Latest news with #UChicago
Business Journals
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Journals
The Beat: New UChicago VC fund targets deep-tech startups
Welcome to Chicago Inno's The Beat, a twice-weekly look at the people, companies and ideas that are shaping Chicago's innovation economy. The Big One A new $25M venture capital fund launched Thursday to support the deep-tech ventures coming out of the University of Chicago ecosystem. GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events Harper Court Ventures — funded through UChicago and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and independently managed by MFV Partners — will focus on scaling pre-seed and seed-stage companies associated with the university's labs, the Polsky Center or alumni. Investors in the fund include the UChicago Endowment as well as several members of UChicago's Board of Trustees. The fund will target startups in high-impact sectors, such as those working on quantum computing, life sciences, energy and artificial intelligence innovations. READ MORE: $25M VC fund launches to back UChicago deep-tech startups More from The Beat On its 10-year anniversary, Chicago venture capital firm M25 announced its largest fund to date. Nearly half of workers in a recent survey say their companies have issued return-to-office mandates in 2025 — illustrating a larger trend of fading workplace flexibility. Drive Capital returns $500M to investors In a single week, Drive Capital returned about $500M in cash and stock to investors during a lull in liquidity for limited partners nationwide. The Columbus, Ohio-based venture capital firm, which set up a Chicago office in 2023, last Friday distributed two-thirds of its shares of Root Inc., worth nearly $140 million, to outside limited partners in its first fund from 2013, according to SEC filings. READ MORE: Drive Capital returns $500 million to investors amid national liquidity lull Sign up for the Business Journal's free daily newsletter to receive the latest business news impacting Chicago.
Business Journals
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Journals
The Beat: 10 startups named to UChicago competition
In the latest edition of The Beat, get to know more about the student-led startups that made UChicago's New Venture Challenge.
Time of India
11-05-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Diet has a crucial role in recovery after antibiotic treatment
FacebookTwitterPintrest Read Also The modern Western-style diet, which is high in processed foods, red meat, dairy products, and sugar, has a lasting impact on your gut microbiome. This diet, which is low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, reduces the variety of microbes in the digestive system and the metabolites they produce. As a result, the risk of immune system-related conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease is on the rise more than ever. A new study has now found how this diet can shape the gut microbiome.A study from the University of Chicago looked at the powerful role diet plays in shaping gut microbiome health. The research published in Nature shows how a typical Western diet prevents the gut microbiome from recovering after antibiotic treatment and leaves it susceptible to understand this, the researchers fed mice a Western-style diet and found that they were not able to rebuild a 'healthy,' diverse gut microbiome following antibiotic treatment. These mice were also more susceptible to infection by pathogens like Salmonella. However, the mice that were fed a diet mimicking a Mediterranean diet, high in plant-based fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, were able to quickly restore a healthy and resilient gut microbiome after antibiotics.'We were really surprised by how dramatically different the recovery process is in the mice on the Western-style diet versus the healthier one,' Megan Kennedy, a student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UChicago and lead author of the study, said in a antibiotics are lifesavers, they wreak havoc in the microbiome of your gut by eliminating both harmful and beneficial bacteria.'The mammalian gut microbiome is like a forest, and when you damage it, it must have a succession of events that occur in a specific order to restore itself to its former health,' Chang said. 'When you are on a Western diet, this does not happen because it doesn't provide the nutrients for the right microbes at the right time to recover. Instead, you end up with a few species that monopolize these resources, and don't set the stage for other organisms that are required for recovery,' Eugene B. Chang, MD, the author, started with mice that were fed with food mimicking a typical Western-style diet (WD) or a diet of regular mouse chow (RC) with diverse sources of plant fiber and low fat. Both groups were then treated with antibiotics. Later, some mice continued the same diet, while some were switched to the other diet. They found that only the mice on the healthy RC diet, either before or after antibiotics, were able to restore a balanced gut study further stresses the fact that eating fruits and vegetables is crucial for your gut health . It demonstrated how diet builds the crucial foundation for a diverse, robust, and resilient gut microbiome. The study also emphasizes how diet can be used as a treatment. Besides promoting overall good health, one potential clinical application is using diet to treat infections in patients following cancer treatment or organ transplants. These patients are often placed on powerful antibiotics and immunosuppressant drugs, which can lead to infections with multidrug-resistant bacteria. Adding more antibiotics would only compound the situation. 'Maybe we can use diet to rebuild the commensal microbes that have been suppressed under these therapies. We can restore the healthy microbiome much quicker and prevent the emergence of more multidrug-resistant organisms,' Chang suggests that those who have an upcoming surgery should add healthy foods to their diet. 'I've become a believer that food can be medicinal. In fact, I think that food can be prescriptive, because we can ultimately decide what food components are affecting which populations and functions of the gut microbiome,' Chang said.
Axios
05-05-2025
- Science
- Axios
Making drinking water from sewage and other big ideas at Chicago Water Week
Recycling sewage into drinking water may sound gross, but it's one of many ideas being floated at this year's Chicago Water Week. The big picture: To better understand this alternative to diverting H20 from water-rich areas like ours, Axios talked to Peter Annin, author of "Purified: How Recycling Sewage is Transforming our Water." He'll speak at the Shedd Aquarium on Thursday. His biggest surprise: How many communities are already drinking former sewage, including Orange County, California; San Diego; El Paso and more. "It is happening all over the Sunbelt and most people don't even realize it," Annin tells Axios. The big takeaway:"There are only two realistic options left for 'new' water supplies: the ocean and the toilet, and that the toilet is the more sustainable option — as long as people can just get over the yuck factor," he says. Zoom in: Closer to home, Green Bay Packaging is using "recycled sewage to make their paper and not discharging any wastewater into the once notoriously polluted Fox River," Annin says. The intrigue: Rare earth minerals may be the next resource scientists extract from wastewater, according to new research. UChicago researcher Chong Liu and others will talk about a process to pull lithium from "dilute sources" on Tuesday night in a program that is already filled up. If you go: You can find all the Water Week events, including Annin's Thursday talk here. Highlights include:
CBS News
30-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
University of Chicago foreign students' visas reactivated as Trump administration redefines policy
Visas for 10 current and former University of Chicago students have been reactivated, the school confirmed Wednesday. A UChicago spokesperson confirmed to the school's student newspaper that F-1 statuses had been reactivated for all 10 current students and recent graduates affected by the Trump administration's crackdown on foreign students. The visas were initially revoked in early April by the federal government, with no reasoning given. Hundreds of students around the country were put in a similar position. The Trump administration unexpectedly reversed course in revoking student visas on Friday, with the Justice Department announcing more than 4,700 students would have their visas reinstated. The Trump administration has been sued dozens of times over visa cancelations across the country, and judges have sided almost unanimously with the students. Monday, the federal government began to reveal its new policy for terminating international students' legal status. In a court filing, government officials shared the new policy, a document issued over the weekend with guidance on a range of reasons students' status can be canceled, including the revocation of the visas they used to enter the U.S. Brad Banias, an immigration attorney representing a student whose status was terminated, said the new guidelines vastly expand ICE's authority beyond previous policy, which did not count visa revocation as grounds for losing legal status. In the past, if a student had their visa revoked, they could stay in the U.S. to finish their studies — they simply would not be able to reenter if they left the country. "This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they've done nothing wrong," Banias said. Many of the students who had visas revoked or lost their legal status said they had only minor infractions on their record, including traffic violations. Some did not know why they were targeted at all. According to court filings and testimony from lawyers for the government in a Tuesday hearing, Department of Homeland Security officials said they ran the names of student visa holders through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run database that contains reams of information related to crimes. It includes the names of suspects, missing persons and people who have been arrested, even if they have never been charged with a crime or had charges dropped. In total, about 6,400 students were identified in the database search. One student had been pulled over and charged with reckless driving in 2018 only for the charges to eventually be dropped, which was also recorded in the NCIC. That student appeared in a spreadsheet with 734 other students' names. That spreadsheet was forwarded to a Homeland Security official, who, within 24 hours of receiving it, replied: "Please terminate all in SEVIS." That's a different database listing foreigners who have legal status as students in the U.S. Reyes said the short time frame suggested that no one had reviewed the records individually to find out why the students' names came up in NCIC. Please note: The above video is from a previous report
