Latest news with #UniversityOfPennsylvania
RNZ News
12-07-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Toxic fungus enlisted in fight against leukemia
Close-up illustration of Aspergillus flavus fungus. Photo: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Researchers say they have been able to modify toxic fungus cells to fight cancer - specifically, leukaemia. The same mould that has been linked to deaths in the excavations of ancient tombs and found on old bread has the capability of fight leukemia cells. The fungus is known as aspergillus flavus fungus. Associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Sherry Gao, told Saturday Morning the discovery was significant. Gao said they found a new class of compound which was produced by the fungus. But how does the compound fight cancer? Associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Dr Sherry Gao. Photo: Supplied / Dr Sherry Gao "We isolated and define the chemical structure of those new compounds," Gao said. "By making some small chemical tweaks we actually modified the structure a bit, we've found those modified compounds can enter leukaemia cells very selectively. "Once it's entered the cell, its able to prevent cell division - that's why it could possibly lead to a cure for leukaemia." This was not the first fungus that has led to a breakthrough in medicine. Penicillin was also created using a fungus. Gao said her lab was also experimenting with other fungi, aiming to kill other cancer cell lines. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Forbes
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Six Food System Takeaways From The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill'
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 04: U.S. President Donald Trump, joined by Republican lawmakers, signs the ... More One, Big Beautiful Bill Act into law during an Independence Day military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by) On July 4, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' (OBBBA) into law. The Act, which is essentially a massive budget bill, calls for major changes in federal spending that could ultimately reshape food and health systems, our approach to climate change, and the well-being of hardworking rural and urban communities. Let's break down six of the many immediate impacts this Act will have on our food system: 1. Cuts to food and health assistance will make more people hungrier and sicker. The OBBBA enacted the largest spending cuts in history on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, exceeding US$1 trillion in budget reductions. As a result, in the coming years, about 5 million people—1 in every 8 SNAP participants—will lose access to some food relief, and nearly 12 million Americans will lose their health care. The nutrition education program SNAP-Ed has been defunded entirely. According to a team of health researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the Act's cuts to SNAP alone could result in more than 93,000 premature deaths between now and 2039. 2. Parts of the food industry could feel a pinch. SNAP accounts for about 9 percent of grocery spending, so large corporations could see sales dip especially among packaged food products, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That said, the Act keeps income taxes low for corporate retailers, which could help their bottom lines amid high food prices. 3. Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, remain at greater risk. Provisions in the OBBBA that target immigration will likely have disproportionate impacts within the food system. The Act more than triples the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with a focus on ramping up detention and deportation of non-citizens. Plus, it revokes SNAP eligibility for some lawful immigrants and levies new taxes on sending money home to families abroad, both of which impact immigrants' access to self-sufficiency through food and restaurateurship. 4. Restaurant workers get a boost—but only some of them, and with conditions. Some advocates of the OBBBA claimed it would enact 'no taxes on tips,' which is not precisely true but may still be beneficial for some restaurant workers: Through 2028, tipped workers under certain income limits could deduct up to US$25,000 in tip income from federal income taxes. However, undocumented workers—who collectively paid US$96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022—are ineligible for this tax deduction. 5. The Act could help industrial farms—but benefits for rural families are less clear. Aimed at farmers, the OBBBA calls for tax reductions and increased funding for agriculture commodity support programs and crop insurance subsidies. However, these ag programs tend to support large-scale producers over independent family farms. The Act also creates a US$50 billion fund called the Rural Health Transformation Program that is intended to support rural healthcare, but this amount barely offsets one-third of the money Medicaid had once provided. Now, hundreds of struggling rural hospitals that previously relied on Medicaid dollars to stay open are at even greater risk of closing. Additionally, farmers' incomes are in jeopardy: Data shows that, out of every dollar spent on food at home around the country, about 25 percent flows back to rural communities—but if SNAP cuts diminish purchasing power, farmers would see less money. 6. Climate-smart initiatives are either on hold, cancelled, or reversed entirely. The OBBBA continues to reflect the shift in climate priorities throughout the Trump-Vance Administration so far: The Act halts more than US$500 billion in sustainability investments from the Inflation Reduction Act, rolls back incentives for wind and solar energy, and phases out tax credits for new electric vehicles. Meanwhile, industries like coal, oil and gas will receive tax breaks and access to drill for fossil fuels on previously protected lands. The outcomes of the OBBBA are already reverberating across food and agriculture systems—but so are community-grounded efforts to keep one another nourished and to stand up for our collective well-being. And even more than ever, every food system victory matters. Every successful unionization vote—like one recently at Abundance Food Co-op in Rochester, New York—matters. Every program that connects schoolchildren to farm-grown foods—like those in Michigan—matters. Every innovative idea—like rethinking corner stores in Pennsylvania or modular hydroponics in Singapore and Boston—matters. These victories are local, but that doesn't mean they're small. They all can result in mass change across our food and agriculture systems. It's change that comes incrementally—but this means we can work together to ensure that it's sustainable, long-lasting, deeply rooted change that can't easily be undone.
Wall Street Journal
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Trump Is on a Roll, but He Shouldn't Get Overconfident
Six months into Donald Trump's second presidential term, he continues to notch important victories while his opponents wait for the MAGA right to self-destruct. Any day now, Democrats tell themselves, the president's base will abandon him, his poll numbers will nosedive, and the left will be dancing on his political grave. That's possible, insofar as most anything is possible, but it's also a strategy that elevates hope over experience. The problem for Democrats isn't simply that Mr. Trump has seen through so many of his campaign promises. It's also that swaths of voters believe him to be on the common-sensical side of so many controversies. The University of Pennsylvania realized only recently that male athletes shouldn't be allowed to compete against women, and that female athletes shouldn't be forced to share locker rooms with the opposite sex. Mr. Trump understood that a long time ago, as did your average American, even while left-wing Democrats and 'activist-scholars' spent years defending the school's cockamamie position.
Fox News
08-07-2025
- Sport
- Fox News
Former UPenn swimmer reflects on being teammates with Lia Thomas amid Trump admin victory over university
Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Monika Burzynska said she was assigned the locker just one over from Lia Thomas' when the transgender athlete joined the women's swim team in 2021. Burzynska previously knew the athlete as Will Thomas, a member of the men's swimming team at UPenn. "He wasn't very social," Burzynska told Fox News Digital, adding she had only ever had short, passing conversations with Thomas. She thought Thomas had already graduated when her team was dealt the news that the athlete would be transitioning to join the women's team starting in the 2021-22 season. CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON When that season eventually began, and Thomas became a fixture in the women's locker room, Burzynska often retreated to the corner of the room to change. Other times, Burzynska timed exactly when she changed to coincide with when Thomas showered. Eventually, Burzynska opted to only change in the stalls or in the family locker across the hall. "Around Lia, I wasn't going to risk anything," Burzynska said, regarding the possibility of the trans athlete seeing her undress. Burzynska has never spoken out about her experience of being on a team with Thomas until now, amid the recent news that UPenn agreed to apologize to all the female swimmers, rescind Thomas' program records, and adopt a new policy that applies strict biological definitions for males and females. She said the news gave her "a deep sense of peace and validation." "Not only for me, but for all the girls on the team, for all the girls in the swim world and in the sport world. And I think this decision, it brought back – at least for me – a sense of fairness that had been lost," Burzynska said. "Women's records belong to women and that protecting the integrity of women's sports still matters." Still, the memories of what Burzynska and others had to endure lingers. Burzynska identifies as someone with conservative values, but says she grew up feeling "compassion" for transgender people. Her views changed when she was placed next to Thomas in the locker room. "I thought it must be terrible to feel like you're trapped in the wrong body. Just be so out of touch with who you really are," Burzynska said. "You have these issues that are from afar and you never really quite think they're going to touch you personally until you're on a team with Lia Thomas and your locker is directly next to this biological male. And you would have never believed that you'd be facing this issue directly. "And then when that happens, your views change where you still feel sorry for this person because they're clearly so deeply lost. But then it turns into more, 'OK, this is not fair,'" Burzynska added. As a native of Colonia, New Jersey, Burzynska explained that she grew up in a liberal environment with prominent pro-LGBTQ sentiment. Those values followed her when she went to UPenn in the deep blue city of Philadelphia. "We have a very, very, how should I call it, like deep LGBTQ presence on campus where the campus buildings or the dormitories, rather than flying the U.S. flag, the trans flag, the LGBTQ flag [were flown]. Whenever I visit Penn, I see it's like this huge skyscraper dorm, and they have the biggest rainbow flag you could imagine," Burzynska said. "So I guess, in a sense, you could say it encourages it if a person is very confused about their identity, and then there's this group that seems so accepting, so loving, telling you could be whatever you want to be… that might kind of, yeah, encourage people to turn that way." Burzynska, and the other female swimmers on the team at the time, were allegedly coerced into silence and submission by UPenn administrators. A lawsuit by three other former Thomas teammates, Grace, Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski and Ellen Holmquist, alleged that university officials pressured them not to speak out about their thoughts on Thomas joining the team publicly. "The UPenn administrators went on to tell the women that if the women spoke publicly about their concerns about Thomas' participation on the Women's Team, the reputation of those complaining about Thomas being on the team would be tainted with transphobia for the rest of their lives and they would probably never be able to get a job,'" the lawsuit alleged. UPENN AGREES TO FOLLOW TRUMP'S MANDATE ON PROTECTING WOMEN'S SPORTS AFTER LIA THOMAS INVESTIGATION Burzynska, having grown up in a liberal New Jersey town, was already accustomed to the consequences of sharing conservative values in a liberal setting. Burzynska recalls, from a young age, often being criticized for having "conservative or Republican values." "I had been experiencing that forever. And even UPenn, I think it's every university at this point, but UPenn is very, very left-leaning. And so I was kind of ready to embrace that, that my views wouldn't be welcomed because, yeah, I've been conservative most of my life. My beliefs are grounded in faith." Burzynska recalls a futile conversation she had with her head coach, Mike Schnur, when she confronted him with concerns about being on a team with Thomas. "We had this long meeting, I don't know, almost two hours long. And he said, 'Listen, Monika, I understand all your concerns. They're all valid. I don't think any of them would deter you from continuing onto your senior year and having a successful senior year. I think the one thing that would deter you is that Lia is changing in your locker room and there's nothing you could do about it,'" Burzynska said. "I told him in that meeting, 'What are you talking about? Like, how is this fair?' And his response was, 'It's not fair, but if you have any issues with it, come to me… Don't talk about it with everyone else. Come to me. We'll talk through it'" Burzynska said she never took Schnur up on that offer, believing that he wouldn't do anything about it anyway. Still, she alleges she witnessed her teammates having those futile conversations with Schnur, from a distance. Then came the administrators that allegedly pressured the women's swimmers who objected to Thomas to go to pro-LGBTQ counseling. Burzynska said she called the counseling session "brainwashing meetings." She never attended the sessions. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Burzynska has since moved on from the situation and has embraced her life and career beyond it. Still, she admits that parts of the situation instilled "trauma" in her, and she is grateful that President Donald Trump's administration made it a priority to instill consequences on UPenn. "Those [women's] rights at Penn were clearly compromised so it's amazing that they looked into it and Trump took it so seriously," Burzynska said. Fox News Digital has reached out to UPenn for a response to Burzynska's statements. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter .
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Trump administration pushed out a university president – its latest bid to close the American mind
Under pressure from the Trump administration, the University of Virginia's president of nearly seven years, James Ryan, stepped down on Friday, declaring that while he was committed to the university and inclined to fight, he could not in good conscience push back just to save his job. The Department of Justice demanded that Ryan resign in order to resolve an investigation into whether UVA had sufficiently complied with Donald Trump's orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion. UVA dissolved its DEI office in March, though Trump's lackeys claim the university didn't go far enough in rooting out DEI. This is the first time the Trump regime has pushed for the resignation of a university official. It's unlikely to be the last. On Monday, the Trump regime said Harvard University had violated federal civil rights law over the treatment of Jewish students on campus. On Tuesday, the regime released $175m in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, after the school agreed to bar transgender athletes from women's teams and delete the swimmer Lia Thomas's records. Let's be clear: DEI, antisemitism and transgender athletes are not the real reasons for these attacks on higher education. They're excuses to give the Trump regime power over America's colleges and universities. Why do Trump and his lackeys want this power? They're following Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's playbook for creating an 'illiberal democracy' – an authoritarian state masquerading as a democracy. The playbook goes like this: First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you. Check. Next, intimidate legislators by warning that if they don't bend to your wishes, you'll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.) Check. Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with. Check in process. Then focus on independent sources of information. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews. Check. Then go after the universities. Crapping on higher education is also good politics, as demonstrated by the congresswoman Elise Stefanik (Harvard 2006) who browbeat the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT over their responses to student protests against Israel's bombardment of Gaza, leading to several of them being fired. It's good politics, because many of the 60% of adult Americans who lack college degrees are stuck in lousy jobs. Many resent the college-educated, who lord it over them economically and culturally. But behind this cultural populism lies a deeper anti-intellectual, anti-Enlightenment ideology closer to fascism than authoritarianism. JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has called university professors 'the enemy' and suggested using Orbán's method for ending 'leftwing domination' of universities. Vance laid it all out on CBS's Face the Nation on 19 May 2024: Universities are controlled by leftwing foundations. They're not controlled by the American taxpayer and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year. I'm not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orbán has ever done [but] I do think that he's made some smart decisions there that we could learn from. His way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they're much more open to conservative ideas.' Yet what, exactly, constitutes a 'conservative idea?' That dictatorship is preferable to democracy? That white Christian nationalism is better than tolerance and openness? That social Darwinism is superior to human decency? The claim that higher education must be more open to such 'conservative ideas' is dangerous drivel. So what's the real, underlying reason for the Trump regime's attack on education? Not incidentally, that attack extends to grade school. Trump's education department announced on Tuesday it's withholding $6.8bn in funding for schools, and Trump has promised to dismantle the department. Why? Because the greatest obstacle to dictatorship is an educated populace. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. That's why enslavers prohibited enslaved people from learning to read. Fascists burn books. Tyrants close universities. In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at
