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One AI-based advancement at a time, UF leaders are transforming the sports industry
As emerging technologies like AI reshape sport industries and professional demands evolve, it is essential for students to graduate with the expertise to thrive in their future careers. To ensure that these students are set up for success, the UF College of Health & Human Performance has launched a new sports analytics program. Led by Scott Nestler, Ph.D., CAP, PStat, a professor of practice in the Department of Sport Management and a national analytics and data science expert, the program ties back to the UF & Sport Collaborative – a five-part project intended to elevate UF’s presence on the global stage in sports performance, healthcare and communication. “Tools and insights that previously were only available to professional sports teams are now coming to the college level, and it makes sense for universities to begin using these data, technologies and new analytic methods,” Nestler said. The sports analytics program fosters collaboration between academic units, such as the Warrington College of Business and the University Athletic Association, helping bridge the gap between sport research and innovation and empowering students to address real-world challenges through data and AI. For example, the program offers opportunities to leverage technology and analytics for strategic decision making in player acquisition, team formation and in-game decisions. Beyond performance metrics, the program also explores marketing strategies and revenue analytics, providing a well-rounded understanding of the field. “When you have enough data and a large enough sample of individuals, AI can help make predictions that otherwise would take prohibitively longer for a human to accomplish with traditional methods,” said Garrett Beatty, Ph.D., the assistant dean for innovation and entrepreneurship and an instructional associate professor in the College of Health & Human Performance’s Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology. “Because those data volumes are getting so large, AI models, machine learning, deep learning and other strategies can be leveraged to make sense and glean insights from sport and human performance data in ways that have never been done before.” The program seeks to offer several educational opportunities, such as individual courses, certificate programs and potentially a full degree program. In the long term, Nestler envisions the program evolving into a center or institute, beginning with establishing a research lab in the spring. Additionally, the program will leverage the university’s supercomputer, HiPerGator, to analyze larger data sets and use newer predictive modeling machine learning algorithms. “As faculty and staff move from working with box score and play-by-play data to using tracking data, which contains coordinates of all players and the ball on the field or court tens of times per second, the size of data files in sports analytics has grown tremendously,” Nestler said. “HiPerGator, with its large storage capacity and multiple central processing units/graphic processing units, is ideal for using in sports analytics work in 2025.” Nestler also aims to increase student involvement by enhancing UF’s Sport Analytics Club and hiring research assistants to work on projects for the University Athletic Association. “We need to take a broader view of what AI is and realize that it incorporates a lot of what we’ve been calling data science and analytics in the form of machine learning models, which came more out of statistics and computer science. Those are types of AI and those that I think will largely continue to be used in the coming years within the sports space,” Nestler said. “Also, we’re continuing to see growth in the number of people interested in working in this space, and I don’t foresee that changing. Fortunately, we are also seeing the number of opportunities available to those with the appropriate skills increase as well.”
Trump’s Threat is His Destruction of the Republican Party
In All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren describes Willie Stark’s final victory. “And there wasn’t any Democratic party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood.” Warren’s description is darkly poetic and metaphorical. Stark, the populist governor of a fictional state, did not murder his rivals, but he did destroy them, along with the political party he rode to power. Like Stark, Donald Trump has carved up the Republican Party of old, and in its place, there is just Trump. This is not the first time a politician has remade a political party, but the death of the G.O.P. threatens to unbalance our political system. We are defined by close elections, tight legislative majorities, and polarized preferences. Neither side in the cultural conflict can achieve core objectives, so the temptation to put more hope and power into the Executive, to skew the system, is mounting. We can argue about the degree to which past Republicans were truly restrained, especially in government spending, but at least the G.O.P. used to advocate for two seatbelts to keep the body politic safe from accidents: character to govern the self and constitutionalism to limit what government can do to others. As the G.O.P. grew to rival Democratic power, in the 1980s and 1990s, the New Deal coalition fractured, along with the assumption that simply more power, expertly applied, could solve our problems. Democrat Bill Clinton conceded “the era of big government is over.” Justice Elena Kagan recognized, “we’re all textualists now.” The tug of war between an evolving progressivism and a robust conservatism may not have made for an ideal way to solve problems, but it did encourage humility, born of the recognition that radical actions, even if successful, would be punished. Dr. Mark Caleb Smith serves as Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. He teaches courses in American Politics, Constitutional Law, and Research Methodology/Data Analysis. His primary research interest is in the field of religion and American politics. View his profile Those days are over. Donald Trump’s Republicans are no longer a restraint of any kind. The seatbelts of the past have been snipped by the same leaders who claimed to buckle them in place. The Epstein Files are the exception of congressional pushback that proves the rule of the party’s degradation. But what of the appointment of unqualified and incompetent leaders in the F.B.I., H.H.S., Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense? Illegal and extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean? An unexplained and unauthorized military buildup in the same region? Shakedowns of universities and media outlets? Crypto corruption? Tariffs? Strong-arming law firms and firing career civil servants for seeking justice in our courts? The Republican response has mostly been crickets. There is no longer a major party that pretends to restrain the president through the law out of principle. The real disagreement between Trump Republicans and Biden Democrats is not about should the president abuse his power, but how. Unless something dramatic happens, the politics of the meat ax will come for us all. Mark is available to speak with the media regarding the state of politics in America. Simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview.
VR Technology Offers Lessons in Navigating a Snow Squall
WCBS-TV, WPIX 11, and WNYW Fox 5 interviewed Dr. Jase Bernhardt, Hofstra associate professor of geology, environment, and sustainability, about his virtual reality program designed to teach the public about the danger of driving in a snow squall. Funded by a $100,000 Road to Zero Community Traffic Safety Grant from the National Safety Council, Dr. Bernhardt’s project emphasizes the importance of heeding emergency weather advisories and what drivers should do if they are on the road when a snow squall occurs. Users wear a headset and hold a device – like a video game controller – in each hand to replicate the movements of a steering wheel. Bernhardt’s collaborators include Assistant Professor of Sustainability Sasha Pesci; software developer Frank Martin ’22, ’23, who earned both a BS and an MS in Computer Science from Hofstra University; and John Banghoff and other meteorologists at the U.S. National Weather Service (NSW) Office, State College, PA.
Proteins, often called the building blocks of life, play a central role in drug development. When scientists develop new treatments, they must understand how drugs interact with proteins involved in disease mechanisms and with proteins in the human body that influence drug response. Scientists commonly use cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) 3D imaging data to study proteins. While recent advances have enabled higher-resolution images that are easier to analyze, medium-resolution images—which are more difficult to interpret—are still the most common for larger protein complexes. Salim Sazzed, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the computer science department of Georgia Southern University’s Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing, has been awarded a two-year National Science Foundation grant of about $175,000 to lead a groundbreaking project to develop novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for determining protein secondary structures from medium-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) images. Improved modeling from medium-resolution images will help researchers study more proteins efficiently, giving new insights into diseases and potentially guiding the development of new treatments and future drugs. At its core, this research will combine biology and machine learning to study protein structures. The multidisciplinary approach and potential impacts on public health are what most excite Sazzed. “The impetus behind this research is the positive impact on public health and possibly contributing to the biomedical workforce,” he said. “Seeing biology and computer science combine for that kind of impact is incredibly moving.” As the Principal Investigator (PI) for the project, Sazzed will use his expertise in deep learning computer models to focus on a major challenge in structural biology: identifying the two main secondary structures of proteins—the alpha helix and the beta sheet. These structures are critical for a protein’s overall shape and function, but in medium-resolution cryo-EM images they often appear indistinct or lack clear detail, making them particularly difficult to analyze. Sazzed’s research will focus on two main goals. First, he will quantify the variability of alpha helices and beta sheets in medium-resolution images, comparing them to idealized structures. Second, by integrating this structural variability with the image data in a deep learning model, he will aim to generate more precise and accurate representations of protein secondary structures. “When we feed this information into a deep learning model along with the image data, the model should be able to determine protein secondary structures more precisely,” Sazzed elaborated. Sazzed believes students will greatly benefit from this multi-disciplinary approach. In addition to a Ph.D. student, several undergraduate students will be directly engaged in the research. A full-day workshop will also be organized, allowing Georgia Southern students from diverse disciplines to participate. This initiative will build on Georgia Southern’s strong tradition of involving undergraduates in research and will support the University’s recent focus on biomedical and health sciences. “There are many different knowledge areas coming together in this work,” Sazzed said. “It involves computer science, biology, chemistry, and even public health. I look forward to students following the research and exploring these different fields themselves.” Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering & Computing Interim Associate Dean of Research, Masoud Davari, Ph.D., echoes this sentiment and emphasizes its importance to the University’s research profile. “Sazzed’s interdisciplinary research, which bridges the gap between biology and computer science, will foster multidisciplinary research in our college—as it is cutting-edge and potentially groundbreaking in drug development to impact people’s lives nationally and globally,” Davari said. “It’s also well aligned with the college’s strategic research plan—as we make the move to R1 status to be aligned with ‘Soaring to R1,’ which is among the transformational initiatives for the University.” Looking to know more about Georgia Southern University or connect with Salim Sazzed — simply contact Georgia Southern's Director of Communications Jennifer Wise at jwise@georgiasouthern.edu to arrange an interview today.
Holiday Anxiety Is Real — Here’s How People Can Actually Stay Sane This Season
The holidays promise joy, warmth, and “quality time,” but for many people they also deliver a cocktail of stress, expectations, forced cheer, family politics, and receipts longer than a CVS bill. Between travel chaos, financial pressure, social burnout, and attempting to assemble toys designed by engineers who clearly hate humans, holiday anxiety is soaring. The good news: experts who study mental health, behaviour, and stress management say there are ways to keep your nerves intact — and maybe even enjoy yourself along the way. Why the Holidays Stress People Out (Science Says It’s Not Just You) Adults report higher levels of stress in November and December than almost any other time of year. Common triggers include: Financial expectations: gifts, gatherings, travel, meals, and the sudden belief that every present needs to be “meaningful.” Time pressure: too much to do, too few days on the calendar. Social overload: introverts, extroverts, and “I’m-just-here-for-the-food-verts” all feel it. Family dynamics: every family has at least one person who always “starts something.” Nostalgia vs. reality: the pressure to create a “perfect holiday,” despite the fact that perfect holidays only exist in movies and greeting cards. Experts note that people often skip their routines (sleep, exercise, healthy meals) and then wonder why their stress spikes. The season demands more of people while simultaneously removing their coping mechanisms. Practical Ways to Reduce Holiday Anxiety — Backed by Psychology (and Common Sense) 1. Lower the Bar: “Good Enough” Is a Holiday Gift to Yourself Researchers consistently find that perfectionism fuels anxiety. A store-bought pie, a slightly messy house, or wrapping gifts in whatever paper you can find at 11 p.m. will not derail the season. 2. Set Boundaries (Even With the Loud Relatives) Experts often emphasize that saying “no” is one of the most effective stress-management tools. Fewer events, fewer obligations, fewer emotional landmines. 3. Budget Before You Shop Financial therapists note that anxiety drops when people pre-set limits and stick to them. You don’t need a MasterCard bill that arrives in January carrying the emotional weight of a Greek tragedy. 4. Protect Your Recharge Time A short walk, fresh air, or 10 minutes of solitude is not selfish — it’s psychological maintenance. Mental-health researchers recommend intentionally scheduling downtime before the calendar fills itself. 5. Keep Expectations Realistic Not every moment will be magical. Not every conversation will be smooth. Not every plan will unfold as imagined. Experts say acceptance, not forced positivity, lowers stress significantly. 6. Focus on Meaning, Not Perfection Studies show that people feel calmer when they shift their focus toward connection, gratitude, and small moments rather than elaborate performances of holiday cheer. Holiday Angles for Journalists The psychology behind holiday anxiety — what triggers it and why it’s so universal How family systems and old patterns surface at holiday gatherings The economics of holiday stress — debt, spending pressure, and emotional spending How introverts (and extroverts) navigate holiday overload differently Why holiday nostalgia makes people emotionally sensitive Healthy boundary-setting during family events How immigrant, multicultural, and blended families are reshaping holiday expectations Let's get you connected to an expert. The holiday season is increasingly fast-paced, commercialized, and socially demanding. Many people feel pressure to present a perfect life at a time when burnout, financial strain, and mental-health challenges are higher than ever. Helping audiences understand holiday stress — and giving them practical, research-grounded strategies — can make a measurable difference in their emotional well-being. For journalists covering mental health, family dynamics, holiday culture, or stress-management trends, ExpertFile’s roster of psychologists, counsellors, behavioural scientists, and wellness experts can offer insights, interviews, and real-world advice to support your reporting. Find your expert here: www.expertfile.com
Masoud Davari, an associate professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Southern University, has been awarded the 2024 IEEE Region 3 Outstanding Engineer Award, making him the first faculty member in the university’s 55-year history to receive this honor. Davari was recognized for his contributions to reinforcement-learning optimal controls for power-electronic converters, his work on integrating power-electronic systems with cyber-attack considerations in modern power grids, and for his leadership in hardware-in-the-loop testing and standards development, including service on the IEEE P2004 standards working group. In addition to the award, Davari was inducted into the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) honor society. His research program at Georgia Southern has earned significant support, including more than $1.17 million in National Science Foundation funding, a 2024 Gulfstream Aerospace Research Fellowship, inclusion in the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists list, and selection as a finalist for the 2024 Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. You can find out more about Davari's research by visiting his Georgia Southern Scholars profile below: To arrange an interview or to learn more about this award - Looking to know more about Georgia — simply contact Georgia Southern's Director of Communications Jennifer Wise at jwise@georgiasouthern.edu to arrange an interview today.
“Lake Health Under the Microscope: RPI Researcher Offers First Real-World Look at Herbicide Impact”
In a recent Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute news release “RPI Collaborates on First-of-its-Kind Research Study to Keep New York Lakes Healthy,” Dr. Kevin Rose is featured as the essential expert behind an unprecedented field study of the aquatic herbicide florpyrauxifen-benzyl (FPB / ProcellaCOR) in New York lakes. As Director of the Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) at RPI, Rose helped lead the research team that examined long-term, real-world behaviour of the herbicide—discovering that while it disappears rapidly from open water, it lingers in lake-bed sediments for over a year and even spreads beyond original treatment zones. Rose’s involvement highlights his role in translating cutting-edge freshwater science into actionable insights for lake managers, regulators and communities. “New products are occasionally introduced into ecosystems as we work to prevent harm from threats like invasive species,” says Rose. “Many of these tools can bring tangible benefits, but it’s essential to understand their long-term impacts and potential unintended consequences.” Dr. Rose’s leadership brings clarity to an issue that can easily be oversimplified in public debate. By grounding the study in real-world field data rather than controlled laboratory assumptions, he provides a more accurate picture of how aquatic herbicides travel, transform, and linger in lake systems. His work highlights why science-based lake management — informed by long-term monitoring — is critical for maintaining the health, resilience and recreational value of New York’s freshwater ecosystems. For journalists covering invasive species, lake health, climate resilience, herbicide use or the future of freshwater ecosystems, Dr. Kevin Rose is an essential source. He brings both scientific authority and real-world relevance to a topic that affects communities, policy decisions and environmental outcomes across the state. Click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
How UF researchers are helping Floridians to build resilience
When Hurricane Idalia hit the Big Bend region of Florida in 2023, Jeff Carney and his team were watching. A coalition of architects, planners, and landscape architects led by Carney worked closely with the tiny Gulf island of Cedar Key, which is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes, to prepare for this moment. The researchers had modeled for city officials how a major storm would flood the city’s core services. “Idalia caused flooding exactly where the maps said it would, including city hall, the historic downtown, older homes, and many streets,” Carney said. After the storm, Cedar Key moved city hall to higher ground, as outlined in the plan. And just in time. Barely a year later, Cedar Key was hit even harder by Hurricane Helene. Between the storms, Carney’s group had worked with the city to refine their storm preparation. The new plan focused more on resilience-boosting projects, like improving drainage around the city. Cedar Key finalized their plans just weeks before Helene. “A lot of the projects we put forward in this plan are in the process of seeking additional funding after Helene,” Carney said. A professor of architecture at the University of Florida, Carney directs the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience, or FIBER. A research institute in UF’s College of Design, Construction and Planning, FIBER engages with communities to understand how the designs of buildings and cities expose Floridians to risks — not just storms, but also excessive heat, poor air quality, even a lack of health care. FIBER faculty then work with cities to mitigate these hazards. By preparing for emergencies, upgrading buildings, and providing targeted services, communities across Florida are bolstering the resilience of their residents, all with expert help from UF researchers. Preparing to weather big storms That kind of resilience is especially important for some of Florida’s most vulnerable residents. Older and poorer Floridians face higher-than-average risks from natural disasters and other environmental hazards. That vulnerability was apparent in Cedar Key as it weathered the last two hurricane seasons. Centered around aquaculture and tourism, Cedar Key seems in many ways to be thriving. Yet, with the feel of a small fishing village, roughly 13% of its nearly 1,000 full-time residents are considered to be financially disadvantaged, according to U.S. Census data. Poorer residents may also have a harder time walking away from coastal communities devastated by storms. With savings invested into damaged homes and jobs tied to the local area, less-wealthy residents often have no choice but to stay and rebuild. Carney’s team helps people see the opportunities for rebuilding with a clearer vision of a future where rising sea levels are a reality. “You capture people’s attention and excitement when you can offer them options that are not doomsday,” said Carney, who has been working in Pine Island and Matlacha in Southwest Florida’s Lee County to help residents affected by recent storms prepare for the future. “There’s a lot of opportunity for rebuilding as long as you don’t try to have it be business as usual. We help people see how redevelopment can provide a community asset for the future,” he added. “We try to paint the picture of all the possible scenarios so people can find their own comfort level. It puts them in the driver’s seat.” Aging with fewer choices While that kind of agency is empowering, it can be harder to come by as people retire and find themselves facing tough decisions on fixed incomes. That’s a common experience in Florida, which has a larger proportion of seniors than any other state, due in part to its popularity as a retirement destination. More than 10% of Americans over the age of 65 live below the federal poverty line. This population often finds themselves moving to less safe places as they age. “Older people with more social vulnerability — such as low income or poor health — have a tendency to move to worse places,” said Yan Wang, Ph.D., a professor of urban and regional planning in the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning. “They are more likely to move to places with less economic stability, with less access to health care, and with more exposure to extreme weather.” Wang and postdoctoral researcher Shangde Gao, Ph.D., recently published a study that uncovered the risks low-income seniors face when moving. Compared to their peers with higher incomes, poorer seniors were more likely to end up in neighborhoods lacking access to health care facilities. To address these kinds of disparities, UF Health has launched mobile health units that can reach people who have trouble traveling to health centers, including low-income seniors. The Mobile Outreach Clinic provides primary care and referrals for specialists. And the newly launched cancer screening vehicle, which serves all of North Central Florida, can help catch the disease in the early stages when it is easiest to treat. It’s not just finding health care that’s a struggle. Older adults from minority racial groups were also more likely to increase their exposure to poor air quality and to natural disasters like flooding and hurricanes when they moved, Wang and Gao discovered. “If we understand the trend and causes of these income disparities better, we could better prepare some places with more health care resources or better hurricane preparation for these older populations,” Wang said. Building safer, healthier homes That preparation is happening right now in Jacksonville, not just for big storms but for the everyday nuisances and hazards — even the ones people are exposed to in their own homes — that threaten people’s lives and health. The Jacksonville Restore and Repair for Resiliency research initiative was founded to address these kinds of risks while improving energy efficiency. The R3 initiative, as it’s known, is a home remodeling program organized by a slew of community partners and supported by FIBER research on the impact of housing quality on health. The project aims to keep longtime residents of the Historic Eastside in their homes while addressing the home hazards that put people at risk for medical complications like asthma attacks and emergency room visits. “The designs of buildings impact human health and well-being,” said Lisa Platt, Ph.D., the lead researcher with the Jacksonville program and an assistant professor of interior design with FIBER. “Our research is helping the team prioritize the home improvements that will benefit residents’ health the most.” Jacksonville’s Eastside faces a lot of challenges. The population is older than the city as a whole. Roughly three-quarters of residents are over the age of 60, and the poverty rate is over 40%. Yet more than a third of residents own their own homes. Often passed down from previous generations, some of the houses are now over a century old and struggle to keep the intense Florida heat and humidity out. Platt’s research has modeled how things like high heat days — only growing more common in a warming world —are associated with increased emergency room use and poor perceived physical and mental health. That science helps guide the community partners to prioritize providing air conditioning and better insulation to protect Historic Eastside residents. To date, the Jacksonville program is targeting up to 70 homes for renovation. Builders have fixed holes in roofs, replaced drafty windows, and hooked up air conditioning for the first time, keeping the heat and humidity at bay and protecting residents’ health. Now the R3 initiative is applying for federal grants to expand the program. “I think the best way to approach this kind of community action research is with humility and outreach. Community members have amazing expertise. I always say, ‘I can build models to analyze the problem, but you are the ones that are the experts,’” Platt said. “That’s where UF can be most useful, is coming in from a perspective of service.”
Five Million Airbnb Reviews Illuminate Guests’ Crime and Safety Concerns
Concerns about crime and safety have a dramatic impact on the behavior of Airbnb customers, according to new research co-authored by Liad Wagman, Ph.D., Dean of the RPI Lally School of Management. In an analysis of nearly 5 million reviews left by Airbnb guests, Wagman and his colleagues found that a short-term rental property’s occupancy rate and rental price dropped by significant amounts after a guest left a review mentioning safety concerns at or around the property: occupancy rates fell by anywhere from 1.5 to 2.4 percent, while average nightly prices dropped by roughly 1.5 percent. These negative safety reviews influenced the behavior not only of potential future customers, but also of the people who wrote them. A customer who mentioned concerns about crime and safety in the neighborhood around a property, for instance, became 60 percent less likely to ever use Airbnb again. “To see the effect of these dynamics play out in action is always fascinating to me," Wagman said. “Given that humans have different preferences, and that information transmittal is imperfect, it’s unsurprising that the effect of self-experience is larger than that of reading a critical review that resulted from it.” Worries about safety within a property — say, a broken step or a slippery tub — also reduced customers’ willingness to return to the platform, but by a more modest amount. The study also found that when people with neighborhood safety concerns did return to the platform, they tended to book properties in areas with lower rates of crime. The study, co-authored by Aron Culotta of Tulane, Ginger Zhe Jin of the University of Maryland, and Yidan Sun of Binghamton University, was published in the journal Marketing Science. Overall, the researchers found that safety-oriented reviews were rare: only about 0.5 percent of customer reviews mentioned safety concerns. But those reviews tend to be more negative in sentiment than the typical customer review, giving them an outsize impact on the behavior of subsequent would-be customers. The findings illustrate a delicate balancing act digital platforms have to perform, particularly those that rely heavily on user reviews: while highlighting negative experiences can help consumers make more informed choices, too much emphasis can drive customers away completely. The team ran several simulations calibrated by their empirical analysis to test how these dynamics play out in the market. They found that if a platform suppressed negative safety reviews completely, customers might assume that safety information was being hidden, and become more wary of using the platform in general. Conversely, while more transparency around safety issues could lead to fewer bookings of impacted properties in the short term, in the long run such a policy could boost user trust and draw more people to the platform, offsetting the short-term losses. “Platforms with the competitive space to focus on long-term objectives may benefit from a higher level of transparency, which can be facilitated by making information that is relevant to their buyers’ decision-making more readily available,” Wagman said. “Doing so facilitates trust and helps incentivize sellers to work to improve the quality of their offerings, as well as help shape sellers' decisions to enter a market (e.g., offer their listings) in the first place.”
The Conversation: A UF neuroscientist explains the science of pain
Nobody likes to feel pain, but it’s something every person will experience at some point in their life. But why is that? I am a neuroscientist, and my job is to research why and how people feel pain in order to help doctors understand how to treat it better. What is pain? To understand why people feel pain, it helps first to understand what pain is. Pain is the unpleasant sensation you feel when your body is experiencing harm, or thinks it is. Not everyone experiences pain the same way. Pain is a highly personal experience influenced by a variety of biological, psychological and social factors. For example, research has shown differences in the pain experiences of women and men, young and older people, and even across people from different cultures. Danger signals A network of nerves similar to wires runs all through the human body, from the tips of your fingers and toes, through your back inside the spinal cord and up to your brain. Specialized pain receptors called nociceptors can be found at the end of the nerves on your skin, muscles, joints and internal organs. Each nociceptor is designed to activate its nerve if it detects a danger signal. One way scientists classify nociceptors is based on the type of danger signal that activates them. Mechanical nociceptors respond to physical damage, such as cuts or pressure, while thermal nociceptors react to extreme temperatures. Chemical nociceptors are triggered by chemicals that the body’s own tissues release when they are damaged. These receptors may also be triggered by external irritants, such as the chemical capsaicin, which gives chili peppers their heat. This is why eating spicy food can cause you pain. Finally, there are the nociceptors that are activated by a combination of various triggers. For example, one of these receptors in your skin could be activated by the poke of a sharp object, the cold of an ice pack, the heat from a mug of cocoa, a chemical burn from household bleach, or a combination of all three kinds of stimulation. How pain travels though the body When you fall and get a scrape, the mechanical nociceptors in your skin spring into action. As soon as you hit the ground, they activate an electrical signal that travels through the nearby nerves to the spinal cord and up to your brain. Your brain interprets these signals to locate the place in your body that is hurting and determine how intense the pain is. Your brain knows that a pain signal is an SOS message from your body that something isn’t right. So it activates multiple systems all at once to get you out of danger and help you survive. Your brain may call on other parts of your nervous system to release chemicals called endorphins that will reduce your pain. It may tell your endocrine system to release hormones that prepare your body to handle the stress of your fall by increasing your heart rate, for example. And it may order your immune system to send special immune cells to the site of your scrape to help manage swelling and heal your skin. As all of this is happening, your brain takes in information about where you are in the world so that you can respond accordingly. Do you need to move away from something hurting you? Did you fall in the middle of the road and now need to get out of the way of moving cars? Not only is your brain working to keep you safe in the moments after your fall, it also is looking ahead to how it can prevent this scenario from happening again. The pain signals from your fall activate parts of your brain called the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex that process memory and emotions. They will help you remember how bad falling made you feel so that you will learn how to avoid it in the future. But why do we need to feel pain? As this example shows, pain is like a warning signal from your body. It helps protect you by telling you when something is wrong so that you can stop doing it and avoid getting hurt more. In fact, it’s a problem if you can’t feel pain. Some people have a genetic mutation that changes the way their nociceptors function and do not feel pain at all. This can be very dangerous, because they won’t know when they’re hurt. Ultimately, feeling that scrape and the pain sensation from it helps keep you safe from harm. Yenisel Cruz-Almeida is a UF Associate Professor of Community Dentistry and Associate Director of the Pain Research & Intervention Center Of Excellence, University of Florida This article is republished from The Conversation's Curious Kids series under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article:
