Dr. Jacques Courseault, assistant professor of sports medicine at the School of Medicine, has opened one of the world’s first Ehlers-Danlos syndrome clinics, the Tulane Hypermobility Clinic. The Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a group of inherited genetic conditions that affects connective tissue. The idea to open the clinic came after Courseault saw several patients with a range of symptoms resembling the syndrome.

Laura Rosanne Adderley, associate professor of history, was named a finalist for the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award, presented by the Campus Compact coalition of universities. Nominees are considered for their collaboration with communities, institutional impact and academic work. Adderley was nominated by the Tulane Center for Public Service for her community-based initiatives rooted in public humanities.

“Umbrellas — and minds — work best when they are open. … Together, with our umbrellas, we are prepared for any storm.” MICHAEL A. FITTS, president of Tulane University, at the Convocation for New Students in Avron B. Fogelman Arena in Devlin Fieldhouse on Aug. 18, 2022. Students were provided second-line umbrellas, which they were encouraged to adorn with memorabilia.

Architecture students Jose Castillo, James Poche and Chelsea Kilgore won the 2022 Newcomb Quad Pavilion Design Competition for their project “Melt” — decals to adorn the School of Architecture’s temporary home — while the school’s permanent home, Richardson Memorial Hall, undergoes extensive renovation. “Melt” depicts a timeline of the school’s past, present and future. The design also features new seating on the quad.

Engineering physics senior Kate Scalet, and graduates Elliot Lorenz, Austin Wolf and Brock Headen were finalists in a NASA competition for design concepts that allow the expansion of human space exploration, including short-term stays and scientific operations on planetary bodies. The team’s project: a mobile cube that “blooms” into a flower-like shape when deployed and is intended to provide communication capabilities, power generation, energy storage and multipurpose storage on the moon.

Researchers found that the stress neurotransmitter norepinephrine, or noradrenaline, in the brain facilitates fear processing by stimulating neurons in the amygdala to generate a pattern of electrical discharges. This pattern changes the frequency of brain wave oscillation to an aroused state that promotes the formation of fear memories. Jeffrey Tasker, professor of cell and molecular biology and holder of the Catherine and Hunter Pierson Chair in Neuroscience, and Xin Fu, PhD student, led this research.

A study led by Dr. Nassir Marrouche, director of the Tulane Heart and Vascular Institute, shows that the simple approach — compared to advanced image-guided technology to aggressively target diseased areas of the heart — has better patient outcomes when it comes to ablation, a procedure that destroys cardiac tissue to correct irregular heart rhythms, also known as atrial fibrillation.

A research team led by Dr. Samir El-Dahr, Jane B. Aron Professor and chair of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, examined why human kidneys, which are composed of nearly a million filter units, stop creating new filter cells after birth. The researchers used a mouse model to understand what occurs when a fetal stem cell differentiates into a mature kidney cell. Researchers found that near the time of birth, the DNA blueprint that controls the fate of kidney stem cells changes dramatically.