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Duke University Press to join MIT Press’ Direct to Open, publish open-access monographs

MIT Latest News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 5:10pm

The MIT Press has announced that beginning in 2026, Duke University Press will join its Direct to Open (D2O) program. This collaboration marks the first such partnership with another university press for the D2O program, and reaffirms their shared commitment to open access publishing that is ethical, equitable, and sustainable.

Launched in 2021, D2O is the MIT Press’ framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single e-books, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. 

Duke University Press brings their distinguished catalog in the humanities and social sciences to Direct to Open, providing open access to 20 frontlist titles annually alongside the MIT Press’ 80 scholarly books each year. Their participation in the D2O program — which will also include free term access to a paywalled collection of 250 key backlist titles — enhances the range of openly available academic content for D2O’s library partners.

“By expanding the Direct to Open model to include one of the most innovative university presses publishing today, we’re taking a significant step toward building a more open and accessible future for academic publishing,” says Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be building this partnership with Duke University Press. This collaboration will benefit the entire scholarly community, ensuring that more books are made openly available to readers worldwide.”

“We are honored to participate in MIT Press’ dynamic and successful D2O program,” says Dean Smith, director of Duke University Press. “It greatly expands our open-access footprint and serves our mission of making bold and transformational scholarship accessible to the world.”

With Duke University Press’ involvement in 2026, D2O will feature multiple package options, combining content from both the MIT Press and Duke University Press. Participating institutions will have the opportunity to support each press individually, providing flexibility for libraries while fostering collective impact.

For details on how your institution might participate in or support Direct to Open, please visit the D2O website or contact the MIT Press library relations team.  

MIT Department of Economics to launch James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work

MIT Latest News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 4:35pm

Starting in July, MIT’s Shaping the Future of Work Initiative in the Department of Economics will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education of the next generation of scholars, made possible by a gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. In recognition of the gift and the expansion of priorities it supports, on July 1 the initiative will become part of the new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. This center will be officially launched at a public event in fall 2025.

The Stone Center will be led by Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, and co-directors David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It will join a global network of 11 other wealth inequality centers funded by the Stone Foundation as part of an effort to advance research on the causes and consequences of the growing accumulation at the top of the wealth distribution.

“This generous gift from the Stone Foundation advances our pioneering economics research on inequality, technology, and the future of the workforce. This work will create a pipeline of scholars in this critical area of study, and it will help to inform the public and policymakers,” says Provost Cynthia Barnhart.

Originally established as part of MIT Blueprint Labs with a foundational gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative is a nonpartisan research organization that applies economics research to identify innovative ways to move the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory, with a central focus on revitalizing labor market opportunities for workers without a college education. Building on frontier micro- and macro-economics, economic sociology, political economy, and other disciplines, the initiative seeks to answer key questions about the decline in labor market opportunities for non-college workers in recent decades. These labor market changes have been a major driver of growing wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has, in turn, broadly reshaped our economy, democracy, and society.

Support from the Stone Foundation will allow the new Stone Center to build on the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative’s ongoing research agenda and extend its focus to include a growing emphasis on the interplay between technologies and inequality, as well as the technology sector’s role in defining future inequality.

Core objectives of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work will include fostering connections between scholars doing pathbreaking research on automation, AI, the intersection of work and technology, and wealth inequality across disciplines, including within the Department of Economics, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing; strengthening the pipeline of emerging scholars focused on these issues; and using research to inform and engage a wider audience including the public, undergraduate and graduate students, and policymakers.     

The Stone Foundation’s support will allow the center to strengthen and expand its commitments to produce new research, convene additional events to share research findings, promote connection and collaboration between scholars working on related topics, provide new resources for the center’s research affiliates, and expand public outreach to raise awareness of this important emerging challenge. “Cathy and I are thrilled to welcome MIT to the growing family of Stone Centers dedicated to studying the urgent challenges of accelerating wealth inequality,” James M. Stone says.

Agustín Rayo, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, says, “I am thrilled to celebrate the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center in the MIT economics department. Not only will it enhance the cutting-edge work of MIT’s social scientists, but it will support cross-disciplinary interactions that will enable new insights and solutions to complex social challenges.”

Jonathan Gruber, chair of the Department of Economics, adds, “I couldn’t be more excited about the Stone Foundation’s support for the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. The initiative’s leaders have been far ahead of the curve in anticipating the rapid changes that technological forces are bringing to the labor market, and their influential studies have helped us understand the potential effects of AI and other technologies on U.S. workers. The generosity of the Stone Foundation will allow them to continue this incredible work, while expanding their priorities to include other critical issues around inequality. This is a great moment for the paradigm-shifting research that Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson are leading here at MIT.”

“We are grateful to the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation for their generous support enabling us to study two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the future of work,” says Acemoglu, who was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2024 (with co-laureates Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson). “We hope to go beyond exploring the causes of inequality and the determinants of the availability of good jobs in the present and in the future, but also develop ideas about how society can shape both the work of the future and inequality by its choices of institutions and technological trajectories.”

“We are incredibly fortunate to be joining the family of Stone Centers around the world. Jim and Cathleen Stone are far-sighted and generous donors, and we are delighted that they are willing to back us and MIT in this way,” says Johnson. “We look forward to working with all our colleagues, at MIT and around the world, to advance understanding and practical approaches to inequality and the future of work.”

Autor adds, “This support will enable us — and many others — to focus our scholarship, teaching and public outreach towards shaping a labor market that offers opportunity, mobility, and economic security to a far broader set of people.” 

Daily mindfulness practice reduces anxiety for autistic adults

MIT Latest News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 2:40pm

Just 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness practice a day led to reduced stress and anxiety for autistic adults who participated in a study led by scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Participants in the study used a free smartphone app to guide their practice, giving them the flexibility to practice when and where they chose.

Mindfulness is a state in which the mind is focused only on the present moment. It is a way of thinking that can be cultivated with practice, often through meditation or breathing exercises — and evidence is accumulating that practicing mindfulness has positive effects on mental health. The new open-access study, reported April 8 in the journal Mindfulness, adds to that evidence, demonstrating clear benefits for autistic adults.

“Everything you want from this on behalf of somebody you care about happened: reduced reports of anxiety, reduced reports of stress, reduced reports of negative emotions, and increased reports of positive emotions,” says McGovern investigator and MIT Professor John Gabrieli, who led the research with Liron Rozenkrantz, an investigator at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research affiliate in Gabrieli’s lab. “Every measure that we had of well-being moved in significantly in a positive direction,” adds Gabrieli, who is also the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.

One of the reported benefits of practicing mindfulness is that it can reduce the symptoms of anxiety disorders. This prompted Gabrieli and his colleagues to wonder whether it might benefit adults with autism, who tend to report above average levels of anxiety and stress, which can interfere with daily living and quality of life. As many as 65 percent of autistic adults may also have an anxiety disorder.

Gabrieli adds that the opportunity for autistic adults to practice mindfulness with an app, rather than needing to meet with a teacher or class, seemed particularly promising. “The capacity to do it at your own pace in your own home, or any environment you like, might be good for anybody,” he says. “But maybe especially for people for whom social interactions can sometimes be challenging.”

The research team, including Cindy Li, the autism recruitment and outreach coordinator in Gabrieli’s lab, recruited 89 autistic adults to participate in their study. Those individuals were split into two groups: one would try the mindfulness practice for six weeks, while the others would wait and try the intervention later.

Participants were asked to practice daily using an app called Healthy Minds, which guides participants through seated or active meditations, each lasting 10 to 15 minutes. Participants reported that they found the app easy to use and had little trouble making time for the daily practice.

After six weeks, participants reported significant reductions in anxiety and perceived stress. These changes were not experienced by the wait-list group, which served as a control. However, after their own six weeks of practice, people in the wait-list group reported similar benefits. “We replicated the result almost perfectly. Every positive finding we found with the first sample we found with the second sample,” Gabrieli says.

The researchers followed up with study participants after another six weeks. Almost everyone had discontinued their mindfulness practice — but remarkably, their gains in well-being had persisted. Based on this finding, the team is eager to further explore the long-term effects of mindfulness practice in future studies. “There’s a hypothesis that a benefit of gaining mindfulness skills or habits is they stick with you over time — that they become incorporated in your daily life,” Gabrieli says. “If people are using the approach to being in the present and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, that’s what you want most of all. It’s a habit of thought that’s powerful and helpful.”

Even as they plan future studies, the researchers say they are already convinced that mindfulness practice can have clear benefits for autistic adults. “It’s possible mindfulness would be helpful at all kinds of ages,” Gabrieli says. But he points out the need is particularly great for autistic adults, who usually have fewer resources and support than autistic children have access to through their schools. Gabrieli is eager for more people with autism to try the Healthy Minds app. “Having scientifically proven resources for adults who are no longer in school systems might be a valuable thing,” he says.

This research was funded, in part, by The Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT and the Yang Tan Collective.

Court Rules Against NSO Group

Schneier on Security - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 7:07am

The case is over:

A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users.

I’m sure it’ll be appealed. Everything always is.

Republicans’ ‘clearly unprecedented’ gambit to kill climate programs

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:28am
The House Energy and Commerce Committee wants to use the budget process to repeal program authorizations. That may not fly in the Senate.

Trump weighs axing climate guidance for NEPA reviews

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:26am
The proposal, which is circulating through federal agencies, could help fossil fuel projects move forward more quickly.

Colorado high court boosts Boulder’s climate case against Exxon

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:22am
A majority on the state Supreme Court allowed the climate lawsuit to proceed at the state level, but a minority dissent warned of "chaos."

Disasters displaced a record number of people last year

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:22am
About 11 million U.S. residents had to relocate to another part of the country in 2024.

FEMA review council to meet amid agency turmoil

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:21am
The council, which will meet for the first time next week, has until Nov. 16 to issue a report on the disaster agency's future.

Greenlander takes helm of Arctic Council as tensions simmer

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:19am
Climate research is under pressure as U.S. funding cuts stand to reduce scientific activity in the region and Russia’s isolation hinders collaboration.

Amazon Catholics hope new pope will protect the rainforest

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:17am
Clergy and faithful in the Amazon region see Pope Leo XIV as a pontiff who could protect the region and fight against climate change.

Solar exec who’ll help shape Japan’s climate goals has a warning

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:12am
Shota Ikeda is calling for emissions reductions of at least 75 percent by 2035.

LSE Group study finds $1T industry in climate adaptation

ClimateWire News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 6:12am
It’s the latest example of how climate strategies focused on adapting to the physical shocks of global warming are gaining traction.

How we think about protecting data

MIT Latest News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 5:00am

How should personal data be protected? What are the best uses of it? In our networked world, questions about data privacy are ubiquitous and matter for companies, policymakers, and the public.

A new study by MIT researchers adds depth to the subject by suggesting that people’s views about privacy are not firmly fixed and can shift significantly, based on different circumstances and different uses of data.

“There is no absolute value in privacy,” says Fabio Duarte, principal research scientist in MIT’s Senseable City Lab and co-author of a new paper outlining the results. “Depending on the application, people might feel use of their data is more or less invasive.”

The study is based on an experiment the researchers conducted in multiple countries using a newly developed game that elicits public valuations of data privacy relating to different topics and domains of life.

“We show that values attributed to data are combinatorial, situational, transactional, and contextual,” the researchers write.

The open-access paper, “Data Slots: tradeoffs between privacy concerns and benefits of data-driven solutions,” is published today in Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. The authors are Martina Mazzarello, a postdoc in the Senseable City Lab; Duarte; Simone Mora, a research scientist at Senseable City Lab; Cate Heine PhD ’24 of University College London; and Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab.

The study is based around a card game with poker-type chips the researchers created to study the issue, called Data Slots. In it, players hold hands of cards with 12 types of data — such as a personal profile, health data, vehicle location information, and more — that relate to three types of domains where data are collected: home life, work, and public spaces. After exchanging cards, the players generate ideas for data uses, then assess and invest in some of those concepts. The game has been played in-person in 18 different countries, with people from another 74 countries playing it online; over 2,000 individual player-rounds were included in the study.

The point behind the game is to examine the valuations that members of the public themselves generate about data privacy. Some research on the subject involves surveys with pre-set options that respondents choose from. But in Data Slots, the players themselves generate valuations for a wide range of data-use scenarios, allowing the researchers to estimate the relative weight people place on privacy in different situations. 

 

The idea is “to let people themselves come up with their own ideas and assess the benefits and privacy concerns of their peers’ ideas, in a participatory way,” Ratti explains.

The game strongly suggests that people’s ideas about data privacy are malleable, although the results do indicate some tendencies. The data privacy card whose use players most highly valued was for personal mobility; given the opportunity in the game to keep it or exchange it, players retained it in their hands 43 percent of the time, an indicator of its value. That was followed in order by personal health data, and utility use. (With apologies to pet owners, the type of data privacy card players held on to the least, about 10 percent of the time, involved animal health.)

However, the game distinctly suggests that the value of privacy is highly contingent on specific use-cases. The game shows that people care about health data to a substantial extent but also value the use of environmental data in the workplace, for instance. And the players of Data Slots also seem less concerned about data privacy when use of data is combined with clear benefits. In combination, that suggests a deal to be cut: Using health data can help people understand the effects of the workplace on wellness.

“Even in terms of health data in work spaces, if they are used in an aggregated way to improve the workspace, for some people it’s worth combining personal health data with environmental data,” Mora says.

Mazzarello adds: “Now perhaps the company can make some interventions to improve overall health. It might be invasive, but you might get some benefits back.”

In the bigger picture, the researchers suggest, taking a more flexible, user-driven approach to understanding what people think about data privacy can help inform better data policy. Cities — the core focus on the Senseable City Lab — often face such scenarios. City governments can collect a lot of aggregate traffic data, for instance, but public input can help determine how anonymized such data should be. Understanding public opinion along with the benefits of data use can produce viable policies for local officials to pursue.

“The bottom line is that if cities disclose what they plan to do with data, and if they involve resident stakeholders to come up with their own ideas about what they could do, that would be beneficial to us,” Duarte says. “And in those scenarios, people’s privacy concerns start to decrease a lot.” 

Eldercare robot helps people sit and stand, and catches them if they fall

MIT Latest News - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 12:00am

The United States population is older than it has ever been. Today, the country’s median age is 38.9, which is nearly a decade older than it was in 1980. And the number of adults older than 65 is expected to balloon from 58 million to 82 million by 2050. The challenge of caring for the elderly, amid shortages in care workers, rising health care costs, and evolving family structures, is an increasingly urgent societal issue.

To help address the eldercare challenge, a team of MIT engineers is looking to robotics. They have built and tested the Elderly Bodily Assistance Robot, or E-BAR, a mobile robot designed to physically support the elderly and prevent them from falling as they move around their homes.

E-BAR acts as a set of robotic handlebars that follows a person from behind. A user can walk independently or lean on the robot’s arms for support. The robot can support the person’s full weight, lifting them from sitting to standing and vice versa along a natural trajectory. And the arms of the robot can them by rapidly inflating side airbags if they begin to fall.

With their design, the researchers hope to prevent falls, which today are the leading cause of injury in adults who are 65 and older. 

“Many older adults underestimate the risk of fall and refuse to use physical aids, which are cumbersome, while others overestimate the risk and may not to exercise, leading to declining mobility,” says Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT. “Our design concept is to provide older adults having balance impairment with robotic handlebars for stabilizing their body. The handlebars go anywhere and provide support anytime, whenever they need.”

In its current version, the robot is operated via remote control. In future iterations, the team plans to automate much of the bot’s functionality, enabling it to autonomously follow and physically assist a user. The researchers are also working on streamlining the device to make it slimmer and more maneuverable in small spaces.

“I think eldercare is the next great challenge,” says E-BAR designer Roberto Bolli, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. “All the demographic trends point to a shortage of caregivers, a surplus of elderly persons, and a strong desire for elderly persons to age in place. We see it as an unexplored frontier in America, but also an intrinsically interesting challenge for robotics.”

Bolli and Asada will present a paper detailing the design of E-BAR at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) later this month.

Asada’s group at MIT develops a variety of technologies and robotic aides to assist the elderly. In recent years, others have developed fall prediction algorithms, designed robots and automated devices including robotic walkers, wearable, self-inflating airbags, and robotic frames that secure a person with a harness and move with them as they walk.

In designing E-BAR, Asada and Bolli aimed for a robot that essentially does three tasks: providing physical support, preventing falls, and safely and unobtrusively moving with a person. What’s more, they looked to do away with any harness, to give a user more independence and mobility.

“Elderly people overwhelmingly do not like to wear harnesses or assistive devices,” Bolli says. “The idea behind the E-BAR structure is, it provides body weight support, active assistance with gait, and fall catching while also being completely unobstructed in the front. You can just get out anytime.”

The team looked to design a robot specifically for aging in place at home or helping in care facilities. Based on their interviews with older adults and their caregivers, they came up with several design requirements, including that the robot must fit through home doors, allow the user to take a full stride, and support their full weight to help with balance, posture, and transitions from sitting to standing.

The robot consists of a heavy, 220-pound base whose dimensions and structure were optimized to support the weight of an average human without tipping or slipping. Underneath the base is a set of omnidirectional wheels that allows the robot to move in any direction without pivoting, if needed. (Imagine a car’s wheels shifting to slide into a space between two other cars, without parallel parking.)

Extending out from the robot’s base is an articulated body made from 18 interconnected bars, or linkages, that can reconfigure like a foldable crane to lift a person from a sitting to standing position, and vice versa. Two arms with handlebars stretch out from the robot in a U-shape, which a person can stand between and lean against if they need additional support. Finally, each arm of the robot is embedded with airbags made from a soft yet grippable material that can inflate instantly to catch a person if they fall, without causing bruising on impact. The researchers believe that E-BAR is the first robot able to catch a falling person without wearable devices or use of a harness.

They tested the robot in the lab with an older adult who volunteered to use the robot in various household scenarios. The team found that E-BAR could actively support the person as they bent down to pick something up from the ground and stretched up to reach an object off a shelf — tasks that can be challenging to do while maintaining balance. The robot also was able to lift the person up and over the lip of a tub, simulating the task of getting out of a bathtub.

Bolli envisions a design like E-BAR would be ideal for use in the home by elderly people who still have a moderate degree of muscle strength but require assistive devices for activities of daily living.

“Seeing the technology used in real-life scenarios is really exciting,” says Bolli.

In their current paper, the researchers did not incorporate any fall-prediction capabilities in E-BAR’s airbag system. But another project in Asada’s lab, led by graduate student Emily Kamienski, has focused on developing algorithms with machine learning to control a new robot in response to the user’s real-time fall risk level.

Alongside E-BAR, Asada sees different technologies in his lab as providing different levels of assistance for people at certain phases of life or mobility.

“Eldercare conditions can change every few weeks or months,” Asada says. “We’d like to provide continuous and seamless support as a person’s disability or mobility changes with age.”

This work was supported, in part, by the National Robotics Initiative and the National Science Foundation.

Advancing science, policy and action in tipping points research

Nature Climate Change - Tue, 05/13/2025 - 12:00am

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 13 May 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02335-9

Advancing science, policy and action in tipping points research

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

MIT Latest News - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 4:50pm

Studies by a growing number of labs have identified neurological health benefits from exposing human volunteers or animal models to light, sound, and/or tactile stimulation at the brain’s “gamma” frequency rhythm of 40Hz. In the latest such research at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT, scientists found that 40Hz sensory stimulation improved cognition and circuit connectivity and encouraged the growth of new neurons in mice genetically engineered to model Down syndrome.

Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor at MIT and senior author of the new study in PLOS ONE, says that the results are encouraging, but also cautions that much more work is needed to test whether the method, called GENUS (for gamma entrainment using sensory stimulation), could provide clinical benefits for people with Down syndrome. Her lab has begun a small study with human volunteers at MIT.

“While this work, for the first time, shows beneficial effects of GENUS on Down syndrome using an imperfect mouse model, we need to be cautious, as there is not yet data showing whether this also works in humans,” says Tsai, who directs The Picower Institute and The Alana Center, and is a member of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty.

Still, she says, the newly published article adds evidence that GENUS can promote a broad-based, restorative, “homeostatic” health response in the brain amid a wide variety of pathologies. Most GENUS studies have addressed Alzheimer’s disease in humans or mice, but others have found benefits from the stimulation for conditions such as “chemo brain” and stroke.

Down syndrome benefits

In the study, the research team led by postdoc Md Rezaul Islam and Brennan Jackson PhD ’23 worked with the commonly used “Ts65Dn” Down syndrome mouse model. The model recapitulates key aspects of the disorder, although it does not exactly mirror the human condition, which is caused by carrying an extra copy of chromosome 21.

In the first set of experiments in the paper, the team shows that an hour a day of 40Hz light and sound exposure for three weeks was associated with significant improvements on three standard short-term memory tests — two involving distinguishing novelty from familiarity and one involving spatial navigation. Because these kinds of memory tasks involve a brain region called the hippocampus, the researchers looked at neural activity there and measured a significant increase in activity indicators among mice that received the GENUS stimulation versus those that did not.

To better understand how stimulated mice could show improved cognition, the researchers examined whether cells in the hippocampus changed how they express their genes. To do this, the team used a technique called single cell RNA sequencing, which provided a readout of how nearly 16,000 individual neurons and other cells transcribed their DNA into RNA, a key step in gene expression. Many of the genes whose expression varied most prominently in neurons between the mice that received stimulation and those that did not were directly related to forming and organizing neural circuit connections called synapses.

To confirm the significance of that finding, the researchers directly examined the hippocampus in stimulated and control mice. They found that in a critical subregion, the dentate gyrus, stimulated mice had significantly more synapses.

Diving deeper

The team not only examined gene expression across individual cells, but also analyzed those data to assess whether there were patterns of coordination across multiple genes. Indeed, they found several such “modules” of co-expression. Some of this evidence further substantiated the idea that 40Hz-stimulated mice made important improvements in synaptic connectivity, but another key finding highlighted a role for TCF4, a key regulator of gene transcription needed for generating new neurons, or “neurogenesis.”  

The team’s analysis of genetic data suggested that TCF4 is underexpressed in Down syndrome mice, but the researchers saw improved TCF4 expression in GENUS-stimulated mice. When the researchers went to the lab bench to determine whether the mice also exhibited a difference in neurogenesis, they found direct evidence that stimulated mice exhibited more than unstimulated mice in the dentate gyrus. These increases in TCF4 expression and neurogenesis are only correlational, the researchers noted, but they hypothesize that the increase in new neurons likely helps explain at least some of the increase in new synapses and improved short-term memory function.

“The increased putative functional synapses in the dentate gyrus is likely related to the increased adult neurogenesis observed in the Down syndrome mice following GENUS treatment,” Islam says.

This study is the first to document that GENUS is associated with increased neurogenesis.

The analysis of gene expression modules also yielded other key insights. One is that a cluster of genes whose expression typically declines with normal aging, and in Alzheimer’s disease, remained at higher expression levels among mice who received 40Hz sensory stimulation.

And the researchers also found evidence that mice that received stimulation retained more cells in the hippocampus that express Reelin. Reelin-expressing neurons are especially vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease, but expression of the protein is associated with cognitive resilience amid Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which Ts65Dn mice develop. About 90 percent of people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease, typically after the age of 40.

“In this study, we found that GENUS enhances the percentage of Reln+ neurons in hippocampus of a mouse model of Down syndrome, suggesting that GENUS may promote cognitive resilience,” Islam says.

Taken together with other studies, Tsai and Islam say, the new results add evidence that GENUS helps to stimulate the brain at the cellular and molecular level to mount a homeostatic response to aberrations caused by disease pathology, be it neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s, demyelination in chemo brain, or deficits of neurogenesis in Down syndrome.

But the authors also cautioned that the study had limits. Not only is the Ts65Dn model an imperfect reflection of human Down syndrome, but also the mice used were all male. Moreover, the cognitive tests in the study only measured short-term memory. And finally, while the study was novel for extensively examining gene expression in the hippocampus amid GENUS stimulation, it did not look at changes in other cognitively critical brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex.

In addition to Jackson, Islam, and Tsai, the paper’s other authors are Maeesha Tasnim Naomi, Brooke Schatz, Noah Tan, Mitchell Murdock, Dong Shin Park, Daniela Rodrigues Amorim, Fred Jiang, S. Sebastian Pineda, Chinnakkaruppan Adaikkan, Vanesa Fernandez, Ute Geigenmuller, Rosalind Mott Firenze, Manolis Kellis, and Ed Boyden.

Funding for the study came from the Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT and the Alana USA Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the La Caixa Banking Foundation, a European Molecular Biology Organization long-term postdoctoral fellowship, Barbara J. Weedon, Henry E. Singleton, and the Hubolow family.

Revoking EPA climate rule could trigger carbon boom

ClimateWire News - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 7:02am
President Donald Trump’s move to kill the power plant climate regulation could offer a lifeline to coal while sinking renewable energy.

Florida Backdoor Bill Fails

Schneier on Security - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 7:01am

A Florida bill requiring encryption backdoors failed to pass.

Energy and Commerce unveils broad climate law rollbacks

ClimateWire News - Mon, 05/12/2025 - 7:00am
The House committee's portion of the Republicans' big party-line bill also includes expedited permitting for gas exports and other projects.

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