A new Texas A&M AgriLife Research study shows consumers are willing to pay more for flavorful, vividly colored tomatoes regardless of origin– evidence that sensory traits, not just a “local” label, drive what people value most in fresh produce.

Published in Agribusiness, the peer-reviewed study was led by Samuel Zapata, Ph.D., an associate professor in Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Agricultural Economics, based at the Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen.

A new study published in AJPM Focus found that the risk of child firearm injuries was 45 percent higher during the 2-6 pm afterschool period on school days, compared to non-school days, among students at public schools in New York City. This risk nearly tripled in the immediate period at the end of the school day, typically about 2 pm. A second study, published in Prevention Science, examined the benefits of summer youth employment programs and found that these programs not only reduce youth involvement in crime and violence, but also improve youth educational outcomes, social connections, and community engagement.

Schools will need to become more talk based as AI makes it increasingly easy for students to bypass traditional forms of learning and exposes the limits of exams, researchers argue in a new study. The paper, by two researchers at the University of Cambridge, suggests that Generative AI is likely to push teaching into becoming more conversational, with chatbots acting as partners that introduce students to new ideas and even impersonate historical thinkers to stretch their thinking. It highlights a wave of emerging tools already prompting this shift, including AI systems that provoke students’ critical reasoning and a new “Moderator Bot”, currently being developed at Cambridge, that helps pupils switch perspectives and engage more deeply with one another’s arguments.

As USC leadership and expertise in advancing brain health and healthy aging grows ever stronger, a recent scholarly paper perfectly exemplifies why South Carolina’s flagship university is excelling in these efforts. Led by health promotion, education, and behavior (HPEB) professor Daniela Friedman, 26 researchers representing 16 departments came together to integrate their knowledge and insights related to Alzheimer’s disease research in the Palmetto State. They published their collective perspectives in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports.

Using a second National Institutes of Health grant awarded this year, health promotion, education, and behavior assistant professor Leila Larson will examine the factors influencing childhood development from yet another angle: weather. With nearly $400,000 in funding support, Larson will examine the direct and indirect effects of extreme weather events – from extreme heat, precipitation, and drought to hurricanes, cyclones, and other storms – on pediatric health.

Leila Larson has been awarded nearly three million dollars from the National Institutes of Health to lead a five-year study aimed at improving childhood health and development. The health promotion, education, and behavior assistant professor and global health researcher will use the funds to deploy a health intervention (i.e., the BUNDLE study) that employs three strategies, individually and in combination, that address critical adversities faced by many children in resource limited settings.