Researchers conducted an original research study utilizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) to compare trends in mortality from alcoholic cirrhosis in the U.S. in 1999 with those 20 years later in 2019.
Three South Florida counties that collectively are home to the largest metropolitan population in the state will soon be served by an academic health network that is a true collaboration of the region’s leading public and private academic and medical leaders.
FAU's Reza Azarderakhsh, Ph.D., was among 34 investigators nationwide selected by the NSF for RINGS, which is short for Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems. His project is the only one working on taking post-quantum cryptography to next generation systems.
Every second, an older person in the U.S. falls and injures themselves, and every 20 minutes one of them dies from the fall. The Geriatric Emergency Department Fall Injury Prevention Project will investigate several emergency department-based prevention strategies in older patients at high risk for recurrent falls and injury. The tailored multicomponent intervention will identify effective fall prevention strategies that target limited resources to high-risk individuals who come to the emergency department to improve patient outcomes, improve safety, and reduce overall costs of health care.
With the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season forecast to be above average activity with a higher probability of major hurricanes making landfall along the continental U.S. coastline, several FAU faculty experts are available to discuss various issues surrounding hurricane preparedness, evacuation and aftermath.
About 41 million people live in U.S. Atlantic coastline counties. There isn’t an effective way to identify the impact of urban growth on tidal flats – the guardians of beachfront communities. Researchers have developed a new way to quantify these impacts from a geographic lens focused on place and space using data over three decades.
Researchers are developing the nation’s first drone-based, mobile quantum network for unhackable wireless communication. The network includes drones, a ground station, lasers and fiber optics. In war, these drones would provide one-time crypto-keys to exchange critical information, which spies and enemies would not be able to intercept. Quantum protects information using the laws of nature and not just by a clever manmade code.
For most sea turtles, the journey to find the ocean from their nests is pretty straightforward. However, leatherback hatchlings more often crawl around in circles trying to find the ocean. Circling delays their entry into the ocean, wastes energy, and places them at greater danger from natural predators. Under different moon phases: bright light during full moon and only starlight under new moon, researchers have a better understanding of why this circling behavior happens and why it is most commonly observed in leatherbacks.
FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine received an estate pledge of $28 million from John and Ann Wood to support scholarships for medical students. This is the largest scholarship gift in FAU’s history and the largest known scholarship gift to a Florida public university’s medical school.
Researchers note that health care providers are now able to add to their armamentarium against COVID-19 their prescription of this new antiviral drug for high-risk, newly-infected patients as soon as possible following diagnosis or within five days of the onset of symptoms.
A study of 719 members of a public social-media focused group examined various aspects of COVID-19 that included experience, perceptions and prevention aspects. Results revealed that while much of the media and policy makers have promoted the susceptibility of COVID-19 such as the number of cases, this study showed that it is potential severity that has a stronger influence on prevention practices. Increased emphasis on the severity of COVID-19 could lead to increased prevention practices.
Shirley Pomponi, Ph.D., an ocean explorer, aquanaut and marine biotechnologist, will receive the Society for In Vitro Biology’s (SIVB) highest award – the 2022 “Lifetime Achievement Award.” She has made pioneering, scientific advances and contributions to marine invertebrate biotechnology, biological oceanography and national marine policy.
DeRigne’s research on the importance of paid sick leave benefits cited in President Biden's report, was published in 2016 in the journal Health Affairs. The study was the first to examine the relationship between paid sick leave benefits and delays in medical care and forgone medical care for both working adults and their family members.
Spinal cord stimulation is a minimally invasive FDA-approved treatment to manage chronic pain such as back and neck pain. The ability to accurately predict which patients will benefit from this treatment in the long term is unclear and currently relies on the subjective experience of the implanting physician. A study is the first to use machine-learning algorithms in the neuromodulation field to predict long-term patient response to spinal cord stimulation.
A study is the first to examine if sex significantly affects cognitive outcomes in people who follow individually-tailored, multi-domain clinical interventions. The study also determined whether change in risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), along with blood markers of AD risk, also were affected by sex. Results showed that while care in an Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic setting is equally effective at improving cognitive function in both women and men, the personally-tailored interventions used by the researchers led to greater improvements in women compared to men across AD and CVD disease risk scales, as well blood biomarkers of risk such as blood sugar, LDL cholesterol, and the diabetes test HbA1C. Findings are important because women are disproportionately affected by AD and population-attributable risk models suggest that managing risk factors can prevent up to one-third of dementia cases.
Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion is widely used to treat spinal disorders. The fusion involves placing a bone graft or “cage” and/or implants where the surgically removed damaged disc was originally located to stabilize and strengthen the area. The risk factors for cage migration are multifactorial and include patient, radiological characteristics, surgical techniques and postoperative factors. A study is the first to evaluate the effect of the range of motion, cage migration and penetration using variable angle screws and cervical spine models. The plate developed and tested by the researchers provided directional stability and excellent fusion, showing promising clinical outcomes for patients with degenerative cervical spine disease.
Matt Ajemian, Ph.D., has received a $1,103,081 NSF CAREER grant for a project that will build fundamental knowledge on where and when large shell-crushing predators feed in order to ensure a sustainable future for shellfish species. Further, the work can provide guidance to shellfish restoration programs that are currently “flying blind” with respect to predation risk.
Yufei Tang, Ph.D., has received the coveted National Science Foundation Early CAREER award for a project that will fundamentally advance knowledge related to monitoring and designing marine and hydrokinetic energy systems, including marine current turbines and wave energy converters. Results from the research will help to improve energy systems and accelerate progress in the blue economy.
FAU has received a grant from the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) at Northeastern University to support their "Empowering Women for Careers in Computer Science" initiative. CIC is funded by Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company, and has a mission to transform the national landscape of women in technology through grant funding at the undergraduate level, expert technical assistance by computing faculty, and meaningful data collection for diagnostic and evaluation purposes.
Helping green sea turtles suffering with large debilitating tumors may be a simple as sunlight. Turtles with fibropapillomatosis are treated at rehab facilities where the tumors are surgically removed. Many do not survive or the tumors regrow. Researchers compared vitamin D levels in green sea turtles with and without evident tumors to see if sunlight exposure would influence vitamin D levels and other health parameters. Turtles receiving treatment were housed in tanks exposed to higher or lower levels of sunlight. Results showed that turtles exposed to greater sunlight showed greater increases in plasma vitamin D and a more successful recovery. Turtles kept in the sun tanks also experienced less regrowth of tumors compared to those exposed to low UV light conditions.
A study shows statistically significant and potentially clinically important differences between those who increased and decreased tobacco use during the pandemic. Among current smokers, 28.2 percent reported increased tobacco use, 17.3 percent reported decreased tobacco use and 54.5 percent reported no change.
Mutant mice are providing scientists with a new neurobiological framework to understand the brain changes observed in distractible humans who carry a common gene variant whose frequency has been associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
A longitudinal study tested the novel hypothesis that aggressive and disruptive children engage in frequent conflicts with classmates to strengthen their position in the group and enhance their popularity. Results revealed that higher initial levels of peer-reported aggression and disruptiveness were associated with increases in peer-reported popularity over the course of a semester, particularly for children who reported frequent disagreements with peers.
Out of about 100 million sperm, only a few hundred make it to the fallopian tubes. A directional movement called rheotaxis, guides sperm cells to swim against the cervical mucus flow to reach the egg for fertilization. Swimming the right way is key, especially for infertility. Using this natural rheotaxis behavior of sperm, researchers have developed a microfluidic chip for sperm sorting that is fast, inexpensive, easy to operate and efficiently isolates healthy sperm directly from semen. Importantly, it effortlessly collects sorted sperm cells from the collecting chamber while minimizing contamination by deformed or dead sperm cells.
FAU students Kate Maier and Samantha Zaninelli have been named 2022 Goldwater Scholars. The Barry Goldwater Scholarship is the most prestigious national research fellowship for undergraduate students.
A study of a nationally representative database of 105,988 admissions referred to treatment by the criminal justice system who reported heroin or other opiate as their primary, secondary, or tertiary substance used showed that fewer than 6 percent of cases received opioid agonist treatment as part of the treatment plan. Those with daily substance use, comorbid psychiatric problems, prior treatment, females, Latinos, and those who were older and those who were living independently were more likely to receive this treatment, as were those living in the Northeast and with government health insurance.
Several Florida Atlantic University graduate programs are included in the latest U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Graduate Programs” for 2023.
The “FAU Veteran Canine Rescue Mission” program matches FAU student veterans and alumni veterans with dogs from the Humane Society of Broward County, which will be trained by Happy With Dogs as either for service, emotional support or companionship. The program also includes a research component of the human-canine bond.
The ability to make perceptual and conceptual judgements such as knowing the difference between a picture of an object and the actual 3D object itself has been considered a defining capacity of primates, until now. A study provides the very first behavioral evidence that laboratory mice are capable of higher-order cognitive processes. Findings also provide strong support that the mouse’s hippocampus, like that of humans, is required for this form of nonspatial visual recognition memory and picture-object equivalence.
Researchers have received grants from the Florida Department of Health’s Ed and Ethel Moore Foundation for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, for programs focused on the mechanism of genes involved in neurodegeneration using novel genetic models, and to develop a culturally relevant model to diagnose and manage dementia in rural underserved communities.
There is a need to develop alternative adsorbent materials that can efficiently integrate and intensify the air revitalization process. Researchers could have a promising solution with a white powdery substance they synthesized in their lab called amine-grafted SBA-15 silica, an “aminosilica.”
Many people impacted by COVID-19 experienced changes in their sense of smell, taste, hearing, balance and in some cases, tinnitus, “ringing” in the ears. Among the various causes of tinnitus is stress. What’s unclear, however, is whether the psychological impacts of the pandemic such as stress actually worsened tinnitus. Results of a new study do not support the idea that the pandemic led to a worsening of tinnitus.
In America’s jails, suicide is the leading cause of death – nearly three times higher than in prisons or the general public. Researchers have long recognized the shock and lack of control associated with circumstances and surroundings in jail, however, the extent to which these experiences culminate in a propensity for suicide and self-harm (SSH) remains understudied. A study is the first to examine the risk factors for attempting and threatening SSH in a large metropolitan jail. Among the results: those in protective custody are seven times more likely to threaten and/or attempt SSH; the threat is 61 percent greater for first-time inmates; and the rate is 64 percent lower for males vs. females – individuals had a similar risk regardless of their age or race.
Following a panel discussion of emergency medicine physicians and geriatricians at the 2021 American Academy of Emergency Medicine’s Scientific Assembly, researchers say, unfortunately, most of the emergency departments in the U.S. and worldwide do not provide the level of service recommended by the Geriatric Emergency Department (GED) Guidelines. Endorsed by four major medical organizations, the GED guidelines characterize the complex needs of the older emergency department patient and current best practices, with the goal of promoting more cost-effective and patient-centered care. These recommendations necessitate increased staff, resources, and education.
Ivermectin is not approved by the FDA to treat or prevent COVID-19. Nonetheless, prescriptions of ivermectin by U.S. health care providers increased more than tenfold from 3,589 per week pre-COVID-19 to 39,102. In addition, the NIH, WHO and European Medicine Agency have all advised against using ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. Researchers urge all health care providers to always prioritize compassion with reliable evidence on efficacy and safety. As such, they recommend a moratorium on prescribing ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19, except to provide the necessary evidence in data from large-scale randomized trials.
A new study could be a game changer for users of prosthetic hands who have long awaited advances in dexterity. Researchers examined if people could precisely control the grip forces applied to two different objects grasped simultaneously with a dexterous artificial hand. They designed a multichannel wearable soft robotic armband to convey artificial sensations of touch to the robotic hand users. Subjects were able to successfully grasp and transport two objects simultaneously with the dexterous artificial hand without breaking or dropping them, even when their vision of both objects was obstructed. The study is the first to show the feasibility of this complex simultaneous control task while integrating multiple channels of haptic/touch sensation feedback noninvasively.
A study is the first to examine the impact of per-meal protein prescription and nutrition education with and without diet coaching to improve protein intake among middle-aged women. Since protein is the building block of muscles, researchers also investigated the impact of the changes in protein intake on muscle health.
More than 1,000 manatees died in 2021, due mostly to starvation. They consume about 100 pounds of seagrass a day, and this staple food is now scarce in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon (IRL). A new study shows that about 7,400 acres of seagrass were lost in the IRL between 1943 and 1994. Between 2011 and 2019, about 58 percent of seagrasses were lost. To help with recovery efforts, researchers are experimenting with growing seagrass in large tanks and then transplanting it into the IRL to try to restore some of the lost seagrass beds.
FAU's Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a 10-year facilities use agreement with Bezos Academy. This agreement will open a tuition-free, Montessori-inspired preschool for low-income families adjacent to FAU’s A.D. Henderson University School on FAU’s Boca Raton campus in fall 2022.
A study is the first to unveil the prevalence of plastics in the entire water column of an offshore plastic accumulation zone in the southern Atlantic Ocean and implicates the ocean interior as a crucial pool of ‘missing’ plastics. Results show that small microplastics are critical, underexplored and integral to the oceanic plastic inventory. In addition, findings show that weak ocean current systems contribute to the formation of small microplastics hotspots at depth, suggesting a higher encounter rate for subsurface particle feeders like zooplankton.
A new longitudinal study takes a deep dive into adolescent self-esteem and the role that parents – specifically mothers – and friends play in shaping how youth feel about themselves.
A study is the first to evaluate the utility of online drug use forums as an early indicator of impending novel psychoactive substances (NPS) intoxications with potentially harmful or lethal outcomes before they happen. Results showed that seven of the eight NPS in the study appeared on Reddit discussions prior to their implication in poisonings or intoxications. These forums in the virtual world can help predict changes in exposures associated with new or re-emerging NPS in the real world, with potential to be used in early warning systems.
FAU's online master’s in nursing programs are ranked No. 20 in the nation for 2022 by U.S. News & World Report, rising from No. 32 in 2021. In addition, FAU’s online master’s in educational administration and supervision is ranked No. 13 in the nation this year, climbing from No. 19 in last year’s rankings. FAU’s online master’s business programs (non-MBA) also rose to No. 41 in this year’s rankings, up from No. 45 in 2021.
Many pharmaceutically relevant marine sponges are found only in trace amounts within the source sponge, and it is neither economically nor ecologically feasible to harvest enough wild sponge biomass to supply the necessary quantities for clinical drug development and manufacture. Researchers have come up with a viable solution – develop sponge cell lines for rapid division and successfully culture them in 3D to scale-up production.
Researchers created a novel 3D printed robotic replica of a human spine modified to include an artificial disc implant with a soft magnetic sensor array to enable surgeons to preview the effects of surgical interventions prior to the operation. The patient-specific model was based on a CT scan of the human spine. Results showed that the soft magnetic sensor array system had the high capability to classify five different postures of the spine with 100 percent accuracy, which can be a predictor of different problems of the spine that people experience.
With this NIH grant, FAU researchers are developing an affordable, disposable self-testing HIV-1 chip that can selectively detect HIV from whole blood samples, be highly sensitive to detect HIV during the acute infection, treatment and viral rebound; be rapid within 40 minutes; highly stable without requiring refrigeration; and fully automated providing true sample-in-answer-out ability.
Reducing the energy industry’s carbon footprint in the sunshine state is impeding a large carnivore’s paw-print. A study is the first to document the effect of utility-scale solar energy (USSE) facilities in Peninsular Florida on both habitat suitability and connectivity for any large carnivore. The study examined 45 USSE facilities equaling 27,688 acres. The findings suggest a substantial bias in locating USSE facilities within rural and undeveloped lands, which may provide connectivity that is sufficient for Florida panthers to roam, live and breed. Most facilities were installed on grasslands and pastures, impacting panthers’ ability to move through wildlife corridors, which they need for dispersal and survival.
Fields was invited to work on the heat sterilization step with researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory based out of California, Nelson Laboratories headquartered in Utah, and Johnson & Johnson based in New Jersey. The research group has been addressing not only heat-resistant bacteria, but individual proteins that, on Earth, can act as infectious agents (e.g. Mad Cow Disease). These biomolecules were chosen for testing as representatives of the simplest, hardiest infectious agents known.
Recent guidelines have restricted aspirin use in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease to patients under 70, and more recent guidance to patients under 60. Yet, the risks of heart attacks and strokes increase markedly with age. Researchers urge that to do the most good for the most patients in primary prevention of heart attacks and strokes, health care providers should make individual clinical judgements about prescribing aspirin on a case-by-case basis and based on benefit-to-risk not age. They conducted an updated meta-analysis, which adds the results of the four recent trials to the previous comprehensive meta-analysis of six earlier major trials, and aspirin produced a statistically significant 13 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease with similar benefits at older ages in each of the individual trials.
A new technology for autonomous systems for self-driving cars based on machine-learning and artificial intelligence to mimic human driving behavior has earned a second competitive utility patent. The technology provides a convenient, pleasant and more importantly, trustworthy experience for humans who interact with autonomous vehicles.
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