With a couple of month until Election Day, the Harris-Walz campaign is ramping up its grassroots efforts by organizing homecoming tours of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Homecoming season is one of the necessary times for HBCUs, celebrating the wealthy culture, history and sense of community they’ve built over generations. The campaign’s decision to launch at this significant time is meant to connect with Black voters in key battleground states corresponding to North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Not only are these states crucial to the upcoming election, but also they are home to a few of the most famous HBCUs in the country. According to the campaign, we are going to send surrogates, including Black elected officials, national leaders and celebrities from each the HBCU and hip-hop communities, to engage directly with students and alumni.

The tour begins today, September 28, at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) as the varsity celebrates its 132nd Founders’ Day. The campaign will include a tailgate on the WSSU vs. football game. Bowie State University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Other stops on the tour include Lincoln University and Virginia State University on October 12, followed by stops at Howard University, North Carolina A&T State University and Clark Atlanta University on October 19, and ending at Morehouse and Spelman College on October 26.

“Howard University helped shape everything I am today, and historically Black colleges and universities prepare the next generation of leaders” – Harris, a proud graduate of the university, recently published on X (formerly Twitter).

HBCUs have long held a special place in American education. Founded to serve black students once excluded from mainstream institutions, it has been on the forefront of educational excellence, cultural expression and political engagement for over 150 years. Homecoming at these institutions is greater than just a college tradition—it’s a celebration of Black pride and progress that brings together alumni, students, and the encompassing community.

These institutions have all the time been centers of political engagement, making this tour a natural and effective way to reach and energize a key voting base. The Harris-Walz campaign builds on its recent momentum and engagement with the HBCU community. Last week, the campaign celebrated National HBCU Week, National Voter Registration Day and National Black Voter Day by hosting in-person and virtual canvassing events at 60 HBCU campuses.

“Vice President Harris has been very clear: she is not taking a single voter for granted, Black voters are not in our back pocket and we have to put in the work to earn their votes,” said Christale Spain, newly appointed National Commission on Black Affairs Director .Harris-Walz campaign’s involvement in an announcement to ESSENCE. “That’s exactly what we’re doing as we launch an HBCU tour of battleground states.”

Spain emphasized that “As president, Kamala Harris will chart a brand new path forward that features creating a chance economy that gives our community with real economic tools, not to mention her leadership as vp that resulted in student loan debt forgiveness for thousands and thousands of individuals, working directly to close the racial wealth gap and create thousands and thousands of recent jobs for black staff. Vice President Harris is the one candidate in this election who has made real progress for Black America – and she or he is just getting began.”

While last visit In an interview with the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC), Governor Tim Walz highlighted HBCUs’ legacy of political engagement and advocacy, recalling the Atlanta Student Movement’s fight for voting rights and racial equality. He also warned of ongoing voter suppression efforts, especially in the state of Georgia.

Additionally, the Harris-Walz ticket was endorsed by over 50 HBCU Football Legendsincluding Hall of Fame inductees and Super Bowl MVPs corresponding to Doug Williams – the primary black quarterback to start, win and be named Super Bowl MVP. Joining legends corresponding to Southern University’s Mel Blount and Maryland Eastern Shore’s Emerson Boozer, these athletes praised Harris’ commitment to justice and equality, expressing confidence that as president she is going to prioritize the well-being of all Americans.

Given the long-standing role of HBCUs in supporting political activism and social solidarity, the Harris-Walz campaign initiative could prove crucial in mobilizing voter turnout. As campaign efforts proceed, the impact of those efforts can be closely watched in the run-up to the November election.

James Earl Jones died earlier this month on the age of 93. The reason for his death stays unknown, and details of his type 2 diabetes diagnosis are emerging.

The EGOT recipient lived with diabetes for a few years before he died on September 9. Jones opened about his late diagnosis of diabetes during a 2016 appearance. He was already over 60 years old when he came upon that he had been affected by a chronic disease for years.

“I fell asleep on a bench in the middle of the gym one day,” Jones explained. “And the doctor who was there said, ‘This isn’t normal,’ and encouraged me to get checked out.”

After visiting the doctor, a laboratory test confirmed that Jones had type 2 diabetes. He admits that the diagnosis was a shock for him and “struck me like a lightning bolt.” he said then. But it ultimately led to an entire lifestyle change for Jones and his entire family.

“When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I realized my whole family had diabetes,” he said. (*2*)

It was a disease that ran in his family, as his mother and several other other members of the family had type 2 diabetes. Jones also knew that some ethnic groups were at greater risk than others.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38.1 million American adults had the disease diabetes in 2021. More than a fifth of those people had undiagnosed diabetes. The highest rates of diagnosed diabetes are amongst American Indian or Alaska Native adults, followed by Black, Latino, and Asian adults, with the bottom rates amongst whites.

Jones was diagnosed with diabetes in his 60s, which is a standard age group for brand new diabetes diagnoses.

“As we age, diabetes and other age-related diseases, such as obesity and abnormal cholesterol levels, become more common,” said Noa Tal, M.D., an endocrinologist on the Center for Pituitary Disorders on the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, California.

It is commonly the case that diabetes goes unnoticed before it’s finally diagnosed.

“Unfortunately, (type 2 diabetes) sometimes goes unnoticed,” adds Tal.

When Jones became aware of his diabetes, he needed the assistance of his wife and son to maintain him on the right track and chargeable for his eating habits.

“There have been difficult changes, like not having your favorite strawberry shortcake,” he said. “My wife and son helped me by keeping an eye on everything and being guard dogs. They both helped me stay organized.”

Jones was best known for his roles on and. He was a pioneer in Hollywood and have become one among the primary African-American actors to have a recurring role on a daytime drama in 1965 ().

He enjoyed a profession that lasted well into his 80s and earned him quite a few accolades, including two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy Award, a National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honors. He also received an honorary Oscar and a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement. In 2022, the Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

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Have you ever considered a sprained ankle as a brain injury? Most people probably would not do this.

However, we’re starting to know how the brain continuously adapts, so-called plasticity.

Although the damage from an ankle sprain takes place within the ankle, there may also be some changes within the brain when it comes to how well it senses pain and movement.

One of our PhD students, Ashley Marchant showed something similar happens when we modify the load (or load) on the muscles of the lower limb. The closer the charge is to Earth’s normal gravity, the more accurate our sense of motion is; the less muscle load, the less accurate we get.

This work means we’d like to rethink how the brain controls and responds to movement.

Solving a crucial puzzle

Historically, exercise science has attempted to enhance muscle function through resistance training, cardiovascular exercises and flexibility.

One of a very powerful issues within the treatment and prevention of sports injuries is that even when the sports medicine team determines that the athlete is able to return, the danger of future injury stays two to eight times higher than in the event that they had never been injured.

This implies that sports doctors missed something.

Our work on the University of Canberra and the Australian Institute of Sport has focused on sensory input to try to resolve this puzzle. The aim was to evaluate the power of sensory reception, i.e. perception, a facet of movement control.

Input (sensory) nerves. they outnumber output (motor) nerves by about ten to 1.

Over 20 years, scientists have developed tools to find out the standard of sensory input reaching the brain, which determines how well we will perceive movement. Evaluating these inputs may very well be useful for everybody from astronauts to athletes and older people susceptible to falls.

We can now measure how well a person receives information from three critical input systems:

• vestibular system (balance organ of the inner ear)
• visual system (students’ response to changes in light intensity)
• position detection system within the lower limbs (mainly from sensors within the muscles and skin of the ankle and foot).

This information allows us to construct a picture of how well a person’s brain collects details about movement. It also indicates which of the three systems may profit from additional rehabilitation or training.

Lessons from space

You could have seen videos of astronauts, for instance on the International Space Station, moving around using only their hands with their legs hanging behind them.

This shows how humans leave Earth’s gravity minimal information for the sensory system from the skin and muscles of the legs.

The brain quickly deactivates the connections it normally uses to manage movement. This is advantageous when an astronaut is in space, but as soon as she or he has to face or walk on the surface of the earth or moon, she or he is at greater risk of falls and injuries.

Similar brain changes can occur in athletes on account of changes in movement patterns after injury.

For example, limping after a leg injury implies that the brain receives movement information that may be very different from the movement patterns of that leg. In the case of plasticity, this will mean that the movement control pattern doesn’t return to its optimal pre-injury state.

As mentioned earlier, injury history is the perfect predictor of future injuries.

This suggests that after injury, there are changes within the athlete’s movement control processes – almost certainly within the brain – that reach outside of time when the damaged tissue heals.

Measures of how well an athlete perceives movement are related to how well she or he performs in various sports. So sensory awareness may be as well a solution to discover sports talents early.

Poor performance on the identical measures of sensory perception may occur in older adults and within the context of fall prevention predict later falls.

This could also be on account of reduced physical activity in some older people. The “use it or lose it” idea may show how brain connections chargeable for perception and movement control can degrade over time.

Precision healthcare

New technologies for tracking sensory abilities are a part of a latest direction in healthcare generally known as precision health.

Precision Health uses technology and artificial intelligence to take note of a range of things (corresponding to their genetic makeup) that affect a person’s health and provide treatments designed specifically for that individual.

Applying a precision health approach to motion control could enable rather more targeted rehabilitation for athletes, training astronauts, and stopping earlier falls in older adults.