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Justin Jackson

Justin Jackson

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Justin has been covering science news as a host of This Week in Science (TWIS podcast) since 2004. The weekly program brings a slightly irreverent, yet fervently pro-science perspective to recent research across all scientific subjects. While he has previously worked in biotech research labs running fermentation experiments and in genomics labs running next-generation sequencers, Justin’s first love of science is in communicating the stories to a wider audience. Justin joins the Science X team

Articles by Justin Jackson

Medical Xpress / Air pollution during pregnancy shows varying effects by region

In the journal JAMA Network Open, ECHO Cohort Consortium researchers reported a negative association between weekly prenatal exposure to fine particulate air pollution and birth weight.

Dec 29, 2025
Medical Xpress / A urine-based biological aging clock: Machine learning and microRNA offer accurate prediction

Craif Inc. in Nagoya, Japan, working with Nagoya University's Institute of Innovation for Future Society, has developed a urine-based biological aging clock. In validation of the method, predicted ages came within 4.4 years ...

Dec 22, 2025
Medical Xpress / Antiviral trial ties valacyclovir to faster cognitive decline

New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center investigators, with co-authors across additional US centers, report greater cognitive worsening at 78 weeks with valacyclovir than with placebo among ...

Dec 22, 2025
Medical Xpress / Online psychoeducation underperforms existing digital cognitive behavioral therapy in trial

Big Health Inc, along with paid academic investigators, reports higher remission rates and lower anxiety symptom scores with their smartphone-delivered digital cognitive behavioral therapy, DaylightRx, compared with an online ...

Dec 19, 2025
Medical Xpress / Recreational marathoners show no long-term heart damage after 10 years

A collaboration of researchers in Switzerland, Germany, and the US tracked cardiac function in recreational marathon runners over a 10-year span. Repeated endurance training and racing aligned with stable right ventricular ...

Dec 17, 2025
Medical Xpress / WISDOM trial weighs risk-based cancer screening

University of California, San Francisco investigators led WISDOM, a randomized comparison of risk-based breast cancer screening and annual mammography. Rates of stage ≥IIB breast cancers met a noninferiority threshold under ...

Dec 17, 2025
Medical Xpress / Psilocybin shows greater potential than cannabinoids for obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment

In a review of previous studies, McMaster University researchers observe a stronger signal for psilocybin as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder than cannabinoids.

Dec 16, 2025
Medical Xpress / Higher maternal vitamin D during pregnancy tied to less childhood tooth decay

Zhejiang University School of Medicine investigators reported that higher maternal plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels across pregnancy aligned with lower odds of early childhood caries in children.

Dec 15, 2025
Medical Xpress / From mind-controlling tech to clinical therapy: An optogenetics roadmap

Researchers at the University of Geneva, together with colleagues in Switzerland, France, the United States and Israel, describe how optogenetic control of brain cells and circuits is already steering both indirect neuromodulatory ...

Dec 11, 2025
Medical Xpress / Priming for depression in a dimly lit world

St. Hedwig Hospital and Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin researchers report that repeated mornings spent under dim indoor light in healthy young adults raised afternoon and evening cortisol and reshaped sleep in ways known ...

Dec 9, 2025
Medical Xpress / Rethinking long-term allergy treatments: Experimental vaccine protects against anaphylaxis in mice

Researchers led by the Institut Pasteur, Université Paris, have developed a vaccine that elicits anti-Immunoglobulin E antibodies in humanized mice, protects against Immunoglobulin E-mediated anaphylaxis, and shows no detectable ...

Dec 8, 2025
Medical Xpress / Early Parkinson's predictor found in daily step count

Oxford's Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Population Health report that daily step counts may help identify who will later be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, with lower activity patterns acting as an early ...

Dec 5, 2025
Medical Xpress / Chronic cannabis use, vomiting and compulsive bathing—symptoms of a hidden syndrome

Researchers at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago have found that cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a vomiting condition tied to chronic cannabis use, rose sharply in US emergency ...

Dec 3, 2025
Medical Xpress / Childhood instability accelerates women's sexual strategies, study suggests

California State University, Sacramento, researchers traced how disordered childhood social worlds in women connected to faster life history traits and greater mating effort, with those traits explaining 22.2% of the association ...

Dec 2, 2025
Medical Xpress / Early childhood patterns of picky eating can ripple through development for some

At the University of Oslo, psychologists and collaborators following Norwegian families identified a sizable group of children whose eating patterns centered on avoidant and restrictive intake and whose difficulties stretched ...

Dec 2, 2025