it is.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Weichuan Dong is a scientist in spatial epidemiology, population health, and machine learning, with a focus on how environmental and social factors shape chronic disease risk and outcomes. Dr. Dong’s work integrates large-scale clinical data, advanced AI/ML methods, and geospatial analysis to generate insights that support better prevention, diagnosis, and care delivery.Dr. Dong has led and contributed to multidisciplinary projects across cardiology, cancer, neurology, and public health, partnering with clinicians, data scientists, and industry collaborators. His research has resulted in high-impact first-author publications (e.g. JAMA Neurology, JAMA Network Open, Annals of Surgery, JNCCN, CEBP, Cancers, and Nature Scientific Reports), national media coverage, and translational findings that inform healthcare systems and policy discussions.Dr. Dong’s long-term goal is to bridge data science, healthcare, and real-world impact—advancing precision population health by turning complex datasets into actionable, scalable, and equitable solutions.

Transcript:

For decades, we’ve known about America’s “Stroke Belt”—a region in the South where stroke is especially common. But until now, we didn’t know whether epilepsy showed a similar pattern. Our research analyzed health records from nearly five million Medicare beneficiaries across the United States. By combining data with advanced geographic mapping, we created the first nationwide map of new-onset epilepsy in older adults. What we found was striking. Epilepsy was not evenly distributed across the country. Instead, we identified an “Epilepsy Belt” stretching across parts of the South, including Louisiana, Mississippi, eastern Texas, and central Oklahoma, where older adults were much more likely to develop epilepsy. Epilepsy risk later in life is shaped not only by biology, but also by the environments in which people live. Communities with higher epilepsy rates also tended to have more insufficient sleep, more days of extreme heat, lower levels of physical activity, and limited access to health care. That does not mean these factors directly cause epilepsy. Many cases are related to stroke, brain injury, or other neurological diseases. But understanding why certain communities carry a greater burden may help identify where earlier detection, diagnosis, and targeted prevention efforts are needed most. As our population ages and extreme heat becomes more common, understanding how communities shape brain health will become increasingly important. By revealing where epilepsy is most common—and the conditions those communities share—we hope to help public health leaders target resources where they can make the greatest difference.

Read More:

[JAMA Neurology] - Incidence and Risk Factors of Epilepsy Among Older Adults in the US Medicare Population

[Houston Methodist] - Discovering America’s ‘epilepsy belt’: First-of-its-kind national study reveals US regions with high epilepsy rates among older adults

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On Houston Methodist Week: What are free radicals, and how are they affecting our cells?

John P. Cooke, professor of cardiovascular sciences, discusses this.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. John P. Cooke is the Chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Regeneration, and Medical Director of the RNA Therapeutics Program in the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center in Houston, Texas.He trained in cardiovascular medicine and obtained a Ph.D. in physiology at the Mayo Clinic. He was recruited to Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor of medicine. In 1990, he was recruited to Stanford University to spearhead the program in vascular biology and medicine, and was appointed professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, and associate director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute until his recruitment to Houston Methodist in 2013.Dr. Cooke’s research program is focused on vascular regeneration, vascular cell identity and cell fate. The Cooke group aims to understand the mechanisms underlying epigenetic plasticity that are required for functional adaptation to cellular challenges. Innate immune signaling causes global changes in the expression and activity of epigenetic modifiers with metabolic coupling that favors an open chromatin configuration. The translational output of this work is vascular regeneration via therapeutic transdifferentiation using small molecules or mRNA.

Transcript:

Every day our cells are under attack from an enemy within – reactive oxygen species, also known as free radicals. Free radicals are generated by cell metabolism, by the very nature of burning calories. The DNA in a single cell takes tens of thousands of hits per day.

The good news is that our cells have outstanding DNA repair systems that fix the damage. They have to fix the damage, as the DNA is the code for the identity of the cell, and for its functions. In a surprising twist, we found recently that one such DNA repair protein is the enzyme called telomerase.

You may know it! Telomerase repairs the ends of the chromosome. These ends are a bit like the ends of a shoelace, holding the chromosome together. As cells divide, the telomere gets shorter, and at some point, the cells can’t divide anymore and become aged. Telomerase can repair the ends so that the cells can keep going.

Recently, we found that telomerase can also repair DNA damage throughout the length of the chromosome. We found that telomerase could repair the DNA damage caused by free radicals generated during aging.

Then we gave telomerase a tougher test. Could telomerase repair DNA damage due to radiation. We treated human skin cells, and human skin, with mRNA encoding telomerase. We saw that telomerase was generated by the skin cells and protected them from radiation induced DNA damage. That protection prevented radiation-induced aging and death of the skin cells. This work indicates that the unexpected effect of telomerase to repair DNA throughout the length of the chromosome can protect human cells from free radicals, aging, and radiation.

Read More:

[Houston Methodist] - New study shows mRNA therapy could protect patients from radiation-induced skin damage caused by cancer treatment

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On Houston Methodist Week: Where do you live? Your answer may affect your health.

Jad Ardakani, clinical research fellow, explores why.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Jad Ardakani is a medical doctor and clinical research fellow in preventive cardiology at the Houston Methodist, where he works under the mentorship of Dr. Sadeer Al-Kindi and Dr. Khurram Nasir. His research focuses on the environmental and social determinants of cardiometabolic disease, leveraging large-scale clinical and geospatial datasets.His work utilizes the Houston Methodist CVD Learning Health System Registry to examine how residential address–linked environmental exposures influence the development of conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He is particularly interested in integrating environmental exposures with precision prevention approaches—including biomarkers, wearable health data, and body composition measures—to improve cardiovascular risk prediction and population-level prevention strategies. His work also includes studying cardiovascular disease burden and risk factors in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) populations, with an emphasis on regional disparities and prevention.

Transcript:

The place you call home may shape your health more than you think. When we talk about Type 2 diabetes, we usually focus on diet, exercise, and family history. But where you live — your neighborhood — may matter just as much. Our team set out to test that idea. We used a tool called the Climate Vulnerability Index. It scores how exposed a neighborhood is to stressors like extreme heat, storms, and pollution, along with social conditions such as poverty, poor housing, and limited access to care. We linked that index to the health records of more than one million adults across our health system — none of whom had diabetes when the study began. Then we followed them for up to seven years to see who went on to develop Type 2 diabetes. The results were striking. Adults living in the most vulnerable neighborhoods had a twenty-three percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those in the least vulnerable areas. And this pattern held even after we accounted for age, sex, race and ethnicity, obesity, blood pressure, cholesterol, and baseline blood sugar. In other words, the environment around us leaves a measurable mark on our health — one that traditional risk factors alone can miss. Why does this matter? Because it gives us a new way to see risk. By mapping climate and community vulnerability onto clinical data, we can spot the neighborhoods that need help before disease takes hold, and direct prevention where it will do the most good. This is one of the largest studies of its kind, but it is really just a starting point. Recognizing that health is shaped not only by our choices, but by the places we live, is the first step toward building healthier, more equitable communities.

Read More:

[National Library of Medicine] - Climate Vulnerability Index and Incident Type 2 Diabetes in a Large Integrated Health Care System

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Is film photography dead? Not so fast.

Rotem Rozental, lecturer in critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California, explores the unlikely rebirth of this photographic medium.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Rotem Rozental is Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Los Angeles Center of Photography and lecturer in Critical Studies at USC Roski School of Art and Design. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Binghamton University, where her dissertation examined photographic archives and nationalism.Her monograph “Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement” (Routledge, 2023) won the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies. Her scholarly work appears in peer-reviewed journals including Photographies and Philosophy of Photography, while her cultural criticism has been published in Artforum, Afterimage, Jewish Currents, and other outlets.Dr. Rozental’s current research examines visual literacy in the age of AI, generational relationships with technology, and institutional leadership during cultural transformation. She has curated 50+ exhibitions exploring photography’s intersection with memory, technology, and collective identity, and has mentored over 60 international artists. Her work bridges academic research with public-facing cultural criticism, making complex ideas about images, technology, and visual culture accessible to general audiences.Follow her writing and connect on Substack:

Transcript:

It wasn’t too long ago that analog photography was declared all but dead.Digital cameras had taken over nearly all areas of photographic production. Film industry titans like Polaroid and Kodak had shrunk dramatically. Darkrooms, shuttered at high schools and college campuses across the country, replaced by digital labs. For most people, the spirit of analog photography was mainly channeled through Instagram filters.But within the past five years, younger people have been increasingly drawn back to the darkroom. Gen Z is going back to the darkroom and is resurrecting analog photography.In 2025, 35% of the 42 million active film camera users worldwide were reported to be between the ages of 18 and 30. The photography journal PetaPixel announced 2024 as “film’s best year in decades,” as major brands have introduced new cameras in response to renewed demand and revived classic models. In my work as a historian of photography and lecturer at the University of Southern California, I’ll often ask my students about how they take photos. This year, for the first time, they discussed printing photos, mounting them or crafting photo albums. They now write letters, send postcards. The inaugural festival AnalogCon that we organized this year at the Los Angeles Center of Photogrhaphy, showed how analog photography – as a practice, ritual and community – is flourishing.This move goes beyond nostalgia—it’s hard to yearn for an analog world you never knew. If anything, it’s postalgic, a deliberate and conscious insistence on a relationship with past technology and media that rejects algorithmic feeds and the alienation of social media. They might find them online, but they practice them IRL, opting for tangible cultural objects and perhaps a healthier relationships with peers and visual culture.

Read More:

[The Conversation] - Why Gen Z is falling in love with film photography

[Los Angeles Center of Photography] - AnalogCon

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Why do we evaluate male and female beauty differently?

Eugen Wassiliwizky, senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Empirical Aesthetics, looks for an answer.

Faculty Bio:

Eugen Wassiliwizky has an interdisciplinary background in neuropsychology, classics, and musicology and has conducted research in Germany, Canada, and Norway. His work examines the neural and evolutionary foundations of aesthetic experience across domains including language, film, music, and facial perception. Alongside his academic research, he has extensive experience as a communication coach, helping researchers, policymakers, and professionals communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively.

Transcript:

More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin made an intriguing observation. Unlike many animal species, in which males are the more ornamented sex—think of lions or birds of paradise—he argued that humans are unusual because it is women who are generally regarded as “the beautiful sex.” In other words, the typical pattern of sexual ornamentation appears to be reversed in humans. Surprisingly, however, this idea remained untested for more than a century and a half. Yet the answer had been hiding in scientific data all along.Together with colleagues, we recently analyzed one of the largest collections of facial-attractiveness data ever assembled: more than 1.5 million ratings from around the globe. The result was remarkably consistent: across cultures, age groups, and sexual orientations, female faces received higher attractiveness ratings than male faces. On average, a female face outranked about 60% of male faces. We call this robust phenomenon the Gender Attractiveness Gap.The findings also revealed several surprising details. Women showed the strongest preference for female faces, even stronger than men did. Moreover, facial structure explained a substantial part of the effect: differences in facial femininity and masculinity accounted for roughly 40% of the observed GAP. Another unexpected pattern emerged when we looked beyond average ratings. Whereas female attractiveness followed an almost perfectly normal distribution, male faces exhibited a small but distinct group of exceptionally attractive individuals. This raises the intriguing possibility that exceptional male attractiveness occupies a more specialized role than previously assumed.Rather than closing a chapter, these findings open an entirely new one. Why do humans evaluate female and male beauty so differently? And what do attractiveness ratings actually reveal about the way our minds perceive human beauty? Sometimes important scientific discoveries are not entirely new, they are patterns that have been hiding in plain sight for decades, waiting to be recognized.

Read More:

[The Royal Society Publishing] - The gender attractiveness gap

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Student work can serve a larger purpose than simply earning a grade.

Christian Martinez, adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, tells us how.

Faculty Bio:

Christian A. Martinez is a graduate instructor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where he teaches reproducible research and data science. His work focuses on open science, civic open data, and designing educational experiences that enable students to create publicly available research and open-source software.

Transcript:

What happens to most student assignments after they’re graded?In many courses, the answer is simple: they disappear. A paper is submitted, a project is graded, and the work ends there.In my teaching, I began exploring a different approach. Instead of designing assignments for a single reader—the instructor—I asked students to create work that could have a life beyond the classroom.Using reproducible research methods and publicly available government data, students developed analyses that could be shared openly. Some projects became published online portfolios. Others were incorporated into an open educational resource used by future students. Several students contributed directly to open-source software that is now freely available to researchers around the world.I call this the “Accidental Author” framework because many students never expected to become authors or software contributors. They simply completed a course assignment. But by designing assignments around authentic audiences, transparency, and reproducibility, their work became something larger than a grade.This approach also changes the educational experience. Students know their work may be read by peers, employers, or members of the public, encouraging greater attention to documentation, communication, and reproducibility. Rather than treating assignments as temporary products, they begin thinking like researchers, collaborators, and contributors.The goal isn’t simply to produce better assignments. It’s to create learning experiences where the knowledge students generate can continue to educate others, contribute to open science, and remain valuable long after the semester has ended.

Read More:

NYC Open Data Student Gallery - Brooklyn College

Reproducible Research Using R

Reproducible Research Using R: Student Work in Practice

The OpenData Package Developer’s Guide

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What are ‘teen takeovers’, and do we need to curb them?

Krista Mehari, associate professor of public health at Michigan State University, says teens themselves can be part of the solution.

Faculty Bio:

Krista Mehari is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health in Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine. Her work focuses on improving the safety and well-being of youth from minoritized groups in overburdened, underresourced communities, with a specific focus on youth violence and firearm injury prevention. She takes a participatory action research approach to partner with communities to develop, implement, and evaluate violence prevention strategies. Her work has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and others.

Transcript:

“Teen takeovers”—youth-led gatherings fueled by social media—have occurred in cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh. The headlines often focus on curfews and crackdowns, but beneath the headlines lies a bigger question: How could we partner with teens to come up with solutions, instead of deciding that teens are the problem?Teen takeovers demonstrate young people’s creative energy, their desire for community, and their capacity to spread information quickly.In my work as a youth violence prevention researcher, I have found that youth participatory action research—working with young people to identify problems and create potential solutions—works for the good of communities and for the young people themselves.Research shows that involving young people in participatory action promotes leadership skills, boosts academic engagement, grows strong social bonds, and builds safer communities for everyone.But here’s the catch: Sometimes youth partnership is just for show—adults pretend that they are including young people but still exclude them from real power. Teens don’t just spot hypocrisy; they call it out. To quote one frustrated youth leader: “Honestly, people are irrelevant after they hit 25.” This sentiment isn’t about age; it’s about adults who violate their trust and resist making real change. The research on youth partnerships shows that teens need more than empty promises. To make adult-youth partnerships successful, teens need mutual respect and trust, collaborative goal setting, shared decision making, and transparency. Adults can build successful youth partnerships through warmth, consistency, curiosity, and flexibility. Youth partnerships are most successful when adults are transparent, share decision-making power, collaborate in brainstorming solutions, and support implementation of solutions.By partnering with young people, decisionmakers can monitor the pulse of their communities and implement relevant, attractive, sustainable solutions in real time.

Read More:

[Sage Journals] - Project GRIP: An Illustration of Participatory Action Research with Communities of People Who Own and Use Firearms

[Taylor & Francis] - Transdisciplinary participatory action research: how philosophers, psychologists, and practitioners can work (Well) together to promote adolescent character development within context

[Taylor & Francis] - Impact of a participatory action approach to virtue promotion among early adolescents

[ScienceDirect] - Facilitating youth participatory action research (YPAR): A scoping review of relational practice in U.S. Youth development & out-of-school time projects

[Annual Reviews] - Youth-Led Participatory Action Research and Developmental Science: Intersections and Innovations

[Wiley Online Library] - Youth participation: Adultism, human rights and professional youth work

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How do we beat the heat in cities going forward?

Katherine Mach, professor and chair of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, explores some tools that can help.

Faculty Bio:

Katharine Mach is professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, & Earth Science. During Spring 2025, she was the Coleman P. Burke Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Environment. Her research assesses climate-related risks and response options to address increased flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, and other hazards. Through innovative approaches to integrating evidence, she informs effective adaptations to the risks. Mach was the 2020 recipient of the Piers Sellers Prize for world leading contribution to solution-focused climate research. Mach has served as a chapter author or lead in the Fourth through Sixth US National Climate Assessments and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and as a member of the National Academies Climate Security Roundtable. She serves as Co-Editor in Chief for Climate Risk Management, an editorial board member for Oxford Open Climate Change and Environmental Research: Climate, and an advisory committee member for the Aspen Global Change Institute. Across all of her research projects, she engages in relevant policy processes and explores and discusses climate risk and adaptation with the media, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and communities.

Transcript:

As global temperatures rise, extreme weather isn’t just becoming more severe, it’s becoming continuous. Many people are grappling with new relentless hazards. Chronic heat is one of them, defined as dangerous conditions that persist for 90 days or more every year. The impacts of chronic heat add up. Our research shows that some residents are enduring indoor home heat indexes that average over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours a day, consecutively. Chronic heat can severely impact physical and mental health, household finances, and community well-being. This isn’t a brief spike, it’s an underrecognized, daily crisis happening in our communities. Meeting this threat requires what my colleagues and I call actionable knowledge. Our Chronic Heat Research Group brings together over 100 scientists, doctors, community leaders, and officials monthly. Together, practitioners are taking action, and we’re using complex climate modeling and analysis to provide evidence on the risks and the effectiveness of different responses. The tools for decision making range from hyper-local indoor heat risk mapping to policy blueprints. By connecting climate risk science to decision makers, we empower cities to deploy cooling resources preemptively to protect residents, and update the infrastructures needed, ideally before crisis points occur. Intensifying chronic heat isn’t just a temporary surprise, it’s a new normal. Treating chronic heat as a permanent adaptation challenge is how we build safer and more resilient cities worldwide. This work demands that we reimagine urban planning, public health systems, and energy grids for a hotter reality, turning short-term emergency response of the past into stable protection for people and the environment at large.

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On Florida International University Week: Sleep disorders may be changing your brain.

Matthew Sutherland, associate professor of psychology, explores how.

Faculty Bio:

Matthew Sutherland is a cognitive neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at Florida International University. His research uses brain imaging to better understand how conditions such as substance use, sleep disorders and other health challenges affect brain function and behavior.

Transcript:

Most people know that poor sleep can leave them feeling tired, unfocused or irritable. But sleep disorders may do more than affect how you feel. They may actually be associated with changes in the brain itself.We wanted to better understand what happens in the brain across different types of sleep disorders. Sleep disorders affect an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans, yet most research has only examined these conditions one at a time.Our team conducted a meta-analysis of 57 brain imaging studies, looking at disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea, as well as sleepwalking, nightmare disorder and sleep terrors. By analyzing many studies together, we were able to identify patterns that might not be visible in individual investigations.Across multiple sleep disorders, we found structural changes in a region of the brain called the thalamus. More specifically, changes appeared in an area known as the pulvinar, which helps direct attention, filter information and support higher-level thinking.These findings may help explain why people with chronic sleep problems often report brain fog, difficulty concentrating, slower reaction times and challenges with decision-making.We also found unique changes among people with parasomnias, disorders that disrupt the sleep cycle itself. These changes occurred in a brain region involved in motivation, emotional regulation and decision-making, which may help explain some of the mood and behavioral symptoms associated with these conditions.Understanding how sleep disorders affect the brain could help researchers develop better diagnostic tools, identify problems earlier and create more personalized treatments.

Read More:

[Nature] - Sleep disorders and structural alterations in brain regions linked with motivation: a neuroimaging meta-analysis

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