Connecting Science and Society

How we eat dramatically impacts our health, yet millions of Americans live in ‘food deserts’ – areas with limited access to fresh, nutritious food. Recent research reveals that solving this crisis requires looking beyond just physical access to food to understand how our entire community environment shapes our dietary choices. Through a series of pioneering studies, Dr Terrence Thomas and colleagues at North Carolina A&T State University have been investigating how different aspects of our food environment influence what we put on our plates. Their findings suggest that creating lasting change requires reimagining how communities engage with food at every level.

In the atoms that make up the matter around us, negatively charged particles called electrons have properties such as spin and orbital angular momentum. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg have developed a theoretical framework which allows them to simulate the dynamics of the spin and orbital angular momentum of electrons in materials when probed with an ultrafast laser pulse. Using this framework, they are able to simulate different materials and improve our understanding of dynamics on an atomic scale.

In the Aínsa Basin of the Spanish Pyrenees, the Mondot-1 well was drilled, cored, and fully logged to capture a detailed record of a long-buried ancient river delta system. Dr. John D. Marshall, Dr. Jürgen Grötsch, and Dr. Michael C. Pöppelreiter with co-workers at Shell International used this core to trace how sediments once flowed across the landscape, and were deposited under shifting tectonic conditions. The team employed augmented reality and interactive virtual displays; these innovative tools offer new ways to explore subsurface depositional systems, and are particularly useful in locations where physical access to the core is difficult, or no longer possible.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes respiratory tract infections in children and adults. While for many patients the outcomes of infection are mild, for others, infection can prove fatal, and there is a lack of effective treatments. Dr Jim Wu from the Shanghai Ark Biopharmaceutical Company in China carries out his vital research to develop new, safe, and effective treatments to tackle this killer.

People with chronic lung conditions like COPD and cystic fibrosis are vulnerable to lung infections caused by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These infections are often difficult to treat and can cause sudden worsening of symptoms, known as flare-ups or acute exacerbations. While we know P. aeruginosa triggers inflammation and damage in the lungs, much less is understood about how exactly it causes these flare-ups, or how it survives in such a harsh environment. Dr Sandra Grumelli from the Center of Investigations of Respiratory Diseases in Argentina, has explored the role of a common molecule called choline which is released during infection. Using a combination of mouse models and laboratory experiments, she has discovered that choline not only makes breathing harder, it also helps P. aeruginosa adapt to and persist in the lungs. Her research opens up new possibilities for tackling chronic infections by targeting the bacteria’s energy use and the way it responds to its environment.

Many of us have witnessed the troubling effects of ageing on the mind in older friends or family members – the forgotten names, the misplaced keys, the struggle to solve problems that once seemed simple. For decades, scientists have accepted cognitive decline as an inevitable part of growing older. But what if our personality could protect us from some of these changes? A remarkable 25-year study by Dr David Sperbeck, a neuropsychologist at North Star Behavioral Health Hospital in Alaska, has uncovered compelling evidence that certain personality traits might act as a shield against age-related cognitive decline.

As our global population ages, movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease present growing challenges for healthcare systems. Traditional assessment methods rely on subjective clinical ratings during brief clinic visits and often fail to capture the full picture of a patient’s condition. Professor Martin McKeown and his colleagues are pioneering innovative artificial intelligence approaches which use ordinary video recordings to objectively monitor movement disorders. These cutting-edge technologies promise to transform care for millions of patients by enabling remote, continuous assessment of symptoms, while reducing healthcare costs and improving quality of life.

When we think about water pollution, we often picture oil spills on the ocean surface or chemicals flowing down rivers. But some of the most significant environmental challenges occur completely out of sight, deep underground, where contaminated water moves through layers of rock and soil. Understanding how these invisible pollutants travel has profound implications for protecting our drinking water supplies and coastal ecosystems. Groundwater engineer Dr E. John List has developed an approach that challenges fundamental assumptions about how contamination spreads underground.

Cancers often develop because of faulty DNA repair systems. PARP inhibitors (PARPi) are a class of targeted anti-cancer drugs that exploit this weakness, by inhibiting a complementary DNA repair system, to selectively target the tumour. However, these medicines need to be taken every day, creating a burden on patients and reducing the options for combination with other anticancer therapies. Professor Nicola Curtin and her team at Newcastle University investigated how long different PARPi stay active in cancer cells after a single dose and how this influences their effectiveness when combined with another anti-cancer drug.

The remote streams of subantarctic Macquarie Island are home to low diversity freshwater invertebrate communities with an unusual taxonomic composition. However, over a century of grazing by introduced rabbits dramatically degraded surrounding vegetation, increasing erosion and disturbing stream ecosystems. Following rabbit eradication in 2016, Dr Richard Marchant of Museums Victoria and colleagues from the University of Canberra and the Australian Antarctic Division investigated whether the island’s streams were recovering ecologically. Their study reveals a slow but measurable resurgence of invertebrate taxa, particularly in areas with moderate prior damage and vegetation regrowth, though full recovery remains uncertain.