Trees don’t benefit health for everyone

The biological benefits of nature are not the same for all populations, according to a new study.

Being around trees is proven to enhance health, from lowering stress to increasing longevity.

“The prevailing thought among urban planners and health professionals has been that if we plant trees, everyone’s health will get better,” says Amber Pearson, professor in the public health department in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

“Our study found that the benefits of trees aren’t equally experienced.”

Published in the Lancet Regional Health–Americas, the study examined the relationship between residential tree canopy and allostatic load—the cumulative “wear and tear” on the body caused by chronic stress.

Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data related to 40,307 adults matched with satellite maps of tree cover, Pearson’s team analyzed data for every census block in the country. And they found that while higher tree canopy is generally associated with lower allostatic load, that was not the case for the most vulnerable groups.

“Surprisingly, there is an association between trees and better health for those who have a higher income and education and are employed, but there is no association for less-advantaged people,” Pearson says.

“The findings were consistent for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic subpopulations, but not for non-Hispanic Black participants.”

The study notes that 24% of non-Hispanic Black participants lived in high-canopy neighborhoods, yet they did not show the same reduction in allostatic load seen in white and Hispanic groups. Pearson suggests for some minority groups, other environmental or social stressors—like discrimination—may override the calming effects of nature.

“There are other things that may be more stressful in disadvantaged groups like unfair treatment, lack of good job opportunities, or poor neighborhood conditions that tree canopy is not going to overcome,” Pearson explains.

The findings suggest that while urban greening is a vital public health tool, it must be paired with efforts to address the root causes of social and economic inequality for the most vulnerable groups to reap its benefits.

Source: Michigan State University

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Being overweight may lead to faster cognitive decline

Being overweight may lead to accelerated cognitive decline, according to new research.

Cognitive decline is a normal process. As people age, it often becomes harder to remember things and think as clearly as when they were younger. In otherwise healthy adults, these changes are gradual and subtle.

The new study found higher body mass index over time led to more rapid declines in cognitive functions, memory, and executive functioning than what is typically seen in aging adults. That includes things such as managing emotions, organizing and planning tasks, concentrating, and more.

The researchers relied on data from a nationally representative study that followed more than 8,200 people over the age of 50 for 24 years.

The present study found that every unit increase in BMI led to a more rapid decline in brain health.

But it’s not all bad news.

“We found that if people managed their weight, they could significantly lower their rate of cognitive decline in just two years,” says Suhang Song, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in University of Georgia’s College of Public Health.

“That makes BMI one of the most easily modifiable risk factors when it comes to aging well.”

The researchers found the strongest correlation between BMI and cognitive decline at year eight of the study. The effect was most pronounced in adults over 65.

Defined as having a BMI of 30 or higher, obesity negatively affects brain health. But it’s not clear exactly how, according to the researchers.

It’s likely that extra weight results in inflammation, reduced blood flow and insulin resistance. That may lead to cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias.

Two out of every five Americans are considered obese based on their BMI alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some researchers are pushing for an expanded definition of obesity that also accounts for additional factors including waist size and weight-related health conditions. Under that definition, the percentage of Americans with obesity jumps to 75%.

Meanwhile, more than 7 million people are living with dementia in the US. And that number is predicted to double by 2050, the researchers say.

“There are no cures for dementia,” Song says, “which is why it is critical to identify and address any modifiable risk factors we can find to prevent it.”

The study appears in the Journal of Neurology.

Source: University of Georgia

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Can existing flu shots help protect against bird flu?

New research shows that existing flu shots may offer protection against bird flu.

As potentially deadly avian influenza (H5N1) continues its global spread, moving from birds into mammals and in rare cases into humans, scientists are confronting a difficult reality.

If a human pandemic emerges, vaccines designed specifically to protect people against H5N1 may not be ready in time.

New international research led by National Taiwan University, in collaboration with University of South Florida Health, suggests that part of the answer may already exist.

“…we may be underestimating the broader protective value of seasonal influenza vaccines.”

In a study in Emerging Microbes & Infections, researchers found that seasonal influenza vaccines in routine global use may significantly reduce the risk of death from H5N1 infection. The results are based on a systematic review and analysis of ferret studies, widely considered the gold standard animal model for human influenza.

The findings highlight an important implication for pandemic preparedness, suggesting that readily available tools may offer protection while the world races to develop more targeted solutions.

The Taiwan-US research team analyzed nearly two decades of experimental data from 35 controlled studies involving almost 1,800 ferrets. Seasonal flu vaccines that included a specific component, neuraminidase N1, reduced H5N1-related mortality by approximately 73% in vaccinated animals compared with unvaccinated animals.

That level of protection was comparable to some H5N1-specific vaccines that failed to generate strong immune responses and was only modestly lower than those that did.

In contrast, seasonal vaccines lacking the N1 component showed little to no protective effect, underscoring how specific elements of existing vaccines may play an outsized role in defending against emerging threats.

“This work suggests that we may be underestimating the broader protective value of seasonal influenza vaccines,” says Chi-Tai Fang, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at National Taiwan University and National Taiwan University Hospital and senior author of the study.

“While they are not designed to target H5N1, certain components appear to activate immune responses that can reduce the severity of infection. In a real-world setting, that kind of partial protection could translate into lives saved while more specific vaccines are being developed and distributed.”

For Sten Vermund, dean of the USF Health College of Public Health, chief medical officer of the Global Virus Network and a coauthor, the findings highlight an important opportunity for pandemic preparedness.

“In a pandemic scenario, timing is everything,” Vermund says. “We often face a critical gap between the emergence of a new virus and the availability of a targeted vaccine. Our findings suggest that seasonal flu vaccination, something already widely available, could help reduce severe outcomes during that window. That is a meaningful advantage when every week matters.”

The study also revealed something unexpected. The seasonal vaccines did not produce detectable antibodies against H5N1 using standard tests. Instead, the protection appears to come from more complex immune mechanisms likely involving cross-reactive cellular responses that are not captured by traditional measures of immunity, suggesting protection may exist even when it is not detectable through standard laboratory markers.

These findings arrive at a critical moment, as H5N1 continues to spread among mammals while limited amounts of vaccine are available globally. This leaves health systems vulnerable in the early stages of an outbreak. While not a substitute for targeted vaccines, extensive adoption of seasonal flu vaccines could buy time by reducing deaths, easing strain on health systems and slowing the impact of a rapidly spreading virus.

The researchers caution that the findings are based on animal models and must be validated in humans, but they also point to an important next step in understanding how existing immunity built through routine vaccination may shape responses to emerging infectious diseases.

Source: University of South Florida

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Listen: Why the Federal Reserve matters more than ever

In a new podcast episode, a Nobel laureate examines the future of Federal Reserve leadership and independence—and how to address future financial crises.

From setting interest rates to keeping inflation in check, the Federal Reserve sits at the center of some of the most important economic decisions shaping our daily lives.

As the Fed prepares for new leadership, as Kevin Warsh prepares to follow the tenure of Jerome Powell, many are wondering: What’s next for the Fed, especially when it comes to their financial decisions and their independence?

Professor Douglas Diamond is a Nobel Prize-winning economist of the University of Chicago. One of the founders of modern banking theory, Diamond has conducted groundbreaking research on banking, particularly during financial crises.

In this episode of Big Brains, Diamond describes the lessons we can learn from past bank runs, including the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and warns that the Fed must remain on guard to help prevent the next financial crisis from happening:

Source: University of Chicago

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Cow manure digester leaks offset their climate benefits

A new study shows that systems designed to capture methane from cow manure, called dairy digesters, are highly effective.

But on the rare occasions they fail, the leaks are large enough to offset their climate benefits.

“I think manure emissions on dairies are underestimated. These digesters seem to be a solution that captures a lot of methane,” says Alyssa Valdez, a University of California, Riverside climate scientist and lead study author. “But I wanted to make sure they were working properly.”

The findings of her study in Environmental Research Letters draw on eight years of satellite and airborne observations of 98 dairies across California. By tracking emissions before, during, and after digester installation, Valdez and her research team were able to see how these systems perform over time and at scale.

Digesters are widely seen as a key climate solution. By sealing manure ponds and capturing the gas they produce, these systems convert methane into usable fuel instead of allowing it to escape into the atmosphere where it has a tremendous effect on the climate.

Methane is shorter lived than carbon dioxide, but it is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere, making even small releases significant.

A previous study led by UCR climate scientist Francesca Hopkins examined emissions at a single dairy using ground-based measurements. Hopkins found that a well-managed digester can cut methane emissions by as much as 80%. This new research builds on that work by showing how digesters perform across dozens of farms, including what happens when things go wrong.

Across the dairies studied, the number of strong methane plumes declined after digesters were installed, suggesting the systems are effective overall. However, the researchers also detected occasional leaks that were far more intense than emissions from traditional manure storage.

“For the most part, the digesters are working well,” Valdez says. “But the few leaks that happen, they make a huge impact.”

In some cases, the team observed methane escaping at rates around 1,000 kilograms per hour. By comparison, typical emissions from open manure lagoons ranged from 20 to 100 kilograms per hour.

The contrast highlights a central challenge: digesters concentrate methane in one place, making it easier to capture, but they also increase the risk of powerful releases if something goes wrong.

Those large releases are not limited to system failures. The study also captured spikes in emissions during digester construction and installation, a phase that is rarely measured but can produce substantial short-term increases.

To capture these patterns, the researchers relied on satellite and aircraft data. Satellite images allowed them to track changes across dozens of dairies over long periods, which is not possible with traditional ground-based monitoring. Aircraft measurements were then used to identify concentrated methane plumes over specific infrastructure locations, making the approach especially useful for spotting leaks.

“A farmer might not know their digester is leaking,” Valdez says. “This gives us a way to detect issues early and prevent them from becoming long-term problems.”

However, this method does not capture all emissions. It cannot measure more diffuse methane releases from sources such as lagoons or fields. For that reason, the researchers say satellite and airborne observations are most effective when combined with on-the-ground measurements, which provide a fuller picture.

This need for comprehensive monitoring comes as California continues to invest in digesters as part of its strategy to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. Hundreds of these systems are already operating or in development across the state.

In some cases, methane releases are not accidental. Operators may vent gas when it cannot be flared due to air quality regulations or when systems require maintenance. These process-related emissions add another layer of complexity to managing digester performance.

Even so, the study shows that most systems are working well and that large leaks are relatively uncommon. But for Valdez, who spent years living in California’s Central Valley, and whose family lives there, the work is about ensuring that climate solutions deliver real benefits in a region critical to the nation’s food system.

“This region is the backbone of our food supply, but people there also carry a lot of fear about air quality,” she says. “And they have good reasons for that.”

More broadly, the study highlights the need to pay closer attention to agricultural waste.

“We need to start caring about poop,” Valdez says. “And we need to keep verifying that these solutions are actually working. If we monitor them carefully, we can make sure they deliver on their promise.”

Source: UC Riverside

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Could coral reefs hold the next big medicine?

Researchers have found that coral reefs are home to a vast array of previously unknown bioactive metabolites.

Bioactive metabolites are small biomolecules that have the potential to provide the basis for new drugs, and a host of other products.

“There’s a huge treasure trove of genomic potential,” says University of California, Santa Barbara marine biologist Rebecca Vega Thurber.

Thurber one of the scientists on the 2016-2018 Tara Pacific expedition, a two-year scientific exploration of the coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean. The expedition team studied 32 archipelagos and took a total of 58,000 samples; it was the first research voyage of this scale to examine these fragile ecosystems.

“The mission was to try to characterize the total biodiversity that existed on these pretty unexplored reefs and open water systems,” says Thurber, who directs UCSB’s Marine Science Institute and is a coauthor of a paper in the journal Nature.

The expedition’s research dove into various aspects of the coral reef microbiome—the many, diverse microorganisms that live in and around corals. Thurber’s team was especially interested in the bacteria associated with these reefs.

“In the past, a lot of people looked at bacteria associated with the water, and there’s a lot of really interesting biodiversity associated with the water bacteria, but no one had really taken a deep dive into coral-specific bacteria,” she says.

Taking a genomic approach, which characterizes organisms’ DNA, the researchers examined the bacteria found in two types of stony coral and one type of fire coral. The latter are actually colonial marine organisms more closely related to jellyfish than they are to their stony distant cousins.

The team reconstructed more than 13,000 metagenome-assembled microbial genomes from reef-building coral samples taken during the expedition.

“Ninety percent of what we found had never been found before,” Thurber says. “That’s a total of 3,700 new bacteria we discovered through this approach.”

Virtually all of the newly discovered bacteria were specific to their hosts, and not found in the water, she adds.

This discovery adds a wealth of possibilities for finding and synthesizing important products, using the bioactive molecules these bacteria produce as a result of their metabolisms. Small compounds the bacteria use to grow, communicate, defend themselves, and adapt could be converted for a variety of purposes, from medicine to industry.

“They can be used for drugs, or for industrial purposes,” she points out.

“They could be used in laundry detergents, or in the development of concrete, for example. If you’re developing new biotechnology materials, these biomolecules are really important for allowing scientists to create new synthetic products.”

Among the newly found bacteria they identified were new groups of Acidobacteriota, a ubiquitous and metabolically versatile group that encodes previously unknown enzymology, which could play a promising role in protein engineering.

Furthermore, the team found that the biosynthetic potential of reef-building coral microbiomes rivaled or surpassed that of sponges, a well-known and prolific source of bioactive metabolites. Sponges have been a primary focus for bioactive product discovery, Thurber explains, but corals had never really been explored in terms of their bioactive compounds.

And this is only scratching the surface—the researchers looked at just three species of coral out of hundreds.

“What could we discover if we looked at all corals?” she asks.

All of this potential, unfortunately, exists in fragile ecosystems at the front lines of ocean warming, which has already bleached many coral reef systems in the Pacific.

“It underscores the importance,” the researchers say, “of conserving coral reefs as vital reservoirs of molecular diversity.”

“Coral reefs are doing really badly right now,” Thurber says. “We really wanted a better understanding of what these creatures are capable of and what we could potentially be missing when they’re destroyed.”

Source: UC Santa Barbara

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Could chickens hatch more useful medical proteins in eggs?

A researcher is working to create chickens that hatch useful medical proteins.

Chicken eggs are already used to harvest helpful proteins called antibodies to protect humans from viruses such as influenza.

A new breakthrough at the University of Missouri could one day lead to chickens that produce other useful medical proteins in their eggs.

In a new study, Mizzou researchers solved a common issue in the field of avian genetics known as epigenetic silencing.

In the past, scientists have learned that if they insert a new gene into random places in a chicken’s DNA, the new gene may get “silenced” or turned off over time. Therefore, the chicken—and more importantly, its offspring—might either not inherit the benefit linked with the new gene or the benefit may diminish over time as the new gene gets passed down from generation to generation. That makes it difficult to create a stable line of genetically engineered chickens that produce useful medical proteins.

So, Mizzou scientists tried a new approach to avoid epigenetic silencing. Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, researchers focused on a specific enzyme that plays a key role in glucose metabolism inside a chicken cell. They attached a marker that glows green, allowing them to easily see whether a gene stays turned on.

“This enzyme, GAPDH, is needed to break down sugar to make energy, so every cell needs it to survive,” Kiho Lee, a professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and study author, says.

“Our hypothesis was that since this enzyme is active all the time, the gene segment we introduce into that location should stay on all the time.”

After multiple months and many rounds of cell division, the researchers were excited by what they saw in the chicken cells in Lee’s lab: the reporter genes were still glowing bright green, indicating that gene silencing never occurred.

The success of this proof-of-concept study paves the way to see whether Lee and his team can create a platform for developing a stable line of genetically modified chickens. They’re collaborating with scientists and industry partners to see which genetic modifications would be most helpful to various stakeholders.

“This work could ultimately support efforts to make a stable line of genetically engineered birds that lay many eggs, all of which will hopefully contain useful proteins that can be used in various clinical applications for human medicine,” Lee says.

“There could also be agricultural and economic implications of this work, too. With how devastating avian influenza is to birds, if a new gene segment that can mitigate transmission of the virus can be inserted into the chicken’s genome, we would want that new gene segment to stay on and get passed down from generation to generation.”

The research appears in Poultry Science.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the United States Department of Agriculture.

Source: University of Missouri

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