To that end, a new study from Washington University indicates that as patients age, the disease gradually impairs an important cellular housekeeping process called autophagy, which is responsible for eliminating waste from cells. This housekeeping is significant in Huntington’s because a buildup of waste in a specific kind of neuron leads to such cells’ untimely deaths.

The researchers also showed that enhancing the autophagy pathway in such neurons that were created from skin cells of Huntington’s patients protects those cells from dying.

“Our study reveals how aging triggers a loss of the crucial process of autophagy — and hints at how we might try to restore this important function, with the aim of delaying or even preventing Huntington’s disease,” said senior author Andrew S. Yoo, PhD, a Washington University professor of developmental biology.

The study, published Oct. 27 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also may offer clues to understanding cognitive decline in aging generally.

Huntington’s disease destroys a specific type of brain cell called medium spiny neurons, the loss of which causes involuntary muscle movements, impaired mental health and cognitive decline. Patients typically live about 20 years after signs of the disease first appear.

For this study, the researchers reprogrammed patients’ skin cells into medium spiny neurons using a technique they developed that allows adult skin cells to be transformed directly into various types of brain cells, depending on the specific recipe of signaling molecules to which the skin cells are exposed. More common techniques involve use of stem cells — but stem cells reset the cells’ biological clocks to an early developmental state, which is not useful when studying diseases that only become symptomatic in adulthood.

“We collected skin cell samples from different patients at a range of ages and modeled the disease before and after symptoms developed, which allowed us to identify the differences between younger and older patients with Huntington’s disease,” Yoo said. “We knew there must be some change that takes place as patients age. They all have a genetic mutation in the Huntingtin gene. We wanted to find the difference between young patients who have no symptoms and older patients who actively show signs of the disease.”

Yoo and his colleagues, including co-first authors Youngmi Oh, PhD, and Seongwon Lee, PhD, both staff scientists in Yoo’s lab, found that medium spiny neurons reprogrammed from skin cells of older patients with symptomatic Huntington’s produced very high levels of a microRNA molecule called miR-29b-3p. These high levels were not seen in reprogrammed neurons of younger Huntington’s patients or in reprogrammed neurons from healthy individuals of any age. The investigators showed that the microRNA set off a chain of events that included impairing autophagy in these cells. When the skin cells completed the conversion into neurons, they began producing the problematic microRNA, autophagy slowed down, and the cells began dying.

The researchers went on to show that reducing levels of this microRNA allowed autophagy to continue and protected the neurons from dying. In addition, they found that enhancing autophagy with a chemical compound called G2 protected the diseased neurons from death. As the researchers increased the dose of G2, the protection from cell death improved as well.

G2 is derived from a series of analogs that were discovered in the labs of co-authors David Perlmutter, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, the George and Carol Bauer Dean of the School of Medicine, and the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor; Gary Silverman, MD, PhD, the Harriet B. Spoehrer Professor and head of the Department of Pediatrics; and Stephen C. Pak, PhD, a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Newborn Medicine. G2 was identified via high throughput screening for autophagy enhancer drugs that could correct the cellular accumulation of variant alpha-1-antitrypsin Z that causes liver disease in alph-1-antitrypsin deficiency (ATD). The G2 compounds could therefore represent attractive candidates for preventing neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease, liver disease in alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency and perhaps other diseases in which aberrant accumulation of misfolded proteins is toxic to cells.

The study also uncovered what may be a tantalizing clue for understanding cognitive decline in normal aging. When comparing the symptomatic neurons to pre-symptomatic neurons and to healthy neurons from both young and older adults, the researchers found that the neurons of healthy older adults produced slightly elevated levels of the harmful microRNA, but in far smaller amounts than the neurons of symptomatic Huntington’s disease patients. The study suggests that even in normal, healthy aging, medium spiny neurons gradually produce low levels of this microRNA, which may interfere with autophagy’s healthy cellular housekeeping.

“By modeling different stages of the disease across the life span, we can identify how aging plays a role in disease onset,” Yoo said. “With that information, we can begin to look for ways to delay that onset. Our study also suggests that the triggering molecule for the onset of Huntington’s disease may play some role in age-associated decline in neuronal function generally. Understanding the component of aging that sets off neurodegeneration may help in developing new strategies for treatment and prevention of Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions that develop at older ages.”

Yoo and his team also are working with other collaborators using their cellular reprogramming technique to investigate forms of Alzheimer’s disease, tauopathy, and other neurodegenerative conditions.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers RF1AG056296 and R01NS107488; the Cellular and Molecular Biology Training Program, grant number T32 GM007067; the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund; the CHDI Fund; a Hereditary Disease Foundation Grant; the Farrell Foundation Fund; and a Mallinckrodt Scholar Award.

In a new paper, published August 22, 2022 in the journal JCI Insight, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine address the question of whether rehabilitation can augment functional outcomes when combined with pro-regenerative therapies, such as stem cell grafting.

Using a rat model, researchers induced a cervical lesion that impaired the animals’ ability to grasp with its forelimbs. There were four groups: animals who underwent the lesion alone; animals who received a subsequent grafting of neural stem cells designed to grow and connect with existing nerves; animals who received rehabilitation only; and animals who received both stem cell therapy and rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation therapy for some animals began one month after initial injury, a time point that approximates when most human patients are admitted to SCI rehabilitation centers. Rehabilitation consisted of daily activities that rewarded them with food pellets if they performed grasping skills.

The researchers found that rehabilitation enhanced regeneration of injured corticospinal axons at the lesion site in rats, and that a combination of rehabilitation and grafting produced significant recovery in forelimb grasping when both treatments occurred one month after injury.

“These new findings indicate that rehabilitation plays a critically important role in amplifying functional recovery when combined with a pro-regenerative therapy, such as a neural stem cell transplant,” said first author Paul Lu, PhD, associate adjunct professor of neuroscience at UC San Diego School of Medicine and research health science specialist at the Veterans Administration San Diego Healthcare System.

“Indeed, we found a surprisingly potent benefit of intensive physical rehabilitation when administered as a daily regimen that substantially exceeds what humans are now provided after SCI.”

Senior author Mark H. Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Translational Neuroscience Institute at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and colleagues have long worked to address the complex challenges of repairing SCIs and restoring function.

In 2020, for example, they reported on the observed benefits of neural stem cell grafts in mice and in 2019, described 3D-printed implantable scaffolding that would promote nerve cell growth.

Spinal cord injuries remain a largely unresolved medical challenge. Nearly 18,000 people in the United States suffer SCIs each year, with another 294,000 persons living with an SCI, usually involving some degree of permanent paralysis or diminished physical function, such as bladder control or difficulty breathing.

“There is a great unmet need to improve regenerative therapies after SCI,” said Tuszynski. “We hope that our findings point the way to a new potential combination treatment consisting of neural stem cell grafts plus rehabilitation, a strategy that we hope to move to human clinical trials over the next two years.”

Co-authors include: Camila Marques De Freria, Lori Graham, Amanda N. Tran and Dena Yassin, all at UC San Diego; Ashley Villarta, Veterans Administration Medical Center, San Diego; J. Russell Huie and Adam R. Ferguson, UC San Francisco.

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The study is led by the Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade de Brasilia, and co-authored by more than 20 other organizations including the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

White-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) are pig-like hoofed mammals native to the tropical forests of Central and South America. They are extremely social, forming large herds of up to hundreds of animals. Peccary researchers from Mexico to the Amazon have been intrigued by the sudden disappearance of white-lipped peccary populations across large areas, as well as reports of previous disappearances and subsequent reappearance.

The study shows that over 20–30-year population cycles, the disappearances represent seven-to-twelve-year troughs when peccaries vanish. These can occur simultaneously at regional and perhaps continent-wide spatial scales as large as 10,000–5 million square kilometers (3,861-1.9 million square miles).

The study suggests that the mysterious disappearances may be triggered by populations growing too big, and crashes are likely facilitated by different causes, including disease outbreaks, and underscores the need for more long-term studies to better understand the causes.

The ground-breaking study, which relies on collaboration and detective work to document 43 different disappearances at 38 sites in nine countries, also incorporates 88 years of commercial and subsistence harvest data from the Amazon. It confirms that this poorly-known species which is so ecologically important to neotropical forests, as well as culturally and socio-economically crucial to the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who live in these forests, has large-scale and long-term population cycles.

From an ecological perspective, the white-lipped peccaryis considered a keystone species as they influence forest regeneration and plant populations, especially palms, through seed predation and foraging and turnover of leaf litter. They are also considered ecological engineers through their maintenance and expansion of forest mineral licks and wallows, which benefit many other wildlife species. In addition, they are the preferred prey of Latin Americas’ apex predator, the jaguar (Panthera onca). When peccaries disappear, jaguar populations decline.

White-lipped peccaries are immensely important from a socio-cultural perspective, as a preferred subsistence hunting target for Indigenous Peoples and riverine and rural communities across their range. This significance is reflected in the stories, oral history and art of many of Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples. Indeed, some Indigenous Peoples have stories which refer to the peccaries disappearing and reappearing.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Jose Fragoso from the Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil, the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA/MCTIC), Manaus, Brazil and the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California, said: “This analysis highlights the importance of very large, continuous natural areas that enable source-sink population dynamics and ensure re-colonization and local population persistence in time and space for perhaps the fundamental keystone species for neotropical forests. It also highlights how working with indigenous peoples can help resolve mysteries in biology.  Our work also resolves a key question in tropical ecology, what happens to white-lipped peccaries when they disappear.”

Senior author Dr. Mariana Altricher, from the Environmental Studies Department, Prescott College, Arizona, believes that “this work clarifies an enduring mystery in tropical forests. It will help guide future research and conservation efforts in the tropics. Most importantly we must continue to monitor peccary populations, especially in fragmented protected areas”.

Dr. Harald Beck, Co-Chair of the IUCN Peccary Specialist Group, and one of the authors of the study, said: “This unique publication has a large-scale focus (Central and South America), utilized historical and current data, and state of the art new modeling methods to answer critical ecological questions about the spatial-temporal population fluctuations of the dominant Neotropical mammal, the white-lipped peccary. The paper will guide future research in the Neotropics, as well as influence conservation efforts and policies.”

Dr. Rob Wallace, Senior Conservation Scientist at WCS and one of the co-authors of the study remarked: “WCS remains committed to landscape-scale conservation at a series of Nature’s Strongholds in Latin America, which is fundamental for wide-ranging species like the white-lipped peccary, especially considering these population cycles. Understanding these natural population cycles will be crucial for interpreting our population monitoring efforts, which represents the gold standard for evaluating our conservation impact, not just for white-lipped peccaries themselves as a keystone species and socio-cultural touchstone, but also the other wildlife with which they coexist – lowland tapir, collared peccaries, leaf litter biodiversity, a number of palm species, plant diversity, and, of course, the jaguar.”

Study authors were: Jose ? M. V. Fragoso^1,2,3*, Andre ? P. Antunes^2,4, Kirsten M. Silvius⁵, Pedro A.L. Constantino⁴, Galo Zapata-Rios⁶, Hani R. El Bizri^7,8, Richard E. Bodmer^9,10, Micaela Camino^11,12, Benoit de Thoisy¹³, Robert B. Wallace¹⁴, Thais Q. Morcatty^8,15, Pedro Mayor^16,17, Cecile Richard-Hansen¹⁸, Mathew T. Hallett^19,20,21, Rafael A. Reyna- Hurtado²², H. Harald Beck²³, Soledad de Bustos^24,25, Alexine Keuroghlian²⁶, Alessandra Nava²⁷, Olga L. Montenegro²⁸, Ennio Painkow Neto²⁹, Mariana Altrichter³⁰.

1 Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, DF, Brazil

2 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA/MCTIC), Manaus, Brazil

3 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California, USA

4 RedeFauna–Rede de Pesquisa em Diversidade, Conservaca?o e Uso da Fauna da Amazonia, Tefe ?, Amazonas, Brazil

5 Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

6 Wildlife Conservation Society– Ecuador Program, Quito, Ecuador

7 Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

8 Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel Mamiraua ?, Tefe ?, Amazonas, Brazil

9 Museum of Amazonian Cultures-Fundamazonia, Iquitos, Loreto, Peru ?

10 DICE, School of Anthropology & Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

11 Proyecto Quimilero, Roosevelt 4344, CABA, Resistencia, Argentina

12 EDGE of Existence—Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London, England, UK

13 Kwata NGO, Cayenne, French Guiana

14 Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, USA

15 Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom

16 Departament de Sanitat i d’Anatomia Animals, Facultat de Veterina?ria, Universitat Auto?noma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

17 Museo de Culturas Indigenas Amazonicas, Loreto, Iquitos, Peru

18 Office Francais de la Biodiversite ?-DRAS/SCGEEUMREcoFoG, Kourou, France

19 Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

20 Institute for the Environment & Sustainability, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA

21 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia

22 El Colegio de la Frontera Sur -Unidad Campeche, Campeche, Campeche, Mexico

23 Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Towson, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

24 Secretari?a de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable de Salta, Santiago del Estero, Salta, Argentina

25 Fundacio ? n Biodiversidad Argentina, Suipacha, Argentina

26 Peccary Project/IUCN/SSC Peccary Specialist Group, Campo Grande, Brazil

27 Fiocruz ILMD Amazon, Adriano ? polis, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

28 Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota ?, Colombia

29 Tropical Sustainability Institute–TSI, Carapicu ??ba, Sa?o Paulo, Brazil

30 Faculty Environmental Studies, Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona, USA

Corporate pledges not to buy soybeans produced on land deforested after 2006 have reduced tree clearance in the Brazilian Amazon by just 1.6% between 2006 and 2015.

This equates to a protected area of 2,300 km² in the Amazon rainforest: barely the size of Oxfordshire in the UK.

The findings, made by tracing traders’ soy supplies back to their source, are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The work involved a team from the University of Cambridge, Boston University, ETH Zurich and New York University.

The researchers also discovered that in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savannah, zero-deforestation commitments have not been adopted effectively — leaving over 50% of soy-suitable forests and their biodiversity without protection.

Brazil has the largest remaining tropical forests on the planet, but these are being rapidly cleared to rear cattle and grow crops including soybean. Demand for soy is surging around the world, and an estimated 4,800 km² of rainforest is cleared each year to grow soybeans.

The majority of soy is consumed indirectly by humans: soybean is widely used as feed for factory-farmed chickens, pigs, fish and cattle. It also accounts for around 27% of global vegetable oil production, and as a complete protein source it often forms a key part of vegetarian and vegan diets.

By 2021, at least 94 companies had adopted zero-deforestation commitments — pledging to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. But the study revealed that many of these commitments are not put into practice.

And the researchers say that adoption of zero-deforestation commitments is lagging among small and medium sized food companies.

“Zero-deforestation pledges are a great first step, but they need to be implemented to have an effect on forests — and right now it’s mainly the bigger companies that have the resources to do this,” said Professor Rachael Garrett, Moran Professor of Conservation and Development at the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, a joint senior author of the report.

She added: “If soybean traders actually implemented their global commitments for zero-deforestation production, current levels of forest clearance in Brazil could be reduced by around 40 percent.”

Deforestation is the second largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions after fossil fuel use. It also causes the loss of diverse animal and plant life, threatens the livelihoods of indigenous groups, and increases inequality and conflict.

The researchers say that the supply chains of other food products including cattle, oil palm and cocoa supply chains are more complex than soy, making them even more difficult to monitor.

“If supply chain policies intend to contribute to the task of tackling deforestation in Brazil, it’s crucial to expand zero-deforestation supply chain policies beyond soy,” said Garrett, who is also Professor of Environmental Policy at ETH Zurich.

A ‘soy moratorium’ was the first voluntary zero-deforestation commitment in the tropics — by signing it, companies agreed not to buy soybeans produced on land deforested after 2006. But while the commitment was implemented in the Brazilian Amazon, most Brazilian soy is produced in the Cerrado — which is rich in biodiversity.

The researchers say their findings suggest private sector efforts are not enough to halt deforestation: supportive political leadership is also vital to conservation efforts.

“Supply chain governance should not be a substitute for state-led forest policies, which are critical to enable zero deforestation monitoring and enforcement, have better potential to cover different crops, land users, and regions,” said Garrett.

In 2021, the COP26 Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use committed to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. It was signed by over 100 countries, representing 85% of global forests.

This week’s Federal Budget included a $224 million allocation to help save threatened species – news that coincides with some concerning findings of a new paper authored by University of South Australia (UniSA) researchers.

A study led by UniSA conservation psychologist Dr Elissa Pearson reveals overwhelming public ignorance of Australia’s most threatened species, a factor that is contributing to the extinction crisis of endangered animals.

UniSA researchers, alongside colleagues from Zoos Victoria and Edith Cowan University, polled more than 300 zoo visitors and community members, testing their awareness of seven endangered species at risk of extinction within the next decade.

“More than 90 per cent of those surveyed did not recognise six of the seven species; the exception being the Tasmanian devil,” Dr Pearson says.

The other species were the Leadbeater’s possum, eastern barred bandicoot, helmeted honeyeater, southern corroboree frog, Lord Howe Island (LHI) stick insect, and orange-bellied parrot.

The Journal for Nature Conservation paper outlines a clear link between species recognition, likeability and conservation support, showing that people are far more inclined to donate toward conserving Australia’s iconic koala, kangaroo and wombat populations, despite these not being endangered.

“There are huge gaps in community knowledge regarding native Australian wildlife, with less than eight per cent of people able to correctly name six of seven endangered species when shown photographs.

“Apart from the Tasmanian devil, which 86 per cent of people recognised, the level of familiarity and knowledge of our vulnerable species is limited. Misidentification is also common, particularly the eastern barred bandicoot which is often mistaken for a bilby.”

The most likeable Australian animals – the koala and kangaroo – also reflect the ‘similarity principle’, which suggests that people tend to prefer animals most like humans, and that when only a limited number of species can be conserved, mammals are favoured over other species, regardless of their endangered status.

The helmeted honeyeater, southern corroboree frog and LHI stick insect were consistently the least liked species.

“Apart from the likeability factor, our study showed that being able to recognise species increased people’s willingness to support their conservation, so that is a starting point we need to address.”

Endangered insects are fighting an uphill battle for support, with 85 per cent of people disliking them, putting their survival at most risk. However, this perception could be changed with some clever marketing initiatives, the researchers suggest.

“The LHI stick insect has some exceptional qualities, such as their resilience and survival against all odds, their ability to reproduce without males, their tendency to form large social groups during the day, or even the fact that their foot pads are heart shaped. If people knew these facts the likeability factor would likely shoot up,” Dr Pearson says.

Pacemakers are lifesaving devices that regulate the heartbeats of people with chronic heart diseases like atrial fibrillation and other forms of arrhythmia. However, pacemaker implantation is an invasive procedure, and the lifesaving pacing the devices provide can be extremely painful. Additionally, pacemakers can only be used to treat a few specific types of disease.

In a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers detail the workings of a wireless, battery-free pacemaker they designed that could be implanted with a less invasive procedure than currently possible and would cause patients less pain. The study was helmed by researchers in the Gutruf Lab, led by biomedical engineering assistant professor and Craig M. Berge Faculty Fellow Philipp Gutruf.

Currently available pacemakers work by implanting one or two leads, or points of contact, into the heart with hooks or screws. If the sensors on these leads detect a dangerous irregularity, they send an electrical shock through the heart to reset the beat.

“All of the cells inside the heart get hit at one time, including the pain receptors, and that’s what makes pacing or defibrillation painful,” Gutruf said. “It affects the heart muscle as a whole.”

The device Gutruf’s team has developed, which has not yet been tested in humans, would allow pacemakers to send much more targeted signals using a new digitally manufactured mesh design that encompasses the entire heart. The device uses light and a technique called optogenetics.

Optogenetics modifies cells, usually neurons, sensitive to light, then uses light to affect the behavior of those cells. This technique only targets cardiomyocytes, the cells of the muscle that trigger contraction and make up the beat of the heart. This precision will not only reduce pain for pacemaker patients by bypassing the heart’s pain receptors, it will also allow the pacemaker to respond to different kinds of irregularities in more appropriate ways. For example, during atrial fibrillation, the upper and lower chambers of the heart beat asynchronously, and a pacemaker’s role is to get the two parts back in line.

“Whereas right now, we have to shock the whole heart to do this, these new devices can do much more precise targeting, making defibrillation both more effective and less painful,” said Igor Efimov, professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at Northwestern University, where the devices were lab-tested. “This technology could make life easier for patients all over the world, while also helping scientists and physicians learn more about how to monitor and treat the disease.”

Flexible mesh encompasses the heart

To ensure the light signals can reach many different parts of the heart, the team created a design that involves encompassing the organ, rather than implanting leads that provide limited points of contact.

The new pacemaker model consists of four petallike structures made of thin, flexible film, which contain light sources and a recording electrode. The petals, specially designed to accommodate the way the heart changes shape as it beats, fold up around the sides of the organ to envelop it, like a flower closing up at night.

“Current pacemakers record basically a simple threshold, and they will tell you, ‘This is going into arrhythmia, now shock!'” Gutruf said. “But this device has a computer on board where you can input different algorithms that allow you to pace in a more sophisticated way. It’s made for research.”

Because the system uses light to affect the heart, rather than electrical signals, the device can continue recording information even when the pacemaker needs to defibrillate. In current pacemakers, the electrical signal from the defibrillation can interfere with recording capabilities, leaving physicians with an incomplete picture of cardiac episodes. Additionally, the device does not require a battery, which could save pacemaker patients from needing to replace the battery in their device every five to seven years, as is currently the norm.

Gutruf’s team collaborated with researchers at Northwestern University on the project. While the current version of the device has been successfully demonstrated in animal models, the researchers look forward to furthering their work, which could improve the quality of life for millions of people.

There is evidence that lower-income and people of color (POC) in the U.S. do not use bike share as much as higher-income and white people. Using data from residents living near bike share stations in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the paper examines reasons for these disparities. Researchers looked at many factors that might explain bike share use and interest in lower-income, racially diverse, traditionally underserved neighborhoods. They focused on residents who live near bike share stations, so that proximity would not be a barrier.

A few key findings:

1. People who are not members, but are interested in using bike share, including POC, are motivated to use bike share for fun, recreation, and social reasons (as opposed to utility).
2. Knowledge of bike share and receiving information from interactive sources (for example, bike share ambassadors) are associated with bike share use.
3. Cost is a barrier for people who are interested in using bike share, but are not members. Discounted memberships are one solution, but survey results indicate that many people do know know about them.

Some reasons for not using bike share among people of color and lower-income people may also be related to reasons for not bicycling, generally. These include concerns about traffic safety as well as personal safety.

This paper is an analysis of data collected in a “Breaking Barriers to Bike Share” project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP). Read more about the original study and explore some of the products to come out of this research, including a set of ten bike share equity briefs to help operators establish equity programs based on what’s been shown to work.

Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

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