UTA study explores zinc’s power to heal blast injuries

Researchers aim to develop a safe treatment to limit muscle loss and promote regeneration after traumatic wounds

University of Texas at Arlington

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Dr. Zui Pan, professor of graduate nursing (UTA Photo)

view more 

Credit: UT Arlington

Researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington are pursuing a potential breakthrough that could help soldiers recover from devastating blast injuries.

Zui Pan, professor of graduate nursing at UT Arlington, is leading the 20-month study exploring how zinc might protect and regenerate muscle tissue damaged by trauma. The multidisciplinary study team also includes bioengineering professors Jun Liao and Yi Hong, along with Yingjie Liu, an assistant professor of research at UTA’s Bone-Muscle Research Center and a member of the RISE 100 initiative.

Although injuries from the initial blast are irreversible, the team’s research focuses on reducing secondary damage, the progressive tissue loss that occurs after the initial injury as reduced blood flow, swelling and infection further destroy muscle and surrounding tissue. Secondary damage is often just as severe as initial damage and is potentially catastrophic.

“To save lives and stop bleeding, we often use a tourniquet or bandage to stop blood flow to the affected area, which induces severe ischemia—meaning no blood flow,” said Dr. Pan, director of a lab focused on calcium signaling in cancer and other diseases. “When the bandage or tourniquet is removed, the blood rushes back into the area—a process called reperfusion. This brings oxygen back, but it can actually cause more tissue damage. Our goal is to find ways to reduce this secondary damage.”

Zinc has been shown to facilitate muscle regeneration, Pan said, but it must be administered in a controlled manner.

“If too much zinc is given, it can become toxic and cause more damage,” she said.

To test its effectiveness, researchers will use a zinc-infused gel known as gelatin methacryloyl—an FDA-approved material—to study how it promotes muscle regeneration following blast injuries.

While precise statistics are hard to determine, blast injuries among service members have increased since the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A 2016 Department of Veterans Affairs report found that 74% of all combat injuries between 2001 and 2011 were caused by explosions.

Beyond military applications, the research could also benefit civilians recovering from severe trauma caused by car accidents, sports injuries or natural disasters such as earthquakes.

“Our long-term goal is to identify a safe and convenient way to apply zinc directly to muscle tissue to help protect skeletal muscle from ischemia reperfusion injury and promote regeneration,” Pan said.

The study is part of the UT System’s Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative (TRC4), created to address the critical needs for improvement of trauma care both on the battlefield and in the civilian world.

About The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)

Celebrating its 130th anniversary in 2025, The University of Texas at Arlington is a growing public research university in the heart of the thriving Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. With a student body of over 42,700, UTA is the second-largest institution in the University of Texas System, offering more than 180 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Recognized as a Carnegie R-1 university, UTA stands among the nation’s top 5% of institutions for research activity. UTA and its 280,000 alumni generate an annual economic impact of $28.8 billion for the state. The University has received the Innovation and Economic Prosperity designation from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and has earned recognition for its focus on student access and success, considered key drivers to economic growth and social progress for North Texas and beyond.

 

A novel climate biostress model and sentinel system seeks to track global climate impacts

Published in Cell Reports Sustainability, the paper presents an interdisciplinary framework for detecting and responding to the biological signatures of climate change

Advanced Science Research Center, GC/CUNY

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

On the cover of the current issue of Cell Reports journal. The Earth’s dynamic climate produces biological impacts that play out across time and the global biosphere.  A newly proposed climate biostress sentinel system would use advanced technologies to detect and evaluate the impacts of human-dominated, accelerating global change.

view more 

Credit: Nicoletta Barolini

NEW YORK, NY, November 10, 2025 – An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) has unveiled a groundbreaking conceptual model and integrative monitoring framework designed to reveal how climate change is stressing life across the planet. Their study, published this week in Cell Reports Sustainability, introduces the concept of the Climate BioStress model and proposes the adoption of an integrative Climate BioStress Sentinel System (CBS3), which could transform how researchers, policymakers, and communities detect, understand, and respond to climate threats.

The research starts from simple but urgent questions: What is the impact of climate change across the living kingdoms of Earth, and can these effects be systematically detected? The team’s answer is that climate biostress manifests as detectable biological signatures — ranging from genetic shifts to changes in individual organisms and entire ecosystems — that can serve as early warning signals of climate-driven change.

“Life has always carried the imprint of stress in its biochemistry, physiology, and behaviors,” said the study’s lead author Charles J. Vörösmarty, founding director of the CUNY ASRC Environmental Science Initiative, Einstein Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, and of Geography at Hunter College. “By systematically identifying these stress signatures across species and ecosystems, we can better understand the cascading effects of climate change and provide real-time insights for mitigation. This includes humans and our social and built infrastructures.”

A Sentinel System for a Stressed Biosphere

CBS3 is envisioned as a global, multi-scale network for detecting and integrating climate stress indicators across biological, built, and social infrastructures — making it particularly well-suited for deployment in dense urban environments. The system draws on cutting-edge tools such as genomic sequencing, biochemical analysis, advanced sensing technologies, artificial intelligence, and socio-environmental data to benchmark current conditions and track changes over time.

The study highlights a range of sentinel organisms and species that can serve as measurable indicators, including:

• Microbes and phytoplankton, which regulate greenhouse gases and oxygen production
• Amphibians, long recognized as highly sensitive to environmental change
• Sessile organisms like corals and trees, whose growth patterns record long-term climate stress
• Lichens and other symbionts sensitive to heat and pollution

CBS3 would also incorporate human-centered data — from government records to social media — to capture how climate stress reverberates through societies and economies. The study team also imagines the extensive use of citizen science-collected environmental data using advanced microsensors that can be installed in homes or businesses or as wearable clothing by millions of people. These data can then be uploaded through cell phones to give a near-real time, integrated picture of biostress, which the researchers liken to a weather report for climate stress.

A Pan-Scientific Grand Challenge

Developing and deploying CBS3 represents what the authors call a “pan-scientific grand challenge” that spans at least 12 orders of magnitude in space and time — from molecular chemistry to planetary-scale dynamics. While technical challenges remain, the study argues that science is ready for an initial rollout of sentinel-based systems.

“By providing operational tracking of climate effects on multiple systems, our study aligns with the One Health concept integrating data from humans, animals, and ecosystems,” said study co-author Patrizia Casaccia, founding director of the CUNY ASRC Neuroscience Initiative and Einstein Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at the CUNY Graduate Center. “We suggest that the implementation of sentinel systems, inclusive of data on plants, microbes, animals, people, water, and soil would provide an important tool for monitoring the impact of climate stressors and test the effectiveness of any global commitments built around such a sentinel system. Overall, these approaches would inform policy decisions and guide investments in climate response.”

“While climate adaptation is geared toward protecting humans and social and economic systems, our work shows that adaptation alone will be insufficient,” added co-author Kevin Gardner, founding director of the CUNY ASRC Structural Biology Initiative and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the City College of New York. “CBS3 offers a way to detect climate stress early and mobilize more effective, data-driven responses that could guide mitigation strategies to minimize the impact on the biosphere.”

DOI: 10.1016/j.crsus.2025.100558

About the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center
The Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) is a world-leading center of scientific excellence that elevates STEM inquiry and education at CUNY and beyond. The CUNY ASRC’s research initiatives span five distinctive, but broadly interconnected disciplines: nanoscience, photonics, neuroscience, structural biology, and environmental sciences. The center promotes a collaborative, interdisciplinary research culture where renowned and emerging scientists advance their discoveries using state-of-the-art equipment and cutting-edge core facilities.

About the Graduate Center of The City University of New York
The CUNY Graduate Center is a leader in public graduate education devoted to enhancing the public good through pioneering research, serious learning, and reasoned debate. The Graduate Center offers ambitious students nearly 50 doctoral and master’s programs of the highest caliber, taught by top faculty from throughout CUNY — the nation’s largest urban public university. Through its nearly 40 centers, institutes, initiatives, and the Advanced Science Research Center, the Graduate Center influences public policy and discourse and shapes innovation. The Graduate Center’s extensive public programs make it a home for culture and conversation. 

The Earth’s dynamic climate produces biological impacts that play out across time and the global biosphere.  A newly proposed climate biostress sentinel system would use advanced technologies to detect and evaluate the impacts of human-dominated, accelerating global change.

Credit

Nicoletta Barolini

---

Journal

Cell Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.crsus.2025.100558 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A Climate BioStress Sentinel System (CBS3): Identifying Climate Impacts from the Genome to Urbanized Biosphere

Article Publication Date

10-Nov-2025

 

Suicide prevention program decreases risks, saves lives among people recently released from jail

An experimental program for people in jail tested by researchers from Brown and Michigan State reduced the number of suicide attempts by more than half in the year after jail detention.

Brown University

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A federally funded clinical trial to evaluate an intervention to prevent suicides among people recently released from jail reduced suicide attempts by 55%.

That’s according to a new study in JAMA Network Open led by researchers from Brown University and Michigan State University.

In the United States, one in five adults who attempts suicide has spent at least one night in jail in the year prior. With more than 10 million admissions per year and many stays of just a few days, jails touch a significant number of people at high risk for suicide who are not well connected with other support services. This led psychologists to ask: What if trained professionals intervened while people were detained in jail to decrease suicide risk once they got out?

With funding from federal grants, the research team tested a safety planning intervention that involved an in-jail program and telephone check-ins over the course of six months. The trial was called Suicide Prevention for at-Risk Individuals in Transition and the results show that it reduced suicide attempts by more than half.

The researchers noted that while public discourse tends to focus on preventing suicides in jail, there has been little emphasis on decreasing risks before or after detention.

“We chose to focus on the period surrounding jail detention, including those first six months after return to the community, as a critical point of intervention for people who are at risk for suicide, and also one that had been largely ignored in the scientific literature,” said study author Lauren Weinstock, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University.

Weinstock, a clinical psychologist, led the project in Providence, Rhode Island, while clinical psychologist Jennifer Johnson, a professor at Michigan State University and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown, led the project in Michigan. With other researchers, they partnered with the late psychologist Barbara Stanley from Columbia University and Greg Brown at the University of Pennsylvania, who had developed an intervention for suicide prevention that had been used in hospital emergency departments.

The research team conducted a randomized clinical trial of 800 at-risk individuals recruited in two mid-size jails: the Rhode Island Department of Corrections and Genesee County Jail in Michigan. Of this group, the researchers followed up with 655 people after release from jail.

Trained therapists met with study participants while they were in jail for a single safety planning session focused on strategies they could use to keep themselves safe while in jail and after they were released. After the participants returned to the community, the therapists followed up with regular phone calls for six months.

“The idea was to build that trust up front, as well as a shared understanding of what someone can do to stay safe,” Weinstock said.

During the follow-up calls, the clinician would provide support and assess suicide risk, connect the person to treatment or care (for example, making an appointment for mental health services), and help with problem-solving around life’s challenges, such as family conflicts or work issues.

According to the study, in the year after jail detention, the intervention reduced suicide attempts by more than half, and suicide events (including suicidal behaviors and suicide-related hospitalizations) by 42%, compared to the enhanced standard care people leaving jail typically receive.

The researchers showed that the safety planning intervention, which had been successful in emergency departments, could also translate to the jail setting.

“The number of stressors and strains encountered in the criminal and legal setting were very notable,” Weinstock said. “There were high rates of prior suicide attempts, substance use and trauma exposure, with people sharing stories of very difficult life circumstances. This was a population at an extremely high risk for suicide, so it was informative to see how effective this intervention could be with this particular group.”

Weinstock said that the next challenge is encouraging the adoption of the intervention on a wider scale. The team is using data from this study to prepare a cost-effectiveness analysis, and they intend to develop an implementation study as well. 

“We hope that correctional and community mental health systems can work in partnership to implement safety planning,” Weinstock said. “The goal is to provide these systems with the most important data they need to move towards change in their routine practices, in a larger effort to save lives.”

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (U01MH106660), with additional funding from the National Institute of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Suicide Prevention Research and the National Institute of Justice.

---

Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.43156 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Safety planning vs. standard care for suicide prevention after pretrial jail detention: A randomized clinical trial

Article Publication Date

10-Nov-2025

COI Statement

Dr. Weinstock reports receiving grant funding from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIMH/NIH), the Warren Alpert Foundation, and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI); consulting payments from the University of California Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder; and book royalties from Oxford University Press. Dr. Johnson reports receiving grants from Suicide Prevention 19 NIH; consulting fees from CareSource, a nonprofit managed care organization; and from the Michigan Hospital Association. Dr. Arias reports receiving grants from NIMH/NIH and Advance-RI Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) funded through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH (NIGMS/NIH). Dr. Brown has equity in Oui Therapeutics and reports receiving grants from NIMH/NIH and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP); book royalties from the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association; and royalties from the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene for the commercial use of the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale. Dr. Gaudiano reports receiving grant support from NIH, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and AFSP; consulting payments from Harvard University and the Department of Defense; and book royalties from Oxford University Press and Guilford Press. Dr. Kubiak reports grants and contracts with NIMH/NIH, the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, Flinn Foundation, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Michigan Justice Fund, and the Public Welfare Foundation. Dr. I.W. Miller reports receiving grants from NIMH/NIH and the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the NIH (NIDA/NIH); and book royalties from Oxford University Press. Dr. T.R. Miller reports receiving grants from NIMH/NIH. Mr. Russell is the CEO of Genessee Health System. Dr. Stein reports receiving grants from NIH and book royalties from Oxford University Press and the University of North Carolina Press. Dr. Yen reports receiving grants from the Department of Mental Health in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, NIMH/NIH, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health of the NIH (NCCIH/NIH). No other disclosures were reported.

 

Shell Abandons Two Major UK Offshore Wind Projects

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Nov 10, 2025

Shell has exited two offshore wind power projects in Scotland as the world’s top oil and gas firms continue to scale back their investment and involvement in renewable energy.  

Shell has ditched plans to build two wind farms offshore Scotland, days after announcing it is withdrawing from the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind project in the United States.  

Offshore Scotland, Shell sought to develop the MarramWind project in a 50/50 joint venture with ScottishPower Renewables, and to build the CampionWind offshore wind farm as sole owner of the project. 

However, Shell has now sold its 50% in MarramWind to ScottishPower Renewables, which will develop the proposed floating offshore windfarm that could deliver up to 3 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy, enough to power the equivalent of more than 3.5 million homes.

Shell has also returned the CampionWind lease to Crown Estate Scotland. 

The supermajor and Iberdrola-owned ScottishPower Renewables won the leases in Crown Estate Scotland’s landmark ScotWind Leasing auction in January 2022.

But regulatory changes, cost inflation, and high interest rates have impacted project economics in the offshore wind industry in the past three years. 

“Shell believes that returning the CampionWind lease to CES will offer the best opportunity for any potential future the site may have,” the supermajor said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg. 

Shell and the other European supermajor, BP, have shifted focus back to their core oil and gas business. The pivot took place after the energy crisis made energy security and affordability more important than sustainability, while high interest rates and supply chain issues further reduced already meager returns from clean energy projects and made many new energy ventures uncompetitive.   

Two weeks ago, Shell withdrew from the Atlantic Shores 50-50 joint venture with EDF power solutions, established to develop offshore wind projects off the coast of New Jersey and New York. 

Shell assigned its 50% outstanding membership interests to the existing joint venture partner with immediate effect. 

“This decision was taken in line with Shell’s power strategy, where we continue to maximize the value of our platforms and high-grade our portfolio, shifting away from capital-intensive generation projects to assets that support our trading and retail strengths,” the supermajor said. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com