The University researchers who demonstrated superconducting materials at room temperatures last fall, now report a new technique in the quest to also create the materials at lower pressures.

In a paper highlighted as an Editor’s Suggestion in Physical Review Letters, the lab of Ranga Dias, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics and astronomy, describes separating hydrogen atoms from yttrium with a thin film of palladium inside a diamond anvil.

The resulting yttrium superhydride is superconducting at 12 degrees Fahrenheit and about 26 million pounds per square inch, still too high for practical applications. But it is a significant improvement over the pressures that were required for the room temperature materials the researchers reported last fall in Nature.

“This is a completely new technique that nobody has used before for high pressure superhydride synthesis,” Dias says. Read more here.

The University’s Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies has selected two 2021 postdoctoral fellows after a nationwide competition. They’ll join the University in the coming academic year to teach and continue their research.

Mia Alafaireet is completing her PhD in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her dissertation, Transplanting Blackness: New Negro Botanicals and the Ecology of Black Health, examines the Harlem Renaissance through the lens of environmental health, and draws from African-American literature, medical history, and environmental humanities.

Ricardo Milhouse is completing his PhD in gender studies at Arizona State University in the School of Social Transformation. His dissertation, (Dis)Locating the Sensual: Black Queer Placemaking in Brooklyn, New York, investigates the impact of gentrification on aspects of Black queer culture, drawing from urban geography, Black gender and queer studies, and scholarship on design.

Read more here.

New findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) Study could change our understanding of the prevalence of neurological problems in children and how neuroimaging is used to screen for these problems.

Scan results revealed one in 25 children needed further medical evaluation.

“These were all healthy kids. Without these scans some would have had a major medical event,” says John Foxe, director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience and principal investigator of the ABCD Study at the University of Rochester. He is a co-author of the study, which appears in the journal JAMA Neurology.

As part of the ABCD Study, the nine- and ten-year-old participants had an MRI. Of the nearly 12,000 scanned, around 2,500 revealed results that needed follow-up. This gives researchers the largest data set of incidental findings on this population to date.

“Neuro-typical kids may have an actual problem; that’s the real eye opener. The numbers that this study revealed was more than we expected,” says Foxe. “These findings could be the beginning of what is needed to develop protocols around universal screening of youth.”

Read more here.

Karen DeAngelis, associate professor in educational leadership at the Warner School of Education, who has been selected as a 2021 Distinguished Research and Practice Fellow by the National Education Finance Academy (NEFA). DeAngelis is an expert in school finance analysis and research. Along with teaching leadership courses at Warner, DeAngelis brings an economics background to her education work, and her research focuses on the allocation of resources, both financial and human, in K-12 education. Read more here.

(Editor’s Note: Last week’s edition incorrectly gave the date of the Three Minute Thesis Competition as April 19. We apologize for any confusion this caused.)

The University’s fifth annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition, which challenges doctoral students and postdoctoral appointees to describe their research within that time frame to a general audience, will be held virtually starting at noon today.

A panel of judges will select the first-place winner and runner-up from the nine finalists. Audience members will cast their votes for a People’s Choice Award. Register here to attend.

The Center for Research on Flavored Tobacco (CRoFT) is seeking applications for year 4 pilot projects for research to inform FDA regulation of tobacco products.

Pilot projects should address one or more of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products priority areas:  toxicity, addiction, health effects, behavior, communications, marketing influences, and impact analysis related to tobacco products and electronic nicotine delivery systems such as e-cigarettes.

The center, at the University of Rochester and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, is one of the national Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) funded through NIH and the FDA.

Applicants have the option to include a request for supplemental funding of up to $13,000 if the mentored pilot project addresses existing cancer disparities focused on e-cigarettes and/or vaping flavors.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 p.m. May 2, 2021. We encourage you to apply or to share with others who may be interested. Submit applications here.

Researchers who need access to transgenic and mouse genome editing services can now use the services of the Transgenic and Genome Editing Core Facility at the Medical College of Georgia.

To start a project, investigators should contact Lin Gan at ligan@augusta.edu to discuss the details of the project, including costs and timelines. Read more about the process.

Contact Tim Bushnell, director of the Shared Resource Laboratories, or Jeff Wyatt, executive director of Animal Resources, with questions.

Here are important links for researchers:

• The University’s COVID-19 Resource Center for important updates and guidance on working, teaching, and learning remotely
• University of Rochester Medical Center website for restrictions, resources, and news
• The University’s COVID-19 “Restart and Recovery” web page

PLEASE NOTE that the University’s COVID-19 Dashboard is updated daily and dashboard numbers may reflect additional cases confirmed later in the day. When a new case is known, the contact-tracing process begins immediately with the Monroe County Health Department, with confirmed exposures being contacted and required to quarantine. Remember:

If you feel like you’re experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, it’s best to report them through Dr. Chat Bot immediately. Even if you think your symptoms might be something else, like a cold, seasonal congestion, or allergies, it’s still important to tell University health professionals and contact tracers what you are experiencing—they always want to receive more, not less, information.

Common COVID-19 symptoms include:

• A temperature of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher
• Chills
• Muscle or body aches
• Severe fatigue
• Headache
• Congestion or runny nose
• Sore throat
• Loss of taste, smell, or appetite
• Cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
• Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea