AAI launches Immunology Explained to help the public understand the science behind their health

American Association of Immunologists Inc

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Immunology Explained: Connecting You to Science that Protects Your Health

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Credit: The American Association of Immunologists

The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) today announced the launch of Immunology Explained, a public communications initiative designed to connect people everywhere with clear, science-based information about the immune system and its impact on health. Immunology Explained will cover a broad range of immunology topics including vaccines, autoimmunity, cancer immunotherapy, and infectious diseases. 

Launching during Health Literacy Month, Immunology Explained comes at a critical time when false claims and distrust in science are spreading rapidly, undermining public confidence in science and health. The initiative aims to counter these trends by offering accessible, engaging content across a new website and social media platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Dr. Uli von Andrian, AAI President, said, “Our members are responsible for some of the most significant biomedical discoveries of the past century, including the development of life-saving cancer immunotherapies, antibody therapies, transplant technologies, and vaccines. With Immunology Explained, we want to make immunology understandable and relevant by tapping into the expertise of the world’s leading immunologists to translate these discoveries into helpful, everyday insights for families, caregivers, policy makers, and everyone interested in immune health.” 

Developed by the American Association of Immunologists and their expert members, Immunology Explained connects immunology to overall health, helping people understand its link to common concerns such as allergies, childhood vaccines, infection, and even cancer.  As an objective, independent, and trusted resource, Immunology Explained is research-backed and vetted by expert immunologists, promoting a deeper understanding of immune health that can help people and their loved ones live longer, healthier lives. 

The initiative’s launch underscores AAI’s broader strategic goal to combat false claims and to strengthen public trust in science by increasing public understanding of the relevance of immunology to health. By translating cutting-edge discoveries into clear, everyday language, Immunology Explained empowers people to make health decisions with confidence and clarity. 

“AAI has been advancing immunology for more than a century and never has the need to share science with the public been more urgent,” Dr. von Andrian added. “We are proud to offer Immunology Explained as a trusted, independent voice at a time when reliable health information is needed more than ever to protect the public health and sustain public support for life-saving biomedical research.” 

Learn more at immunologyexplained.org and follow Immunology Explained on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. 

About The American Association of Immunologists 

The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) is one of the world’s largest organizations of immunologists and scientists in related disciplines. Our mission is to improve global health and well-being by advancing immunology and elevating public understanding of the immune system. AAI members are responsible for some of the most significant biomedical discoveries of the past century, including the development of life-saving cancer immunotherapies, antibody therapies, transplant technologies, and vaccines. We support scientists across the field of immunology through knowledge dissemination, community building, advocacy, and public outreach. 

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Method of Research

News article

 

Afraid of the dentist? The cause may be something different from what you think

Between 8 – 20 per cent of children and adolescents are so afraid of dental treatment that they meet the criteria for being diagnosed with dental fear.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Young people who have experienced bullying, divorce, violence or abuse are significantly more likely to be anxious in the dentist’s chair. 

This angst may cause some people to avoid going to the dentist, while others feel an intense urge to flee once they are there.

A major risk factor is painful experiences at the dental clinic.

Between 8 – 20 per cent of children and adolescents are so afraid of dental treatment that they meet the criteria for being diagnosed with dental fear.

Now, new research shows that dental fear occurs more often in those who have been exposed to stressful childhood experiences.

In other words, painful experiences in life can affect how you feel in the dentist's chair.

Lying on your back can make you feel vulnerable

The study, with responses from more than 5800 adolescents aged 13 -17 years, shows that adolescents who have experienced stressful experiences during childhood, such as violence, divorce, abuse or bullying are significantly more likely to have dental fear than adolescents who do not have such experiences.

The study is based on data from HUNT, The Trøndelag Health Study, which is one of the largest health studies ever performed. It is a unique database of questionnaire data, clinical measurements and samples from a county’s inhabitants since 1984.

The more stressful experiences the young people had, the great was the likelihood that they would have dental fear. The study also shows that the association was stronger in girls than in boys.

"For many people who have experienced a lot of insecurity in childhood, dental treatment can be demanding. The patients lie on their backs in a vulnerable position while an authority figure works inside the mouth. It's no wonder that dental treatment can be difficult," says Lena Myran, a specialist in psychology. She works on a daily basis at the Competence Center Tannhelse Midt (TkMidt).

Not been to the dentist for 40 years

This centre includes several specialist services where dentists and psychologists work together in teams to help children and adults who have severe dental anxiety. Myran works with adult patients. She is also working on a doctoral thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on the connections between painful childhood experiences and health, related to the oral cavity and teeth.

"I have patients who haven't been to the dentist for 40 years," Myran said.

The study she recently published is only about young people and looks at the connections between painful childhood experiences and dental fear. The researchers looked at different types of stressors, but painful experiences at the dental clinic were not included in this material.

"It is also important to note that this is a cross-sectional study that does not provide a basis for saying what is cause or effect. We can only see if there is a connection," says Myran.

The study found a clear link between dental fear and various types of painful childhood experiences, including bullying.

Girls most at risk

"Bullying means being systematically rejected and ridiculed. If you have experienced bullying, you may have a hypersensitivity to other people's intentions. There may be periods during dental treatment where it is silent, and you do not quite know what the dentist is thinking. This may be similar to situations where these individuals have felt insecure. For people who have been bullied, saying what you think and feel may have felt dangerous," says Myran.

Myran was surprised that the correlation between painful childhood experiences and dental fear was stronger in girls than in boys.

"We know that dental fear is more common among girls and that more girls than boys have experienced sexual abuse. There are also more girls than boys who develop anxiety and depression in adolescence, but the fact that we found such a clear difference in our material was still surprising," Myran said.

She believes the findings should have consequences for how the dental health service treats young people.

"When dental professionals meet frightened patients, they can ask about the cause. Patients often find it safe for the dentist to ask. Patients know that the dentist is not a psychologist, so it does not have to be a long conversation. But by taking the patient’s experiences and fears into account, dental professionals can contribute to better dental health and safer patient experiences," says Myran.

Tell the dentist

Inspired by other initiatives in Norway, TkMidt established a service for children and adolescents who suffer from dental fear called “Trygge Barn i Tannbehandling” (Safe Children in Dental Treatment) (TBiT) eight years ago. This offer is now being rolled out nationally.

As part of the effort, training is being offered to dental professionals on how to deal with young patients who are afraid.

"It’s important to talk to your dentist or dental hygienist about how you feel. Just telling your dentist that you are afraid can help an incredible amount. Even a short sentence about your fears will lead many dentists to be more sensitive. The dentist is a good friend who should help, and you don't have to ask in any specific way, but just say that you are afraid," says Myran.

She emphasizes that many children may have had painful childhood experiences without developing dental fear, and that the anxiety about the dentist is generally greatest when you are a child, and that it often decreases as the child matures.

Children who have been in dental treatment a lot have an extra vulnerability to developing dental fear.

"Our study and other research show that, overall, there are many ways to develop intense fear of going to the dentist. Fortunately, there is good help available," says Myran.

It is possible for adult patients throughout Norway to seek help from one of Norway's Centres of Expertise in the Dental Health Service (in Norwegian).

References:
Myran, L., Sun, YQ., Dahllöf, G. et al.Associations of adverse childhood experiences with dental fear, and the mediating role of dental fear on caries experience: the Young-HUNT4 Survey. BMC Oral Health 25, 1141 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-025-06486-1

Laura Beaton, Ruth Freeman, Gerry Humphris; Why Are People Afraid of the Dentist? Observations and Explanations. Med Princ Pract 1 July 2014; 23 (4): 295–301. https://doi.org/10.1159/000357223

Raadal M, Strand GV, Amarante EC, Kvale G. Relationship between caries prevalence at 5 years of age and dental anxiety at 10. European Journal of Paediatric Dentistry. 2002 Mar;3(1):22-26. PMID: 12871013

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Journal

BMC Oral Health

DOI

10.1186/s12903-025-06486-1 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Associations of adverse childhood experiences with dental fear, and the mediating role of dental fear on caries experience: the Young-HUNT4 Survey

 

JACK NICOLSON AS THE DENTIST

 STEVE MARTIN IS THE DENTIST IN THE REMAKE

 SCI-FI-TEK 70 YRS IN THE MAKING

Pacific Fusion to open facility in New Mexico

World Nuclear News

Monday, 29 September 2025

California headquartered pulsed magnetic fusion system developer Pacific Fusion has selected Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the site for its first Research and Manufacturing Campus.
 

(Image: Pacific Fusion)

The USD1 billion New Mexico Research and Manufacturing Campus at Mesa del Sol will house the company's Demonstration System, designed to achieve net facility gain - more fusion energy out than all the energy stored in the system - by 2030. Pacific Fusion will launch its manufacturing operations in New Mexico before the end of the year, with facility construction set to begin in 2026.

Pacific Fusion said the Demonstration System is designed to "deliver 100-fold higher facility gain at 10-fold lower cost than the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a 1,000-fold leap in practical fusion performance". It also builds on decades of scientific and engineering advances at the Z Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, its research partner.

The company noted that it continues to expand its headquarters, including its three Research and Development Campuses, in California.

"These developments keep us on track to deliver the first commercial fusion system in the United States by the mid-2030s and then move quickly to scaled deployment of affordable fusion energy," it said.

Upon finalisation, the New Mexico Research and Manufacturing Campus project will bring more than 200 long-term jobs to the state, along with hundreds more construction jobs, workforce development programmes, and regional economic activity.

"Pacific Fusion's decision to build in New Mexico proves that our state can compete - and win - in the race to attract the most innovative companies in the world," said New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. "This project will create good jobs, expand our clean-tech economy, and ensure New Mexico continues to lead in the industries of the future."

Pacific Fusion was founded in 2023 to deliver affordable fusion energy. Its technology builds on New Mexico's legacy of applied physics and clean-energy innovation, including decades of research at Sandia National Laboratories.

New AI enhances the view inside fusion energy systems

If a sensor fails, this system could provide the missing data and even greater detail

Princeton University

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An illustrator’s depiction of data gathered from sensors being analyzed by artificially intelligent software. 

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Credit: Bumper DeJesus / Princeton University

Imagine watching a favorite movie when suddenly the sound stops. The data representing the audio is missing. All that’s left are images. What if artificial intelligence (AI) could analyze each frame of the video and provide the audio automatically based on the pictures, reading lips and noting each time a foot hits the ground?

That’s the general concept behind a new AI that fills in missing data about plasma, the fuel of fusion, according to Azarakhsh Jalalvand of Princeton University. Jalalvand is the lead author on a paper about the AI, known as Diag2Diag, that was recently published in Nature Communications. “We have found a way to take the data from a bunch of sensors in a system and generate a synthetic version of the data for a different kind of sensor in that system,” he said. The synthetic data aligns with real-world data and is more detailed than what an actual sensor could provide. This could increase the robustness of control while reducing the complexity and cost of future fusion systems. “Diag2Diag could also have applications in other systems such as spacecraft and robotic surgery by enhancing detail and recovering data from failing or degraded sensors, ensuring reliability in critical environments.”

The research is the result of an international collaboration between scientists at Princeton University, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Chung-Ang University, Columbia University and Seoul National University. All of the sensor data used in the research to develop the AI was gathered from experiments at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a DOE user facility.

The new AI enhances the way scientists can monitor and control the plasma inside a fusion system and could help keep future commercial fusion systems a reliable source of electricity. “Fusion devices today are all experimental laboratory machines, so if something happens to a sensor, the worst thing that can happen is that we lose time before we can restart the experiment. But if we are thinking about fusion as a source of energy, it needs to work 24/7, without interruption,” Jalalvand said. 

AI could lead to compact, economical fusion systems

The name Diag2Diag originates from the word “diagnostic,” which refers to the technique used to analyze a plasma and includes sensors that measure the plasma. Diagnostics take measurements at regular intervals, often as fast as a fraction of a second apart. But some don’t measure the plasma often enough to detect particularly fast-evolving plasma instabilities: sudden changes in the plasma that can make it hard to produce power reliably. 

There are many diagnostics in a fusion system that measure different characteristics of the plasma. Thomson scattering, for example, is a diagnostic technique used in doughnut-shaped fusion systems called tokamaks. The Thomson scattering diagnostic measures the temperature of negatively charged particles known as electrons, as well as the density: the number of electrons packed into a unit of space. It takes measurements quickly but not fast enough to provide details that plasma physicists need to keep the plasma stable and at peak performance. 

“Diag2Diag is kind of giving your diagnostics a boost without spending hardware money,” said Egemen Kolemen, principal investigator of the research who is jointly appointed at PPPL and Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. 

This is particularly important for Thomson scattering because the other diagnostics can’t take measurements at the edge of the plasma, which is also known as the pedestal. It is the most important part of the plasma to monitor, but it’s very hard to measure. Carefully monitoring the pedestal helps scientists enhance plasma performance so they can learn the best ways to get the most energy out of the fusion reaction efficiently. 

For fusion energy to be a major part of the U.S. power system, it must be both economical and reliable. PPPL Staff Research Scientist SangKyeun Kim, who was part of the Diag2Diag research team, said the AI moves the U.S. toward those goals. “Today’s experimental tokamaks have a lot of diagnostics, but future commercial systems will likely need to have far fewer,” Kim said. “This will help make fusion reactors more compact by minimizing components not directly involved in producing energy.” Fewer diagnostics also frees up valuable space inside the machine, and simplifying the system also makes it more robust and reliable, with fewer chances for error. Plus, it lowers maintenance costs.

PPPL: A leader in AI approaches to stabilizing fusion plasma

The research team also found that the AI data supports a leading theory about how one method for stopping plasma disruptions works. Fusion scientists around the world are working on ways to control edge-localized modes (ELMs), which are powerful energy bursts in fusion reactors that can severely damage the reactor’s inner walls. One promising method to stop ELMs involves applying resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs): small changes made to the magnetic fields used to hold a plasma inside a tokamak. PPPL is a leader in ELM-suppression research, with recent papers on AI and traditional approaches to stopping these problematic disruptions. One theory suggests that RMPs create “magnetic islands” at the plasma’s edge. These islands cause the plasma’s temperature and density to flatten, meaning the measurements were more uniform across the edge of the plasma. 

“Due to the limitation of the Thomson diagnostic, we cannot normally observe this flattening,” said PPPL  Principal Research Scientist Qiming Hu, who also worked on the project. “Diag2Diag provided much more details on how this happens and how it evolves.” 

While magnetic islands can lead to ELMs, a growing body of research suggests they can also be fine-tuned using RMPs to improve plasma stability. Diag2Diag generated data that provided new evidence of this simultaneous flattening of both temperature and density in the pedestal region of the plasma. This strongly supports the magnetic island theory for ELM suppression. Understanding this mechanism is crucial for the development of commercial fusion reactors.

The scientists are already pursuing plans to expand the scope of Diag2Diag. Kolemen noted that several researchers have already expressed interest in trying the AI. “Diag2Diag could be applied to other fusion diagnostics and is broadly applicable to other fields where diagnostic data is missing or limited,” he said. 

This research was supported by DOE under awards DE-FC02-04ER54698, DE-SC0022270, DE-SC0022272, DE-SC0024527, DE-SC0020413, DE-SC0015480 and DE-SC0024626, as well as the National Research Foundation of Korea award RS-2024-00346024 funded by the Korean government (MSIT). The authors also received financial support from the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence under award 2025-97.

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PPPL is mastering the art of using plasma — the fourth state of matter — to solve some of the world’s toughest science and technology challenges. Nestled on Princeton University’s Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, our research ignites innovation in a range of applications, including fusion energy, nanoscale fabrication, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability science. The University manages the Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the nation’s single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. Feel the heat at https://energy.gov/science and http://www.pppl.gov.  

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-63492-1 

Article Title

Multimodal super-resolution: discovering hidden physics and its application to fusion plasmas