The National Institutes of the Health (NIH) has awarded researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai a four-year grant to study the role of the human microbiome in rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, and other autoimmune diseases. The grant is part of the NIH’s Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Autoimmune and Immune-Mediated Diseases (AMP® AIM) program, which is designed to speed the discovery of new treatments and diagnostics. It will support the Microbiome Technology and Analytic Center Hub (Micro-TEACH), a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Icahn Mount Sinai and NYU Langone Health.

Researchers at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, Department of Defense (DOD), to study the role of obesity and oxidative stress in Alzheimer’s disease.

Autonomous vehicle technology likely won't replace the workers behind the wheels of buses, vans and other vehicles shuttling people around cities and towns anytime soon, but mass transit authorities must examine how these technologies will affect both the operation of and the workforce driving public transportation. Researchers at Traffic21, a transportation research institute at Carnegie Mellon University, have urged officials and policymakers to preemptively consider the safety of incorporating automation technologies into their fleets, and training operators to work effectively with these systems.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $53 million in funding awards for diverse small businesses to pursue advanced scientific instrumentation and technologies to address climate change. The funding will support 259 projects across 38 states that cover security and resilience, renewable energy, energy storage, carbon capture and conversion, and fusion energy, including projects that invest in disadvantaged communities to promote equitable research, development, and deployment of solutions. Developing new clean energy solutions is a key component of achieving President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

A survey of how academics use social media to encourage people to interact with their research argues that much of the public value of their work is being overlooked in official 'impact' assessments. The research analysed 200 examples of how academics encourage the uptake of their research on social media. It suggests the 'impact' measurements used to inform last week’s results from the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ – the official system for assessing research in the UK - require an update, because academics are now much more socially networked than they were when the system was devised.