U.S. News’ Best Colleges 2022 edition ranked Tulane No. 42 among the nation’s top National Universities list, No. 29 among National Private Universities and No. 34 among the list of Most Innovative Schools. The publication also ranked Tulane No. 4 among the Best Schools for Service Learning, and Tulane’s Undergraduate Business Program ranked 41st in the nation. Additionally, the Princeton Review Best 387 Colleges: 2022 Edition placed Tulane in the top universities that are Most Loved, Best Run, and have the Best College City, Best Quality of Life and the Happiest Students.

A Tulane team will work with the New Orleans-based glass recycling center Glass Half Full to develop a plan to divert glass from landfills and turn it into glass sand products to restore coastal communities and preserve historic sites. The project, led by Julie Albert, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was inspired by a service-learning collaboration.

ESPN selected the Tulane University Special Olympics (TUSO) program as one of the Top 5 Unified Special Olympics Sports groups in the nation and also named TUSO to its 2021 Honor Roll for intentionally promoting meaningful social inclusion by bringing together students with and without intellectual disabilities to create accepting environments.

A study co-led by Dr. Xiao-Ming Yin, chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Dr. Donald R. and Donna G. Pulitzer Professor, found that cycle thresholds from PCR tests — an indicator of the amount of virus an infected person carries — aren’t a reliable gauge for identifying those most likely to transmit COVID-19.

Researchers at the Tulane National Primate Research Center found that an inhaled vaccine currently being developed induces a robust and long-lasting immune response against SARS-CoV-2 in nonhuman primates, similar to the protection provided by the Moderna vaccine.

Tiong Aw, assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is developing more efficient ways to test and measure viruses in wastewater so engineers can evaluate how to best eradicate them.

The Africana Studies Program has launched its new Black Studies Book Club. “Our plans are to bring in a scholar (once per semester) whose recent publication has shifted the conversation in Africana Studies to deliver a public lecture and to facilitate a more intimate, book club–style conversation,” said Mia L. Bagneris, director of the Africana Studies Program. The conversation aims to bring together diverse constituencies of the Africana Studies Program, including students, faculty, staff and local community members as well as students and faculty from New Orleans Math…

Michael J. Moore, a professor of biomedical engineering at the School of Science and Engineering, is part of a national study that aims to provide solutions to the national opioid overdose crisis by creating a living bioengineered nerve circuit that mimics the pain transmission pathway in the spinal cord. The circuit of living cells is designed to help scientists test the effectiveness of non-addictive alternatives to opioid painkillers. The study is Moore’s first paper under the HEAL Initiative, or Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, a $945 million, multiuniversity funding…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has selected Monica Embers, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of vector-borne disease research at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, to serve as one of 14 members of the 2021 Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. The primary function of the Working Group is to develop a report of findings and recommendations regarding the federal response to tick-borne disease prevention, treatment and research.

Machu Picchu, the most famous landmark of Inca civilization, was believed to be built around A.D. 1438. A new study, co-authored by Jason Nesbitt, associate professor of anthropology at the School of Liberal Arts, suggests the citadel may have been built some two decades earlier. Nesbitt, along with researchers from Yale and the University of California–Santa Cruz used accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) — an advanced form of radiocarbon dating — to determine the age of human remains recovered during the early 20th century at the site.