Pre-kindergarten instruction in Harris County will get a much-needed boost courtesy of a US$2.6 million grant to the University of Houston's College of Education.

The fund, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education 2003 Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program in response to the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB), will allow the College of Education to tackle the pervasive problem of educating bilingual, disabled and impoverished young students.

The College of Education hopes to help nearly 30,000 Harris County students by the end of the two-year grant period. Sixteen schools, drawn from eight school districts around the county, have been selected because of their low socio-economic status and high needs of their students. UH professors will take their expertise to the field for the teachers' benefit and will deliver instruction to their own college students in the schools as well.

Educational resources for the Pre-K age group have been scarce.

"Professional development at the Pre-Kindergarten level has been more limited statewide and nationwide because Pre-K has not usually been viewed as being a vital part of the education sequence," said Hawkins. "We have finally recognized the importance that should be placed on teaching Pre-K level students who have the greatest need." Specifically, she cited students enrolled in Programs for Preschool Children with Disabilities (PPCD), in economically disadvantaged (Title One) schools, and in ESL/Bilingual programs.

Out of 114 eligible applicants only seven institutes were funded. The College of Education was one of those seven and the only institution in Texas to receive a portion of the grant.

Robert Wimpelberg, dean of the College of Education, said this grant is one of the largest, most competitive grants the college has received. He applauded the four professors who received it - Juanita Copley, Yolanda Padrón, Robert "Bob" Houston and Jacqueline Hawkins.

There will be three grant components: literacy, mathematics and social skills. "We want to help teachers and our students recognize that building good peer relationships and adult relationships is just as important as reading, writing and arithmetic," Copley said. "Children have a better capability for learning if they socialize well."

Padrón cited research that shows most reading difficulties faced by adolescents and adults are the result of problems that could have been prevented through good instruction in their early childhood years. Children who enter school with language skills and pre-reading skills (e.g., understanding that print reads from left to right and top to bottom) are more likely to learn to read well in the early grades and succeed in later years.

The University of Texas at San Antonion (UTSA) is partnering with Northwestern University and the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center-Memphis to form one of 12 Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research. The center will be located in Evanston, Ill.

The centers are intended as a venue for state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary research into the causes and treatments of Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Funded by a $5 million, 5-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the new center will study how Parkinson's disease affects parts of the brain that control movement and learning. Institutions conducting Parkinson's research at the Udall centers include the University of California at Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School and Duke University.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that results from degeneration of neurons in a region of the brain that controls movement. This degeneration creates a shortage of the brain-signaling chemical neurotransmitter known as dopamine, causing the movement impairments that characterize the disease. Symptoms include trembling in limbs and face, stiffness of limbs or trunk, slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination.

Charles Wilson, UTSA professor of biology, is heading one of the four project teams at the new center. His project proposes to use mathematical models and computer simulations to bridge the gap between biophysical information and cellular properties that play a key role in Parkinson's related diseases.

In the United States, at least 500,000 people suffer from Parkinson's disease and 50,000 new cases are reported annually. Parkinson's usually affects people over age 50 and strikes men and women in equal numbers.

The Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research program was developed in honor of Congressman Morris K. Udall, who died in 1998 after a long battle with the disease.

A $155,000 gift from Memorial Hermann Healthcare System to the Texas Woman's University-Houston Center will help TWU address the state's nursing shortage and support health science faculty development programs.

"One of the critical concerns in addressing the state's nursing shortage is having enough instructors to teach nursing students," said TWU Chancellor Dr. Ann Stuart. "Memorial Hermann's generosity will help TWU attract and retain nursing and other allied health program instructors."

The funding will be provided in 2003 and 2004 and is designated to support faculty development, recruitment and retention. Approximately 83 percent of the funding is earmarked for the College of Nursing and the balance is designated for the College of Health Sciences, which offers programs in health care administration, physical therapy, occupational therapy and nutrition.

Dr. David J. Mangelsdorf, professor of pharmacology and biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and an associate investigator in the university's Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been awarded Germany's highly respected Heinrich Wieland Prize for his research on lipids.

The prestigious international science award is given annually to one individual for research in the fields of biochemistry, chemistry and physiology of fats and lipids and its clinical importance.

Mangelsdorf's research focuses on the mechanisms of nuclear receptor proteins that serve as sensors in protecting human cells against unusually high and possibly toxic levels of lipids, such as cholesterol and fatty acids. These lipid-sensing proteins play a central role in the maintenance of physiological levels of lipids consumed with food. Dr. Mangelsdorf's work signifies an important contribution to the elucidation of the mechanism that the body uses to restore the balance following an increase in cholesterol levels.

Three other UT Southwestern scientists have received the Wieland Prize since its inception in 1963.

Nobel laureates Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein claimed the award in 1974 for their research in lipoprotein receptors and the genetic control of cholesterol metabolism. They shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1985 for their discovery of the underlying mechanisms of cholesterol metabolism, which led to the development of statin drugs - now used by 13 million Americans - to treat high cholesterol.

Dr. John Dietschy, professor of internal medicine, received the Wieland Prize in 1983 while he was chief of gastroenterology at UT Southwestern for his research into the regulation of cholesterol balance in tissues.

The work of Brown, Goldstein and Dietschy served as a foundation upon which his lab was able to build, Mangelsdorf said.

Mangelsdorf will fly to Munich to receive the award, which includes about US$29,500 in cash. The award is named after German chemist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Heinrich Otto Wieland.

Rice University Professor Richard Smalley has received the 2003 Small Times Magazine Best of Small Tech Lifetime Achievement Award. Smalley received the award for his efforts to advance nanotechnology through scientific research, commercial application and public outreach.

The 2003 Small Times Magazine Best of Small Tech Awards recognize the best people, products and companies in nanotechnology, MEMS and microsystems.

Smalley is University Professor, the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, and professor of physics at Rice University. He holds the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of fullerenes, a family of carbon molecules that includes buckyballs and carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that conduct electricity as efficiently as copper and have 100 times the strength of steel at one-sixth the weight. As the Director of Rice's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory, Dr. Smalley's current research focuses on how to most effectively and efficiently produce, process and use nanotubes.

The recipients of the Small Times Magazine Best of Small Tech Awards, along with the finalists, were selected by nominations and applications submitted by companies and individuals. Small Times Media news staff and an industry panel of experts reviewed the applicants and selected one winner and four finalists in six categories, plus lifetime achievement and other. The panel considered accomplishments between October 1, 2002 and September 1, 2003. A complete list of winners and finalists can be found in the November/December issue of Small Times‚ magazine and online at www.smalltimes.com.

Geriatrician Janice Knebl, DO, MBA, has been named the first Dallas Southwest Osteopathic Physicians (DSWOP) Inc. Distinguished Chair of Clinical Geriatrics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) at Fort Worth.

Dr. Knebl currently serves as a professor of internal medicine and chief of geriatrics at the Fort Worth medical school.

In 2001, DSWOP pledged US$1.2 million, the largest gift in its history, to the health science center to create the endowment. The position holds special significance as the first chair in clinical geriatrics among all osteopathic medical schools.

The endowment builds upon UNT Health Science Center's long-term commitment to addressing health issues that affect an aging population. It was one of the first institutions in the country to offer specialized medical training in geriatric care to doctors, dentists, and psychologists. Through its outpatient-based Geriatric Assessment and Planning Program, the only one in the Metroplex, a team of physicians, psychologists, social workers, and geriatric nurse specialists work with older patients to thoroughly examine and assess their needs. Scientists in UNTHSC's Institute for Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Research are making discoveries that could change the way neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are treated.

Dr. Knebl said she has a vision for expanding the school's work in geriatrics.

The endowment is intended to serve as a permanent catalyst for expanding clinical geriatric services to older adults and their caregivers in north Texas. In addition, it allows the health science center to provide expert training and mentoring in geriatrics for medical students, residents and geriatric fellows, Dr. Hahn said.

The endowment is one of many ways DSWOP has demonstrated its support of the health science center. Over the past 20 years, DSWOP has previously given the institution $1.2 million to support loans and scholarships for medical students and to fund the Professional and Continuing Education office.

DSWOP, a non-profit organization, was established with proceeds from the 1983 sale of Stevens Park Osteopathic Hospital. It has since distributed almost $13 million in grants to more than 150 organizations.

Dr. Knebl graduated from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She earned a master's in business administration from Texas Christian University in 2002. Among her many honors, she was named the "Internist of the Year" by the American College of Osteopathic Internists in 2002.

The Board of Governors of IODP Management International, Inc. (IMI) have named Rice University geoscientist Manik Talwani as the first president of IMI. Talwani's appointment becomes effective Jan. 1, 2004.

The largest, most ambitious geoscience program ever undertaken, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is an international partnership of scientists and research institutions formed to explore the evolution and structure of the Earth. The lead agencies in IODP are the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology (MEXT). IMI, a not-for-profit corporation, has qualified to fill the role of the central management office for IODP.

IODP will use new resources and multiple platforms to support technologically advanced ocean drilling research, enabling investigation of Earth regions and processes that were previously inaccessible and poorly understood. Japan and the United States are each contributing a drilling platform. The Japanese vessel, the Chikyu (meaning "The Earth"), will be a state-of-the art, riser-equipped, dynamically positioned drill ship operated by the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center. The U.S. drill ship, JOIDES Resolution, is a non-riser vessel operated by Texas A&M University through the JOI Alliance.

As IODP gets underway, significant scientific and financial participation is also anticipated from Europe, which will provide the international IODP community with "mission-specific" platforms for drilling in special environments such as the very shallow-water portions of continental shelves and high-latitude ice-covered seas like the Arctic.

IMI's role includes coordination between IODP's science advisory structure, the lead agencies and the implementing organizations. IMI will also be responsible for integrating scientific objectives into an effective operational plan, and it will make decisions concerning the most efficient means of implementing the program plan.

Talwani, the Schlumberger Professor of Geophysics, earned a Master of Physics from Delhi University in India and a doctorate from Columbia University, where he served as professor of geophysics until 1982. Talwani also served as director of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory (now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) from 1973 to 1981. He left Lamont for Gulf Oil Company, where he served first as director of the Center for Crustal Studies and later as chief scientist. When Chevron acquired Gulf in 1985, he accepted an appointment at Rice and simultaneously founded the Geotechnology Research Institute at the Houston Advanced Research Center, where he served as director until 1998. Talwani will remain a member of Rice's faculty but will be take a leave of absence to serve at IMI.

Talwani's scientific leadership has contributed greatly to our understanding of how oceans and continents evolve. He is widely known for his studies of the Earth's crust and the dynamics of continental margins and ocean basins. His scientific achievements have earned many honors and awards, including the Krishnan Gold Medal from the Indian Geophysical Union, and the Macelwane Medal and Ewing Medal, both from the American Geophysical Union (the latter award given jointly with the U.S. Navy). He is also a recipient of the Woollard Award from the Geological Society of America, NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award (for sending the first gravimeter to the Moon), and the Wegener Medal from the European Union of Geosciences. Talwani is a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Science. He is also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, having received Fulbright and Guggenheim awards to first study in Norway in 1974. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo in 1981.

Lily T. Garcia, D.D.D., M.S., and Richard Seals, Jr., D.D.S., have been elected the American College of Prosthodontists (ACP) for 2003-2004. Dr. Garcia, chair of the department of prosthodontics, was voted secretary of the board and Dr. Seals, associate professor of prosthodontics, was elected speaker of the house of delegates. Drs. Garcia and Seals will both serve on the ACP Board of Directors which meets three times a year to conduct the college's business.

The ACP, a non-profit educational and scientific organization, was founded in 1970 and is the recognized organization for the specialty of prosthodontics. The ACP is the sponsor organization for American Board of Prosthodontics, the board-certifying agency for the specialty of prosthodontics. The college also provides continuing education for prosthodontists wanting to expand their education and learn about the latest advances. The college has more than 2,700 members in North America and around the world.

Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, a senior official at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), and Dr. Alan MacDiarmid, a Nobel Laureate researcher at the same institution, have been invited to become members of the advisory board for early stage venture capital firm, Genesis Campus.

Feng, who grew up in Singapore, is vice president for research and graduate education and professor of physics at UTD; and MacDiarmid, who was raised in New Zealand, holds the James Von Ehr Distinguished Chair in Science and Technology at UTD and is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics. MacDiarmid was a co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The Genesis Campus Board of Advisors draws from its extensive global industry connections and strong relationships with the academic and business communities to provide unique vantage points on the emerging needs of the market, customers and identifying market opportunities early. As members of the advisory board, Feng and MacDiarmid will provide insights into the current high-technology market landscape, trends and commercial potential.

"As vice president for research of one of the fastest-growing universities in the Southwest, I look forward to working with other members of this board for three reasons," said Feng. "The first is to work in my capacity as vice president for research with the successful global entrepreneur Wu-Fu Chen and his colleagues to develop win-win scenarios. "The second is to gain deeper insights into technology development from the entrepreneurial and investment angles. And the third is to ensure that technology developed and being developed in research universities in general -- and UTD in particular -- receive the visibility they deserve."

Other members of the board include: Leonard Brody, the CEO and founder of IPREO and a best-selling author; Michael Buckland, founder and managing director of Mobile Communications UK; Wireless Industry pioneer Mal Gurian, and Jerry Mills Gurian, the chairman of the Intellectual Property Group at Baker Botts, L.L.C.

"We are very excited to have such a diverse membership," said Wu-Fu Chen, founder of Genesis Campus. "The addition of Drs. Feng and MacDiarmid give the board two very strong scientific minds with practical business orientation. They add an excellent mix to our other members and provide the diversity in expertise that we are looking for."

Genesis Campus, founded in 2001 by serial entrepreneurs Chen and Roman Kikta, is a business accelerator and early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The firm is focused on information and wireless communication technologies, including their associated systems, networks, components and applications. Genesis Campus serves as a facilitator for the development of new businesses, providing capital, support services and strategic relationships needed by early-stage companies. The firm leverages the appropriate capital, channels, suppliers, skills and resources needed to optimize the time-to-revenue for emerging technology companies in the start-up process.

The relatively cheap and readily available flu shot should be recommended more often as a precaution against heart attacks and strokes, say University of Texas Medical School at Houston cardiologists. Their call for large-scale clinical studies and expansion of current guidelines for vaccinations against influenza appeared in this week's issue of Circulation, the leading journal of the American Heart Association.

"We are alerting the medical community to the importance of flu vaccination in patients with heart disease," said lead author Mohammad Madjid, M.D., an assistant professor in the cardiology division of the UT Medical School at Houston. "The vaccination rate for these patients is notoriously low (around 30 percent) and much lower than the national average of 60 percent."

A review of numerous studies suggested that influenza may cause up to 91,000 deaths per year by triggering heart attacks and strokes, much higher than the accepted belief that flu causes only 20,000 deaths per year. Annually, 729,000 deaths result from strokes and heart disease.

A team led by S. Ward Casscells III, M.D., who is the health science center's vice president for biotechnology, the John Edward Tyson Distinguished Professor of Medicine and a professor of cardiology at the UT Medical School, pioneered research on the link between flu and fatal heart attacks. Their data suggested influenza may be four times more deadly than previous estimates showed. Studies by other scientists have shown that flu vaccinations reduce heart attack risk by 50 to 67 percent and halve the risk of stroke.

Madjid and fellow cardiologists are calling for initiation of large-scale clinical trials to assess the protective role of flu shots for patients with heart disease and people who are likely to develop cardiovascular problems in the future.

Casscells noted that the popular cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins (Zocor, Lipitor, Pravachol, Crestor, Mevacor, Lescol) do reduce the risk of heart attack and of overall deaths, but the reduction begins at one year and does not reach a 50 percent reduction rate for 5 years. "Compared to flu shots, statins are probably as effective (eventually) but are more expensive, slower to act, and have more side effects," he said. "These drugs are life-savers, but they are not enough, and it's likely that the benefits of flu shots and statins are additive."

Casscells cautioned that no one should discontinue these medicines without discussing it with their doctor. Heart patients and those at risk-such as diabetics and people over age 50-also need a variety of vegetables and fruits, a regimen of exercise (initially under supervision for most patients), and stress reduction, plus flu shots.

The authors also called on the American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology, American College of Cardiology and other cardiovascular disease groups to fully adopt current federal flu-shot guidelines that recommend the vaccine to all people older than 50 and everyone with heart disease.

In addition to Madjid and Casscells, other authors of the Circulation article were Morteza Naghavi, M.D., and Silvio Litovsky, M.D.

The team's work was partly supported by the U.S. Army's Disaster Relief and Emergency Medical Services (DREAMS) grant.

Technology that significantly improves the ability of high-speed flywheels to store energy has been developed by research engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.

A flywheel made with the new technology set a speed record, spinning at 3,000 miles per hour, demonstrating the capability of storing 70 percent more energy than the same-sized flywheel made with current technology.

"This is an important step toward the routine use of energy storage flywheels in space," said Kevin Konno, the NASA program manager for the project.

An example of the need for energy storage in space is the solar-powered space station, which spends 30 minutes of every 90-minute orbit in the dark. That's when the space station turns to battery power. High-speed flywheels are being developed to provide more reliable, efficient and longer lasting energy storage.

Research engineers in the Center for Electromechanics at The University of Texas at Austin designed, fabricated and tested the record-setting flywheel in a project funded by NASA. The work is being done in collaboration with a space flywheel program at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and Test Devices Inc., a private test company, based in Hudson, Mass.

Composite flywheels store energy by rapidly spinning a small wheel to ultra high speeds. The technical challenge is obvious to anyone who has spent time on a child's merry-go-round-when you are in the center, it is easy to hold on. As you get farther from the center, it gets harder to hold on. At these high speeds, the material of the flywheel itself has trouble "holding on" and the flywheel grows as it spins. The researchers solved the problem of controlling how the structure grew to achieve very high speed without breaking.

The record-setting flywheel his team developed included a novel, bell-shaped composite structure rotating on a metallic shaft in vacuum that well suits the design needs of NASA's future space missions.

High-speed flywheels offer several advantages over low-speed flywheels and the chemical batteries now considered for space applications. High-speed flywheels store and release energy in a package that's smaller and weighs less than other technologies, thus allowing more space on board for scientific payloads.

High-speed flywheels also last longer. Last year, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin charged and discharged a flywheel 110,000 times with no change in performance. In addition, a flywheel system can be operated so that it wastes less than 5-10 percent of the energy stored as it is charged and discharged. By comparison, chemical batteries can typically be charged and discharged a few tens of thousands of times at best and typically waste more than 20 percent of the energy on charging and discharging.

NASA's flywheel achievements, while directed toward space applications, are also expected to benefit companies using flywheels to improve power delivery for factories, businesses and hybrid vehicles.