Friday FYI
Volume 5, Issue 13 May 13, 2005 Circulation 14,402
Newsletter from the Office of Vice President of Research and Graduate Education
Index University News Corporate News Commentary Upcoming Events Other News

University News

California HIV/AIDS research program awards $15.3 million to five research centers

Awards totaling $15.3 million over four years have been made to five collaborative HIV/AIDS research centers, representatives in the Universitywide AIDS Research Program of the University of California Office of the President announced Monday.

The centers, which involve partnerships with other institutions and are scheduled to begin operation July 1, are Charles Drew University in Los Angeles, San Mateo Medical Center, UC Davis, UCLA, and UC San Diego.

The centers are:

The Universitywide AIDS Research Program provides state funding for the support of merit-reviewed AIDS-related research conducted at nonprofit research institutions and community-based organizations throughout California. The program has awarded more than 1,770 research grants to more than 50 California institutions since 1983.

The program provides start-up funds for the development of cutting edge research by investigators based in California, providing critical leverage in competing for and bringing subsequent federal and private resources to the state. A 2002 survey of California investigators has found that nearly seven dollars in federal and other grant support was generated for every dollar invested by UARP in California-based research.

The new California collaborative HIV/AIDS research centers represent a major initiative for UARP, with the goal of fostering innovative research with high potential for advancing HIV/AIDS science in under-researched populations in California, to further the Universitywide AIDS Research Program's mission of accelerating progress towards prevention and a cure for AIDS.

Funding under the center initiative will provide support for both institutional research infrastructure and for substantive research studies at each center, as well as for institutional partnerships that strengthen science and expand the HIV/AIDS research capability of institutions and organizations throughout the state.

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Structural Engineers Receive $7.5 Million Contract To Test Bomb Blast Mitigation Technologies

UCSD structural engineers together with a team of industry and university partners will develop and evaluate blast mitigation technologies to harden buildings and bridges against terrorist bomb attacks through a new US$7.5 million federal contract. More than 40 tests will be performed over the next two years in the new blast simulator laboratory at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering's Englekirk Structural Research Center. Testing is expected to begin in June, after the simulator has been commissioned.

The blast mitigation program at UCSD is supported by the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), the federal interagency organization for combating terrorism. In 2003 and 2004, TSWG awarded UCSD contracts totaling $8.6 million to construct the blast simulator. The newest contract brings cumulative support for the blast mitigation program to $16.1 million.

Partners in the UCSD blast mitigation testing program include Karagozian and Case (K&C) and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), who will aid in computational analysis required to design the tests. K&C and SAIC will also develop predictive computer tools based on testing results. MTS Systems Corporation, the company which originally built the UCSD blast simulator, will continue to enhance the equipment in preparation for the blast load simulations. The Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology will oversee a series of explosive field tests which will help validate UCSD's laboratory results. Structural Group is providing blast mitigation technologies for the test specimens.

The UCSD blast simulator is the world's first laboratory to simulate the effects of bombs without the use of explosive materials. The project is led by UCSD structural engineering professors Gil Hegemier and Frieder Seible.

The UCSD blast simulator generates the speed and force of explosive blasts through a servo-controlled hydraulic system that punches test specimens at speeds of up to 26 meters per second during a 1-2 millisecond pulse. In the accumulator bank, nitrogen charges hydraulic fluid and builds up pressure. This pressure is released through velocity generators which propel steel plates carrying elastomeric pads precisely shaped to impart specific pressure distributions on the test specimen.

UCSD structural engineers will test a variety of building components, such as structural columns, which are most vulnerable to blast loads, as well as load-bearing and infill walls, and bridge elements such as towers. They will simulate a range of blast scenarios including the equivalent of 50 pounds of TNT detonated within a few feet of a structure to 5,000 pounds of TNT detonated from more than 100 feet away.

Throughout the program, the team will evaluate how the structural components perform before and after retrofitting with blast mitigation technologies. One candidate technology is fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite overlays originally designed to protect structures from earthquakes. Such material is as thin as a cotton shirt, stronger than steel, and consists of carbon threads woven in a polymer matrix which is bonded with resin. Composite overlays performed successfully in full-scale explosive field tests in which unretrofitted building columns suffered catastrophic damage, while columns wrapped with the composite overlay were virtually undamaged. Such overlays have been deployed on several federal buildings in the U.S. and abroad.

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San Francisco Wins Bid for Stem Cell Science Headquarters

San Francisco has won its bid to become home to the state stem cell institute headquarters - a brand new office space about a 15-minute walk from the growing life sciences campus at UCSF Mission Bay.

The eagerly awaited decision reached on May 6 signals a major turning point in Mission Bay's redevelopment renaissance. This transformation began just five years ago when UCSF broke ground for its first health sciences research and teaching building at its 43-acre Mission Bay campus.

In a highly competitive process, San Francisco beat out rivals San Diego and Sacramento to have space in a mixed-use project at 250 King Street selected as the site of the administrative headquarters of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The CIRM was created last November when voters approved a statewide ballot measure which authorizes $3 billion in bonds to support stem cell research, much of it using human embryonic stem cells, over the next 10 years. The measure was brought to voters in an attempt to get around limits on federally financed embryonic stem cell research set by President George W. Bush.

In an all-day meeting in Fresno, the 27-member stem cell oversight group known as the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC) approved by a five-vote margin to locate the headquarters in San Francisco, the front-runner in the competition all along. The ICOC decision was widely expected since it considered recommendations from a site search subcommittee, which announced May 2 that San Francisco's King Street site should be selected. Still, the ICOC heard final pitches from the representatives of San Diego and Sacramento, the second - and third-scoring cities, before making its decision.

The CIRM headquarters proximity to UCSF - the birthplace of biotechnology and a pioneer in stem cell research - was itself a major selling point in Mayor Gavin Newsom's winning proposal.

As part of a bidding process to determine the location of its permanent headquarters, CIRM asked local governments, working in partnership with building owners, to provide about 17,000 square feet of office space at little or no cost. In the end, the cities and counties which submitted proposals in March offered so much more.

The centerpiece of San Francisco's proposal, reportedly worth about $17 million in perks, includes a ten-year, no-cost lease on the third floor of a building at 250 King Street - brand new office space near UCSF Mission Bay, the center of the Bay Area's burgeoning life sciences community. The office space, directly across from SBC Ballpark and boasting expansive views of the Bay, will be built out to the CIRM's precise specifications. It will be outfitted with the highest quality fixtures and furniture and equipped with the latest in advanced telecommunications systems at absolutely no cost to the CIRM.

San Francisco's winning bid also included:

The bid also submitted an alternative location at 1700 Owens Street should the CIRM have wanted to be closer to UCSF.

UCSF's Developmental and Stem Cell Biology program is led by Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, who was recruited in April 2004. He has an international reputation for his work on neuronal stem cells in the developing brain and is widely regarded as a key leader in this scientific frontier.

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U. T. Dallas, Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee To Agree to Exchange Students, Faculty, Research

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee (IITR) - powerhouses of high-technology higher education in their respective countries - are expected to sign an agreement later this month that would facilitate an exchange of students, faculty and research information between the two institutions.

The agreement is scheduled to be signed by the heads of the two universities - UTD President Dr. Franklyn Jenifer and IITR Director Dr. Prem Vrat - during a visit by Vrat to the UTD campus in late May.

"Both UTD and IITR are very enthusiastic about the cooperative efforts envisioned under this affiliation agreement," said Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for research and graduate education at U. T. Dallas. "There are tremendous synergies between the two institutions, starting with the very strong engineering and computer science programs at both schools. In addition, IITR has an up-and-coming program in management, which has long been a strength at UTD."

The objective of the agreement is to promote cooperation between the two institutions, including the reciprocal exchange of students and faculty, collaborative research projects, exchange of publications and academic information and other mutually agreed-upon activities. The student exchange aspect of the agreement is expected to be implemented almost immediately, with UTD planning to host four third-year students from IITR as research interns this summer. UTD students will be able to study and work at IITR in the near future.

"As one of seven IITs - a group I refer to as the "Magnificent Seven" - the institute at Roorkee is among the most prestigious research universities in India," Feng said. "This new relationship with IITR is another step in UTD's efforts to develop collaborations with high-quality universities throughout the world in order to raise our visibility and to improve the quality of our academic and research endeavors."

The two universities began a relationship last year when the directors of four IITs, including Roorkee, visited UTD. Last December, UTD returned the favor when a delegation from the university, led by Nobel laureate and UTD faculty member Dr. Alan MacDiarmid, made a 10-day trip to India which included a stop at IITR.

"Collaboration agreements among universities, of course, are concluded all the time," said Feng, who was a member of the UTD delegation to India. "However, we believe this particular agreement holds a great deal of promise because of the many areas of commonality at the two institutions, as well as the strong desire by both to advance among the ranks of globally recognized research universities."

Feng added that several dozen members of the UTD faculty are alumni of IITs, although none graduated from IITR.

Nearly 160 years old, the institute at Roorkee was declared an IIT by the government of India in 2001. The university is considered a trendsetter in the areas of education and research in the fields of science, technology and engineering. It offers bachelor's degrees in 10 disciplines of engineering and architecture and postgraduate degrees in 55 disciplines of engineering, applied science, architecture and planning.

Roorkee is located in northern India, approximately 175 kilometers from New Delhi.

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Cornell University Signs Partnerships With China

Cornell University President Jeff Lehman led a Cornell delegation to China, where he signed educational accords to establish programs in collaboration with Qinghua University and Beijing University. Qinghua , one of the leading technical universities in China, will exchange faculty and students with Cornell University's College of Engineering. Joint faculty working groups will meet twice a year for workshops, focusing on nanotechnology, materials research, information science, and environmental engineering. The agreement with Beijing University establishes a new undergraduate program major in China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences beginning in the Fall 2005 semester at Cornell University. China Millennium Council President Mary Ho from Rochester , met with Cornell University President Jeff Lehman and Senior University Kathy Okun, in extending their warm greetings of welcome to the new Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong .

Lehman met in Ithaca with Dr. Su Guaning , president of Nanyang Technological University , and signed an agreement to establish a joint master's program in hospitality management. Students in the twelve month program will integrate their program of studies between Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca and the Nanyang campus in Singapore. Cornell's curriculum provides students a unique international education and prepares them for global leadership positions in the rapidly growing Asian hospitality industry.

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Harvard's Drops In Drops Hold Promise

A team of Harvard researchers has developed a technique that allows the precise formation of double emulsions - droplets within droplets - that offers new ways to deliver drugs, nutrients, and other consumer and industrial products.

The team, led by Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and of Professor of Physics David Weitz, devised a technique using two tiny tubes that produces precisely-sized fluid droplets wrapped inside a second fluid and suspended in a third.

The advance has a wide potential range of applications in the pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic, and chemical industries. The double emulsions are potentially useful in any application where a product needs to be shielded from its surroundings for a period of time before being delivered.

Any consumer who has eaten a salad is already familiar with emulsions. Two liquids that don't mix, such as oil and vinegar, form emulsions. A shaken bottle of salad dressing, with oil droplets floating in vinegar, illustrates a single emulsion. A double emulsion, such as Weitz and colleagues created, involves a third liquid surrounding the oil droplet and insulating it from the vinegar.

Weitz said that double emulsions are already widely used in industry, but current techniques have no way to control the size of the droplets involved. That means there's no reliable way to regulate the delivery of whatever cargo the drops contain, which limits the technique's use in applications that require exact quantities.

Weitz and his colleagues' technique, described in the April 22 issue of the journal Science, uses two tiny tubes, with a smaller one inserted in the other, to form the droplets. Working with Weitz were lead author Andrew Utada, a graduate student at the Division of Applied Sciences (DEAS), former postdoctoral fellows Darren Link and E. Lorenceau; DEAS Professor H.A. Stone; and P.D. Kaplan of the Unilever Skin Global Innovation Center.

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Shared Computing Grid Cuts Data Mountains Down to Size

Although University of Wisconsin-Madison professors Wesley Smith and David Schwartz operate in completely different scientific spheres - one seeking to explore the fundamental properties of matter and the other trying to wrest free the secrets of the human genome - both have the same dilemma: They are awash in a sea of data.

To make sense of the human genome, for example, Schwartz and the small army of scientists engaged in one of biology's grandest projects must sort through 20,000-25,000 genes and the hundreds of millions of base pairs - long, contiguous sequences of DNA that are the genes' biochemical memory.

Such tasks, Schwartz notes, are computationally intense. With a handful of computers, analysis of one small portion of the genome might take a year. But now, thanks to a visionary computing initiative called Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), Schwartz can whip through daunting sequences of DNA like nobody's business.

GLOW is a campus-wide distributed computing environment in which hundreds of individual personal computer-sized processors work in concert to sort through the massive data sets acquired by people such as Schwartz; or to power the simulations that Smith, a UW-Madison professor of physics, uses to presage experiments planned for the high-energy particle accelerators that provide a deep understanding of matter.

The power of GLOW is derived from harnessing the available cycles of many small computers, which almost never use their full computing capacity. Participating teams contribute processors and, with the help of $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a $500,000 match from UW-Madison, the project has been able to assemble additional racks of processors that are managed by the individual projects, but which are available to the GLOW pool when not in local use.

By some estimates, most computers are used to only about 30 percent of their capacity. GLOW, using Condor, takes advantage of this spare capacity by dividing large research tasks into small ones and sending those tasks over a network to idle computers to work on.

GLOW, in effect, has transformed the UW-Madison campus into a laboratory to study the power and issues associated with distributed computing in an intensive research environment.

GLOW is built so that very different applications might be applied. For example, data collected by the IceCube Neutrino Telescope at the South Pole is processed very differently from data that might inform UW-Madison cancer researchers looking for a new drug.

One of the challenges for GLOW is convincing faculty that participation can be of benefit to their projects. Even with hundreds of processors deployed in the collective interest, and with more being added all the time, there is still a competition for a finite resource.

GLOW collaborators include: Juan Depablo, Department of Chemical Engineering; David Schwartz, departments of chemistry and genetics; Paul Barford, Miron Livny and Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, Department of Computer Sciences; Paul Deluca and Robert Jeraj, Department of Medical Physics; Francis Halzen, Albrecht Karle, Sridhara Dasu, Don Reeder, Wesley Smith, Marcus Mueller, Yibin Pan and Sau Lan Wu, Department of Physics.

 

© 2005 The University of Texas at Dallas
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