Researchers find caregivers of children hospitalized for cancer, blood disorders at risk for food insecurity

Wake Forest University School of Medicine study finds caregiver food insecurity during hospitalization is associated with longer stays for children

Wake Forest University School of Medicine

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., June 18, 2026 — Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine found caregivers of children hospitalized for cancer and blood disorders may experience food insecurity during their child’s stay, even if they don’t face that issue at home, and it could be linked to longer stays. 

The study, published this spring in Pediatric Blood & Cancer, highlights an overlooked issue, “inpatient food insecurity,” or when families don’t have enough to eat while their child is in the hospital because of the hardships that time might create like missed work or additional expenses. 

“We found caregivers who otherwise wouldn’t be food insecure at home had trouble accessing food when their child was in the hospital,” said Joanna Robles, M.D., assistant professor, hematology and oncology, pediatrics, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “These are not only times of stress for a family, but they incur additional expenses that go beyond medical bills.” 

The study examined survey responses from more than 300 caregivers of children hospitalized in 2022 and 2023 at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Brenner Children's Hospital and found nearly one in five caregivers of children admitted to pediatric hematology-oncology units reported experiencing food insecurity during their child’s hospital stay. And most of them — more than 70% — said they did not experience food insecurity at home outside of hospitalization times.  

Food insecurity can also impact the overall outcome of the sick child, the study also found. Children whose caregivers experienced food insecurity during the hospitalization stayed in the hospital about one third longer on average compared to those who did not. These children also had higher rates of readmission within 30 days of discharge. 

“This shows the value in that additional screening question,” Robles said. “Not only should we assess if a patient’s family struggles with access to food, but we should also specifically screen during the hospital stay and offer help in real time, like meals or other financial assistance. 

Robles said additional research is needed to better understand how inpatient food insecurity affects clinical outcomes and whether targeted support, such as caregiver meal assistance, transportation support or broader financial screening, can reduce hospital length of stay or readmissions. 

To address inpatient food insecurity at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Brenner Children’s Hospital, families who need help are offered three free hot meals a day while their child is in the hospital in addition to a 24/7 food pantry with shelf-stable items. Families are also referred to state and federal assistance programs with the ability to apply onsite to ease the process. 

“Families go through a lot when a child is sick,” she added. “If we can help provide the basics, they can focus on their child’s health, and it could even improve outcomes.” 

About Wake Forest University School of Medicine   

Wake Forest University School of Medicine is the academic core of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Advocate Health and a recognized leader in experiential medical education and groundbreaking research. It directs the education of nearly 1,900 students and fellows, including physicians, basic scientists and allied clinical professionals. The school of medicine also strategically investigates opportunities that will expand basic and clinical research, resulting in nationally and internationally recognized excellence in biomedical research. The school has two campuses, each co-located with leading-edge innovation districts, The Pearl, in Charlotte, and Innovation Quarter, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. These affiliated life-sciences innovation districts focus on advancing health care through new medical technologies and biomedical discovery.   

   

About Advocate Health 

Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Advocate Health is the third-largest nonprofit, integrated health system in the United States. A preeminent academic health system at the forefront of clinical excellence, innovation and research, it delivers care under the names Advocate Health Care in Illinois; Atrium Health in the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama; and Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Wake Forest University School of Medicine is its academic core. Nationally recognized for expertise in heart and vascular, neurosciences, oncology, pediatrics and rehabilitation, Advocate Health is also a pioneer in the delivery of virtual health care. It is accelerating discovery by making research participation part of the standard-of-care through its one-of-a-kind National Center for Clinical Trials, plus two affiliated life-sciences-focused innovation districts and one of the nation’s largest graduate medical education programs. With more than 165,000 teammates serving patients at 69 hospitals and over 1,000 care locations across eight states, Advocate Health reinvests over $6 billion each year to improve community health, making it one of the nation’s largest providers of community benefit.  

 

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Journal

Pediatric Blood & Cancer

DOI

10.1002/1545-5017.70358 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Inpatient Food Insecurity and Pediatric Hematology Oncology Hospitalization Outcomes

 

A century-old concrete formula gets a long-overdue update for the modern age

Bentham Science Publishers

A new study published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal by Dr. Chenhui Jiang of the Department of Construction Engineering, Zhejiang College of Construction, Hangzhou, China, takes one of civil engineering's most foundational rules and brings it into the present. Abrams' Law — a relationship between concrete's water-to-cement ratio and its compressive strength, first set out by Duff Abrams in 1918 — has guided concrete mix design for over a century. But as the construction industry has increasingly adopted fly ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants, as a partial substitute for Portland cement, the original formula has shown clear limitations. It simply was not designed with such mineral additives in mind, and applying it directly to fly ash concrete can produce inaccurate strength predictions, complicating the design of safe and sustainable structures.

What the Research Set Out to Solve — and How

The study tackled this gap by introducing two important changes to the original Abrams' formula. First, the standard water-to-binder ratio was replaced with what the researcher calls an "effective" water-to-binder ratio — one that accounts for fly ash's pozzolanic reactivity, meaning its capacity to chemically contribute to strength over time. Second, the proportion of fly ash in the concrete mix was added as a second independent variable, since the original law only considered one factor. To test and calibrate this updated formula, the researcher produced 40 concrete mixtures using two types of Portland cement and two types of fly ash, with fly ash replacing cement at rates ranging from 0% up to 80%. Compressive strength was measured at four points in time — 14, 28, 60, and 120 days. Multi-linear regression analysis was then applied to determine the formula's three empirical constants across all these combinations.

Results That Hold Up Across a Wide Range of Conditions

The augmented formula performed well across the full scope of mixtures tested. The regression analysis produced coefficients of determination (R²) of 0.95 or higher for most mixture combinations — a threshold that, in the inherently variable world of concrete research, indicates a strong and reliable fit between the model and measured data. To further confirm its validity, the formula was tested against compressive strength data drawn from three independent sources in published literature, and the predicted values closely matched the measured results across all four ages examined. The research concludes that this updated version of Abrams' Law can reliably predict the compressive strength of concrete containing fly ash across a broad range of mix proportions and curing ages, offering engineers a more accurate tool for designing greener, more durable concrete structures. This research was supported by the General Scientific Research Program of the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province, the Teaching Reform and Research Program of Zhejiang Higher Vocational Education, and the General Scientific Research Program of the Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of Zhejiang Province, China.

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Read the published article here: https://bit.ly/3PQBxAm

JOURNAL

The Open Civil Engineering Journal

DOI: 10.2174/0118741495439121260414095419

If you want to publish your article please visit : https://bit.ly/4de0DRi

 

 

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Journal

The Open Civil Engineering Journal

DOI

10.2174/0118741495439121260414095419 

Article Title

An Augmentation of Abrams’ Law: Correlate Compressive Strength with Water-binder Ratio of Concrete Containing Fly Ash

 

Mystery of 17th century shipwreck holding 400 gold coins finally solved after 30 years

Bournemouth University

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image: 

Examples of the gold coins recovered from the wreck. 

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Credit: British Museum

The identity of a centuries-old shipwreck discovered off the south coast of England, holding 400 gold coins has finally been identified as the Dutch trading ship “Dom van Keulen” which left Morocco for the Netherlands in the autumn of 1633.

A new publication identifies the mysterious wreck that, for almost 30 years, a team of divers and researchers from the British Museum, Bournemouth University (BU) and the South West Maritime Archaeology Group have worked to identify. The book, called ‘From Morocco to the Coast of England: The Story of the Dom van Keulen and its Remarkable Cargo’ reveals that the Dutch ship came across some adverse weather.

Independent Historian, Ian Friel who helped identify the ship has uncovered documents in the National Archive relating to its voyage from Morocco to the Netherlands during which the crew “met with much tempestuous weather”. The ship sprang a leak and sank close to the coastal town of Salcombe, Devon off the south coast of England. All the crew survived.

Dave Parham, Professor of Maritime Archaeology at BU, who edited the book alongside Venetia Porter, former Senior Curator for Islamic and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art at the British Museum who worked with the South West Maritime Archaeology Group to find out more about the cargo and its ship after it was discovered in 1995.

Dave Parham said: “Among its cargo were 150 bags of gum arabic, 64 bags of saltpetre, 320 goat skins and 9,000 Barbary ducats, gold Moroccan coins. It is thought that most of the cargo was salvaged at the time, but more than 400 coins remained on the seabed until they were discovered by the South West Maritime Archaeology Group in 1995.”

Dave continued: “This provides important context for the wealth and architecture of the Sa‘dian Sharifs, the trade in African gold, and tangible evidence of the flourishing 17th-century maritime trade linking Morocco, the Low Countries and Britain.”

The 400 coins which along with other material from the wreck are on display at the British Museum originated from the Barbary Coast, recognised today as Morocco. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Dutch merchants actively traded by exchanging manufactured goods for highly valued, pure West African gold. At this time the Dutch had a large maritime industry and had a global trading empire. Many of the foreign imported ducats were melted down to produce their own Dutch gold coins which became one of the world’s most widely accepted trade currencies.

Very little is known about the appearance or size of the Dom van Keulen and no known paintings of the ship exist. Professor Parham says that the wreck site is about 30 metres long. It lies at a depth of around 18 metres and includes cannons and anchors amongst other small items of cargo. 

Other items brought up from the wreckage and now in the ownership of the British Museum include a pewter bowl and spoon, gold jewellery, a sounding weight in the shape of a fish, a stamp seal, pottery and a gold finger nugget.Head of Research at the British Museum, Jeremy D Hill, said:

“The discovery of African gold from under the sea off the coast of Devon was an amazing discovery that raised so many questions about how it came to be there. Answering those questions has taken a team of experts, working collaboratively. The story can now be told of how a Dutch ship carrying North African gold was wrecked off the English coast, making this a discovery of international importance. It reminds us how much there is still to be found under our seas.”

The book offers a detailed account of the find and the recovery process of the shipwreck. It also provides a cultural history of the Sa’dian Sharifs, an Arab Sharifian dynasty that ruled Morocco at the time the ship's crew would have been trading with them.

The wreck site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 and is closely managed by Historic England. Diving on the site is restricted to those that hold a licence granted by the Secretary of State at DCMS. The wreck is monitored by the National Coastwatch Institution (NCI) Prawle Point station, which overlooks the site. Devon & Cornwall Police’s marine unit also undertake regular patrols in the vicinity as part of Operation Birdie, a national initiative to tackle illegal interference with historic wreck sites.

An Open Access version of the book can be found online with physical copies available for purchase from the British Museum online shop.

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DOI

10.48582/eh04-q803 

 

More gold coins and recovered jewellery from the site

 

Other recovered artefacts including - pewter bowl and spoon, a ceramic sounding weight shaped as a pilchard, stamp seal and finger nugget

Credit

British Museum

 

A diver above the wreck site with cannons below on the sea bed. 

Credit

Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST)

 

Menopausal women taking hormones more likely to have overall healthier lifestyles

New large-scale study identifies patterns of dietary intake, physical activity, and sleep across menopause and hormone therapy groups

The Menopause Society

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CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 17, 2026)—Menopause is associated with a number of adverse health effects, some of which can be mitigated by an array of modifiable health behaviors (MHBs), including diet, exercise, and sleep duration. A new study sought to determine whether menopause and hormone therapy status had any association with MHBs. Initial results suggest that a link exists. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society.

During the menopause transition, there is a significant increase in the risk of chronic diseases, along with an increased incidence of such bothersome symptoms as hot flashes and urogenital problems. The use of hormone therapy often serves as a treatment option to manage these menopause symptoms. However, whether hormone therapy affects health outcomes and chronic disease risk directly or indirectly through altered health behaviors is unclear.

Research to date around this topic has produced mixed results, with some research suggesting that postmenopausal women focus more on a healthy lifestyle. A first-of-its-kind cross-sectional analysis involving more than 10,000 women sought to identify to what extent menopause status and the use of hormones was linked with a healthy lifestyle as defined by diet, physical activity, and sleep duration.

The research showed that postmenopausal women who never used hormone therapy reported a lower intake of fruit and vegetables. Never-users of hormone therapy were 19% less likely to meet strength-based activity guidelines. Sleep duration was also shorter in postmenopausal women who had never used hormone therapy. The likelihood of meeting sleep guidelines was 14% lower in never, 26% lower in current, and 24% lower in past hormone therapy users compared with premenopausal and perimenopausal women.

According to the researchers, these findings may be related to elevated follicle-stimulating hormone levels, as expected in postmenopausal women who do not use hormone therapy, and the lower estradiol levels associated with menopause, which have been associated with poorer sleep. In addition, menopause-related hot flashes and urogenital symptoms can contribute to sleep disturbances, but these symptoms may be alleviated by hormone therapy.

Survey results are published in the article “Menopause and hormone therapy in relation to dietary intake, physical activity, and sleep and meeting lifestyle guidelines.”

“This large observational study underscores that women who use hormone therapy tend to adopt overall healthier lifestyles. Although this association may partly reflect better symptom control enabling healthier behaviors, healthy-user bias is likely a significant contributor. Women who choose to use hormone therapy are often more proactive in their healthcare and may systematically differ from nonusers in socioeconomic resources, access to care, and health literacy. This largely explains why early observational studies of hormone therapy suggested cardiovascular benefits that were not confirmed in subsequent randomized, controlled trials,” says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society.

For more information about menopause and healthy aging, visit www.menopause.org.

The Menopause Society is dedicated to empowering healthcare professionals and providing them with the tools and resources to improve the health of women during the menopause transition and beyond. As the leading authority on menopause since 1989, the nonprofit, multidisciplinary organization serves as the independent, evidence-based resource for healthcare professionals, researchers, the media, and the public

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Journal

Menopause

DOI

10.1097/GME.0000000000000002805 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Menopause and hormone therapy in relation to dietary intake, physical activity, and sleep, and meeting lifestyle guidelines

Article Publication Date

17-Jun-2026

 

Data center emissions could be curbed with underground carbon capture

By tapping into underground saline aquifers, researchers estimate that up to 90% of data center carbon dioxide emissions could be stored, offering a scalable path to decarbonization

American Chemical Society

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Over the last two decades, annual carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have declined significantly. In recent years, however, this trend has slightly reversed, likely due to the explosive growth of data centers. As energy-intensive data centers proliferate, their emissions could undo years of decarbonization efforts. According to an analysis of data in the public domain, capturing and storing emissions in underground reservoirs could halt this reversal, researchers report in ACS’ Energy & Fuels. 

More data centers are needed to keep up with the rapidly growing demand for computational power, particularly to support emerging artificial intelligence models. Study authors Hon Chung Lau and Steve C. Tsai project that the power requirement of data centers in the U.S. will more than quadruple, going from 40 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 to an estimated 169 GW in 2030.   

Meeting this demand will require greatly expanding energy production. Fossil fuels — particularly natural gas, which is more abundant and relatively cleaner burning than coal — is the most reliable solution. “Natural gas combined cycle [NGCC] power plants equipped with carbon capture and storage technologies [CCS] will be the best way to provide power to these data centers and prevent carbon dioxide from being emitted to the atmosphere,” says Lau. 

Previous researchers have suggested that saline aquifers — deep layers of rock with salt water-filled pores — could be used to store carbon dioxide gas captured from fossil fuel-based power plants. Injecting the carbon dioxide into these spaces would trap it there permanently. 

The researchers calculated that powering all data centers in the U.S. with fossil fuels would raise yearly carbon dioxide emissions from 90 million tons in 2025 to 404 million tons by 2030. Next, they mapped the data centers and underground saline aquifers to assess how much of these emissions could be stored there. 

The mapping found that 34 U.S. states have sufficient saline aquifers to store carbon dioxide for more than a century. If emissions in these states were injected into saline aquifers starting in 2025, nearly three-fourths of data center emissions could be mitigated by 2030. Transporting carbon dioxide captured in other states via pipelines to neighboring states with saline aquifers would raise that figure to 90%. Locating data centers close to both natural gas reservoirs and saline aquifers would minimize the cost of energy supply to data centers and reduce the cost of large-scale decarbonization efforts like CCS.  

Although CCS is a mature technology, groundwork is still needed to deploy it at scale. Decarbonizing data centers would require partnerships between data center owners, utilities, and CCS providers, Lau says.

The authors are associated with Low Carbon Energies, LLC, a consulting company involved in the ongoing energy transition.  

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and science news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio. 

Registered journalists can subscribe to the ACS journalist news portal on EurekAlert! to access embargoed and public science press releases. For media inquiries, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. 

Journal

Energy & Fuels

DOI

10.1021/acs.energyfuels.6c01309 

 

Study yields new insights on what makes conversation engaging

While speaking style does matter, willingness to extend a conversation depends primarily on interest in the topic, McGill researcher says

McGill University

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What makes a speaker engaging? Both what is said and how it is said matter, but in different, complementary ways, a new study conducted at the McGill School of Communication Sciences and Disorders has found.

When people try to sound “engaging,” they tend to speak more loudly and in a higher pitch, and this can lead listeners to evaluate them more positively, the researchers said. However, the study also reveals that the listener’s desire to extend a conversation depends mainly on interest in what the speaker has to say.

“We were surprised to find a clear split: social impressions of the speaker (friendliness, competence, attractiveness) were driven mainly by how they spoke, whereas willingness to extend the conversation was driven primarily by what the conversation was about,” said Marcos Domínguez-Arriola, PhD student and lead author of the study.

“Speaking about something interesting may help sustain an engaging first conversation, but sounding engaging may be more important for whether someone wants to interact with you again,” he clarified. “This distinction helps explain why some conversations feel immediately rewarding but do not lead to lasting connections, while others may feel less exciting yet still foster meaningful relationships.”

What an engaging speaker sounds like

For their first experiment, Domínguez-Arriola and Professor Marc D. Pell recruited 20 participants (10 women, 10 men) to record sets of pre-written anecdotes. The 160 anecdotes all followed a similar, short, conversational format and had been classified by another panel of volunteers as “interesting” or “boring.”

The participants were asked to record their anecdotes twice: in a neutral voice and in an “engaging” voice, as if trying to create a positive connection with the listener. The researchers then used acoustic analysis tools to measure different voice features.

“We found that, across speakers, this 'engaging' vocal styling is marked by higher loudness and pitch, more dynamic variation in loudness, and a 'brighter' vocal quality,” said Domínguez-Arriola.

What makes people feel engaged

In a second experiment, the researchers recruited 36 people (18 women, 18 men) to listen to the anecdotes. They were asked to rate the speaker on various social traits and to say how long they would be willing to continue the conversation – a key innovative feature of the study that the researchers called “time bidding.”

That was when the researchers found that it was the listener’s interest in the topic – as opposed to the speaker’s oratorical style – that was the most important factor in determining the length of a conversation.

Given that this current experiment was based on asynchronous listening tasks, the researchers say the next step is to study social interactions in real time, taking a closer look at how conversational partners continuously adapt to each other. They also plan to examine what feeling engaged in conversation entails from a neurological perspective.

About the study

“Not Worth My Time! Understanding Factors That Make Speech Socially Engaging,” by Marcos E. Domínguez-Arriola and Marc D. Pell was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Secretary of Science, Humanities and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico.

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Journal

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

DOI

10.1037/xhp0001410 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Not worth my time! Understanding factors that make speech socially engaging.