Why an early Alzheimer’s theory is making a comeback, the U.S.’s electricity crisis, and improving precision medicine

First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with staff writer Jennie Erin Smith about a new old idea for Alzheimer’s disease. They discuss how the cholinergic hypothesis originally came about, how it fell out of fashion, and why it’s making a comeback now.

Next on the show, the United States can make more power as demand goes up, but moving that increased amount of electricity around the country is proving problematic. Madeline Yozwiak, a postdoctoral scholar in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her Policy Forum article on the barriers to scaling up the country’s electric grid and some potential solutions.

Finally, boosting precision medicine by looking at All of Us. The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us project is a gigantic source of whole-genome sequences and electronic health records. Philip Empey, associate professor in the School of Pharmacy and associate director of the Institute for Precision Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses how panning through this huge trove of data to find pharmacogenomic variants—genes important for prescription decisions—will improve precision medicine. 

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Image: Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

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