Science

This Week in Science: Children allowed COVID-19 vaccine, singing lemurs, pig kidneys, flamingo makeup

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panelvoted on Tuesday to recommend the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5-11 years old. The FDA is not bound by the panel’s decision, but it is expected to act accordingly and grant emergency-use authorization for the vaccine within a few days. If approved, vaccination eligibility will expand to some28 million children in that age bracket.

This Week in Science: Moderna boosters approved, koala chlamydia vaccine trial starts, NASA launches spaceship, leading primate center to be shut down

An FDA advisory panelunanimously voted last week to approve the use of a booster shot for the Moderna vaccine and again voted unanimously yesterday to approve a booster for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Moderna’s booster only applies to certain groups of people, such as those over the age of 65, high-risk individuals between the ages of 18 and 64 or people whose jobs put them at risk of contracting COVID-19. The individuals in all three categories should wait at least six months after their second dose to receive their Moderna booster shot. Although the FDA panel unanimously decided to approve the booster for those categories, the panel did not make any decisions on whether to recommend booster shots for low-risk adults over 18. Some members believe it is too early to make the call; they argue that as more people become eligible for the booster, it will be crucial to determine if it is effective at providing better protection against COVID-19. Additionally, some scientists say that there is not enough evidence to suggest that vaccine efficacy is decreasing, which, if true, could make a booster shot pointless.

This week in Science: FDA okays e-cig, first malaria vaccine approved, toilet bats discovered

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrationgranted market authorization to an electronic cigarette company for the first time on Tuesday, approving certain products for sale in the United States. The FDAapproved three products from R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company’s brand, Vuse, in an effort to diminish the impacts of traditional cigarettes, whose carcinogenic properties contribute to an estimated 400,000 U.S. deaths each year. The FDA concluded that the reduced morbidity and mortality among smokers outweigh the risks that approving Vuse products poses to youth. Notably, 10% of high school students who use e-cigarettes said Vuse is their usual brand.

Like humans, this species of songbird can understand rhythm, Tufts study finds

Imagine two metronomes: one ticking with each beat equally spaced apart and the other clicking with a messy, inconsistent rhythm. Most people would find that the second metronome sounds out of place. But would an animal be able to tell the same?

Highly processed foods make up 67% of youth diets, Friedman study finds

As smartphones, online shopping and cryptocurrency have become more prevalent in the past 20 years, so too have ultraprocessed foods, which make up the majority of youth diets. The percentage of child and adolescent diets composed of ultraprocessed foods — those made with refined ingredients and additives — hasincreased from 61% to 67% in the past 20 years, according to a recent Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings may have implications for combating the development of ultraprocessed food-related disease in adulthood.

Events on the Hill — Week of Feb. 23

MONDAY"TUPIT Screening: 'True Justice'"Details: The Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College (TUPIT) will host a free screening of the documentary "True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight For Equality" (2019), which relates historical injustices of the U.S. prison ...

Events on the Hill — Week of Feb. 16

TUESDAY"Student-Alumni Panel and Networking Night"Details: Engineering alumni will return to campus to network with students and discuss career paths as part of the School of Engineering's National Engineers Week programming. Registration begins at 5:30 p.m. and appetizers will be served.Where ...

Co-majors offer students interdisciplinary breadth, depth

There are currently five courses of study that can be categorized as co-majors, according to the Registrar of the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. These co-majors consist of biomedical sciences, biotechnology, education, environmental studies (ENVS) and science, technology and society (STS). ...

Cartoon: Specimen 15-A

Cartoon: STEM on the Hill

Op-Ed: Climate change is a moral issue

In June 2012, Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. In this speech, he famously referred to climate change as “an engineering problem.”He went on to say, “The fact remains, there are uncertainties around climate, climate change, why it’s changing, ...

Op-Ed: The university’s climate responsibility

Correction: In the Dec. 11, 2016 op-ed “The university’s climate responsibility,” by Bruce Everett the sentence "Research suggests that climate sensitivity is in fact near or even below the bottom end of the IPCC range — on the order of two degrees celsius or fewer” was changed to  "Actual evidence strongly suggests that climate sensitivity is in fact below even the bottom end of the IPCC range – on the order of one degree Celcius or less for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” This correction was made after the Daily received evidence substantiating the latter statement.

Editorial: New credit system, new problems

The university recently made the decision to change its current credit system to a standardized, credit-hour system, as described in an Oct. 3 Daily article. Under the current system, a student could theoretically graduate with less than the 120 semester hour units required by the U.S. Department ...

Sheldon Krimsky discusses private interests, ethics in science

Sheldon Krimsky has been a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) at Tufts since 1974. Since then, he’s contributed extensively to the study of ethical considerations relative to biotechnology and other scientific fields. He was a consultant to the Presidential Commission ...

Channeling Ina: Chemistry in the kitchen

Science is everywhere! By everywhere, I don’t mean Tisch group study the night before all of the chemistry and biology exams. Science rules most things in the world around us, including all of the cooking and baking processes that turn raw ingredients into delicious food. Food chemistry is by far ...

Share the love (of science)

As a wide-eyed freshman battling my way through Bio 14, I was quick to find fault in nearly every aspect of the course. The lecture slides were confusing and poorly organized. The clicker questions required logical leaps that I wasn’t comfortable taking. And the exams. Oh, those Bio 14 exams.My frustration ...

New Dietary Guidelines for Americans generate mixed opinions

As the the nation’s go-to source for nutrition advice, the U.S. Federal Government released the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans on Jan. 7. While acting as an outline for a healthy diet, this report includes a series of key recommendations for healthy eating patterns along with five main guidelines. 

Cheese provides unexpected vehicle for microbial research

While many science laboratories enforce a strict “no food in the lab” policy, Assistant Professor of Biology Benjamin Wolfe’s lab almost always contains at least one kind of food: cheese. Wolfe studies how microbial communities assemble, and he often uses food in his lab, especially cheese, which ...

First-year Harry Paul presents work on scoliosis at White House

Tufts first-year Harry Paul presented his invention, intended to ease the lives of children living with congenital scoliosis, to President Barack Obama and other White House officials earlier this month. Paul has been working on the device for three years and recently submitted it for a patent. The ...

Kaleidoscope science

Ever since my middle school days, when I was compelled to watch “Leprechaun in the Hood” by what I now imagine must have been near-Clockwork Orange-tactics, I have had a slightly biased vendetta against all of cinema.Although I seemed entrenched in my anti-cinematic ways to friends and family, this ...