Jalees Rehman

69 posts · 63,770 views

I am an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As a cell biologist and cardiologist, I direct a research laboratory that investigates the growth of blood vessels and the biology of stem and progenitor cells.

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  • March 1, 2016
  • 11:10 AM
  • 212 views

Shame on You, Shame on Me: Shame as an Evolutionary Adaptation

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

Can shame be good for you? We often think of shame as a shackling emotion which thwarts our individuality and creativity. A sense of shame could prevent us from choosing a partner we truly love, speaking out against societal traditions which propagate injustice or pursuing a profession that is deemed unworthy by our peers. But if shame is so detrimental, why did we evolve with this emotion? A team of researchers led by Daniel Sznycer from the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University ........ Read more »

Sznycer D, Tooby J, Cosmides L, Porat R, Shalvi S, & Halperin E. (2016) Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 26903649  

  • January 5, 2016
  • 09:16 AM
  • 443 views

We Have Become Exhausted Slaves in a Culture of Positivity

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

We live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. This is one of the central tenets of the book "Müdigkeitsgesellschaft" (translatable as "The Fatigue Society" or "The Tiredness Society") by the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han is a professor at the Berlin Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) and one of the most widely read contemporary philosophers in Germany. He was born in Seoul where he stu........ Read more »

Byung-Chul Han. (2015) The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press. info:/

  • December 8, 2015
  • 12:46 PM
  • 440 views

The Dire State of Science in the Muslim World

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

Universities and the scientific infrastructures in Muslim-majority countries need to undergo radical reforms if they want to avoid falling by the wayside in a world characterized by major scientific and technological innovations. This is the conclusion reached by Nidhal Guessoum and Athar Osama in their recent commentary "Institutions: Revive universities of the Muslim world", published in the scientific journal Nature. The physics and astronomy professor Guessoum (American University ........ Read more »

Guessoum N, & Osama A. (2015) Institutions: Revive universities of the Muslim world. Nature, 526(7575), 634-6. PMID: 26511563  

Romanowski, M., & Nasser, R. (2010) Faculty perceptions of academic freedom at a GCC university. PROSPECTS, 40(4), 481-497. DOI: 10.1007/s11125-010-9166-2  

  • October 14, 2015
  • 09:53 AM
  • 644 views

Feel Our Pain: Empathy and Moral Behavior

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

"It's empathy that makes us help other people. It's empathy that makes us moral." The economist Paul Zak casually makes this comment in his widely watched TED talk about the hormone oxytocin, which he dubs the "moral molecule". Zak quotes a number of behavioral studies to support his claim that oxytocin increases empathy and trust, which in turn increases moral behavior. If all humans regularly inhaled a few puffs of oxytocin through a nasal spray, we could become m........ Read more »

De Dreu, C., Greer, L., Van Kleef, G., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. (2011) Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 1262-1266. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015316108  

Shalvi S, & De Dreu CK. (2014) Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(15), 5503-7. PMID: 24706799  

Xu X, Zuo X, Wang X, & Han S. (2009) Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 29(26), 8525-9. PMID: 19571143  

  • July 29, 2015
  • 02:09 PM
  • 813 views

The “Invisible Web” Undermines Health Information Privacy

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

What do the third parties do with your data? We do not really know because the laws and regulations are rather fuzzy here. We do know that Google, Facebook and Twitter primarily make money by advertising so they could potentially use your info and customize the ads you see. Just because you visited a page on breast cancer does not mean that the "Invisible Web" knows your name and address but they do know that you have some interest in breast cancer. It would make financial sense to sen........ Read more »

Libert, T. (2015) Privacy implications of health information seeking on the web. Communications of the ACM, 58(3), 68-77. DOI: 10.1145/2658983  

  • July 20, 2015
  • 10:00 AM
  • 571 views

How Viruses Feign Death to Survive and Thrive

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

During the past decade, multiple groups of researchers have come across a fascinating phenomenon by which viruses hijack the phagocytosis process in order to thrive. One of the "Eat Me!" signals for phagocytes is that debris derived from an apoptotic cell is coated by a membrane enriched with phosphatidylserines which are negatively charged molecules. Phosphatidylserines are present in all cells but they are usually tucked away on the inside of cells and are not seen by other cells. Wh........ Read more »

Amara A, & Mercer J. (2015) Viral apoptotic mimicry. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13(8), 461-9. PMID: 26052667  

  • June 25, 2015
  • 12:43 PM
  • 843 views

The Long Shadow of Nazi Indoctrination: Persistence of Anti-Semitism in Germany

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

Voigtländer and Voth examined the results of the large General Social Survey for Germany (ALLBUS) in which several thousand Germans were asked about their values and beliefs. The survey took place in 1996 and 2006, and the researchers combined the results of both surveys with a total of 5,300 participants from 264 German towns and cities. The researchers were specifically interested in anti-Semitic attitudes and focused on three survey questions specifically related to anti-Semitism. Survey........ Read more »

Voigtländer N, & Voth HJ. (2015) Nazi indoctrination and anti-Semitic beliefs in Germany. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 26080394  

  • April 28, 2015
  • 09:40 AM
  • 878 views

Murder Your Darling Hypotheses But Do Not Bury Them

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

There is surprisingly little data on how and when scientists reject hypotheses, but John Fugelsang and Kevin Dunbar at Dartmouth conducted a rather unique study "Theory and data interactions of the scientific mind: Evidence from the molecular and the cognitive laboratory" in 2004 in which they researched researchers. They sat in at scientific laboratory meetings of three renowned molecular biology laboratories at carefully recorded how scientists presented their laboratory data and how........ Read more »

Fugelsang, J., Stein, C., Green, A., & Dunbar, K. (2004) Theory and Data Interactions of the Scientific Mind: Evidence From the Molecular and the Cognitive Laboratory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 58(2), 86-95. DOI: 10.1037/h0085799  

  • March 31, 2015
  • 05:45 AM
  • 778 views

African-Americans Receive Heart Transplants at Hospitals With Poor Performance Track Records

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

About five million people in the US suffer from heart failure, and approximately half of them die within five years of being diagnosed. Only about 2,500 hundred people a year receive a heart transplant – the treatment of last resort. A new heart can be life-saving, but it is also life-changing. Even under the best conditions, the surgery is complex, and recovery carries a heavy physical and emotional burden.
... Read more »

Kilic, A., Higgins, R., Whitson, B., & Kilic, A. (2015) Racial Disparities in Outcomes of Adult Heart Transplantation. Circulation, 131(10), 882-889. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.011676  

  • March 31, 2015
  • 05:23 AM
  • 679 views

Fixing 'leaky' blood vessels to combat severe respiratory ailments and, perhaps, Ebola

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

When you get an infection, your immune system responds with an influx of inflammatory cells that target the underlying bacteria or viruses. These immune cells migrate from your blood into the infected tissue in order to release a cocktail of pro-inflammatory proteins and help eliminate the infectious threat. During this inflammatory response, the blood vessel barrier becomes “leaky.” This allows for an even more rapid influx of additional immune cells. Once the infection resolves, th........ Read more »

Gong, H., Rehman, J., Tang, H., Wary, K., Mittal, M., Chatturvedi, P., Zhao, Y., Komorova, Y., Vogel, S., & Malik, A. (2015) HIF2α signaling inhibits adherens junctional disruption in acute lung injury. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 125(2), 652-664. DOI: 10.1172/JCI77701  

  • March 9, 2015
  • 08:58 AM
  • 1,338 views

“She’s strong for a girl”: The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

We have all heard the stereotypes: women can’t drive, they don’t understand computers, and how many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb? But those are all in good fun, right? But what if gender stereotypes actually bring about the observed differences between men and women that supposedly underline these stereotypes? A recent study by the psychologist Marina Pavlova at the University of Tübingen tested this idea.... Read more »

Pavlova, M., Weber, S., Simoes, E., & Sokolov, A. (2014) Gender Stereotype Susceptibility. PLoS ONE, 9(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114802  

  • March 5, 2015
  • 10:11 AM
  • 771 views

Does Thinking About God Increase Our Willingness to Make Risky Decisions?

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

Daniella Kupor and her colleagues at Stanford University have recently published the paper "Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking" which takes a new look at the link between invoking the name of God and risky behaviors. The researchers hypothesized that reminders of God may have opposite effects on varying types of risk-taking behavior. For example, risk-taking behavior that is deemed ‘immoral' such as taking sexual risks or chea........ Read more »

Kupor DM, Laurin K, & Levav J. (2015) Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking. Psychological Science. PMID: 25717040  

  • February 10, 2015
  • 09:02 AM
  • 874 views

Moral Time: Does Our Internal Clock Influence Moral Judgments?

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

Does morality depend on the time of the day? The study "The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior" published in October of 2013 by Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith suggested that people are more honest in the mornings, and that their ability to resist the temptation of lying and cheating wears off as the day progresses. In a series of experiments, Kouchaki and Smith found that moral awareness and self-control in their study subjects decreased in the........ Read more »

Gunia, B., Barnes, C., & Sah, S. (2014) The Morality of Larks and Owls: Unethical Behavior Depends on Chronotype as Well as Time of Day. Psychological Science, 25(12), 2272-2274. DOI: 10.1177/0956797614541989  

  • February 9, 2015
  • 09:22 AM
  • 619 views

Literature and Philosophy in the Laboratory Meeting

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

Research institutions in the life sciences engage in two types of regular scientific meet-ups: scientific seminars and lab meetings. The structure of scientific seminars is fairly standard. Speakers give Powerpoint presentations (typically 45 to 55 minutes long) which provide the necessary scientific background, summarize their group's recent published scientific work and then (hopefully) present newer, unpublished data. Lab meetings are a rather different affair. The purpose of a lab meeti........ Read more »

Thomas Kuhn. (2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226458106.001.0001  

  • February 9, 2015
  • 09:08 AM
  • 543 views

Resisting Valentine's Day

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

To celebrate Valentine's Day (as a geeky scientist), I decided to search the "Web of Science" database for published articles with the phrase "Valentine's Day" in the title.The article with the most citations was "Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events" published in the Journal of Business Research in 2009, by the authors Angeline Close and George Zinkhan. The title sounded rather interesting so I decided to read it. The authors reported the res........ Read more »

Close, A., & Zinkhan, G. (2009) Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events. Journal of Business Research, 62(2), 200-207. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2008.01.027  

  • February 6, 2015
  • 09:02 AM
  • 773 views

Typical Dreams: A Comparison of Dreams Across Cultures

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

Have you ever wondered how the content of your dreams differs from that of your friends? How about the dreams of people raised in different countries and cultures? It is not always easy to compare dreams of distinct individuals because the content of dreams depends on our personal experiences. This is why dream researchers have developed standardized dream questionnaires in which common thematic elements are grouped together. These questionnaires can be translated into various languages and used........ Read more »

Yu, C. (2008) Typical dreams experienced by Chinese people. Dreaming, 18(1), 1-10. DOI: 10.1037/1053-0797.18.1.1  

  • February 5, 2015
  • 09:10 AM
  • 802 views

Climate Change: Heatwaves and Poverty in Pakistan

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

The 2010 floods were among the worst that Pakistan has experienced in recent decades. Sadly, the country is prone to recurrent flooding which means that in any given year, Pakistani farmers hope and pray that the floods will not be as bad as those in 2010. It would be natural to assume that recurring flood disasters force Pakistani farmers to give up farming and migrate to the cities in order to make ends meet. But a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change by Valerie Mueller ........ Read more »

Mueller V, Gray C, & Kosec K. (2014) Heat Stress Increases Long-term Human Migration in Rural Pakistan. Nature Climate Change, 182-185. PMID: 25132865  

  • February 4, 2015
  • 05:39 PM
  • 622 views

The Psychology of Procrastination: How We Create Categories of the Future

by Jalees Rehman in Fragments of Truth

Paying bills, filling out forms, completing class assignments or submitting grant proposals – we all have the tendency to procrastinate. We may engage in trivial activities such as watching TV shows, playing video games or chatting for an hour and risk missing important deadlines by putting off tasks that are essential for our financial and professional security. Not all humans are equally prone to procrastination, and a recent study suggests that this may in part be due to the fact that t........ Read more »

Tu, Y., & Soman, D. (2014) The Categorization of Time and Its Impact on Task Initiation. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(3), 810-822. DOI: 10.1086/677840  

  • January 16, 2015
  • 06:10 AM
  • 948 views

Fixing ‘Leaky’ Blood Vessels in Severe Respiratory Ailments and Ebola

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

When you get an infection, your immune system responds with an influx of inflammatory cells that target the underlying bacteria or viruses. These immune cells migrate from your blood into the infected tissue in order to release a cocktail of pro-inflammatory proteins and help eliminate the infectious threat.

During this inflammatory response, the blood vessel barrier becomes “leaky.” This allows for an even more rapid influx of additional immune cells. Once the infection resolves,........ Read more »

Gong, H., Rehman, J., Tang, H., Wary, K., Mittal, M., Chatturvedi, P., Zhao, Y., Komorova, Y., Vogel, S., & Malik, A. (2015) HIF2α signaling inhibits adherens junctional disruption in acute lung injury. Journal of Clinical Investigation. DOI: 10.1172/JCI77701  

  • January 5, 2015
  • 03:02 PM
  • 989 views

Typical Dreams: A Comparison of Dreams Across Cultures

by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration

Have you ever wondered how the content of your dreams differs from that of your friends? How about the dreams of people raised in different countries and cultures? It is not always easy to compare dreams of distinct individuals because the content of dreams depends on our personal experiences. This is why dream researchers have developed standardized dream questionnaires in which common thematic elements are grouped together. These questionnaires can be translated into various languages and used........ Read more »

Yu, C. (2008) Typical dreams experienced by Chinese people. Dreaming, 18(1), 1-10. DOI: 10.1037/1053-0797.18.1.1  

Nielsen, T., Zadra, A., Simard, V., Saucier, S., Stenstrom, P., Smith, C., & Kuiken, D. (2003) The Typical Dreams of Canadian University Students. Dreaming, 13(4), 211-235. DOI: 10.1023/B:DREM.0000003144.40929.0b  

Schredl M, Ciric P, Götz S, & Wittmann L. (2004) Typical dreams: stability and gender differences. The Journal of psychology, 138(6), 485-94. PMID: 15612605  

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