Friday, July 18, 2025

What ever-growing incisors can teach us about genetic disease

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science

Teeth may seem like static fixtures, but a new collaboration between engineers and clinicians is proving just how dynamic, informative and medically significant our teeth can be.

In a recent study, published in the American Chemical Society’s ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, engineers and dentists come together to uncover how teeth, as biological material, hold key information for understanding rare craniofacial disorders that develop during childhood. Kyle Vining, Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and in Preventative and Restorative Science at Penn Dental Medicine, leads this interdisciplinary team, which includes Yuchen (Tracy) Jiang, a former master’s student in MSE, Kei Katsura, a pediatric dentist and KL2 postdoctoral research scholar at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Institute of Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at Penn, and Elizabeth Bhoj, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in Penn Medicine and the Division of Human Genetics at CHOP.

Through their new methodology and by leveraging unique characteristics of rodent teeth, the team was able to combine materials science, mineralogy and human genetics to map out the properties of enamel and dentin development. Their methods have the potential to provide new insights into identifying and treating both rare craniofacial diseases in children and more common dental cavities.

“People often assume that if you understand bone, you understand teeth,” says Vining. “But that’s not necessarily the case. Teeth have a different composition, require different analytical tools and behave differently during development. What’s exciting is that by using mouse incisors to study enamel formation over time, we do not need to extract baby or adult teeth to understand those characteristics.”

Teeth, Rocks and Cross-Disciplinary Tools

The project is centered on a deceptively simple question: How do teeth mineralize? Surprisingly, scientists don’t have a full picture of how this essential process unfolds.

“This is an exciting step in determining how teeth develop and harden,” says Katsura. “Tooth mineralization is such an intricate process with many hidden secrets we get to uncover. Although we still don’t fully understand how teeth mineralize, our long-term hope is to apply this knowledge to the clinic, helping people who are more susceptible to dental cavities, specifically those with rare genetic syndromes.”

To answer this question, researchers borrowed a surprising tool from geology: the nanoindenter, a device traditionally used to test the hardness of rocks. Now, instead of probing granite or sandstone, the team uses it to analyze tiny sections of tooth enamel, but it wasn’t a straightforward task.

“Sample preparation was one of the most challenging parts,” says Jaing, the lead author on the paper. “Tooth is such a hard and heterogeneous material. It’s layered, shifting and biological. Embedding it properly for testing took a lot of troubleshooting.”

But once they got it right, the insights flowed. Using nanoindentation, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and even Raman spectroscopy, the team measured everything from tooth enamel’s elasticity and stiffness to mineral contents. Their samples, postnatal day 12 mouse teeth, were carefully chosen to be old enough for the enamel to have formed, but not so old that the bones became too hard to section.

What Can Teeth Tell Us About Disease?

While Jiang and Vining analyzed the physical properties of teeth, Katsura brought in the biological side: mouse models of Mendelian genetic disorders, many of which mimic the human versions of craniofacial syndromes. Bhoj provided further expertise on these rare diseases, helping guide the project toward real-world clinical applications.

“These disorders are hard to treat in part because little attention is paid to the oral cavity, so we don’t always know how dental and oral conditions relate to the systemic issues these children face,” says Katsura. “But we’re showing that materials science can help us find part of the answer.”

One major challenge? Teeth start developing in utero, making early study difficult. But by examining how structure changes during development, and linking it with function, researchers hope to eventually backtrack from a fully developed tooth to better understand what went wrong along the way.

“We’re excited to be able to integrate tools of materials science to learn about the properties of tooth development,” says Vining. “Our work lays the foundation for further studies that could lead to diagnostic tools or even new materials for fillings that prevent decay.”

Taking New Research and Mindsets Forward

This work is already informing the team’s future work on genetic craniofacial diseases in mice. Long term, the researchers envision their tools used in dental clinics to screen for enamel defects, assess treatment outcomes or even predict disease risk.

And the project isn’t just breaking scientific ground, it’s also reshaping how researchers think about collaboration. Jiang, who trained as a materials scientist, reflects on her experience working outside her comfort zone.

“You don’t need to have everything figured out before working on a project. I’ve learned that growth happens along the way and that learning from collaborators is one of the most valuable parts of scientific research,” she says. “The most exciting discoveries come from different people bringing different strengths.

This work was partially supported by the Joseph and Josephine Rabinowitz Award for Excellence in Research from Penn Dental Medicine. This work was partly carried out at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, supported by the NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Program under grant NNCI-2025608. Research reported in this publication was supported in part by a NIDCR Supplement from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number KL2TR001879.

Journal

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

DOI

10.1021/acsami.5c08408

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Multimodal Characterization of Rodent Dental Development

UCalgary led research helps kids with acute gastroenteritis recover at home

Canadian collaboration identifies optimal treatment approach to improve outcomes after emergency department discharge

University of Calgary

Most children seeking emergency department (ED) care due to vomiting are discharged home. Although they usually feel better when they leave the ED, the vomiting recurs in nearly one-third of children.

Dr. Stephen Freedman, MD, a pediatric ED physician, led a national study to evaluate if sending children who present for care with frequent vomiting from an acute intestinal infection are better off when provided with an anti-vomiting medication to take, as needed, at home.

“When children are really sick, it’s important to get them to hospital to be seen by a medical professional and it’s also important to ensure that once they are able to go home, that they continue to recover,” says Freedman a professor at the Cumming School of Medicine and lead investigator of the study. “Gastroenteritis results in over two million visits by children to Emergency Departments and over 50,000 hospitalizations each year in North America.”

Freedman and his team conducted a double-blind randomized clinical trial in six pediatric hospitals in Canada. They enrolled more than 1,000 children aged six-months to 18 years and found that ondansetron, a well-tolerated and safe anti-nausea drug, can prevent vomiting when given at home. In the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, children administered ondansetron were less likely to have moderate-to-severe symptoms after ED discharge.

“In an earlier study, we found that ondansetron works well to stop vomiting and reduces the need for intravenous fluids administration when given as a single dose in the ED. However, some kids experience a recurrence of vomiting at home. Now we know that by providing a small number of doses to be taken at home, it can benefit those with ongoing symptoms,” says Freedman.

Despite how common acute gastroenteritis is in children, Freedman says there has been an ongoing debate as to the best treatment approach following ED discharge. He adds that the results from this definitive trial should finally address this question.

“This study was designed to determine the right approach. We wanted to ensure we do not unnecessarily provide a medication with no clinical advantages. On the other hand, if it is beneficial we wanted to quantify the benefits so that healthcare teams know how many doses to provide and which patients it will help. This study offers evidence that children with frequent and recent vomiting from an intestinal infection should be provided with two doses of ondansetron at the time of ED discharge,” says Freedman.

The study involved institutions within the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada (PERC) network. Network co-founder, and study co-author, Dr. Terry P. Klassen, MD, says it demonstrates the effectiveness and collaboration of Canadian researchers and shows the value of investment in clinical trials in Canada.

“In areas like pediatric emergency medicine, we need to collaborate nationally to conduct clinical trials that provide the evidence-based solutions needed to inform care to ensure that every child has an optimal outcome,” says Klassen, pediatric emergency physician and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

The study’s findings have been included in national recommendations distributed to emergency department healthcare providers published by Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK).

“The next step is to determine, among the broad group of children who were eligible to participate in this study, if there is a sub-group of children most likely to benefit. This will enable clinicians to ensure the medicine is provided appropriately to those patients for whom it will be most effective,” says Freedman.

Journal

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMoa2503596

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Multidose Ondansetron after Emergency Visits in Children with Gastroenteritis

Article Publication Date

16-Jul-2025

COI Statement

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

“Sisters together’: Antiracist activism and the fight for trans inclusion at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

University of Chicago Press Journals

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, hosted from 1976 to 2015, brought together lesbian feminists for a celebration of culture and activism. Today, the festival is perhaps best known for its controversial "womyn-born-womyn” attendance policy, which excluded trans women from participation. A new article in Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society examines the fight for trans inclusion at Michfest and positions it within a rich history of activism at the festival, including antiracist activism by women of color.

In 1991, a woman named Nancy Jean Burkholder was expelled from the Michfest grounds on the basis of her being trans. In response to her protests that there was no policy explicitly denying entry to trans women, festival organizers released a statement codifying the womyn-born-womyn attendance guideline.

While many found the womyn-born-womyn policy offensive and exclusionary, Michfest producers framed it as a way to ensure their intended community was protected. Supporters of the policy often invoked the Michfest Womyn of Color tent, founded in 1986 as a refuge from the racism of the predominantly white festivalgoers. A trans woman attempting to enter the festival, these supporters argued, would be as invasive as a white woman attempting to enter the Womyn of Color tent.

However, writes article author Jessica Pruett, this rhetoric demonstrates an ignorance of “the racialized policing of gender as another effect of the festival’s womyn-born-womyn policy.” In the festival’s early years, Pruett writes, “attendees frequently misgendered butch Black women in particular, reporting them as men to festival producers.”

Attempts to resist the womyn-born-womyn policy built on a tradition of antiracist activism at the festival. A counter-festival, “Camp Trans,” was inaugurated in 1994, and held just outside the Michfest gates. Additionally, workshops on trans inclusion were held within the festival itself, many of which addressed the intersection of race and trans identity. “While trans women were often depicted as uniformly white and powerful in arguments against trans inclusion,” writes Pruett, “workshops like this exposed the hyperfocus on white trans women as a misrepresentation of a large and diverse community.”

Eventually, backlash to the womyn-born-womyn policy contributed to the end of Michfest. Yet, Pruett writes, to reduce to the festival to white and trans-exclusionary feminism “would be to erase the antiracist, trans feminisms that were also part of the festival community.” The gathering was once an experiment in utopia, writes Pruett. By studying its conflicts and its complexities, we revive this sense of possibility, and “see Michfest for what it was: a series of contested dreams for a future that we have yet to realize.”

Journal

Signs

DOI

10.1086/734685

Article Title

“Sisters Together”: Antiracist Activism and the Fight for Trans Inclusion at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

From kelp to whales: marine heatwaves are reshaping ocean life

University of Victoria

New research from the University of Victoria (UVic) highlights how marine heatwaves can dramatically impact marine ecosystems and offers a stark preview of how future ocean warming will reshape ocean life.

From 2014 to 2016, the Pacific coast of North America experienced the longest marine heatwave ever recorded, with temperatures reaching two to six degrees above historical averages over a prolonged period. Researchers from UVic’s Baum Lab have compiled a comprehensive overview of the heatwave’s ecological impacts, reviewing the findings from 331 primary studies and governmental reports.

“The marine heatwave resulted in unprecedented ecological disturbance across thousands of kilometres of North America’s west coast,” says Samuel Starko, lead author and former UVic postdoctoral fellow. “Our comprehensive synthesis of the ecological impacts of the heatwave helps us to better understand its overall impacts and how these fit into the broader context of other marine heatwaves.”

According to the research, 240 different species were found outside of their typical geographic range during the heatwave, with many of them found further north than ever before. Several species, such as the northern right whale dolphin and the sea slug Placida cremoniana, were found over 1,000 kilometres north of their typical habitat.

The heatwave caused widespread kelp and seagrass declines and many kelp forests collapsed. Species from sea stars to seabirds died on unprecedented scales and unusual mortality events were observed in several species of marine mammal. A key rocky shore predator, Pycnopodia helianthoides, came close to extinction.

Many of the impacts of the heatwave were cascading, with direct impacts on some species driving complex dynamics that affected everything from plankton to whales. Temperature-linked diseases, such as sea star wasting disease, contributed to ecosystem collapse. The reduced abundance and nutritional quality of forage fish caused problems for predators. Plankton communities reorganized and offshore oceanographic productivity was altered.

The heatwave had economic costs as well. The closure of multiple fisheries, driven by changes in species interactions, disease proliferation and habitat loss, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

“As heatwaves become more frequent and intense under climate change, the 2014-16 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave provides a critical example of how climate change is impacting ocean life, and how our future oceans may look,” says Julia Baum, UVic marine ecologist and special advisor, climate. “This study underscores the urgent need for proactive, ecosystem-based marine conservation strategies and climate change mitigation measures.”

The research, published in Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review, is supported by funding from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Mitacs, Oceans North, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Forrest Research Foundation.

Research in the Baum Lab supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) No. 11 (life below water) and No. 13 (climate action). Learn more about the SDGs at UVic.

DOI

10.1201/9781003589600-2

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

ECOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO EXTREME CLIMATIC EVENTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE 2014–2016 NORTHEAST PACIFIC MARINE HEATWAVE

Article Publication Date

17-Jul-2025

Short-term digital mental health interventions reduces depression and anxiety in Ukrainian children and adolescents displaced by war

Queen Mary University of London

In a first of its kind randomised controlled trial, researchers found delivering a problem solving digital mental health intervention to young Ukrainian refugees significantly reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. The findings show that a small, low-cost, scalable intervention delivered in schools through mobile devices may support the mental health of millions of displaced young people.

UNICEF reports that 47 million children and adolescents have been displaced from their homes in recent years due to war and conflict. As a consequence of the hardships and trauma they experience, these young people often develop significant mental health problems, particularly anxiety and depression. Without access to therapists who can provide appropriate mental health support in the young person’s first language, refugee children and adolescents can struggle with long-term mental health conditions. Digital interventions offer a low-cost, scalable solution to help displaced young people with their urgent mental health needs.

An international group of researchers, led by Professor JR Weisz from Harvard University and colleagues including senior author Professor Dennis Ougrin from Queen Mary University of London, tested a digital mental health intervention with 709 Ukrainian students, aged 10-18, who had been displaced to Poland.

The researchers created a Ukrainian-language version of an evidence-based digital mental health intervention called Project SOLVE. The 30-minute intervention, delivered in schools through mobile devices, teaches problem solving by providing students with strategies for solving everyday problems, such as school stress and interpersonal conflict. Standard measures of the students’ mental health were taken by participants at the start of the trial, and one and four months later.

The results, published today in The Lancet Primary Care, found that this brief mental health intervention reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety in displaced young people at one month and four months after the 30-minute intervention.

Professor JR Weisz from Harvard University said: "Children displaced by conflict are at elevated risk of long-term psychological harm, but access to mental health services is often limited or non-existent. In our trial with Ukrainian young people in Poland we found the effects of our 30-minute intervention lasted for four months. Given the need of the population and the promising findings of this trial we would like to continue to explore whether project SOLVE could be useful in other refugee settings.”

Senior author Professor Dennis Ougrin from the Youth Resilience Research Unit in the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health at Queen Mary, said: "Project SOLVE shows that even a single, low-cost, scalable intervention delivered through schools and mobile devices can make a difference. The results were clear: those who received the intervention reported lower levels of internalising symptoms—feelings like sadness, worry, and withdrawal—compared to peers in the control group. Among all participants, youth who received Project SOLVE had significantly lower anxiety and depression symptoms after both 1 and 4 months. Among those with high initial distress, benefits were even more striking, with effect sizes nearly doubling.” He went on: “Project SOLVE’s strength lies in its simplicity and accessibility. At a time when millions of displaced young people remain underserved, this research suggests a promising step toward meeting their urgent mental health needs - one mobile device at a time.”

The study also confirmed that Project SOLVE was easily administered in the classroom and with minimal disruption to learning. Participating students gave positive ratings on all seven items of the Program Feedback Scale and indicated that the intervention was viewed as acceptable and useful, and they would recommend it to a friend who needed support.

This study arose from a proposal by the GROW Network, a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals convened after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

ENDS 

Paper details:   

Weisz, et al. “Effects of a Brief Digital Problem-Solving Intervention on Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Ukrainian Children and Adolescents Displaced by War: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Published in The Lancet Primary Care. 

DOI: 10.1016/j.lanprc.2025.100001
Available after publication at:   https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanprc/article/PIIS3050-5143(25)00001-9/fulltext

A copy of the paper is available upon request. 

Funded by:  Dean’s Competitive Fund, Harvard University

About Queen Mary   

www.qmul.ac.uk     

At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.  

Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.    

Our reformer heritage informs our conviction that great ideas can and should come from anywhere. It’s an approach that has brought results across the globe, from the communities of east London to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.    

We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.   

DOI

10.1016/j.lanprc.2025.100001

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Effects of a Brief Digital Problem-Solving Intervention on Depression and Anxiety Symptoms in Ukrainian Children and Adolescents Displaced by War: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Article Publication Date

17-Jul-2025

Here’s how the U.S. military can trim its massive carbon footprint

Reduced military spending would lead to significant savings in energy use, according to new research

University of Utah

military spending graphic — image:
Military expenditures and energy use, 1975 to 2022.
view more
Credit: University of Utah

As an institution, the U.S. military is the world’s single largest consumer of energy and emitter of climate-altering carbon pollution, on par with the entire nation of Venezuela.

Now for the first time, research by a University of Utah sociologist documented how military spending tracks in near lockstep with emissions. Brett Clark and his coauthors conclude that reducing those expenditures can lead to significant reductions of energy use and, thereby, carbon emissions.

Can the military play a role in climate mitigation?

“Of course, the military affects the environment in a certain capacity, but we usually think of it in regard to war, such as the consequences of bombing or destruction on that front, or maybe the waste left,” said Clark, a professor in the U College of Social & Behavioral Science. But most of the military’s emissions occur in non-combat situations, such as moving fleets and equipment around, training pilots, testing aircraft, or just keeping the AC running at hundreds of bases.

Military expenditures and energy use, 1975 to 2022.

Were it a nation, the U.S. military’s carbon emissions would rank 47th, with 900 bases and installations on U.S. soil and another 800 overseas. Between 2010 and 2019, the military released a total of 636 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

“If the U.S. military is the largest single institution as far as burning of fossil fuels and carbon emissions, what happens on that side of the equation has huge implications,” Clark said. “In this current climate as far as attacks on climate science, expansion of military operations, pushing other countries to greatly expand their militaries, military spending, given its direct connection to energy consumption and fossil fuel emissions, has huge implications for the world as far as thinking about climate mitigation. To ignore it comes at our own peril.”

Along with colleagues from Penn State University and University of British Columbia, Clark recently published an analysis of military spending’s relationship with emissions in PLOS Climate. The team tracked specific kinds of military energy use between 1975 and 2022, and then compared various strategies for reducing emissions over the next 10 years.

Aviation consumes the lion’s share of fuel

They examined only energy directly used in military and training operations, such as fuel burned by planes, ships and terrestrial vehicles, and electrical use at bases. Jet fuel accounted for 55% of this energy use.

“Reducing aviation activities must be a key focus given its share of energy consumption,” lead author Ryan Thombs of Penn State told the BBC. “Aviation is very energy-intensive, and any serious effort to reduce the military’s footprint will require focusing on this category.”

The world’s militaries vast energy consumption and its impact on climate crisis is understudied by the scientific community, which is a surprising and significant oversight, the paper argues. “Military leaders and their institutions consider anthropogenic climate change to be a threat multiplier to geopolitical stability and national security, and some scholars have suggested that the world’s militaries are potentially helpful actors in global climate governance and other sustainability efforts,” the authors wrote.

To inform the study, the team used data compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s military expenditure database. The researchers tracked energy use in British thermal units, or BTU, and expenditures in inflation-adjusted 2021 dollars.

‘Asymmetrical’ responses to changes in spending

Military energy use and spending fluctuated widely since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, when it dropped, then soared during the “peacetime” buildup under President Ronald Reagan, dropped with the end of the Cold War, and exploded again with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While military spending is far greater now than 50 years ago, fuel consumption fell by more than half–to 622 trillion BTU–due to more efficient equipment and a wave of base closures in the 1990s. Military spending, meanwhile, climbed from $464 billion to $812 billion in 2022.

The authors processed the data to see how military energy use would be affected by changes in spending. “We found that a 1% increase in military expenditures had a 0.648% increase in energy,” Clark said. “But on the flip side, a 1% decrease in military expenditures resulted in 1.09% decrease.”

The team’s findings show that sustained cuts could result in annual energy savings on par with what the nation of Slovenia or the state of Delaware consumes annually by 2032.

But just as important to Clark is what doesn’t get funded when defense budgets expand. “Military spending, that’s public spending,” Clark said. “The more you spend on that front generally results in a massive decrease in general public spending for social programs, health care, education, and programs to address climate change. If you expand military consumption, you’re taking away public money to address all those other realms.”

The U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, fly in formation as they prepare for the Beale Air and Space Expo 2025 at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., June 5, 2025.

Credit

U.S. Air Force photo by Frederick A. Brown

The study, “Reducing U.S. military spending county lead to substantial decreases in energy consumption,” was published July 2 in the journal PLOS Climate. Co-authors include Andrew Jorgenson of the University of British Columbia.

Journal

PLOS Climate

DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000569

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Reducing U.S. military spending could lead to substantial decreases in energy consumption

Article Publication Date

2-Jul-2025