A newly released compendium, Feminism and COVID-19: How Women Fare in the Face of a Global Crisis, is revealing how women across the world were simultaneously critical for the success of the global COVID-19 response, and disproportionately impacted by the pandemic’s secondary effects, such as lost income, and increased unpaid care work and violence.

Book co-editors, Dr. Julia Smith of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics, gathered together a unique multidisciplinary and transnational team of authors and experts who examined nine case studies of the COVID-19 response and its global and local impacts on women from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hong Kong, Kenya, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

Scientists identify three new proteins, one each from soybean, corn, and wheat, that the body uses to determine oral tolerance—the opposite of food allergy. They found that specialized immune cells called regulatory T cells interact with these proteins in the gut. By understanding tolerance, researchers can better understand food allergies and begin to imagine future immunotherapies that promote tolerance rather than allergic reactions.