University News
UC San Diego to Receive $52 Million For Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study
The Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a federally established consortium directed by Leon Thal, M.D., Director of the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine,will receive $52 million over six years to conduct several new clinical trials on Alzheimer's disease, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced. The award is the third renewal of a cooperative agreement between the NIH's National Institute on Aging (NIA) and UC San Diego, which coordinates the consortium of nearly 70 research sites in the United States and Canada.
Thal, Professor and Chair of the Departmentof Neurosciences at the UCSD School of Medicine, has led the ADCS since its inception in 1991.
The purpose of the NIA award is to test drugs for their effectiveness in slowing down the progression or treating the symptoms of AD, as well as to investigate new methods for conducting dementia research.
In the next six years funded by this award, researchers will focus on possible therapies aimed at affecting the peptide beta amyloid and the tau protein. Douglas R. Galasko, M.D., a physician scientist with the UCSD Shiley-Marcos ADRC, was one of the early scientists who determined that beta amyloid and tau could be measured in spinal fluid and were useful markers for Alzheimer's. It remains to be seen, however, whether plaques and tangles actually cause the disease or are byproducts of Alzheimer's.
The ADCS consortium was first established in 1991 as an infrastructure of leading researchers to carry out clinical trials for promising new therapies for AD. In his capacity as the principal investigator of the ADCS, Thal has established major, large-scale clinical drug trials, as well as validation tests for methods to evaluate the course of Alzheimer's disease. On the basis of a single study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by members of the ADCS, vitamin E has now entered clinical practice for the care of patients with Alzheimer's disease. The ADCS also demonstrated that Vitamin E failed to prevent progression to AD in subjects with mild cognitive impairment. In another ADCS investigation, donepezil was shown to delay the progression from mild cognitive impairment to early Alzheimer's disease. Estrogen replacement therapy was shown to not be useful for the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease in women, despite its previous clinical popularity. The ADCS has also spearheaded the development of concepts such as mild cognitive impairment and has fostered the development of new study designs and instruments useful for clinical trials.
To date, approximately 4,600 people have participated in the ADCS studies.
[ FYI Index ]
SESAME to Open: Particle Accelerator Spurs Middle East Science Partnership
When Stanford physicist Herman Winick heard that Germany was planning to throw out an old particle accelerator, he thought, why not donate it to the Middle East? This idea has sparked plans to build a new state-of-the-art research facility in Jordan using pieces of the old German equipment. The lab will speed up electrons in a circle to produce high-energy light called synchrotron radiation, which is useful for a host of experiments. The project's leaders hope that the new facility will help solve important scientific questions and bring together researchers from different parts of the region.
Winick first conceived of the project in 1997 when he heard that Germany's BESSY I facility was headed for the junkyard.
He thought it was a perfectly good machine, and with his friend Gustav-Adolf Voss, a scientist at Germany's DESY particle physics lab, suggested offering the accelerator as a gift to the Middle East to serve as the centerpiece of a new research center. Winick has long been interested in human rights and international scientific collaboration. In 1992, he served as chair of the American Physical Society's Committee on International Freedom of Scientists.
German leaders quickly agreed to the plan. Under the auspices of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the project was born.
Researchers named it SESAME, for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East.
A council of eight countries—Jordan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey—will run the project together. Other countries, such as Iran and the United Arab Emirates, plan to join soon. Each country gets one vote on the council. Together they approve the annual budget and agree on each country's financial contribution, taking into account each nation's ability to pay.
The council elected to build the lab in Jordan, which was offering a site and $7 million to construct the building. "There was no outside pressure from Germany or the U.S. to decide where it should be," Winick said. "It is a regional project that belongs to those people and they are taking ownership."
The member countries will pay for the operating costs of the facility, and UNESCO funds of about $700,000 will cover moving the equipment from Germany to Jordan. The project still needs money for some new parts and equipment that cannot be salvaged from BESSY I.
Under construction in the hills about 19 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of Amman, the capital of Jordan, the building housing SESAME should be finished and occupied by the spring of next year. Researchers expect the facility to be operational by 2010.
Currently at least 50 synchrotron radiation labs exist around the world, but SESAME will be the first in the Middle East. The only other region without a synchrotron facility is Africa, although a proposal for one there has sprung up in the wake of SESAME. South America and Asia have synchrotron labs. Stanford has the first synchrotron radiation research facility in the world, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif.
SESAME will accelerate electrons to near light speeds inside a hollow ring. As the particles fly around the loop, they will emit extremely intense beams of X-rays, as well as ultraviolet and infrared radiation, called synchrotron light.
Scientists can use the light from SESAME to look at anything they want to, including proteins, viruses and other molecules that are too small to see with visual light microscopes. In fact, the discovery of the double-helix shape of DNA was made with X-rays—using machines that were a million times weaker than SESAME.
Synchrotron technology has applications in chemistry, physics, biology, archaeology and many other fields. One of its main applications is environmental science.
In order to fight pollution, scientists must understand the chemical makeup of environmental contaminants. Synchrotron radiation allows researchers to probe these molecules on a small scale. This kind of study would benefit people in the Middle East directly.
Because the region has never had a synchrotron facility before, most Middle Eastern scientists are not trained in the technology of particle accelerators or in the many uses of synchrotron light. To train the staff who will use and run SESAME, the project sent 18 scientists from the Middle East abroad to study synchrotron technology; they were funded by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the scientists' home countries and labs. Winick also raised money from the U.S. Department of Energy to bring 20 Middle Eastern scientists to synchrotron labs in the United States to learn about scientific topics that can be studied with synchrotron radiation.
Abdel-Megid Mamoon is an Egyptian scientist who has been training at a synchrotron facility at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. He is studying damage to cells caused by melanoma, a type of skin cancer that is especially prevalent in Egypt because of bright sunlight near the equator. Once SESAME is running, however, he plans to work there because it is closer to home.
[ FYI Index ]
Center for Urban School Improvement Receives $1.6 Million Media Literacy Grant
The Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago has been awarded a $1.6 million John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant to work on media literacy after-school programs, a foundation spokesperson announced October 19.
Nichole Pinkard, Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Urban School Improvement, will be the principal investigator for the project. At the Woodlawn High School and North Kenwood/Oakland campuses of the University of Chicago Charter School, she will lead the effort to enable students to use and critique new digital media. The program will enable students to access digital media resources from anywhere at anytime. They will learn how to produce video documentaries, podcasts, and music videos — the same kind of creative design work done by documentary filmmakers, engineers, music producers, graphic artists, and video game developers.
The grant is part of the foundation's plans to support the emerging field of digital media and learning by committing $50 million over five years to the effort. The foundation will fund research and innovative projects focused on understanding the impact of the widespread use of digital media on our youth and how they learn.
MacArthur's approach is comprehensive, extending beyond the classroom to assess how digital technology may transform youth in both their formal and informal learning environments.
The research will test the theory that digital youth are different because they use digital tools to assimilate knowledge, play, communicate, and create social networks in new and different ways. The foundation's efforts will connect players across a variety of academic, education, commercial, and nonprofit fields to assess implications and seed new collaborative projects.
Eighty-three percent of young people between the ages of 8 and 18 play video games regularly; nearly three-quarters use instant messaging. On a typical day, more than half of U.S. teenagers use a computer and more than 40 percent play a video game. Using websites like MySpace and Facebook, young people are sharing photos, videos, music, ideas, and opinions online, connecting with a large group of peers in new and sometimes unexpected ways.
[ FYI Index ]
Company Founded by UT Dallas Ph.D. Student Receives $1.5 Million Emerging Technology Grant
Hanson Robotics, Inc., of Dallas, founded by University of Texas at Dallas Ph.D. student David Hanson, received a $1.5 million Texas Emerging Technology Fund grant to help the young company take its new robotics technologies to market, according to an announcement made Tuesday by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The grant will enable Hanson Robotics to commercialize its patent-pending robot which has a more lifelike appearance than existing robots and speech recognition software that creates more realistic human-robotic interactions. The technology promises many potential applications, including in areas such as prosthetics.
Dr. Mihai Nadin, the Ashbel Smith Professor who heads the Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems at UT Dallas, and colleagues will work with the firm on user interface and interactive design. Personnel from The University of Texas at Arlington's Automation and Robotics Research Institute will be involved in manufacturing and mechanical design.
The $200 million Texas Emerging Technology Fund was created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 at the request of the governor. Since then, more than $44 million has been awarded from the fund in an effort to keep Texas competitive with other states in areas of new and innovative technologies.
Hanson is pursing a Ph.D. degree as a student in UT Dallas' Institute for Interactive Arts and Engineering. The institute, headed by Dr. Tom Linehan, is devoted to the study of the effects technology can have on such fields as the arts, computer science, physics, filmmaking, literature and communications. Hanson has received worldwide media coverage in recent years for his breakthroughs in creating lifelike androids.
[ FYI Index ]
Researchers Awarded $1.2 Million Training Grant for Cancer Epidemiology
By studying cancer in ethnically diverse settings, researchers learn important clues about genetic and environmental factors that play a role in this disease. But few cancer researchers have the expertise to look at these populations.
The University of Michigan School of Public Health has received a $1.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to train public health students in cancer epidemiology research in special populations. The school will work with the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the program will focus on 15 countries in Asia, Africa and South America, as well as minority populations in the United States.
This program will be a major component in the School of Public Health's new Center for Global Health.
The new program will work with researchers in Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Hong Kong. Domestic projects will focus on African-Americans, migrant workers, Hispanics and Arab-Americans.
By understanding cancer trends in international populations, researchers can apply that knowledge to minority populations in the United States.
Studying cancer in foreign populations could lead researchers to a new genetic pathway that could in turn lead to a targeted treatment. Or they could spot an environmental factor that plays a role in cancer development. International cancer research has also helped shape disease prevention. For example, research on hepatitis B in Taiwan revealed an association between the viral infection and liver cancer, leading to recommendations of the hepatitis B vaccine for all American children.
The new program, Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations, will recruit 50 students over five years. It will leverage existing relationships between U-M faculty and cancer researchers in countries such as Israel, Egypt and Brazil.
Students will take specialized classes to learn about cancer epidemiology research, which looks at trends in cancer rates to help identify possible environmental or genetic causes. Coursework will also include an international summer field research experience or the opportunity to collaborate with local investigators specializing in minority research.
Researchers have found disparities in cancer incidence and patterns in different ethnic groups. For example, in Egypt, 35 percent of colon cancer patients are under age 40 and colon cancer rarely occurs in older populations, whereas it tends to strike older Americans and is infrequent in those younger than 40.
Other projects students and researchers will work on under this grant include investigating aggressive breast cancer in Africa by Sofia Merajver, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the Cancer Center's Breast Oncology Program; and Lisa Newman, M.D., director of the Cancer Center's Breast Care Center; and pancreatic cancer in Arab-Americans by Diane Simeone, M.D., co-director of the Cancer Center's Gastrointestinal Oncology Program. Other core faculty on this grant include George Kaplan, Ph.D., Director of Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, UM-SPH; MaryFran Sowers, Ph.D., Director of Center for Integrated Approaches to Complex Diseases, UM-SPH, and Mark Wilson, Sc.D., Director of Global Health Interdepartmenal Concentration Program at UM-SPH.
Cancer causes 6 million deaths every year worldwide. Cancer rates are expected to increase 50 percent to 15 million new cases by 2020.
[ FYI Index ]
Global Climate and Energy Project Announces $1.15 Million in Research Awards
Researchers in biomass, advanced coal utilization and integrated assessment of biofuels have been named recipients of $1.15 million through the Global Climate and Energy Project, GCEP Director Franklin Orr has announced. The awards fund research aimed at a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The new efforts bring the total number of GCEP-supported research programs to 32 with funding of approximately $46.6 million since the project's launch in December 2002.
The first new program, "Microbial Synthesis of Biodiesel," is led by Professor Chaitan Khosla of the departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Stanford. This research aims to genetically engineer a specific bacterium to improve biodiesel production. The resulting organisms would take in a stream of biomass carbon and produce long-chain hydrocarbon fuel. If this research is successful, it could lay the scientific foundation for new types of liquid fuels from biomass.
The second research program, "Technology Potential of Biofuels: Feasibility Assessment," is led by biological sciences Professor Christopher Field and Rosamond Lee Naylor, the Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. They are developing an approach to obtain reasonable quantitative estimates of the total biomass resource that is sustainably available and the costs of producing this biomass for energy.
In addition, awards supporting two exploratory research efforts allow researchers from two universities the opportunity to collaborate on evaluating the potential of a novel coal-energy-conversion research concept. These research activities, both titled "Integration of Coal Energy Conversion with Aquifer-Based Carbon Sequestration," are led by Associate Professor Reginald Mitchell of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and by Professors Larry Baxter and Dale Tree of the departments of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, respectively, at Brigham Young University. In these efforts, researchers are exploring the feasibility of developing a power plant that combines oxidation of coal using water at high temperature and pressure with storage of the resulting carbon dioxide and other waste products in deep underground saline aquifers. This concept, if found viable, may offer a means for decreasing the global warming impacts of coal-based power generation.
Administered at Stanford, GCEP is a collaborative effort of scientific and engineering communities at academic research institutions and in industry. Its purpose is to conduct fundamental, pre-commercial research that will permit the development of global energy solutions with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions. The GCEP sponsors—ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota—intend to invest $225 million over a decade or more in the project.
[ FYI Index ]
UCLA and JPL Form Partnership
UCLA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have formed a research institute to better understand and predict regional environmental and climate change and support future space missions.
The Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering will examine relationships between global climate change and Southern California weather and climate patterns and the environment. The effort combines UCLA's strength in climate modeling and remote sensing and JPL's strength in data collection from satellites.
UCLA and JPL officials held a signing ceremony on Oct. 25 on the UCLA campus to commemorate the partnership. The ceremony was followed by the first meeting of the institute's governing board, which includes three representatives from each institution. The two institutions anticipate the partnership will serve as a platform for additional collaboration in the future.
The joint institute will serve as a center for a multi-disciplinary research unit focused on Earth systems in the Southern California region, including studies of the atmosphere, coastal ocean, land surface and the physical, chemical and biological interactions among them.
Researchers also will study the impacts of these processes on air and water quality and on the regional climate system.
The focus on Southern California will distinguish the institute's work from other national centers for environmental and climate research, said Kuo-Nan Liou, UCLA distinguished professor and former chairman of the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, who will direct the new institute.
UCLA and JPL each will contribute $300,000 annually for three years in start-up funding while the institute seeks research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and other state and federal agencies. UCLA will make graduate students available to JPL researchers, and JPL researchers will serve as adjunct faculty teaching courses at UCLA.
Initially, approximately 12 UCLA faculty members will be involved in the joint UCLA-JPL institute. They include researchers with the Institute of Radiation and Remote Sensing, which, under Liou's direction, conducts remote sensing of clouds and aerosols from satellites, researches radiative transfer in clouds and aerosol atmospheres, and examines applications to climate change. Also involved are researchers with the Center for the Embedded Network Sensing, directed by professor of computer science Deborah Estrin. The center is developing sensor systems to monitor and collect information on such diverse subjects as plankton colonies, endangered species, soil and contaminants, and man-made structures such as buildings and bridges.
Among those who played significant roles in forming the joint UCLA-JPL institute were Vice Chancellor for Research Roberto Peccei; Vijay K. Dhir, dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Tony Chan, the former dean of physical sciences now at the National Science Foundation.
JPL involvement in the joint effort is initially focused on using satellite data to test and improve new regional modeling tools being developed within the institute. In addition, JPL scientists and technologists are developing new instruments for remote sensing of regional environments, studying such parts of the Earth system as the coastal ocean, atmospheric boundary layer and land vegetation. JPL scientists leading those efforts include Randall Friedl of JPL's Earth Science and Technology Directorate and Yi Chao, Qinbin Li, Stan Sander and Duane Waliser of JPL's Science Division.
Key support for JPL's involvement in the UCLA-JPL institute has been provided by JPL chief scientist Daniel McCleese; JPL chief technologist Paul Dimotakis; Merle McKenzie, manager of JPL's Strategic University Research Partnership, and professor Thomas Prince, the former JPL chief scientist, now back at Caltech.
[ FYI Index ]
UT System Chief Information Security Officer Appointed
Lewis Watkins, director of information resources for The University of Texas System, has been named to the newly created position of chief information security officer (CISO) for the UT System, officials announced Monday.
As the UT System CISO, Watkins will be charged with the responsibility of overseeing a comprehensive system-wide information security plan and program for protection of UT System information resources and privacy of confidential information. He will collaborate with the UT System's nine academic and six health institutions on matters related to information security and will provide strategic direction and assistance to the institutions concerning the implementation of institutional security plans. The appointment is effective November 1.
Watkins was selected following a national search conducted by a search committee that included representatives from UT System institutions. He will report to Chancellor Yudof and Charles Chaffin, the system-wide compliance officer and chief audit executive.
The UT System CISO position was created as part of an information security program following a comprehensive system-wide review. The position was approved in August by the UT System Board of Regents as part of the 2007 operating budget. The CISO will provide periodic reports to the chancellor and the Board of Regents regarding implementation of the IT security program.
Watkins has been with the UT System administration in his current role as director of information resources since 1994 and serves as the information security officer and information resource manager for the System Administration. Previously, he worked in data and information resource positions with the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and UT Austin. Watkins is a certified information security systems professional (CISSP) and holds a bachelor's degree in secondary education from UT Austin and a master's degree in counseling/guidance from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.