PRONOUNCED; NOOGING

‘Nudging’ both patients and providers boosts flu vaccine numbers

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

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PHILADELPPHIA—Patients were 28 percent more likely to get a flu shot when they got a text message reminder and their primary care provider already had an order for the shot waiting, new research from the Perelman School of Medicine showed. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

“This is important given the rise in vaccine hesitancy, which has resulted in a downward trend in flu vaccination that coincided with a high rate of hospitalization this flu season,” said the study’s lead author, Shivan Mehta, MD, MBA, MSHP, associate chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine. “Many nudge interventions directed to patients only on vaccinations have shown limited effectiveness in the United States, so we wanted to make sure that we addressed both sides of the exam room: the patient and the clinician.”   

The researchers believe these results might point to some strategies that could help boost how many people get the shot every year for an illness that has hospitalized up to 710,000 people each year since 2010—and killed as many as 52,000 Americans annually. 

Nudging versus standard care 

The study tested several forms of “nudging,” a behavioral science concept that means small tweaks that make the healthiest choices the easiest ones. Patients who were eligible for the vaccine received flu shot reminder texts (or automated voice recordings), had automatic orders for a flu shot waiting for their clinician to approve, and monthly personalized messages were sent to providers that compared their patients’ vaccination rates to their clinician peers. 

More than 52,000 people were randomly assigned to two groups: one that received all of the nudges or a “standard care” control group at either the University of Pennsylvania Health System or the University of Washington’s health system, UW Medicine The standard care team didn’t get any of the nudges and followed the usual path for getting a flu vaccine, which relies largely on the clinician remembering to offer the vaccine based on information in the electronic health records. Researchers found that almost 3,000 more people got flu shots when they were nudged than would have been expected if they got normal care. 

Why nudging patients and clinicians worked 

Mehta and his colleagues are encouraged by their findings, driven mainly by the importance of communication and trust. 

“We think the automatic order encouraged primary care physicians to have a conversation with their patients, and we know these clinicians still have a lot of trust from their communities,” said co-senior author Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, a professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, as well as a professor of Health Care Management in the Wharton School.  

The work continues at scale 

The team has replicated their work at Lancaster General Health in the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which serves a rural and suburban patient base that looks somewhat different than the study populations in this study drawn largely from Philadelphia and Seattle. They are still analyzing the results of this replication study.  

Since the work leverages existing tools in the electronic health record along with other available technologies but no additional staffing or human effort, it could be particularly attractive to health systems looking to augment their flu shot efforts.  

“Future interventions could be more successful by complementing the automated communication with clinical staff to engage with patients that are still hesitant, and integrating flu vaccine nudges with other interventions focused on preventive health, like cancer screening,” Mehta said.  

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Journal

JAMA Internal Medicine

DOI

10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.7133 

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

THE NEW GREEN REVOLUTION

Grant to expand self-cloning crop technology for Indian farmers

Plant biologist receives grant to produce higher-yielding crops for sustainable agriculture

University of California - Davis

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Venkatesan Sundaresan, a Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a Gates Foundation grant to develop self-cloning crops for Indian farmers. The five-year, $4.9 million project is a collaboration with researchers Myeong-Je Cho at UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), Viswanathan Chinnusamy at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI), New Delhi and Ravi Maruthachalam at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER-Thiruvananthapuram). 

The project aims to sustainably improve agricultural productivity by producing high-yielding crops that clone themselves, allowing farmers to save their superior seeds from one season to the next. It’s based on a technology called “synthetic apomixis,” which Sundaresan’s lab previously developed in rice. 

With the new funding, the team will expand the technology into other staple crops, starting with pearl millet and Indian mustard, two crops that are regionally important in India but do not usually receive international research attention.

“It’s wonderful that the Gates Foundation has taken an interest in this technology,” said Sundaresan. “Their funding makes it possible for us to apply our method to specific crops in contexts where it can make a difference.”

Giving neglected crops the attention they deserve

Pearl millet and Indian mustard (also known as brown mustard) are widely cultivated in India, but are not traded much internationally. That means they receive less attention from funding agencies, seed developers and agricultural companies.

“Big seed companies generally want to work on huge worldwide crops like corn, soybeans and tomatoes,” said Sundaresan. “The technology we develop with this grant will directly benefit smallholder farmers in developing countries.”

Like many other crops, pearl millet and Indian mustard produce higher yields through hybrid breeding — when two genetically different varieties are crossbred. However, hybrid seeds are expensive to produce and must be purchased each year, because when hybrid plants self-fertilize, their optimal genetic combination gets scrambled, resulting in offspring with sub-par yields. 

To make hybrid crops’ high-yielding capacity stable from generation to generation, Sundaresan’s lab developed synthetic apomixis, which allows plants to clone themselves. Self-cloning hybrid varieties of pearl millet and Indian mustard will be more accessible to smallholder farmers.

Branching from grains to vegetable crops 

Sundaresan’s team originally developed synthetic apomixis in rice and has shown that the same approach can work in maize. An independent research team recently used their methods to produce self-cloning sorghum.

Extending synthetic apomixis to Indian mustard may present an additional hurdle, because it belongs to a very different branch of the plant evolutionary tree. Whereas rice, sorghum and pearl millet are all grass-like monocots, Indian mustard is a dicot in the same genus as cabbage, kale and broccoli. Because embryonic development is different in dicots, the researchers may need to significantly modify parts of their method in order to obtain self-cloning mustard. If they succeed, it will open up the possibility of using synthetic apomixis in a broad range of vegetable crops.

“It may be more complicated to move this technology into dicots, because the embryo initiation process is a little different, but I'm hoping that in five years, we'll have the technology working in Indian mustard,” said Sundaresan. “Our discoveries will also yield valuable information for other dicot crops.”

A tweak to remove transgenics 

In addition to extending synthetic apomixis to new crop species, the project aims to tweak the technology so that it no longer involves transgenics — the insertion of foreign DNA from one species into another. Instead, the researchers want to develop a version of synthetic apomixis that relies exclusively on gene editing, which involves mutating or editing an organism’s existing genes using methods such as CRISPR/Cas9.

Doing so will make synthetic apomixis more widely accessible, because gene-edited crops are usually subject to less stringent regulations than transgenic crops. India recently passed laws to deregulate gene-edited crops, which means that, if successful, any self-cloning varieties produced through this project will be treated in the same way as conventionally bred varieties.

“The time is right to develop these crops in India,” said Sundaresan. “If the technology is a success there, I think it will quickly become adopted by other countries around the developing world. I'm hoping that we have, so to speak, the seeds of a new agricultural revolution in place.”

 

Atlantic nurse sharks show faster growth patterns in Biscayne Bay than nearby Bimini, Bahamas

University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science

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image: 

A juvenile nurse shark is gently restrained for measurements and sampling.

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Credit: Shark Research and Conservation Program, University of Miami Rosenstiel School.

A new study based on long-term monitoring data demonstrates significant differences in growth between nurse sharks off the coast of Miami and those living just across the Gulf Stream.

A new study from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science shows that juvenile Atlantic nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) grow more rapidly as juveniles and reach smaller maximum sizes than nurse sharks in Bimini, Bahamas—locations so close that these populations have historically been assumed to be the same.

Evidence from long-term fisheries-independent monitoring by the Shark Research and Conservation Program at the Rosenstiel School shows Biscayne Bay is an important nursery habitat for numerous species of shark. 

“Despite human degradation of Biscayne Bay, our data suggests it remains critical habitat for many species of juvenile shark, providing essential resources and protection from predation early in life,” said John Hlavin, Ph.D. student in the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy and lead author on the study. 

“Using data from nurse sharks captured more than once between 2017 and 2025, we were able to assess their growth rates and estimate the size of habitats they rely on based on the distance between initial and final capture,” said Emily Yeager, co-author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School. “We found significant differences that show more rapid growth at smaller sizes in Biscayne Bay compared to the Bahamas.”

The study found that juvenile nurse sharks in Biscayne Bay likely rely on small home ranges while young, which increase in size as they grow, and that their growth rates and maximum size are distinct from nearby nurse sharks in the Bahamas. 

“These differences are likely to be driven by variances in access to resources, suggesting that resource availability may be more limited in Bimini, or that juveniles in Bimini may face greater competition from abundant juvenile lemon sharks that share those habitats,” said Catherine Macdonald, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and the director of the Shark Research and Conservation Program.  “These groups may show these significant differences as a result of greater resource availability and/or historic fishing pressure, which has been shown to select for faster growth and smaller maximum sizes.” 

Because South Florida includes extensive recreational fisheries and a historic fishery targeting nurse sharks for their skin and liver oil, there may be genetic differences in nurse shark populations in Florida that explain the observed differences.

The authors emphasize the importance of long-term monitoring that can provide these kinds of data sets. 

“Conducting studies of life-history traits across different habitats within a region can help us better understand how local variation might affect traits that are essential for science-based fisheries management,” added Hlavin. This is especially important for species like nurse sharks that are threatened by poorly managed or unmanaged fisheries in many parts of their range.”

The research was supported by the University of Miami’s Abess Center Fellowship, Florida Sea Grant–Guy Harvey Foundation,  and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship 

The study, titled “Is the seagrass greener on the other side? Faster growth in Biscayne Bay, Florida’s nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) compared to neighboring conspecifics of Bimini, The Bahamas” was published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes on December 18, 2025. The authors include John Hlavin*1,2,3,4, Emily Yeager1,2,3,4, Christine Martin1,2,3,4, Christopher Will1,2, Nicholas Perni2, Christian Pankow1,2, and Catherine Macdonald1,2,3

¹ Shark Research and Conservation Program, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, ² Field School Scientific Training, ³ Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of Miami, ⁴ Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, University of Miami

About the University of Miami and Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science

The University of Miami is a private research university and academic health system with a distinct geographic capacity to connect institutions, individuals, and ideas across the hemisphere and around the world. The University’s vibrant academic community comprises 12 schools and colleges serving more than 19,000 undergraduate and graduate students in more than 180 majors and programs. Located within one of the most dynamic and multicultural cities in the world, the University is building new bridges across geographic, cultural, and intellectual borders, bringing a passion for scholarly excellence, a spirit of innovation, and a commitment to tackling the challenges facing our world. The University of Miami is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU).

 Founded in 1943, the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science is one of the world’s premier research institutions in the continental United States. The School’s basic and applied research programs seek to improve understanding and prediction of Earth’s geological, oceanic, and atmospheric systems by focusing on four key pillars:

*Saving lives through better forecasting of extreme weather and seismic events. 

*Feeding the world by developing sustainable wild fisheries and aquaculture programs. 

*Unlocking ocean secrets through research on climate, weather, energy and medicine. 

*Preserving marine species, including endangered sharks and other fish, as well as protecting and restoring threatened coral reefs. www.earth.miami.edu.

 

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Journal

Environmental Biology of Fishes

DOI

10.1007/s10641-025-01784-7 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Is the seagrass greener on the other side? Faster growth in Biscayne Bay, Florida’s nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) compared to neighboring conspecifics of Bimini, The Bahamas

 

Tests uncover unexpected humpback sensitivity to high-frequency noise

University of Queensland hearing tests conducted across kilometres of ocean off the Australian coast show humpback whales react to higher frequency sounds than expected.

Associate Professor Rebecca Dunlop from UQ’s School of the Environment said the discovery has implications for the mitigation of noise-related human activity along whale migration routes.

“Until our studies, estimates of humpback hearing sensitivity were inferred based on the anatomy of their ears,” Dr Dunlop said.

“In a series of experiments off the Sunshine Coast, we exposed whales to upsweep sounds at a range of frequencies.

“We looked for changes such as slowing their swimming or turning towards or away from the sound as an indication they’d heard it.

“Against a background of natural noise, we confirmed that the humpbacks’ best hearing range largely overlaps with the estimates from anatomical models.

“But their responses at 22 kHz provided the first direct evidence humpbacks are highly sensitive to higher frequencies at the upper end of the human hearing range.

“They are more sensitive at these higher frequencies than the anatomical models predicted.

“This finding is significant because baleen whale species – which includes humpbacks – had previously been considered low-frequency hearing specialists.

“Our experiments also showed their ability to hear quiet signals within natural ocean noise matched data from hearing tests on captive toothed whales, indicating our study in a wild setting was able to mimic hearing experiments in a controlled environment.”

The UQ team conducted the hearing tests across 4 whale migration seasons, 2021-2024.

In a process called behavioural observation audiometry (BOA), frequency-modulated upsweeps were broadcast from a boat positioned in the path of a migrating whale group but too far away to be heard.

As the group approached and came within hearing range, observers watched for deviations in the whale’s course or a change in speed and/or dive behaviour to indicate the sound was heard.

This was repeated for 8 to 10 different groups before the frequency of the upsweeps was changed, and the whole process repeated.

“The whales typically responded by temporarily slowing down or speeding up and turning away to avoid the source vessel and this behavioural change-point was noted,” Dr Dunlop said.

“Sometimes this was followed by heading directly towards the vessel and circling it or resuming their original course, so we know the experiments were a minor but important disruption to their behaviour.”

The results have been displayed in a graph called an audiogram, which shows how sensitive the animal is to each frequency.

For these experiments, the most sensitive whale group for each frequency was used to produce the first data-driven audiogram for humpback whales. It shows their hearing range extends from at least 80 Hz at the low end to 22 kHz at the high end.

“With better understanding of humpback hearing, we can better protect them and minimise human interference on their lives,” Dr Dunlop said.

The research has been published in a research paper in Communications Biology and a research paper in Current Biology and work was conducted under relevant permits and animal ethics approvals.

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.068 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

A predicted humpback whale hearing curve based on modified behavioral observation audiometry data

Article Publication Date

29-Jan-2026