This year’s recipient of the Sobrato Prize in Neuroscience is Andrew Yang, PhD, whose research has reshaped scientific understanding of the blood-brain barrier and its role in brain health and disease. Yang is an investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and an assistant professor of neurology and anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco. Launched in 2024, the Sobrato Prize in Neuroscience seeks to bridge the gap between discovery and the clinic, accelerating life-changing brain science with high potential for patient impact. It is awarded to scientists at Gladstone Institutes whose research has a particularly high potential to lead to new therapies for major brain diseases.

To the point:

In view of recent geopolitical tensions and the disruption of energy imports, an interdisciplinary and international research team led by Yafang Cheng at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry assessed how the costs and benefits of renewable energy expansion in the European Union may evolve under changing conditions.

Fossil fuel energy prices have risen to a level where faster deployment of renewable energies to achieve carbon neutrality is expected to provide substantial air quality, health and economic co-benefits beyond climate protection. The investigated scenarios, building on the fuel price levels observed during the years 2021–2023, yield EU-wide net benefits in the range of approximately 100 to 600 billion Euros.

A newly developed system dynamics model with country-specific parameters was applied to account for dynamic changes of electricity costs upon rapid renewable expansion, allowing for more realistic projections.