“AIDS not only killed individuals but destroyed countless families,” Dr. Gao said in an interview with The New York Times in 2016. “This was a man-made catastrophe. Yet the people responsible for it have never been brought to account, nor have they uttered a single word of apology.” Read more. (Image: Dr. Gao Yaojie, Wikipedia).

How Earth’s First Global Heat Officer Is Tackling Climate Change.
Eleni Myrivili, a former deputy mayor of Athens, now has a global role working to mitigate the catastrophic impacts of the warming climate. She is the first United Nations chief heat officer — and has a remit to keep people cool as the planet boils. Read more.

ORWH Announces Science Policy Scholar Travel Award for a Junior Investigator to Present at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.
The travel award will provide $6,000 to support the junior investigator’s attendance at the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD) Annual Meeting on May 6–9, 2024, in Bergen, Norway. Read more.

Mary Cleave, Who Glimpsed a Blighted Earth From Space, Dies at 76.

"Looking at the Earth,” Mary Cleave told the Annapolis newspaper The Capital this year, “particularly the Amazon rainforest, the amount of deforestation I could see, just in the five years between my two spaceflights down there, scared the hell out of me.” Read more. (Image: Astronaut Mary L. Cleave, Wikipedia/NASA)

Research Outlines How Sex Differences Have Evolved.
Researchers have shown that sex differences in animals vary dramatically across species, organs and developmental stages, and evolve quickly at the gene level but slowly at the cell type level. Read more.

Winner Of The 2023 Wakley Prize Essay: The Importance Of Universal Health Coverage.

The need for universal health coverage in Nigeria is the subject of the winning entry of the 2023 Wakley Prize Essay competition, by Ugochi Okorafor. It shows the dreadful human costs of a lack of access to health care. Read more. You can read the article “Learned helplessness” here. (Image: Ugochi Okorafor via LinkedIn)

Don’t Fix Women, Fix Academia? Gender Inequality in National Academic Contexts.
The new issue 17(2)/2023 of the journal Sociologica includes an interesting Symposium titled “Don’t Fix Women, Fix Academia? Gender Inequality in National Academic Contexts.” Read more.

Citations Show Gender Bias — And The Reasons Are Surprising.An analysis of more than two million papers in the life sciences shows a strong gender bias in citations. “We’re seeing this gender bias decrease, but the bad news is that the gender homophily is still there,” says Sen Chai, an innovation scholar at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a co-author of the study. “Women still tend to build more on women’s work, and men still tend to build on men’s work more.” Read more. 

Cop28 - Only 15 Out Of 133 World Leaders Attending Are Women.
“Yet again, the red carpet is being rolled out for male leaders at COP and men dominate among the senior negotiators. How are we going to achieve a fair outcome in climate negotiations with such inequity at the top? Women and girls are the most affected by climate change, yet they are silenced. Invisible. This must change,” said Helen Pankhurst, Senior Adviser on Gender Equality at CARE International UK. Read more. 

NIH Publishes Report on Research on Women’s Health for Fiscal Years 2021-2022.
The Report of the Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health: Office of Research on Women's Health and NIH Support for Research on Women's Health, known as the Biennial Report, details the NIH-wide programs and accomplishments carried out in fulfillment of ORWH’s core mission. It also includes a summary of ORWH activities during FY 2021-2022. Read more. 

N.I.H.’s New Leader Wants to Broaden Participation in Medical Research.

After being nominated by President Biden in the spring and winning Senate confirmation last month, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli became the 17th director of the N.I.H. She is only the second woman to lead the biomedical research agency on a permanent basis. Several weeks into her tenure, The New York Times visited Dr. Bertagnolli at her office. Read more. Here’s her presentation at the RFS meeting. (Image: Monica M. Bertagnolli, NIH/Wikipedia)

NextGen Vaccinations: Phase 2B Clinical Trial Execution.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, US Department of Health and Human Services is requesting project proposals for the advanced clinical development and assessment of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19. Read more.