UVA, military researchers seek better ways to identify, treat blast-related brain injuries

Research backed by $5.3 million department of defense grant

University of Virginia Health System

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UVA Health's James Stone, MD, PhD, is helping lead research to help better identify, prevent and treat brain injuries for military personnel caused by repeated blast exposures.

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Credit: UVA Health

University of Virginia School of Medicine and Naval Medical Research Command (NMRC) researchers will use a federal Department of Defense grant to better identify, prevent and treat brain injuries for military personnel caused by repeated blast exposures.

The four research projects funded by the $5.3 million grant will explore the role of the neurovascular unit – the interactions between blood vessels in the brain and brain tissue – in maintaining healthy brain function and how damage to the unit can cause chronic health conditions.

“This is about moving from concern to capability, turning careful science into practical ways to identify, prevent, and treat blast-related brain injury,” said James Stone, MD, PhD, a UVA Health radiologist who is helping lead the research. “Together with NMRC, we’ll map how blast affects the brain’s vasculature and deliver objective measures to help support smart training and precise care for our service members and veterans.”

The project will add to nearly 20 years of research by Stone, Ahlers and colleagues that seeks to better understand how regular blast exposures, common in military training and combat, affect the brain over time. Previous research has shown that frequent, low-level blast exposures from weapons or breaching – the use of explosives to enter buildings or other structures – can cause cumulative brain injuries and subtle but meaningful changes in brain function. 

“We are sincerely honored that our collaborative team received a second multi-million-dollar focused program award in recognition of our efforts to understand changes in the brain vasculature after exposure to blast overpressure, especially given the scarcity of funding in this highly competitive environment,” Stephen Ahlers, PhD, a retired Navy captain and NMRC researcher who is leading the project. “We expect that this effort will go a long way to better understand how blast overpressure affects the brain that will generate new biomarkers to assess exposures and treatments to prevent chronic impairments in service members and veterans.” 

How Blasts Affect the Brain

These research projects aim to protect long-term brain health in military personnel by:

• developing non-invasive biomarkers that show blast-induced changes to the brain
• helping determine blast exposure limits during training environments
• identifying potential treatments
• reducing the impact of blast-related brain function and psychological issues among military personnel and veterans

One study will examine how repetitive blast exposure affects the ability of the brain’s blood vessels to regulate blood flow. Study participants with varying levels of blast exposure will undergo advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine if blood flow is impaired in military personnel with higher lifetime blast exposure. Researchers also aim to identify markers that could serve as early indicators of blast-related brain injury.

The second study will investigate how repeated blast exposure affects the brain’s glymphatic system, which removes waste products from the brain. The study will use MRI scans of military study participants to determine if disruptions to the glymphatic system cause declines in brain function. The results could establish new imaging-based measures for assessing subtle brain health effects from repetitive blast exposure and lead to strategies for protecting or rehabilitating the brain.

Another study will assess how repeated exposure to low-intensity blasts affects the cells that make up the neurovascular unit, with that better understanding hopefully leading to new therapies to restore brain and blood vessel health.

The final study will work to identify molecular indicators of blast exposure and test strategies to prevent injuries to blood vessels. Researchers will focus on the endothelial glycocalyx, a microscopic structure that lines blood vessels and regulates blood flow.

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AMS Science Preview: Railways and cyclones; pinned clouds; weather warnings in wartime

Early online research from journals of the American Meteorological Society

American Meteorological Society

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The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Many of these articles are available for early online access–they are peer-reviewed, but not yet in their final published form. Below are some recent examples of online and early-online research.

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

Remote Effects of Urbanization on Temperatures in Adjacent Cities: A Case Study in Utah
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Adjacent urban areas appear to exacerbate each other’s heat island effects. A modeling study of greater Salt Lake City (SLC) and the smaller Utah cities of Ogden and Provo suggests that SLC may raise the temperature in neighboring urban areas by up to 1°C. The smaller cities also amplify heat effects in SLC.

The Critical Need for Hindcast Infrastructure in Climate Science and Sectoral Applications
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

U.S. hindcasting infrastructure is “fragile and underfunded” compared with Europe. Re-running an old forecast with a new component added (hindcasting) allows researchers to correct errors and test how much a new technique or technology improves forecasting. Hindcasts are vital to many sectors, yet this paper’s authors find that the forecast archives on which U.S.-specific hindcasts depend are patchy and underfunded.

“The U.S. currently has an underfunded, fragile hindcast archive infrastructure upon which a tremendous amount of investment and decision support depends. It is critical that our hindcast archive infrastructure be brought into the 21st century.”

Monitoring Microscale Heat Stress Patterns in a Medium-Dense Urban Area with Green Spaces
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Trees beat buildings for urban shade. This study finds that consumer-grade portable measurement devices can provide useful assessments of wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT, a heat stress measure) across urban “microenvironments.” Using these observations, the authors found that buildings either increased or decreased urban WBGT depending on the side of the building measured; tree shade decreased WBGT by 3.5 °C., making trees more reliable against heat stress. At night, unpaved surfaces reduce heat stress by 0.8 °C WBGT.

Assessing Tropical Cyclone Risks to China’s High-Speed Rail Network
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

China’s high-speed rail network is vulnerable to tropical cyclones. 42.7% of the China Railway High-speed (CRH) network is exposed to areas with elevated tropical cyclone risk, and 26 of the 30 busiest CRH lines face elevated risks across multiple sections of their routes, the authors find. The Beijing–Shanghai line, the busiest in the network, exhibits risk exposure across 99.8% of its total length, underscoring the need to improve resilience and warning systems.

Pinned Clouds over Industrial Sources of Heat during TRACER
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Industrial facilities create “pinned clouds.” Stereo cameras in a research campaign monitoring aerosols and convection in Houston, Texas, show that around dawn, seemingly stationary plumes of cloud often appear over gas-fired power plant facilities. These “pinned” clouds are not steam emanating from industrial chimneys but rather the result of air rising after being warmed over industrial heating sources. They can stay in the same place for over an hour.

What are the Costs of Heat Spell Mortality in Europe's Urban Areas up to 2050?
Weather, Climate, and Society

Heat waves, pollution interact to drive up cardiopulmonary deaths. Heat-related cardiopulmonary disease (CPD) deaths could triple by mid-century in Europe and Asia minor, costing €90 billion annually in welfare economic costs. The study also finds a strong link between air pollution and heat-related CPD deaths, suggesting that combating air pollution could prevent up to 190,000 heat-related deaths by 2050.

Weathering Conflict: Impacts and Solutions for Protecting Hydrometeorological Infrastructure during Armed Conflict
Weather, Climate, and Society

Armed conflict compromises forecasts and disaster warnings. Damage to weather observing stations and similar infrastructure by armed groups exacerbates disaster risk in conflict zones, according to an analysis of weather and water data combined with conflict reports and expert interviews. The authors found that “conflict limits the collection, protection, and storage of hydrometeorological observations, which are crucial for producing weather forecasts and warnings [and that] hydrometeorological infrastructure has been directly destroyed and damaged by armed groups.”

Characterizing the Relation between Lightning and Wildfires in the Western United States
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Fire-igniting lightning strikes are flashier. Lighting flashes that ignite wildfires are “larger and 3–4 times brighter” than average strikes, and tend to come from weaker, drier storms, according to a study of U.S. western wildfires using data from the National Lightning Detection Network, Geostationary Lightning Mapper, and radar. The study also finds that 11% of ignition-causing flashes have been misclassified as intra-cloud strikes.

Amplified Global Seasonality in Water Availability over Land in Recent Decades
Journal of Climate

Dry seasons getting drier with global warming. Using data from 2000 to 2020, the authors find that the range of seasonal water availability has increased significantly worldwide, primarily driven by water availability minimums sinking lower (with ever-higher levels of evaporation compared with precipitation). According to the authors, this "underscores the growing imbalance in global seasonal water availability with climate warming."

Convective Mode Classification and Distribution of Contiguous United States Tornado Events from 2003–2023
Weather and Forecasting

Tornado weather changes. Analysis of 2003–23 data reveals different distributions for two tornado-producing weather types. Supercell thunderstorms that produce tornadoes were more frequent over a wider area of the U.S., but declined in frequency over the study period. Quasi-linear convective systems (QLCS) that produce tornadoes were concentrated further to the East; QLCS tornado frequency increased over the measured period, though these tornadoes tended to be weaker.

You can view all research published in AMS Journals at journals.ametsoc.org.

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About the American Meteorological Society

The American Meteorological Society advances the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications, and services for the benefit of society. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of around 12,000 professionals, students, and weather enthusiasts. AMS publishes 12 atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic science journals; hosts more than 12 conferences annually; and offers numerous programs and services. Visit us at www.ametsoc.org/.

About AMS Journals

The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Some AMS journals are open access. Media login credentials are available for subscription journals. Journals include the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Weather, Climate, and Society, the Journal of Climate, and Monthly Weather Review.

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Journal

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

Who knew? Tremendous use for waste medical masks: The buster of microplastic

Higher Education Press

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Post-COVID-19, two big environmental problems stand out: piles of waste medical masks and non-degradable microplastics, with existing methods like incineration being inefficient. Researchers from Zhejiang Normal University found a solution—they turned waste masks into blue-fluorescent carbon quantum dots (MCQDs) via a simple solvothermal process, then doped MCQDs into BiOBr/g-C3N4 to build an S-scheme heterojunction photocatalyst to degrade microplastics. DFT calculations confirmed an interfacial electric field in the heterojunction, while radical capture experiments identified ·O2⁻ and h⁺ as key active species.

The optimized BiOBr/g-C₃N₄/3MCQDs degraded 39.88%±1.04% of PET in seawater—where Cl⁻ enhanced performance by exposing active sites—1.37 times more effective than BiOBr/g-C₃N₄ and better than most reported catalysts. It’s stable (over 90% efficiency after 5 cycles), and PET degradation products (e.g., ethylene glycol, benzoic acid) can be used for polymers or drugs.

The work titled “Waste medical mask-derived carbon quantum dots enhance the photocatalytic degradation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) over BiOBr/g-C3N4 S-scheme heterojunction”, was published on Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica (published on July 25, 2025).

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Journal

Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica

DOI

10.1016/j.actphy.2025.100135 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Waste medical mask-derived carbon quantum dots enhance the photocatalytic degradation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) over BiOBr/g-C3N4 S-scheme heterojunction

 

New AI language-vision models transform traffic video analysis to improve road safety

NYU Tandon researchers win New York City’s Vision Zero Research Award for breakthrough AI that goes beyond video processing — automatically reasoning about road-safety risks from thousands of hours of footage

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

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New York City's thousands of traffic cameras capture endless hours of footage each day, but analyzing that video to identify safety problems and implement improvements typically requires resources that most transportation agencies don't have.

Now, researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering have developed an artificial intelligence system that can automatically identify collisions and near-misses in existing traffic video by combining language reasoning and visual intelligence, potentially transforming how cities improve road safety without major new investments.

Published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, the research won New York City's Vision Zero Research Award, an annual recognition of work that aligns with the City's road safety priorities and offers actionable insights. Professor Kaan Ozbay, the paper's senior author, presented the study at the eighth annual Research on the Road symposium on November 19.

The work exemplifies cross-disciplinary collaboration between computer vision experts from NYU's new Center for Robotics and Embodied Intelligence and transportation safety researchers at NYU Tandon's C2SMART center, where Ozbay serves as Director.

By automatically identifying where and when collisions and near-misses occur, the team’s system — called SeeUnsafe — can help transportation agencies pinpoint dangerous intersections and road conditions that need intervention before more serious accidents happen. It leverages pre-trained AI models that can understand both images and text, representing one of the first applications of multimodal large language models to analyze long-form traffic videos.

"You have a thousand cameras running 24/7 in New York City. Having people examine and analyze all that footage manually is untenable," Ozbay said. "SeeUnsafe gives city officials a highly effective way to take full advantage of that existing investment."

"Agencies don't need to be computer vision experts. They can use this technology without the need to collect and label their own data to train an AI-based video analysis model," added NYU Tandon Associate Professor Chen Feng, a co-founding director of the Center for Robotics and Embodied Intelligence, and paper co-author.

Tested on the Toyota Woven Traffic Safety dataset, SeeUnsafe outperformed other models, correctly classifying videos as collisions, near-misses, or normal traffic 76.71% of the time. The system can also identify which specific road users were involved in critical events, with success rates reaching up to 87.5%.

Traditionally, traffic safety interventions are implemented only after accidents occur. By analyzing patterns of near-misses — such as vehicles passing too close to pedestrians or performing risky maneuvers at intersections — agencies can proactively identify danger zones. This approach enables the implementation of preventive measures like improved signage, optimized signal timing, and redesigned road layouts before serious accidents take place.

The system generates “road safety reports” — natural language explanations for its decisions, describing factors like weather conditions, traffic volume, and the specific movements that led to near-misses or collisions.

While the system has limitations, including sensitivity to object tracking accuracy and challenges with low-light conditions, it establishes a foundation for using AI to “understand” road safety context from vast amounts of traffic footage. The researchers suggest the approach could extend to in-vehicle dash cameras, potentially enabling real-time risk assessment from a driver's perspective.

The research adds to a growing body of work from C2SMART that can improve New York City's transportation systems. Recent projects include studying how heavy electric trucks could strain the city's roads and bridges, analyzing how speed cameras change driver behavior across different neighborhoods, developing a “digital twin” that can find smarter routing to reduce FDNY response times, and a multi-year collaboration with the City to monitor the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for damage-causing overweight vehicles.

In addition to Ozbay and Feng, the paper's authors are lead author Ruixuan Zhang, a Ph.D. student in transportation engineering at NYU Tandon; Beichen Wang and Juexiao Zhang, both graduate students from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; and Zilin Bian, a recent NYU Tandon Ph.D. graduate now an assistant professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Funding for the research came from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Transportation's University Transportation Centers Program.

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Journal

Accident Analysis & Prevention

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2025.108077 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

When language and vision meet road safety: Leveraging multimodal large language models for video-based traffic accident analysis