Move over, lycopene. Tomatoes’ secret sauce may be phytoene

New study suggests a lesser-known compound in tomatoes may help protect against fatty liver disease, which affects more than 1 in 3 American adults

Tufts University

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Phytoene is not only abundant in yellow, orange, and red tomatoes, but also exists in many common fruits and vegetables, including carrots, red peppers, pink grapefruit, watermelon, and apricots.

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Credit: Alonso Nichols/Tufts University

For decades, the red pigment lycopene has been considered the tomato’s star nutrient. But new research from Tufts University suggests that phytoene, a colorless precursor of lycopene, may also contribute to tomatoes’ protective effects against a form of chronic fatty liver disease affecting up to 38% of U.S. adults.

The study, published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Science, found that mice given phytoene developed substantially less fatty liver disease than mice fed the same unhealthy diet without the compound. Although it is not visible in ripe red tomatoes, phytoene is a natural building block that plants convert into lycopene and other carotenoids—the red, yellow, and orange pigments that give many fruits and vegetables their vibrant colors.

As many as 100 million adults in the United States—and up to 75% of Americans with obesity or diabetes—are estimated to have metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. In this condition, too much fat builds up in liver cells. Over time, this excessive fat accumulation can cause liver inflammation and damage that, in more advanced cases, leads to scarring of the liver called cirrhosis.

Scientists have known for years that tomatoes may help protect the liver. Yet tomato powder has outperformed purified lycopene in protecting the liver in animal studies, suggesting that other compounds in tomatoes may also contribute to these beneficial effects.

“Both lycopene and phytoene are found in substantial amounts in tomatoes and tomato products,” said Na Youn Lee, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “But we know from previous research that phytoene is actually more readily absorbed by the body.”

For the new study, the researchers fed two groups of mice a high-refined-carbohydrate diet for six months to mimic dietary patterns associated with fatty liver disease in humans, including high consumption of sugary foods and beverages. Half of the mice also received phytoene supplementation at a dose equivalent to a person eating about three to four medium-sized raw tomatoes or 100 grams of tomato paste—or a little more than a third of a cup—per day.

The team then compared liver health, metabolism, and gut bacteria in the mice that received phytoene with those that did not. The scientists also examined differences between male and female mice, as well as between normal mice and mice lacking two enzymes involved in converting carotenoids into biologically active metabolites.

The mice given phytoene developed much less severe fatty liver disease than those that did not receive the supplement. Rather than working by altering the gut microbiome, phytoene appeared to activate several key proteins involved in regulating liver metabolism, helping the liver burn excess fat for energy rather than allowing it to accumulate.

Mice that lacked the enzymes needed to metabolize phytoene accumulated much higher levels of the compound in their bodies but did not receive the same protection against fatty liver disease. This finding suggests that the liver-protective effects may come from smaller compounds produced when the body breaks down phytoene. Because people can have genetic differences in the enzymes that metabolize phytoene, more research is needed to identify these metabolites and determine whether some individuals may benefit more from phytoene than others.

The study also found that females accumulated more phytoene in the liver than males, suggesting that sex may influence how the body absorbs or metabolizes the compound. The authors noted that future studies could explore whether these differences affect phytoene’s ability to protect against fatty liver disease.

“Our findings have broad implications, as phytoene is not only abundant in yellow, orange, and red tomatoes, but also exists in many common fruits and vegetables, including carrots, red peppers, pink grapefruit, watermelon, and apricots,” said Xiang-Dong Wang, the study’s senior author and a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. “Should further research validate our findings, encouraging people to eat more phytoene-rich fruits and vegetables could be a useful strategy to help prevent metabolic liver disease or slow its progression in high-risk individuals.”

Additional authors are Jennifer Lee, Nirupa Matthan, and Stefania Lamon-Fava, all of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. Research reported in this article was supported by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and an award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Complete information on the methodology and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Journal

Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

DOI

10.1002/mnfr.70596 

Article Title

Phytoene, a Precursor of Lycopene in Tomatoes, Protects Against Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease in Mice

Article Publication Date

23-Aug-2026

MASS DEPORTATION NOW!

US immigration judges are deporting people in mass hearings – some without notice

Alexandra Villarreal in San Antonio, Texas

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, August 15, 2026 


Families arrive for immigration court in New York City on 31 July.Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images


A man in line for the elevator bank at the federal immigration court in San Antonio, Texas, on a morning in mid-July told the security guard that he had an attorney. "You're special," the guard replied, with genuine surprise.

Upstairs, inside Brittany A Rodriquez's courtroom, the young judge with stark blond highlights gave an asylum seeker a month-and-a-half to turn around an application for protection or be ordered deported. Another person who told her "I don't have a lawyer, I only have God" was given until September to find legal representation, or the judge indicated she would move forward with the case regardless.

On Rodriquez's docket that day was a 49-year-old Cuban man who had his hearing moved up by an entire year, out of the blue; a six-year-old Mexican girl and a three-year-old Cuban boy who may have been appearing in court alone – it was not clear; a 22-year-old Venezuelan woman and her two-year-old son; and dozens of other people whose fates in the United States rested on her decisions.

Rodriquez had been on the bench for only about a month, appointed after a career in immigration enforcement. She and the federal attorney whose role it was to argue against the immigrants – the role she herself had filled for almost six years, up until May – quickly read through a list of people, 15 in total, who had missed their hearings. Now, they could be ordered removed from the US "in absentia", without being physically present to find out.

Suddenly, Rodriquez found five more no-shows on the list. "I didn't even do that whole last page," she said casually. "I think these are all 'in absentias', too."

This quiet yet life-altering scene epitomizes the newest frontier in the second Trump administration's deportation push, where people are being scheduled for mass hearings in immigration court at the last minute and those who don't make it are receiving removal orders almost by default.

That, in turn, sets them up for arrest and repatriation whenever they stumble into the midst of immigration agents – or, increasingly, run into local and state law enforcement personnel from departments that are cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, during something as benign as a traffic stop.

"There's people that are walking around, going about their business, without realizing that they have a removal order on their record," said Katie Fleming, director of public education and engagement at the Washington DC-based legal non-profit Acacia Center for Justice.

There's people that are walking around, going about their business, without realizing they have a removal order

Donald Trump has ranted against due process for immigrants and asylum seekers since his first presidential administration, when he repeatedly complained about their right to defend themselves in immigration court and said the US needed to "get rid of judges".

"When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came," Trump tweeted in 2018, adding the following day: "Hiring many thousands [sic] of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go."

Eight years later, Trump has upended the immigration courts so completely that critics allege many thousands of people are now being denied justice. Adjudicators have taken on roles as so-called deportation judges, while their agency, the executive office for immigration review (EOIR), has become an integral part of the White House's mass deportation strategy instead of a last defense against wrongful removal.

"They abandon the real mission of the agency, which is to provide fair hearings and due process to as many people as possible, and instead sort of run it as an adjunct of DHS [Department of Homeland Security] enforcement, with the only real objective to be being [able to] enter as many removal orders as you can, as fast as you can," said Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge.

EOIR's primary responsibility is, in its own words, "to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation's immigration laws". Yet it falls under the Department of Justice, not the US's judicial branch, raising serious, chronic concerns about its independence from executive policy priorities, while its nearly 3.2m-case backlog has long caused headaches for both Democratic and Republican administrations.

An unnamed EOIR spokesperson said: "The Executive Office for Immigration Review prioritizes the timely completion of all cases and makes scheduling adjustments as needed to ensure cases do not languish. Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible. As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner."

Now, the undermining of due process in US immigration courts has come not in one fell swoop, but with a series of policy changes since the start of the second Trump administration that has dramatically eroded the tenets of a fair court system – notice of hearings, transparency, judges' discretion, meaningful appeals, the opportunity to be heard – seemingly to prioritize speed and the administration's hard line on immigration, experts said.

The result of these new practices has been to reduce people's ability to receive individualized determinations based on the merits of their cases, cutting them off instead at earlier stages of the legal process and serving them up for deportation.

"All of these different policy changes and practices and tactics are intertwined, right?" Fleming said. "They're all part of the same story, which is instead of functioning as an independent court system where there are independent adjudicators evaluating claims one at a time, we're seeing the courts incorporated into a much broader enforcement strategy."

Many of the second Trump administration's policies that have hamstrung access to justice in the immigration courts are occurring at the earliest steps in a case, during what's called a master calendar hearing. These court dates are often a person's first few appearances and have typically been mostly administrative, with about 20 cases scheduled at once.

Usually, the judge recounts – and an interpreter at times translates – people's rights and responsibilities, explains the civil immigration charges against them, asks whether they want time to find a lawyer, gives them a list of free legal organizations, checks that the court has an up-to-date address for them and sometimes confirms the facts in their charging documents – where they're from and how they entered the US, for instance.

But over the last year-and-a-half, federal officials have debuted tactic after tactic that, as far as critics are concerned, have weaponized these hearings. Last summer, ICE attorneys started asking to dismiss thousands of cases on the spot, so they could immediately place the same people into a more fast-tracked deportation process that often bypasses the judge's role completely. By January, more streamlined efforts to quickly deny asylum applications without an individualized hearing began to surge, too.

Then, the first signs of a new tool to close as many cases at once came in March, in San Francisco, where master calendar hearings were being scheduled with little time to prepare – a test run for what was to come nationwide, researchers discovered.

By the end of May, they started noticing master calendar hearings across the country scheduled for unusually large numbers of people, with a single judge in a single session on a single day. Notice of the hearings, if given at all, was short and sent out in English; a lot of the people didn't have attorneys; and many of them were being ordered deported without ever going to court through removal orders in absentia, when they failed to appear.

"These are kind of ways to skirt you getting a final hearing where you can actually present evidence for the relief you're seeking in immigration court," said Brandon Marrow, who created bklg.org, and who is researching what the federal government has now labeled "mega master" calendar hearings.

Officials have set a threshold of 100-200 scheduled cases and 150 total people per session for these mega masters, while disproportionately and intentionally singling out those without lawyers. Even hearings that don't meet the definition for mega masters have often been much larger than they were historically, and at much shorter notice for the respondent.

These accelerated court dates make it harder for people to find lawyers if they don't already have one, as their timeline shrinks from months or years to mere days. Free representation is difficult to come by, with legal clinics across the country already overwhelmed by their caseloads, while private attorneys require immigrants to have saved up for what often amounts to thousands of dollars in fees.

Ironically, having a lawyer would allow for faster proceedings, Schmidt said.

"If somebody came in with a lawyer, I could probably do a fair master calendar in about two minutes," he recalled. "It actually took much longer to do hearings, masters, without lawyers if, you know, if you really wanted to give the person a fair opportunity to be heard."

For the mega masters especially, there are almost always more people scheduled than the number who ultimately attend – which usually means at least some proportion are then being ordered removed in absentia. The number of respondents who are not detained appearing for masters hearings this June rose 28.6% compared with June 2024, while the number of in absentia removal orders soared 183.6%, according to researchers at bklg.org.

"Their case isn't being heard on any level, and if they filed an application for relief, if they filed an asylum application, if they filed all the evidence – if they're not in court, the court will deem that application abandoned," Fleming said.

The reasons why people aren't attending their hearings are manifold, but two stand out: lack of notice and fear. Schmidt remembers how often mistakes cropped up when he was a judge, where addresses had the wrong street name or city, and where notices were returned to the court instead of reaching their intended recipient.

"The clerical staff was spread pretty thin, and filing change of address forms wasn't one of their top priorities," he said. "There'd be stacks of them sitting on credenzas, waiting to be filed, which told you something about the reliability of the system."

In recent months, the median potential notice period, or lead time immigrants who are not in detention have had ahead of master calendar hearings has plummeted, falling to just 42 days in June. With notifications still sent through the mail, attorneys fear immigrants are not learning of their hearings until it's too late, a concern supported by existing data.

When Christopher Cusmano, an immigration judge in New York, oversaw a master calendar hearing with 73 people and a median lead time of 169 days, on 27 May, he issued seven removal orders in absentia. A month later, on 25 June, more than three-quarters of the 95 people on his docket, who had a median lead time of just 24 days, received in absentia removal orders, according to data provided by researchers at bklg.org.

In Kansas City, Judge Jayme Salinardi considered two dockets in early June. The first – where 93 people had a median lead time of, at most, 15 days to be alerted that their court date had changed – resulted in 56 in absentia orders. The second, where 96 people had a median lead time of 196 days, ended with just nine, research by bklg.org further found.

Even if people do receive sufficient notice of their hearings, many are terrified to go near an immigration courthouse after arrests there last year. Since at least 1996, both immigration judges and what is now DHS have recognized that the presence of immigration enforcement officers in the courts can have "a chilling effect on the respondent's ability to present his or her case". But once the second Trump administration took office, EOIR officials quickly dismissed that shared understanding as "contrary to logic".

What ensued were high-profile mass arrests, where ICE agents stalked the courts' hallways for their targets, whom they then hauled to detention centers across the country. A federal judge has since blocked that policy, but enough people had already been affected to sow fear and distrust among immigrants who otherwise would have likely attended their hearings.

In total, judges issued 53,808 removal orders in absentia in June, constituting a majority of overall case completions for that month. More than 13,000 of those removal orders came from master calendar hearings with a hundred or more people scheduled, where the median lead time was 45 days or fewer.

"These absentia numbers are completely unlike anything that's been seen before in the immigration courts," said Joseph Gunther, a researcher with bklg.org. "Certainly, compared to before, a lot of things are happening that are completely unprecedented."

Even if people attend their hearings, courts under pressure to issue removal orders are at times rushing proceedings, experts suggested. In Minnesota, Fleming recently witnessed a judge order a detained person deported because their application had not yet arrived – despite the fact it was written punctually in detention then had been misdirected in the mail.

Once people are ordered deported, reversing course can be a feat, even if the reason is something as obvious as never receiving notice of their court date. Generally, immigrants would have to file what are called motions to reopen, which typically carry a $1,065 filing fee and are "challenging applications," Fleming explained, adding: "They require evidence and legal argument."

"It can be very hard to get an attorney to drop everything and represent someone on a complex motion to reopen," she continued. "So it puts them in a very vulnerable legal position" – one where ICE could arrest and deport them, as quickly as in a single day.

Meanwhile, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or have resigned or retired since Trump's second inauguration, many of them being those with higher rates of granting relief or who had experience defending immigrants.

Their replacements have increasingly been recruited by the administration, won over by rhetoric such as: "Apply today to become a deportation judge" who will make decisions that will "define America for generations".

In June, fewer than 2% of all completed cases across all hearings ended with an immigrant winning relief, such as asylum or another legal pathway through the court.

"When you send out ads recruiting deportation judges, I think you're probably not going to get people whose primary concern is understanding immigration law or making sure that people are fairly treated or, you know, resisting government overreach," Schmidt said.

On the same day as Rodriquez's morning docket in San Antonio, the clerk for another judge at the courthouse, appointed under the first Trump administration, spoke quietly to her colleagues and was overheard by the Guardian saying: "We don't have that many attorneys" for all the immigrants appearing before them.

Among the lawyers who did attend, many asked for more time to work on their clients' cases, as at least some of them hadn't even been able to review the record yet.

That judge, Rifian Newaz, reached the list of no-shows at the court that day and paused for a long time, clearly painstakingly reviewing everyone's files. One person didn't get proper notice of the hearing, he said. Another was just a child, whom he then moved to the docket for unaccompanied kids, to give a second chance.

When the hearing concluded, he had still issued 26 new in absentia removal orders.

Opinion - Europeans are sour on Trump, but they increasingly back his immigration policy

David Wippman and Glenn Altschuler, opinion contributors
Sun, August 16, 2026 

THE HILL



It took only a few days for Europe's latest immigration crisis to threaten one of the European Union's core principles.

After 72,000 migrants from Morocco entered Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa, Italy imposed temporary border restrictions against travelers from Spain. Spain promptly reciprocated, jeopardizing the freedom of movement that has been a cornerstone of European integration.

The episode underscores a striking paradox. A huge majority of Europeans have an unfavorable view of President Trump. But on immigration, the issue that did more than any other to drive his political ascent, they are moving in his direction.

As a presidential candidate, Trump cited the need "to regain respect all over the world" as one of the most important issues facing the U.S. In May, Trump declared (and not for the first time), "Our nation is … respected again, respected like never before."

Polling tells a different story. Across the partisan political spectrum, Europeans have been alienated by Trump's tariffs, threats to seize Greenland, attacks on NATO, the war in Iraq, and his expressions of contempt for the leaders of their countries.

In 2022, people in every country in Western Europe considered the U.S. a reliable partner. Now, only Hungary and Poland do. In a recent survey of 36 countries, respondents in 25 said they view China more favorably than the U.S. That includes Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Mexico.

In the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, only 13 percent of the population hold a favorable view of Trump. That number falls to 9 percent in Italy, 8 percent in Germany, and 4 percent in Denmark.

But on immigration, leaders of right-wing parties, whose animus for immigrants long predates Trump, have borrowed from his playbook to foster a populist revolt against mainstream political institutions and political elites. Some of them may soon take power in Europe's most important democracies.

In France, Marine Le Pen's far right National Rally Party brands immigration an existential threat to national identity, security, and economic stability. Le Pen favors immigration quotas and "national priority" for French citizens in jobs, housing, and social welfare benefits. National Rally has a commanding lead ahead of next April's presidential election.

The Alternative for Germany, a party whose slogan "Everything for Germany" was once used by the Nazis, has been classified by the country's own domestic intelligence service as a right-wing extremist organization. It opposes asylum, advocates mass deportations, even of German citizens who are not ethnic Germans, and depicts the country's Muslim population as "a great danger to our state, our society, and our system of values." And this party has overtaken Chancellor Friedrich Merz's governing center-right party in the polls.

In Britain, Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. party deems immigration "a scourge" and blames immigrants for rising prices, declining living standards, and inadequate public services. Last month, Farage accused the British government of "anti-white racism" and promised to ban foreign nationals from government housing and welfare programs if he is elected. Reform U.K. has been leading in the polls for the better part of a year. It now comes in a close second to the governing Labour party, but that drop is likely a temporary product of Andy Burnham's recent elevation to Prime Minister.

For European right-wing nationalist politicians who met last year in Madrid under the banner "Make Europe Great Again," Trump has become a political liability. They know that in Italy, for example, confidence in Trump among voters with a favorable view of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy Party has fallen from 49 percent to 30 percent. And they know that British voters, asked why they would not support Reform U.K., listed Farage's support for Trump as their top reason.

Recognizing the explosive power of anti-immigrant sentiment, leaders of moderate and even left-leaning governments in Europe have tightened immigration policies, asylum rules, and border controls. More and more, Europe's mainstream politicians have begun to sound much like their nationalist counterparts.

Denmark's prime minister, a social democrat, suggested Spain might be excluded from the Schengen Area, which allows free movement among its 29 member countries. Merz, Germany's Chancellor, demanded that Morocco "take back illegal migrants immediately."

Political leaders who ignore public concerns about immigration imperil their prospects at the polls. But the politics of immigration have become increasingly disconnected from reality. Anti-immigration sentiment has intensified, even though the number of migrants entering Europe illegally is far lower than it was a decade ago.

As in the U.S., immigration has become a proxy for deeper anxieties — about national identity, economic insecurity, cultural change, and the extent to which political elites care about ordinary voters. Trump has turned those fears into a politics that scapegoats immigrants as criminals and invaders and treats political opponents as threats to the nation.

Europeans don't like Trump. They should think carefully before embracing his signature policy.

David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Monoskop.org

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EMPIRE - Monoskop 

4.3 The Multitude against Empire. 393. Notes. 415. Index. 473. Page 11. PREFACE. Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the past several decades, as ...

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http://rebels-library.org/files/multitude.pdf

MULTITUDE - Rebel Studies Library 

Page 1. MULTITUDE. WAR AND DEMOCRACY. IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE. MICHAEL HARDT ... Empire calls on war for its legitimation, the multitude calls on democracy as its ...

Newleftreview.org

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii120/articles/empire-twenty-years-on.pdf

EMPIRE, TWENTY YEARS ON | New Left Review 

Just as today's. Empire was formed in response to the insurgencies of the multitudes from below, so too, potentially, it could fall to them, as long as those.

Researchers discover the eye’s hidden cleanup system

Newly identified lymphatic network could fundamentally shift how we understand and treat leading causes of blindness

University of British Columbia

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Many of the world’s leading causes of irreversible blindness, including glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, share a common problem: the buildup of fluid, waste and inflammatory debris in the back of the eye. 

However, for decades, scientists have lacked a clear understanding of how the eye clears this waste away. 

New research from the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto has identified what appears to be a missing piece of the puzzle: a previously unknown waste drainage system at the back of the eye. The hidden circulatory pathway, called the posterior ocular lymphatic outflow, or POLO pathway, provides a route for fluid and waste to exit the eye and enter the body’s lymphatic system.  

“The retina is one of the most metabolically active parts of the body, constantly generating byproducts that need to be cleared,” said Dr. Neeru Gupta, professor and head of UBC’s department of ophthalmology and visual sciences. “This discovery helps explain how the eye flushes this waste and promises to transform how we think about and treat a range of eye conditions.” 

A foundation for future therapies 

Diseases like glaucoma, macular degeneration and retinal disorders are all associated with fluid buildup, accumulation of metabolic waste, and tissue stress and inflammation. Age-related macular degeneration alone affects approximately 2.5 million Canadians.  

The discovery of the POLO pathway suggests there is a natural system responsible for clearing this material and opens new opportunities to harness this system to treat disease.   

“This gives us a whole new framework for understanding these diseases and a potential target for therapeutics,” said Dr. Gupta. “The question now is: How can we enhance or exploit this cleanup system to treat or even prevent disease.” 

Hiding in plain sight 

For more than a century, the eye was thought to lack a lymphatic system, which is present in nearly every other organ and helps to regulate fluid, remove waste and support immune function. 

Dr. Gupta and Dr. Yeni Yücel, professor and director of ophthalmic pathology at the University of Toronto, began challenging that idea in 2009 with the discovery of a lymphatic-related drainage pathway at the front of the eye, termed the “uveolymphatic” pathway. Yet the back of the eye, where many blinding diseases are rooted, has remained largely unexplored.  

“The retina is responsible for vision and it’s also where many of the most serious vision-loss diseases occur,” said Dr. Yücel. “Understanding how this part of the eye maintains a balanced environment and flow of materials is critical.”  

To uncover the POLO pathway, the team used advanced imaging in mice, combining MRI, near-infrared fluorescence and microscopic analysis. They introduced fluorescent tracer molecules into a thin space at the back of the eye and tracked their movement in real time. 

This allowed them to identify small lymphatic vessels in the choroid, a thin layer beneath the retina. Fluid drained from the back of the eye into surrounding orbital tissue and, within minutes, reached nearby lymph nodes that link the eye to the broader lymphatic system. 

“Because lymphatic vessels in the choroid were thought not to exist, the team used multiple techniques to demonstrate both their presence and function,” added Dr. Yücel, a pathologist-scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital. “We were surprised to see such a direct route for fluid to leave the eye and connect with the lymphatic system. It suggests the back of the eye has an active clearance pathway, which could play an important role in removing fluid, proteins and inflammatory material that build up in disease.”  

Further research is needed to understand how the lymphatic pathway operates in humans and how it could be targeted with therapeutics.  

But the researchers say it could one day lead to improved drug delivery to the back of the eye, new therapies that enhance fluid clearance, and deeper insight into how pressure, inflammation and fluid dynamics contribute to vision loss. 

“This is a foundational discovery that shows the eye is not as closed a system as we previously thought,” said Dr. Gupta. “It gives us a new map, a new mechanism and a new set of questions to explore.” 

The study was published today in Translational Vision Science & Technology [LINK].  

The research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Glaucoma Research Society of Canada, Henry Farrugia Ophthalmology Research Fund, Canadian Space Agency, Dorothy Pitts Chair, Stephen M. Drance Chair, Thor and Nicky Eaton Research Fund and Canada Foundation for Innovation Leaders Opportunity Fund. 

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DOI

10.1167/tvst.15.7.23 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Identification and Mapping of a Posterior Ocular Lymphatic Outflow (POLO) Pathway Through Choroidal Lymphatics

Article Publication Date

17-Jul-2026

 

US Parents direct more threats toward school administrators than teachers

Study finds verbal aggression against school staff is prevalent but largely unreported

Ohio State University

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — In K-12 schools across the country, administrators are tasked with keeping everyone safe. New research shows they may be the most in need of protection.

In a study published this week in Psychology of Violence, researchers surveyed school personnel prior to the onset of COVID-19, during the height of COVID restrictions and after most restrictions had been lifted, and their findings surprised them: Administrators were more likely than teachers or school mental health professionals to experience verbal and threatening aggression from parents. After restrictions lifted, 77% of administrators reported such experiences, nearly 3.5 times the rate reported by teachers.

The research was led by Eric Anderman, a professor of educational psychology and vice provost for regional campuses at The Ohio State University. He and colleagues have conducted a number of related studies as members of the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Task Force on Violence Against Teachers and School Personnel.

“We didn't fully expect such a pattern to emerge,” Anderman said. “A lot of us went in with an assumption, including me, that it would be mostly the teachers — they’re the ones who have the most direct contact with students every day.”

The data show that parental aggression against school personnel never went away, even during the height of COVID restrictions. When most schools switched to remote learning, 42% of administrators still reported experiencing verbal or threatening aggression from parents, and rates climbed even higher after schools reopened.

For Anderman, the issue is personal. As a high school teacher early in his career, he experienced a verbal threat from a student and didn’t feel supported by his school’s administration. “That always stuck with me,” he said. “Whenever I write about it, it resurfaces.”

Anderman’s research focuses primarily on academic motivation, which is how he became involved with the APA Task Force nearly two decades ago. Past research from the group found that 49% of teachers nationwide considered quitting or transferring jobs as the result of violence and threats made against them, and that violence against teachers is higher in schools that focus on grades and test scores than in schools that emphasize student learning. 

Although school personnel experience physical assaults, the new study focused on verbal aggression and threats, which a 2022 meta-analysis found to be more commonplace in schools. The researchers measured eight specific types, including obscene remarks or gestures, intimidation, identity-based slurs, verbal threats, bullying, public humiliation, cyberbullying and sexual harassment.

After pandemic restrictions were lifted, more than 1 in 4 teachers said a parent had publicly humiliated them, and more than 1 in 4 reported being cyberbullied. For administrators, more than 4 in 10 were verbally threatened, and around 1 in 5 reported being publicly humiliated or cyberbullied.

The scope of the problem becomes clearer when educators are given the opportunity to describe their experiences anonymously. In earlier research, the task force collected around 3,000 written accounts from teachers describing the worst incidents they had experienced.

“The stuff they told us — you can’t make this stuff up,” Anderman said. “People said things like, ‘Thank you for asking. Nobody ever asked.’ It was therapeutic for some of them.”

Despite how common these experiences are, Anderman describes them as a “silent epidemic” because there is currently no national system for tracking or reporting aggression against school personnel, and it receives little media attention. In addition, many educators don’t report incidents for fear of looking weak or incapable of managing their classrooms. This silence has consequences for the quality of education students receive and for the ongoing national teacher shortage.

There’s good news, though. The study found that maintaining positive relationships between parents and school personnel and providing support for teachers, administrators and mental health professionals at the school and community levels all help reduce parental aggression. School level factors, such as strong administrative support and effective disciplinary policies, were associated with less aggression at all three time points, and community-level factors, such as perceived district investment in education, also made a difference.

The researchers recommend implementing tiered systems of support for all school personnel — including classroom, school and community training — to foster a healthier, safer climate for everyone. The study also noted the importance of proactive and positive communication from school employees to parents. This resonated with Anderman, who still remembers the time his ninth-grade Spanish teacher called his mother — not to report a problem, but to say he was doing well in class. “It made my day,” he said. “But it’s the only time I ever remember it happening.”

Co-authors include Andrew Perry, Hyun Ji Lee and Adriana Martinez-Calvit from Ohio State; Susan D. McMahon from DePaul University; Frank C. Worrell from the University of California, Berkeley; Linda A. Reddy from Rutgers University; Andrew Martinez from Hunter College; Dorothy L. Espelage from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Ron A. Astor from the University of California, Los Angeles. The research was supported by the American Psychological Association.

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Contact: Eric Anderman, anderman.1@osu.edu

Written by Elizabeth Weinstein, weinstein.137@osu.edu   

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Journal

Psychology of Violence

DOI

10.1037/vio0000697 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Parental verbal and threatening aggression against administrators, teachers, and school mental health personnel.

Article Publication Date

6-Jul-2026