Science Market Update

       The research involved in measuring infant cognitive ability over the past two decades has clearly demonstrated that babies only a few months old have a solid, basic grasp on the physicalities of the world. Now, MIT's Josh Tenenbaum has co-led a team of international researchers to explore how infants can use that knowledge to form incredibly surprising expectations of how certain new and unfamiliar situations will turn out.

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine scientists have identified a protein, SAMHD1, that may inhibit the body's immune response system.  This finding represents large gains in the way molecular biology understands immunodeficiency.

With "life sciences" and "physical sciences" occupying distinct areas of thought within science as a whole, it is sometimes easy to forget the ways in which they inform each other. Not so at North Carolina State University, where researchers from the Department of Physics have solved a key puzzle for Parkinson's Disease research.

Once upon a time realizing university officials really wanted to know where students were congregating and what they were doing together had an ominous ring, but that's all changed in the super-connected, GPS-tracked world of today's social media.  Internet connectivity no longer means checking in from the vague no-man's-land of cyberspace: with the smartphones almost everyone now has (at least the Gen Y set), you are constantly locatable in real space through the geo-locator technology built into your phone.  This geo-social component of social networking offers new possibilities for interacting with places as well as people, and leaving a market-opportunity-rich breadcrumb trail while you're at it.  

Student affairs personnel at universities across the United States have already begun to utilize the new tool available to them through companies like FourSquare.  Others who haven't jumped on the bandwagon are analyzing the numbers to see if geo-social connectivity is worth the investment of man hours to set up and administer it.  To assist schools in making this decision, the Education Advisory Board has put out a useful Student Affairs Technology Update report on using FourSquare specifically.  The following chart from the report shows how various campuses are already using geo-social media and to what ends:

Research by the University of Utah and Omica, Inc. reveal a new computational biology software tool that could dramatically change the way genetic diseases are detected.  Published in Genome Research, the Variant Annotation, Analysis and Selection Tool (VAAST) can identify disease causing mutations in individual human genomes. 

UCSD Health Sciences just announced that it will partner with Pfizer to speed delivery of new treatments to market.  Pfizer has been successful with its Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) program at other major research universities, in part because of a non-traditional collaborative approach that includes constant transparency, meaning that they will share resources and information at all stages of research.  What each side brings to the table:

The University of Kansas has received a $90,000 research funding grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct groundbreaking research into liver regeneration. 

Construction has begun for the third phase of UW Medicine’s research hub in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. This new building project is part of a major expansion of UW Medicine's research facilities by the development company Vulcan Real Estate.

Moore's Law predicting the exponential growth rate of transistor capacity every two years may have to be reconsidered in light of the progress being made by Life Technologies Corporation and scientists around the globe who have taken up the Life Tech Grand Challenges to double the scalability, speed and accuracy of its Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM) Sequencer.  The competition was initiated in January as "a first-of-its-kind crowdsourcing initiative in the life sciences tools and technology industry," with a prize of $1M in each category of performance enhancement.  The goal is to double the company's best test rates, which are themselves rapidly improving in the course of the challenge, the result of an Olympian race between internal (company) and external researchers.

     The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has recently announced the reformation of the federal Research & Development expenditure website to make data more transparent and easy to navigate. This new online tool now allows the public to monitor national progress in technology and research innovation.

The ubiquity of cell phone technology in today's world, even in developing nations, has opened a door for biomedical researchers to invent diagnostic devices that utilize the cell phone platform to perform analyses that otherwise would require prohibitively expensive equipment.  And that is just what the 32-year-old bioengineering prodigy Aydogan Ozcan is doing at UCLA's Biophotonics Lab (also known as the Ozcan Research Group Nano / Bio Photonics Lab, and contributor of the photo at right) in the Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

       Almost everyone, young and old, has experienced a memory chain. Perhaps you are reminiscing upon your favorite foods, and all of a sudden you think of your grandmother's kitchen. One memory of food, vibrant and sensory, triggered another less prominent memory of your grandmother.

At this time of year especially, our hearts seem to go out all the more to those in need, which is why we like this blog, which we've updated with a recent video which should bring a smile to your face. Please consider donating your excess inventory in 2012! --updated(12/23/2011)

In a recent flux of research laboratory constructs, a majority of the 21st century designs and new facilities fall under the sustainable category. But what makes a laboratory, or any other building, sustainable?

A Utah State University researcher has genetically modified goats to produce spider silk. Or he almost has.  The goats carry two proteins that allow spiders to weave their silk.  The proteins, injected into embryos, come out in the goats' milk.

For over 70 years, the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has been home to one of the most distinguished hospitals and medical research centers in the country. 

The University of Wisconsin has received research funding and an offer for a long-term partnership from Johnson Controls Inc., a high profile, Wisconsin based corporation that specializes in the development and production of high-tech batteries that will power the cars of the future. 

Washington State University Researchers have recently begun merging elements of aging neuroscience and cutting edge technology to help aging seniors live at home independently for as long as possible. The main goal of the WSU Pullman researchers is to make a prototype "smart home" that would use technology such as movement sensors to help seniors remain safe and healthy while living independently.  

An important subfield of molecular biology has come into its own with improvements in technology and major NIH funding.  The field is glycobiology, and the NHLBI's new “Program of Excellence in Glycosciences” (PEG) is providing $18M over 7 years to researchers at UCSD's Glycobiology Research and Training Center (GRTC) to advance the emerging science.

The University of Arizona just received a multi-million dollar research funding contract from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) to polish the mirror for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST).

Mayor Bloomberg of New York City recently announced a plan to create a high tech community that would rival Silicon Valley.  The plan would include a cutting edge science and engineering campus that would serve as a research hub. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave $5 million worth of research funding to researchers at Iowa State University who are working on developing a type of corn capable of maintaining high yields despite temperature rises. 

More than 50-years ago Stony Brook University was established to help train educators in math and science fields.  Over the years, Stony Brook has not only tripled in size, but has become one of the leading research universities in the nation.