University News
South African Solar Power Research Eclipses Rest of the World
In a scientific breakthrough that has stunned the world, a team of South African scientists has developed a revolutionary new, highly efficient solar power technology that will enable homes to obtain all their electricity from the sun.This means high electricity bills and frequent power failures could soon be a thing of the past.
The unique South African-developed solar panels will make it possible for houses to become completely self-sufficient for energy supplies. The panels are able to generate enough energy to run stoves, geysers, lights, TVs, fridges, computers - in short all the mod-cons of the modern house.
Nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the SA invention. The new technology should be available in South Africa within a year and through a special converter, energy can be fed directly into the wiring of existing houses. New powerful storage units will allow energy storage to meet demands even in winter. The panels are so efficient they can operate through a Cape Town winter. while direct sunlight is ideal for high-energy generation, other daytime light also generates energy via the panels.
A team of scientists led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) scientist Professor Vivian Alberts achieved the breakthrough after 10 years of research. The South African technology has now been patented across the world.
One of the world leaders in solar energy, German company IFE Solar Systems, has invested more than R500-million (US$81.3 million) in the South African invention and is set to manufacture 500 000 of the panels before the end of the year at a new plant in Germany.
Production will start next month and the factory will run 24 hours a day, producing more than 1 000 panels a day to meet expected demand. Another large German solar company is negotiating with the South African inventors for rights to the technology, while a South African consortium of businesses are keen to build local factories.
The new, highly efficient and cheap alloy solar panel is much more efficient than the costly old silicone solar panels. International experts have admitted that nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the South African invention.
The South African solar panels consist of a thin layer of a unique metal alloy that converts light into energy. The photo-responsive alloy can operate on virtually all flexible surfaces, which means it could in future find a host of other applications.
Professor Vivian Alberts said the new panels are approximately five microns thick (a human hair is 20 microns thick) while the older silicon panels are 350 microns thick. the cost of the South African technology is a fraction of the less effective silicone solar panels. According to Professor Alberts in Switzerland it was already compulsory for all new houses to include solar technology to lessen energy demands on national grids.
While South African scientists developed and patented the new, super-effective alloy solar panels, other companies have developed new, super-efficient storage batteries and special converters to change the energy into the power source of a particular country (220 volts in South Africa).
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Caltech Wins Three MURI Awards for 2006
The California Institute of Technology has been awarded three of the 30 program awards from the federal Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. The awards will bring in US$3 million in funding each year for the next five years.
MURI is a multiagency program overseen by the Department of Defense comprising three awarding offices: the Army Research Office (ARO), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). The purpose of the program is to support multidisciplinary research projects at U.S. universities that have potential both for defense and for commercial applications.
The three programs at Caltech that have won funding are for studying the loading of marine structures, recognition during visual surveillance, and embedded control systems.
The principal investigators for the three programs, respectively, are Guruswami Ravichandran, who is the Goode Jr. Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at Caltech, for "mechanics and mechanisms of impulse loading"; Pietro Perona, a professor of electrical engineering, for "learning to recognize for visual surveillance"; and Richard Murray, a professor of control and dynamical systems, for "specification, design, and verification of distributed embedded systems."
Accurding to the Department of Defense, the awards are "for research, graduate students, and laboratory instrumentation development that supports specific science and engineering research themes vital to national defense."
The 30 winners for this year's MURI projects were chosen in a rigorous competition from 143 proposals.
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UC, Monsanto Reach $100 Million Settlement in Growth Hormone Patent Case
The University of California announced on Feb. 27that it has reached a settlement with Monsanto Co., including in partial consideration a payment by Monsanto of an up-front royalty of US$100 million, to resolve claims that the company infringed on UC's patent for the recombinant DNA used to make somatotropin, a dairy cow growth hormone.
Bovine somatotropin is used to enhance milk production and serves as an important tool to help dairy producers improve the efficiency of their operations.
The settlement resolves claims filed against the agricultural products company in a February 2004 lawsuit.
Under the settlement, Monsanto will pay UC an up-front royalty of $100 million in partial consideration for an exclusive license to the university's patent rights to the recombinant DNA to make bovine growth hormone (bGH) protein also known as somatotropin (sold under the Monsanto brand name POSILAC® bovine somatotropin), as well as a covenant not to sue in related patent rights. The settlement also includes an ongoing royalty of 15 cents per dose of POSILAC® to a dairy cow with a minimum annual royalty of $5 million for the life of the last to expire of the university's exclusively licensed patents.
The isolated DNA was a discovery by UC San Francisco scientists Walter L. Miller, Joseph A. Martial and John D. Baxter.
Monsanto's license is subject to certain rights maintained by the U.S. government because the university's work was performed with federal funding. The university also retains certain non-commercial rights to practice the invention for research and educational purposes.
The university's patent (U.S. No. 6,692,941) will expire in 2021; however, a new patent claiming the protein made as a product of the recombinant DNA would run until 2023. The settlement includes licensing fees and royalties to the 2023 expiration of UC's patent rights.
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Baylor Research Institute Receives $2.9 Million to Study Lupus
Baylor Research Institute (BRI) was recently awarded two new grants to study systemic lupus erythematosus, commonly known as lupus or SLE. The new funding from the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Alliance for Lupus Research, which totals more than US$2.9 million, will allow BRI scientists to expand their research of the disease.
Affecting more than one million people in the U.S., lupus is an autoimmune disease that occurs when a person’s body is attacked by his/her own immune system, which leads to damage of healthy tissues and cells. It occurs predominantly in women (who make up around 90% of lupus patients) with a higher incidence in women of Hispanic, African, Asian and Native American descent.
Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, a component of BRI, has made significant advancements in the understanding of lupus. “A major finding was determining that increased levels of a regulatory immune system protein, interferon alpha, play a central role in lupus. An overabundance of interferon alpha is responsible for many of the changes in gene expression levels that correlate with lupus symptoms,” said Jacques Banchereau, Ph.D., Director of Baylor Institute for Immunology Research. “A collaboration between BRI and Argos Therapeutics led to the development of antibodies against interferon alpha. Reducing the serum level of interferon alpha with an antibody could provide a successful treatment strategy for lupus patients.”
Dr. Banchereau received a US$1.9 million grant from the NIAID, a component of the National Institutes of Health, to study groups of immune system cells, called T cells, to see how they differ in lupus patients and healthy individuals. Dr. Banchereau’s group also will determine how these T cell populations fluctuate between times when lupus patients experience remissions and when they suffer from flares (times of intense symptoms). These findings may allow certain types of T cells to be used as early predictors for disease activity. It could also lead to new treatment options that target these T cells.
Virginia Pascual, M.D., an investigator at Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, is supported by a US$1 million research award from the Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR; www.lupusresearch.org). The ALR is a national voluntary health organization whose mission is to support medical research into the cause, cure, treatment and prevention of SLE and its complications. Dr. Pascual’s new funding follows a previous ALR award, which allowed her group to develop a new test to monitor disease severity that is based on various markers of lupus activity.
The goal of Dr. Pascual’s project, a multi-center effort that teams lupus clinicians from around the country as well as Canada and Puerto Rico, is to validate the disease ‘signatures’ that they have identified in the blood of lupus patients. These signatures represent altered gene expression patterns that differentiate lupus patients from healthy individuals. Dr. Pascual’s group has shown that these signatures can be used to predict disease flares and the development of serious complications. They also plan to develop a simple, inexpensive test that can be used to assess disease severity in lupus patients. This information could help doctors decide when to treat patients more aggressively to avoid such complications.
Dallas-based Baylor Institute for Immunology Research is the immunology research component of BRI, an affiliate of Baylor Health Care System. Opened in 1996, Baylor Institute for Immunology Research brings laboratory scientists and clinicians together in an effort to increase understanding of how the immune system works.
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CSIRO Welcomes New Chief Scientist
Garrett said the appointment of Peacock, a former Chief of the Division of Plant Industry at CSIRO, was 'great news' for the science community and for the future of science in Australia.
After completing a degree in Botany at the Sydney University Peacock went on to complete a PhD on genetics of the Australian flora, supported by a CSIRO Post Graduate Fellowship.
Peacock won a CSIRO Post Doctoral Fellowship to go to the University of Oregon at Eugene and study Drosophila Genetics.
Before leaving for the USA Peacock worked at CSIRO’s Plant Industry in the genetics section and took up a Senior Research Scientist position at CSIRO in September 1965.
In 1969 he returned to the USA to work at the University of California San Diego on molecular biology and then moved to Stanford University in 1970 where he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Arthur Kornberg’s Department of Biochemistry. Peacock returned from the USA in 1971 to work at Plant Industry and in 1978 was appointed Chief of the Division.
Over the next quarter of a century, Peacock built Plant Industry into one of the world’s foremost plant science institutes, across a number of research disciplines. He also developed very effective relationships with Australian and international agribusiness enterprises providing landmark examples of the nexus between research discoveries and their adoption into commercial practice. Peacock retired as Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry in 2003.
He has been awarded many honors recognizing his scientific achievements - elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society (UK) in 1982, won the BHP Bi-centennial prize for Science Excellence in 1988 and elected to the elite group of Foreign Associates of US National Academy of Sciences in 1990. The crowning achievement came in 2000 when Jim and Liz Dennis shared the Inaugural Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.
In 1994 Peacock was awarded the country’s highest Honor – the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). In 2002 he was elected President of the Australian Academy of Science.
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Galveston Couple Establishes Professorship in School of Nursing
Jesse L. Dunn III and his wife, Alicia, recently established a UTMB nursing professorship in memory of his mother. The Jesse and Alicia Dunn Professorship in Nursing will support community and public health nursing research.
Jesse Dunn’s mother, Beatrice E. Dunn, was a 1933 graduate of the UTMB School of Nursing who worked in the academic health center’s operating rooms during the 1930s and 1940s.
Dr. Elnora (Nonie) P. Mendias, has been named the inaugural holder of the professorship. Mendias has been a School of Nursing faculty member since 1992. For several years she has received funding to meet the continuing education needs of health professionals across Texas for bioterrorism and other public health emergency preparedness.
Mendias said she is deeply honored to be appointed to the Dunn Professorship, particularly since it is in memory of a nurse who not only worked at UTMB but also received her education there.
During her career at UTMB, Beatrice Dunn worked with pioneering physicians like the late Dr. Truman G. Blocker Jr. A leader in burn research and care, Blocker eventually became the university’s first chief executive to hold the title of president. Jesse Dunn said he has Blocker to thank for enhancing his appreciation of his mother and her profession, which he knew little about since his mother retired from nursing shortly after marrying Dunn’s father.
Dunn, who was born in UTMB’s John Sealy Hospital, is an active supporter of the academic health center. He volunteers for the Timeless Values, Pioneering Solutions Campaign, a five-year, $250 million fund-raising initiative to enhance UTMB’s areas of excellence in teaching the art and science of health care; infectious diseases, biodefense and vaccine development; health care access and telehealth; and longevity, chronic diseases and neurological recovery.
Dunn attributes his decision to establish the professorship partly to his campaign involvement.
UTMB School of Nursing Dean Pamela G. Watson said the Dunns’ contribution is just the most recent example of their support for the university.
Jesse Dunn is chairman of Dunn Heat Exchangers in Texas City. The business provides services for the petroleum and petrochemical industries. Dunn also chairs Safety Short Productions, which develops safety films for industry and the general public. In addition to volunteering for the Timeless Values, Pioneering Solutions Campaign, Dunn has served on the UTMB School of Nursing Advisory Council and is a founding member of the President’s Cabinet. This volunteer organization provides unrestricted financial resources to help advance the university’s mission. Dunn is also a former board member of the Galveston College Foundation and College of the Mainland Foundation.
Longtime UTMB supporters, the Dunns have given to such programs and initiatives as the Salute to Nursing Scholarship Fund and the Blocker Scholars Initiative. The initiative raised more than $5 million to enhance the academic infrastructure of the university’s M.D./Ph.D. Combined Degree Program, which produces physician-scientists who are adept at unraveling the causes of disease and translating research discoveries into improved patient care practices.
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Sloan Foundation Awards Prestigious Fellowships to Young UCSD Faculty in Computer Science and Neuroscience
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded fellowships to 116 young faculty researchers, including two professors at the University of California, San Diego. The prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships are granted annually to young faculty who show “the most outstanding promise of making fundamental contributions to new knowledge.”
The 2006 awards for UCSD went to computer scientist Alin Deutsch and neuroscientist Lisa Boulanger. Other fields benefiting from this year’s Sloan fellowships include chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, economics, mathematics and physics.
Lisa Boulanger joined UCSD in July 2004 as an assistant professor of biology in the Division of Biological Sciences, but she is not new to the La Jolla campus: Boulanger received her Ph.D. from UCSD in neurobiology in 1998. She received her bachelor’s degree in marine biology from Boston University and her master’s degree in neurobiology from Wesleyan University.
Alin Deutsch is an assistant professor in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. The Romanian-born academic received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, respectively, from Bucharest Polytechnic University, and Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt.
Professor Deutsch is a member of CSE’s Database Group, and his research focuses on providing infrastructure for publishing and consuming data on the Web, particularly by exploiting the Extended Markup Language (XML). XML is the widely accepted standard for data exchange among businesses on the Internet. It supports the integration of many different types of data from many different sources. Deutsch has developed computer algorithms to help a user query data without having to know exactly where and in what format that data is stored.
Deutsch also builds high-level, user-friendly tools to help data owners grasp the ramifications of granting access to their data on the Web. In 2004 Deutsch was awarded a five-year NSF CAREER grant for his work on XML middleware techniques for preserving privacy when publishing databases. In June, he will co-chair WebDB 2006, the Ninth International Workshop on the Web and Databases. At UCSD, he is affiliated with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and the Center for Networked Systems, which recently began funding Deutsch’s project to develop a Grid-based processor for XQuery, the World Wide Web Consortium’s standard XML query language.
Professor Boulanger’s current research at UCSD is focused on understanding the mechanistic relationships between the nervous system and the immune system. It builds on a discovery that she and colleagues made while she was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and Harvard Medical School that specific immune proteins also perform distinct, non-immune functions in the brain.
These proteins—members of the major histocompatibility complex class I—are known to play a key role in the adaptive immune system, where they enable the body to identify and eliminate infected cells. Boulanger and her colleagues found that they also “moonlight” in the brain, where they are unexpectedly required for normal brain development as well as adult brain modifications thought to underlie learning and memory.
Boulanger and her UCSD students hope to characterize further the role played in normal brain development and function by major histocompatibility complex, class Iproteins. They also hope to determine the molecular and cellular signaling used by these proteins in neurons and to investigate how these proteins may be involved in specific neurological disorders.
Established in 1955, the Sloan Research Fellowships program has grown in size and cost over the years, and but its purpose remains the same: to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. In most cases, the fellowships go to academics during their first faculty appointments to help them set up laboratories and establish their independent research projects.
The Sloan funds can be applied to a wide variety of uses for which other, more restricted funds such as research project grants cannot usually be employed. Financial assistance at this crucial point, even in modest amounts, often pays handsome dividends later to society, according to the Sloan Foundation.
More than 500 nominations are scrutinized each year to arrive at a final selection of 116 Sloan Research Fellows. Thirty-two fellows have gone on to become Nobel Laureates.
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UCI Researchers Identify First Compound to Block Progression of Alzheimer's Disease
Researchers at UC Irvine have found that a new compound not only relieves the cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, but also reduces the two types of brain lesions that are hallmarks of this devastating disease, thereby blocking its progression.
In a study with genetically modified mice, a team of UCI researchers led by Frank LaFerla, professor of neurobiology and behavior, found that a compound known as AF267B, developed by paper co-author Abraham Fisher of the Israel Institute for Biological Research, reduced both plaque lesions and tangles in brain regions associated with learning and memory. Although drugs exist on the market today to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's, AF267B represents the first disease-modifying compound, meaning it appears to affect the underlying cause and reduces the two signature lesions, plaques and tangles.
The researchers report their findings in the March 2 issue of Neuron.
According to LaFerla, AF267B works by mimicking the effects of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, a chemical in the brain essential for learning and memory. Neurotransmitters act as carriers for messages between brain cells and bind to receptors on the cells' surfaces. Acetylcholine generally binds to specific receptors in the brain, including the M1 receptor, a potentially novel therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease.
Scientists have known for years that there is a major loss of the neurons that produce acetylcholine in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Compounds classified as M1 agonists - meaning that they mimic the effects of acetylcholine and bind to M1 receptors - are regarded as one hope for counteracting or compensating for the loss of acetylcholine. Unfortunately, previous M1 agonists had been tested but failed in clinical trials.
AF267B, however, appears to have overcome the problems seen with earlier generations of M1 agonists. In this study, the researchers found that the administration of AF267B reduced the amount of plaques and tangles in the hippocampus and the cortex of the mice, and improved cognitive performance. When the compound binds to the M1 receptor in those regions of the brain, the levels of an enzyme known as alpha secretase are increased. This enzyme prevents the production of beta-amyloid, which, according to a theory known as the amyloid cascade hypothesis, also would block the eventual accumulation of tangles.
TorreyPines Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company in San Diego, is conducting clinical studies to determine whether the compound is safe for use. In early tests, the compound was well tolerated at tested doses in a group of young, healthy males.
Alzheimer's disease is marked by the accumulation of two types of brain lesions - beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, affecting 4.5 million to 5 million adults in the United States. If no effective therapies are developed, it is estimated that 13 million Americans will be afflicted with the disease by 2050. It is the third most expensive disease to treat and the third leading cause of death, behind cancer and coronary heart disease.
In recent years, LaFerla has been at the forefront of Alzheimer's research and has made a number of significant strides in understanding the molecular development of the disease. In addition to finding that early treatment of beta-amyloid plaques can halt the progression of Alzheimer's, he and other members of his research team created the genetically-altered mouse that was used in this study. His work also determined that chronic nicotine exposure worsens some Alzheimer-related brain abnormalities, contradicting the common belief that nicotine can actually be used to treat the disease.
This study was funded primarily by a grant from the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association.
