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The Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum is administered by the College Board and serves as a standardized set of year-long high school classes that are roughly equivalent to one semester of college-level coursework. Although most students enroll in an actual course to prepare for their AP exams, many others will self-study for the exams without enrolling in the actual AP class.

AP classes are generally stand-alone subjects that easily translate to traditional college courses. Typically, they culminate in a standardized exam on which students are graded using a 5-point scale, which colleges and universities will use to determine credit or advanced standing. Starting in fall of 2014, though, this traditional AP course and exam format has begun to adapt in efforts by the College Board to reflect less stringent rote curriculum and a heavier emphasis on critical thinking skills.

The AP Capstone program is at the center of these changes, and its culmination course is AP Research. If you are interested in learning more about the AP Research Course and Assessment, and how they can prepare you for college-level work, read on for CollegeVine’s Ultimate Guide to the AP Research Course and Assessment.

About the Course and Assessment

The AP Research course is the second of two classes required for the AP Capstone™ Diploma . In order to enroll in this course you need to have completed the AP Seminar course during a previous year. Through that course, you will have learned to collect and analyze information with accuracy and precision, developed arguments based on facts, and effectively communicated your conclusions. During the AP Research course, you apply these skills on a larger platform. In the AP Research course, you can expect to learn and apply research methods and practices to address a real-world topic of your choosing, with the end result being the production and defense of a scholarly academic paper. Students who receive a score of 3 or higher on both the AP Seminar and AP Research courses earn an AP Seminar and Research Certificate™. Students who receive a score of 3 or higher on both courses and on four additional AP exams of their choosing receive the AP Capstone Diploma™.    

The AP Research course will guide you through the design, planning, and implementation of a year-long, research-based investigation to address a research question of interest to you. While working with an expert advisor, chosen by you with the help of your teacher, you will explore an academic topic, problem, or issue of your choosing and cultivate the skills and discipline necessary to conduct independent research and produce and defend a scholarly academic paper. Through explicit instruction in research methodology, ethical research practices, and documentation processes, you will develop a portfolio of scholarly work to frame your research paper and subsequent presentation of it.

Although the core content and skills remain standardized for every AP Research course, the implementation of this instruction may vary. Some AP Research courses may have a specific disciplinary focus wherein the course content is rooted in a specific subject, such as AP Research STEM Inquiries or AP Research Performing and Visual Arts. Similarly, other AP Research courses are offered in conjunction with a separate and specific AP class, such as AP Research and AP Biology wherein students are concurrently enrolled in both AP courses and content is presented in a cross-curricular approach. Alternatively, AP Research may be presented in the form of an internship wherein students who are already working with a discipline-specific expert adviser conduct independent studies and research of the student’s choosing while taking the AP Research class. Finally, some AP Research courses are delivered independently as a research methods class. In this style of class, students develop inquiry methods for the purpose of determining which method best fits their chosen topic of inquiry/research question, and each student then uses a selected method to complete his or her investigation.    

Only schools that currently offer the AP Capstone Diploma may offer the AP Research course. Because it is a part of a larger comprehensive, skills-based program, students may not self-study for the AP Research course or final paper. At this time, home-schooled students, home-school organizations, and online providers are not eligible to participate in AP Capstone.

Your performance in the AP Research course is assessed through two performance tasks. The first is the Academic Paper, which accounts for 75% of your total AP score. In this paper, you will present the findings of your yearlong research in 4,000-5,000 words. Although the official submission deadline for this task is April 30, the College Board strongly recommends that this portion of your assessment be completed by April 15 in order to allow enough time for the second of your performance tasks.

The second performance task is your Presentation and Oral Defense, which accounts for the remaining 25% of your total AP score. Using your research topic, your will prepare a 15-20 minute presentation in an appropriate format with appropriate accompanying media. Your defense will include fielding three to four questions from a panel consisting of your AP Research teacher and two additional panel members chosen at the discretion of your teacher.    

In 2016, fewer than 3,000 students submitted an AP Research project, but enrollment is projected to grow rapidly, since 12,000 students took the AP Seminar assessment in 2016 and most will presumably go on to submit an AP Research project in 2017. Scores from the 2016 AP Research projects reveal a high pass rate (score of three or higher) but a difficult rate of mastery. While 67.1% of students taking the assessments scored a three or higher, only 11.6% received the highest score of a five, while nearly 40% received a three. Only 2% of students submitting research projects received the lowest score of one.    

A full course description that can help to guide your planning and understanding of the knowledge required for the AP Research course and assessments can be found in the College Board course description .

Read on for tips for successfully completing the AP Research course.

How Should I Prepare for the AP Research Course?

As you undertake the AP Research course and performance tasks, you will be expected to conduct research, write a scholarly paper, and defend your work in a formal presentation.   Having already completed the AP Seminar course, these skills should be familiar to you. You should use your scores on the AP Seminar performance task to help guide your preparations for the AP Research performance tasks.

Carefully review your scores from AP Seminar. Make sure you understand where points were lost and why. It may be helpful to schedule a meeting with your AP Seminar teacher to review your work. Alternatively, your AP Research teacher may be willing to go over your AP Seminar projects with you. You might also ask a classmate to review your projects together to get a better idea of where points were earned and where points were lost. Use this review as a jumping point for your AP Research studies. You should go into the course with a good idea of where your strengths lie, and where you need to focus on improving.

A sample timeline for the AP Research course is available on page 36 of the course description . One detail worth noting is that the recommended timeline actually begins not in September with the start of the new school year, but instead begins in May with the completion of the AP Seminar course during the previous school year. It is then that you should begin to consider research topics, problems, or ideas. By September of the following school year, it is recommended that you have already finalized a research question and proposal, completed an annotated bibliography, and prepared to begin a preliminary inquiry proposal for peer review.    

What Content Will I Be Held Accountable For During the AP Research Course?

To be successful in the AP Research class, you will begin with learning to investigate relevant topics, compose insightful problem statements, and develop compelling research questions, with consideration of scope, to extend your thinking.   Your teacher will expect you to demonstrate perseverance through setting goals, managing time, and working independently on a long-term project. Specifically, you will prepare for your research project by:

• Identifying, applying, and implementing appropriate methods for research and data collection
• Accessing information using effective strategies
• Evaluating the relevance and credibility of information from sources and data
• Reading a bibliography for the purpose of understanding that it is a source for other research and for determining context, credibility, and scope
• Attributing knowledge and ideas accurately and ethically, using an appropriate citation style
• Evaluating strengths and weaknesses of others’ inquiries and studies

As in the AP Research course, you will continue to investigate real-world issues from multiple perspectives, gathering and analyzing information from various sources in order to develop credible and valid evidence- based arguments. You will accomplish this through instruction in the AP Research Big Ideas, also called the QUEST Framework. These include:

• Question and Explore: Questioning begins with an initial exploration of complex topics or issues. Perspectives and questions emerge that spark one’s curiosity, leading to an investigation that challenges and expands the boundaries of one’s current knowledge.
• Understand and Analyze Arguments: Understanding various perspectives requires contextualizing arguments and evaluating the authors’ claims and lines of reasoning.
• Evaluate Multiple Perspectives: Evaluating an issue involves considering and evaluating multiple perspectives, both individually and in comparison to one another.
• Synthesize Ideas: Synthesizing others’ ideas with one’s own may lead to new understandings and is the foundation of a well-reasoned argument that conveys one’s perspective.
• Team, Transform, and Transmit: Teaming allows one to combine personal strengths and talents with those of others to reach a common goal. Transformation and growth occur upon thoughtful reflection. Transmitting requires the adaptation of one’s message based on audience and context.

In addition, you will use four distinct reasoning processes as you approach your research. The reasoning processes are situating, choosing, defending , and connecting . When you situate ideas, you are aware of their context in your own perspective and the perspective of others, ensuring that biases do not lead to false assumptions. When you make choices about ideas and themes, you recognize that these choices will have both intended and unintentional consequences. As you defend your choices, you explain and justify them using a logical line of reasoning. Finally, when you connect ideas you see intersections within and/or across concepts, disciplines, and cultures.

For a glossary of research terms that you should become familiar with, see page 62 of the course description .

How Will I Know If I’m Doing Well in the AP Research Course?

Because your entire score for the AP Research course is determined by your research paper and presentation, which come at the very end of the course, it can be difficult to gauge your success until that point. Do yourself a favor and do not wait until your final scores come back to determine how successful you have been in the course.

As you undertake the AP Research course, there will be many opportunities for formative assessments throughout the semester. These assessments are used to give both you and your teacher an idea of the direction of instruction needed for you to master the skills required in the AP Research course. You should use these assessments to your advantage and capitalize on the feedback you receive through each. A list of possible activities used for these assessments can be found on page 41 of the course description .

Another way that you and your teacher will track your progress is through your Process and Reflection Portfolio (PREP). The PREP serves to document your development as you investigate your research questions, thereby providing evidence that you have demonstrated a sustained effort during the entire inquiry process. You will review your PREP periodically with your teacher, who will use it as a formative assessment to evaluate your progress.

Throughout the course, you will be assigned prompts and questions to respond to in your PREP. You will use this portfolio to document your research or artistic processes, communication with your expert adviser, and reflections on your thought processes. You should also write freely, journaling about your strengths and weaknesses with regard to implementing such processes and developing your arguments or aesthetic rationales. 

Your final PREP should include:

• Table of contents
• Completed and approved proposal form
• Specific pieces of work selected by the student to represent what he or she considers to be the best showcase for his or her work. (Examples might include: in-class (teacher-directed) free-writing about the inquiry process, resource list, annotated bibliography of any source important to the student’s work, photographs, charts, spreadsheets, and/or links to videos or other relevant visual research/project artifacts, draft versions of selected sections of the academic paper, or notes in preparation for presentation and oral defense.)
• Documentation of permission(s) received from primary sources, if required — for example, permission(s) from an IRB or other agreements with individuals, institutions, or organizations that provide primary and private data such as interviews, surveys, or investigations
• Documentation or log of the student’s interaction with expert adviser(s) and the role the expert adviser(s) played in the student’s learning and inquiry process (e.g., What areas of expertise did the expert adviser have that the student needed to draw from? Did the student get the help he or she needed — and if not, what did he or she do to ensure that the research process was successful? Which avenues of exploration did the expert adviser help the student to discover?)
• Questions asked to and feedback received from peer and adult reviewers both in the initial stages and at key points along the way
• Reflection on whether or not the feedback was accepted or rejected and why
• Attestation signed by the student which states, “I hereby affirm that the work contained in this Process and Reflection Portfolio is my own and that I have read and understand the AP Capstone TM Policy on Plagiarism and Falsification or Fabrication of Information”

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to maintain strong communications with your teacher as you progress through the AP Research course. Not only is your teacher your best resource for learning new skills and knowledge, but also it is your teacher who will be responsible for grading your final performance tasks and as such, you should always have a strong understanding of how your work is being assessed and the ways in which you can improve it. Remember, your teacher wants you to succeed just as much as you do; work together as a team to optimize your chances.

How Should I Choose a Research Topic?

You will begin to consider research topics before the school year even starts. If your AP Research class is offered in conjunction with another course, such as those rooted in a specific subject or linked to another concurrent AP course, you will have some idea of the direction in which your research should head. Regardless of whether you know the precise subject matter of your topic, you should begin by asking yourself what you want to know, learn, or understand. The AP Research class provides a unique opportunity for you to guide your own learning in a direction that is genuinely interesting to you. You will find your work more engaging, exciting, and worthwhile if you choose a topic that you want to learn more about.

As you begin to consider research topics, you should:

• Develop a list of topics and high-level questions that spark your interest to engage in an individual research project
• Identify potential expert advisers to guide you in the planning and development of your research project (For tips on how to find a mentor, read CollegeVine’s “ How to Choose a Winning Science Fair Project Idea ”)
• Identify potential opportunities (if you are interested) to perform primary research with an expert adviser during the summer, via internships or summer research projects for high school students offered in the community and local higher education institutions
• Discuss research project planning skills and ideas with students who are currently taking or have already taken the AP Research course

You might also find inspiration from reading about past AP Research topics. One list of potential research questions can be found here and another can be found here . Keep in mind that these lists make great starting points and do a good job of getting you thinking about important subjects, but your research topic should ultimately be something that you develop independently as the result of careful introspection, discussions with your teacher and peers, and your own preliminary research.

Finally, keep in mind that if you pursue a research project that involves human subjects, your proposal will need to be reviewed and approved by an institutional review board (IRB) before experimentation begins. Talk with your teacher to decide if this is the right path for you before you get too involved in a project that may not be feasible.

Once you have decided on a research topic, complete an Inquiry Proposal Form. This will be distributed by your teacher and can also be found on page 55 of the course description .

How Do I Conduct My Research?

By the time you begin your AP Research course, you will have already learned many of the basics about research methods during your AP Seminar course. You should be comfortable collecting and analyzing information with accuracy and precision, developing arguments based on facts, and effectively communicating your point of view. These will be essential skills as you move forward in your AP Research project.

As you undertake your work, remember the skills you’ve already learned about research:

• Use strategies to aid your comprehension as you tackle difficult texts.
• Identify the author’s main idea and the methods that he or she uses to support it.
• Think about biases and whether other perspectives are acknowledged.
• Assess the strength of research, products, and arguments.
• Look for patterns and trends as you strive to make connections between multiple arguments.
• Think about what other issues, questions, or topics could be explored further.

You should be certain to keep track of all sources used in your research and cite them appropriately. The College Board has a strict policy against plagiarism. You can read more about its specifics on page 60 of the course description .

How Do I Write My Paper?

Before you begin writing your final paper, make sure to thoroughly read the Task Overview handout which will be distributed by your teacher. If you would like to see it beforehand, it can be found on page 56 of the course description . You should also review the outline of required paper sections on page 49 of the course description .

Your paper must contain the following sections:

› Introduction

› Method, Process, or Approach

› Results, Product, or Findings

› Discussion, Analysis, and/or Evaluation

› Conclusion and Future Directions

› Bibliography

Before you begin writing, organize your ideas and findings into an outline using the sections listed above. Be sure to consider how you can connect and analyze the evidence in order to develop an argument and support a conclusion. Also think about if there are any alternate conclusions that could be supported by your evidence and how you can acknowledge and account for your own biases and assumptions. 

Begin your paper by introducing and contextualizing your research question or problem. Make sure to include your initial assumptions and/or hypothesis. Next, include a literature review of previous work in the field and various perspectives on your topic. Use the literature review to highlight the gap in the current field of knowledge to be addressed by your research project. Then, explain and justify your methodology, present your findings, evidence, or data, and interpret the significance of these findings. Discuss implications for further research or limitations of your existing project. Finally, reflect on the project, how it could impact its field, and any possible next steps. Your paper should conclude with a comprehensive bibliography including all of the sources used in your process.

Make sure to proofread and edit your paper yourself, have it proofread and edited by a friend, and then proofread and edit it again before you complete your final draft.

How Do I Prepare For My Oral Defense?

Once your paper is finished, you may be tempted to sit back and rest on your laurels. Although you’ve no doubt expended a tremendous about of energy in producing a final product you can be proud of, don’t forget that the work is not over yet. Your oral defense accounts for 25% of your total score so it should be taken seriously.

Your oral defense is a 15-20 minute presentation that uses appropriate media to present your findings to an oral defense panel. You may choose any appropriate format for your presentation, as long as the presentation reflects the depth of your research. If your academic paper was accompanied by an additional piece of scholarly work (e.g., performance, exhibit, product), you should arrange with your teacher for him or her, along with the panelists, to view the scholarly work prior to your presentation.

As you plan your presentation, consider how you can best appeal to your audience. Consider different mediums for your presentation, and how those mediums might affect your credibility as a presenter. You want to be engaging to your audience while still being taken seriously.

Following your presentation, you will field three or four questions from your panelists. These will include one question pertaining to your research or inquiry process, one question focused on your depth of understanding, and one question about your reflection throughout the inquiry process as evidenced in your PREP. The fourth question and any follow-up questions are at the discretion of the panel. A list of sample oral defense questions begins on page 52 of the course description . For a complete outline of the oral defense, see page 49 of the course description . 

How Will My Work Be Assessed?

Because this assessment is only available to students enrolled in the AP Capstone program, your teacher will register you for the assessment when you enroll in the course. You should confirm with your teacher that you are registered for the assessment no later than March 1. 

You will submit your final paper and complete your oral presentation no later than April 30, at which point your teacher will submit your work and scores through an AP Digital Portfolio. Your presentation will be scored by your teacher alone. Your paper will be scored by your teacher and validated by the College Board.

You may find the scoring rubric from the 2016 performance tasks available here . You may find a collection authentic student research papers and scoring explanations available here .

Preparing for any AP assessment can be a stressful process. Having a specific plan of attack and a firm grasp of how your work is assessed will help you to feel prepared and score well. Use CollegeVine’s Ultimate Guide to the AP Research Course and Assessment to help shape your understanding of the course and how to complete your performance tasks effectively. When submission day arrives, you should feel better prepared and informed about the work you have produced.

For more about information about APs, check out these CollegeVine posts:

• Can AP Tests Actually Save You Thousands of Dollars?

• Should I Take AP/IB/Honors Classes?

• How to Choose Which AP Courses and Exams to Take

• What If My School Doesn’t Offer AP or IB Courses?

• Are All APs Created Equal in Admissions?

Want access to expert college guidance — for free? When you create your free CollegeVine account, you will find out your real admissions chances, build a best-fit school list, learn how to improve your profile, and get your questions answered by experts and peers—all for free. Sign up for your CollegeVine account today to get a boost on your college journey.

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Academic Paper: Literature Review

7 min read • march 13, 2023

Dylan Black

Introduction

Your Literature Review is the first formal part of your paper. It is the section that is the most detached from your actual research project because you most likely will not bring up your actual research question/topic until the end when you situate your gap in the body of knowledge relating to your topic of inquiry.

The point of your literature review is to explain what is already known about your specific topic of inquiry and establish that the gap you have chosen is truly a gap in the body of knowledge. Coming out of your introduction, your reader will be aware of the broader context of your work and the general idea of what it is you'll be talking about. The literature review takes that context and blows it up into what will eventually become approximately the first 1200-1500 words of your paper (though word count varies across discipline and paper format).

How to Write a Lit Review

The goals of your lit review.

The first goal of your literature review is to, as the name implies, conduct an extensive review of the literature through little-r research. This involves more than just listing the sources and their content because you will be explaining connections between them whether they be agreements in data, disagreements in conclusions, etc.

The biggest mistake students make in their Lit Review - and we'll discuss this in more detail in a later section - is that they just list what sources say and do little to analyze what is actually known about a certain subject. This leads to a weak review of the literature and a murky, undeveloped gap. By connecting your sources, you are able to incorporate multiple perspectives, establish credibility, and at the end of the day, simply have a better reading lit review that truly explains the body of knowledge surrounding your topic.

The second goal of your literature review is to establish your gap and explain how:

it hasn't been covered by researchers before (this is justified through the fact that you just explained what is already known!)

why it is relevant to your discipline/topic

This part of your lit review is crucial to your research paper. This part of your paper connects your literature review - all of the known stuff - to what you are doing. This goal basically addresses the question, "ok so we just looked at aaaalllll of these sources, now what are you going to do", answering it with something along the lines of "well, we see that these sources have established [something] about my discipline, but no one has addressed [your gap], so I plan on researching it."

Using phrases like "This paper provides new insight on..." and "However, [researchers, be specific!] have overlooked [your research gap]" can make this especially clear, which is important because your gap is what lays the foundation of everything to come!

Clearing the Gap , Image From GIPHY

Varying Perspectives

An especially important part of your literature review is establishing and explaining, as the CollegeBoard puts it, "relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives". This means that your lit review cannot just be a bunch of summaries of random papers strewn across a page at random, despite the content being somewhat similar.

When writing, and more specifically when planning your lit review, understanding the perspectives of each of your papers, and being able to connect them in a way that they join hands , or naturally lead into one another in a logical chain of succession is invaluable.

To use myself as an example, in my literature review I focused on three sections: "Marxism and Labor", a section about the economic foundations of my topic, "Applications of Marxism to Film", in which I described how the previous section connects to film in a broader sense, and finally "Marxist Film Theory and Moon", which took the previous two sections and explicitly connected them to my film of interest. In building my Lit Review throughout these 3 sections, not only was I able to split up topics in a meaningful way, but each section built on itself, connecting to points made by previously mentioned sources.

Connecting Your Sources To Your Topic of Inquiry

When writing your literature review, every source you mention at some point or another will have to connect to your overall topic of inquiry, otherwise what's the point? Why would they be used? Thus, when you include a source, not only do you want to explain the content and what the source actually says in terms of the literature but you want to be explicit in explaining the relevancy and credibility of the source in connection to the content of your paper.

This will help you better connect your sources to each other. This is important because the quality of your literature review hinges on how it presents the known information to your readers and helps them understand why your project A) is connected to these sources and B) is a new addition to them.

When you're explicitly building on sources to connect them to the topic of your paper, you more effectively accomplish goal A because your reader doesn't have to do much guesswork. Then, when you move onto your gap, the fact that all of your sources are established as relevant will help you effectively justify your gap.

A sample structure of a literature review. Image from the University of Hull

What Not To Do: The Source Spaghetti

We've mentioned this a few times throughout this guide, but it needs repeating. There is one thing, and one thing only, that you should never do in your literature review, and that's something called "the source spaghetti". Basically, this is a method of writing a literature review where instead of planning or connecting sources to each other, you essentially list out your sources with a brief summary, quickly moving from source to source with very little rhyme or reason making your lit review muddled and unfocused, like reading a bowl of spaghetti.

While this certainly gets some information on the page, it is not an effective way of writing a literature review for the simple reason that you won't be able to have the level of detail that a good Lit Review requires.

Image from GIPHY

Rubric Points and Logistics

Now that we've gone over some tips and tricks, let's take a look directly at the rubric and see what the CollegeBoard explicitly states are the expectations for a lit review. For reference, the full rubric can be found here , and is the source for all the following rubric screenshots.

Seen above is the row of the AP Research scoring guidelines that best correspond to your literature review. Let's move from a one to a five and see what differentiates each point.

A literature review that earns a one and a two is marked by a single perspective, that is to say, it does not cover a wide variety of sources and does not effectively describe the body of knowledge surrounding a topic of inquiry. Papers that earn a one for the literature review typically use non-scholarly works as opposed to scholarly works in their research. For example, news sources do not count as scholarly, whereas research papers that have been peer-reviewed (that bit is important) do.

Moving into the three-point category, we see that a paper with this score does have varying perspectives and scholarly works, but lacks in the connections department. A paper with this score may have done some solid little-r research, but did not structure their lit review in such a way that the sources were able to be in discussion with one another. This is why a paper that uses a spaghetti sources way of organization will not be successful. Remember that connections between your sources are just as crucial as the content of the sources themselves.

The four and five categories meld into one. In fact, the text in the rubric is exactly the same. What separates a four and a five is a degree of sophistication in your writing. Where a 4 may hit all the points and do it well, a five does that and goes above and beyond. It's a very fine line and frankly, it's pretty subjective on the part of the reader. The easiest way to figure out what separates these two is to read sample fours and sample fives to see the difference for yourself.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations! If you've made it this far you have all the skills to get started on your literature review. Your next steps from here are to get started on your little-r research, start collecting sources, and get connecting. You got this!

Key Terms to Review ( 3 )

Non-scholarly works

Peer Review

Research papers

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A gene long thought to just raise the risk for Alzheimer’s may cause some cases

FILE - A section of a human brain with Alzheimer’s disease is displayed at the Museum of Neuroanatomy at the University at Buffalo, in Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 7, 2003. A long-feared gene appears to do more than raise people’s risk of Alzheimer’s: Inheriting two copies can cause the mind-robbing disease, according to research published in the journal Nature Medicine on Monday, May 6, 2024. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time, researchers have identified a genetic form of late-in-life Alzheimer’s disease — in people who inherit two copies of a worrisome gene.

Scientists have long known a gene called APOE4 is one of many things that can increase people’s risk for Alzheimer’s, including simply getting older. The vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases occur after age 65. But research published Monday suggests that for people who carry not one but two copies of the gene, it’s more than a risk factor, it’s an underlying cause of the mind-robbing disease.

The findings mark a distinction with “profound implications,” said Dr. Juan Fortea, who led the study the Sant Pau Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.

Among them: Symptoms can begin seven to 10 years sooner than in other older adults who develop Alzheimer’s.

An estimated 15% of Alzheimer’s patients carry two copies of APOE4, meaning those cases “can be tracked back to a cause and the cause is in the genes,” Fortea said. Until now, genetic forms of Alzheimer’s were thought to be only types that strike at much younger ages and account for less than 1% of all cases.

Scientists say the research makes it critical to develop treatments that target the APOE4 gene. Some doctors won’t offer the only drug that has been shown to modestly slow the disease, Leqembi, to people with the gene pair because they’re especially prone to a dangerous side effect, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a study coauthor at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Sperling hunts ways to prevent or at least delay Alzheimer’s and “this data for me says wow, what an important group to be able to go after before they become symptomatic.”

But the news doesn’t mean people should race for a gene test. “It’s important not to scare everyone who has a family history” of Alzheimer’s because this gene duo isn’t behind most cases, she told The Associated Press.

HOW DO GENETICS AFFECT ALZHEIMER’S?

More than 6 million Americans, and millions more worldwide, have Alzheimer’s. A handful of genes are known to cause rare “early-onset” forms, mutations passed through families that trigger symptoms unusually young, by age 50. Some cases also are linked to Down syndrome.

But Alzheimer’s most commonly strikes after 65, especially in the late 70s to 80s, and the APOE gene – which also affects how the body handles fats -- was long known to play some role. There are three main varieties. Most people carry the APOE3 variant that appears to neither increase nor decrease Alzheimer’s risk. Some carry APOE2, which provides some protection against Alzheimer’s.

APOE4 has long been labeled the biggest genetic risk factor for late-in-life Alzheimer’s, with two copies risker than one. About 2% of the global population is estimated to have inherited a copy from each parent.

RESEARCH POINTS TO A CAUSE FOR A SUBSET OF ALZHEIMER’S

To better understand the gene’s role, Fortea’s team used data from 3,297 brains donated for research and from over 10,000 people in U.S. and European Alzheimer’s studies. They examined symptoms and early hallmarks of Alzheimer’s such as sticky amyloid in the brain.

People with two APOE4 copies were accumulating more amyloid at age 55 than those with just one copy or the “neutral” APOE3 gene variety, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine. By age 65, brain scans showed significant plaque buildup in nearly three-quarters of those double carriers – who also were more likely to have initial Alzheimer’s symptoms around that age rather than in the 70s or 80s.

Fortea said the disease’s underlying biology was remarkably similar to young inherited types.

It appears more like “a familial form of Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Eliezer Masliah of the National Institute on Aging. “It is not just a risk factor.”

Importantly, not everyone with two APOE4 genes develops Alzheimer’s symptoms and researchers need to learn why, Sperling cautioned.

“It’s not quite destiny,” she said.

HOW THE NEW FINDINGS MAY AFFECT ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH AND TREATMENT

The drug Leqembi works by clearing away some sticky amyloid but Sperling said it’s not clear if carriers of two APOE4 genes benefit because they have such a high risk of a side effect from the drug – dangerous brain swelling and bleeding. One research question is whether they’d do better starting such drugs sooner than other people.

Masliah said other research aims to develop gene therapy or drugs to specifically target APOE4. He said it’s also crucial to understand APOE4’s effects in diverse populations since it’s been studied mostly in white people of European ancestry.

As for gene tests, for now they’re typically used only to evaluate if someone’s a candidate for Leqembi or for people enrolling in Alzheimer’s research – especially studies of possible ways to prevent the disease. Sperling said the people most likely to carry two APOE4 genes had parents who both got Alzheimer’s relatively early, in their 60s rather than 80s.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How to reform federal permitting to accelerate clean energy infrastructure: A nonpartisan way forward

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Rayan sud , rayan sud former research assistant - economic studies , center on regulation and markets sanjay patnaik , and sanjay patnaik director - center on regulation and markets , bernard l. schwartz chair in economic policy development, senior fellow - economic studies @sanjay_patnaik robert l. glicksman robert l. glicksman j. b. and maurice c. shapiro professor of environmental law - the george washington university law school.

February 14, 2023

Executive Summary

As we laid out in a previous article , the process for the permitting of renewable energy generation and electric transmission projects in the United States is multi-layered and often extremely long. If the U.S. is to achieve its climate ambitions and fully implement transformative legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress will also have to enable a massively accelerated build-out of clean energy infrastructure.

At the same time, valuable environmental safeguards, and the established public participatory and related administrative processes used to adopt and implement them, cannot simply be sidestepped. Congress should approach federal permitting reform in a way that maximizes efficiency in government decisionmaking through shorter timelines for regulatory approvals without sacrificing the value of the current process in protecting the environment and local stakeholders. Further, it is essential that reforms are evidence-based in targeting the major sources of current delays. Our research in this article indicates that striking such a balance is possible—a targeted set of six reforms laid out here could significantly accelerate federal permitting for clean energy infrastructure, without compromising environmental protections.

Permitting reforms will also need to be able to attract bipartisan support to pass through Congress. The most recent high-profile attempt at permitting reform by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was not palatable to both progressive Democrats , who argued it would eliminate environmental protections, and to Republicans , who, among other concerns, argued that it was a federal power grab and that it did not go far enough in reducing regulatory red tape.

In this article, we provide an analysis of the specific points of delay within the federal permitting process for clean energy infrastructure. We then discuss six major areas of potential reform, including evaluations of existing reform provisions on the table, such as Senator Manchin’s proposed legislation. In each area, we provide policy options that would make a significant impact on shortening permitting timelines, avoid affecting the integrity of environmental review, and attract support across the political spectrum. We conclude with options for permitting reform at the local and state levels, both of which have important planning and compliance roles in clean energy infrastructure development, making them critical pieces of the puzzle. Below are the highlights of the policy options we present:

Policy Roadmap

• Under such a program, Congress could direct federal land-management agencies to prepare national-level maps of environmental sensitivity, with corresponding pre-designated “go-to areas” for renewable energy projects in areas of lowest environmental sensitivity.
• Congress could also direct federal land-management agencies to prepare programmatic environmental impact statement reports for low-sensitivity areas with high potential for renewable energy infrastructure, and if it does so, it should appropriate sufficient funding for these mapping and reviewing functions.
• Furthermore, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could expand Clean Water Act Section 404 general permitting to include offshore wind transmission line construction.
• Siting authority for all interstate transmission lines could be federalized with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Interstate transmission lines are critical for decarbonization of the U.S., with national benefits but local costs, that are frequently rejected by state authorities. Natural gas pipelines have similar cost-benefit tradeoffs, but they are permitted much faster due to FERC’s existing siting authority over them. Expanding FERC’s partial, pre-existing backstop authority over transmission lines to complete siting authority is therefore a step with precedent and high expected benefits. FERC could also ensure that interstate transmission lines allocate a fair fraction of their capacity to the states and communities through which they pass, thereby increasing local support for transmission and more equitably distributing its benefits.
• The Biden administration could conduct a staff capacity, funding, and technology needs assessment across agencies involved with critical permitting for clean energy. If the assessment finds substantial gaps, Congress could appropriate funds to increase resources available to these agencies, earmarking them for permitting capacity.
• Congress could transfer initial authority for Clean Air Act permitting for offshore wind from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) within the Department of the Interior. Such a step would help shorten a part of the permitting timeline for offshore wind and bring it on fairer footing with the treatment of Clean Air Act permitting for offshore fossil fuel production, an industry that generates much more pollution. Congress could also create a separate legislative title for offshore wind under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), thereby improving planning, permitting, and leasing processes.
• Congress could support multi-agency coordination by allocating additional funding to the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) , and by expanding its scope to cover mid-sized as well as large clean energy projects. Further, all agencies could adopt the process of lead agency coordination of multi-agency reviews created by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41).
• Narrow expansions of categorical exclusions under NEPA, as detailed by the Bipartisan Policy Center, are likely to accelerate some permitting actions. An overly aggressive expansion of categorical exclusions may not have beneficial effects, as categorical exclusions are already widely used, and misclassifying projects that deserve a higher level of review may not necessarily shorten permitting timelines.
• Strict and automatically-enforced NEPA time limits for pre-designated low-environmental-sensitivity areas for clean energy infrastructure, modeled on a recent European Union plan, are likely to significantly accelerate clean energy permitting and deployment. Broader time or page limits on NEPA reviews without further study and targeting are unlikely to be helpful.
• Congress could direct legal challenges to solar, wind, and transmission infrastructure Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) directly to the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to expedite approval of large clean energy infrastructure projects, as suggested by James Coleman. Any broader limitations on NEPA litigation may have unintended consequences, as the evidence of excessive frivolous litigation or excessive litigation-induced delay is currently mixed.

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The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online  here . The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.

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