It seems that what you don't know just might hurt you when it comes to your immune system. Dr. Janko Nikolich-Zugich, immunobiologist at the University of Arizona and investigator with the BIO5 Institute, has been studying the effects of cytomegalovirus (CMV) on the human immune system's ability to combat other viruses such as West Nile or the flu as we get older. His research suggests that a person infected with CMV has a diminished immune response compared to an uninfected person. The elderly in particular show a compromised immune response and even turn out to have a lower life expectancy.
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Tags: University of Arizona, Aging, Northwest, 2012, Immune System, BioResearch Product Faire Front Line Event, AZ, UAZ, Funding, NH, Tucson
One of the most prestigious scientific awards, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), has been awarded to not one University of Michigan Ann Arbor researcher, but three! This award, started in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, was founded to recognize "the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America's preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions," as per a White House press release. These scientists are nominated by eleven different US government departments and agencies including the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services, as well as the National Science Foundation.
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Tags: University of Michigan, Midwest, Bioresearch, 2012, Michigan, scientific research, Ann Arbor, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research Funding, MI, research scientists, research scientist, UM
It seems we can get oil from any number of unlikely substances these days, and a joint biofuel research team from Texas A&M and Cornell is trying to do just that. With a $2M grant from the NSF, researchers are studying how to extract the naturally-produced oil from algae. So next time you look at a green swimming pool, consider that a similar muck just might be able to fuel your car. Algae is an eukaryotic organism that is photosynthetic and generally aquatic, and it comes in a wide variety of forms. It can be a very small single cell organism like B. braunii or a very large multi-cellular organism like kelp. It fact algae is one of the newest and most promising subjects of research in the quest for biofuels.
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Tags: Cornell University, biofuels, Texas A&M University, Texas, Southwest, 2012, Biochemistry, College Station, TAMU, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Energy, TX, BRPF
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| (Courtesy of http://www.abc.net.au/) |
Every week we see commericals on television asking if we have Mesothelioma. By the number of commercials alone you would be right in thinking Mesothelioma is a serious problem. That's why it's particularly important that a major cancer research institution, the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, recently received a $600,000 grant from the Jimmy Valvano Foundation for Cancer Research. The grant was awarded to the research lab of pathologist Michele Carbone to study HGMB1: A Biomarker for Mineral Exposure and Detection of Malignant Mesothelioma. According to Dr. Carbone:
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Tags: biomedical research, University of Hawaii, cancer research, 2012, Hawaii, Front Line event, Honolulu, HI, Biomedical Research Funding
In the search for early life we are going where we have never gone before...with newly-funded astrobiology research at the University of Illinois.
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Tags: Midwest, Bioresearch, Bioresearch funding, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2012, Illinois, biology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Research Funding, IL, genomics research, research grant, new research grants, UIUC
We've heard about the Golden Fleece Awards (vilifying seemingly-obscure science research) and the Golden Goose Awards (lauding seemingly-obscure science research) more than a little often in this year of threatened federal science budget cuts, but that's more politics than anything else. It certainly isn't half as much fun as the infamous and much-laughed-with Ig Nobel Prizes, given out yearly in honor of improbable research so absurd-sounding we can't help but love it. At this year's awards ceremony, held last Thursday night at Harvard University, 10 unlikely science research projects received their due respect (and a few guffaws) at the hands of genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates.
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Tags: CA, 2013, Northeast, Southwest, 2012, BioResearch Product Faire Front Line Event, Boston, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Event, MA, Harvard, science researchers, Harvard Medical School, UCSB, Santa Barbara, Happy scientist, UC Santa Barbara
Construction of an exciting new research facility was recently announced for the University of Illinois at Chicago. According to a UIC news article, Illinois Governor Quinn declared the commencement of the Advanced Chemical Technology Building (ACTB), which will house researchers from chemistry, biology, and physics. The driving idea behind the building is to foster connections between the three broad fields to focus on specific fields like immunology, orthopedics, tumor growth, and nanoscience.
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Tags: Midwest, University of Illinois Chicago, New research facilities, 2012, Illinois, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Chicago, IL, new construction, BRPF, UIC
The Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL) within the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University in Pullman is one of an elite group of veterinary facilities that use sophisticated molecular tools to diagnose disease, with labs for bacteriology, parasitology, pathology, serology, and virology. One threat they've been keeping a particularly keen eye out for this summer is West Nile Virus, which they have in fact found in horses, and which led the State to issue warnings for both animals (to have them vaccinated) and humans (to take extra precautions). West Nile is transmitted from infected birds, through biting mosquitos, and on to larger warm-blooded creatures. Because this has been such a hot, dry summer across most of the U.S., birds and mosquitos are finding themselves more often sharing the same rare watering hole, which may be causing the rise in West Nile cases. West Nile is an example of a zoonotic disease, meaning that it can be transfered between species. The role of veterinary labs like WADDL in tracking and identifying cases of these diseases is doubly important, then, as they work to prevent epidemics in our animals as well as ourselves.
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Tags: Washington, WSU Pullman, WA, Northwest, New research facilities, Washington State University, veterinary medicine, 2012, animal science, Front Line event, new construction
In a recent round of new funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), two UC Irvine stem cell research labs and their collaborators at other California universities and private labs have been awarded some $37M, of which approximately $12M will go directly to UCI. The two funded projects involve translational research to develop eventual clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease, in the one study, and retinitis pigmentosa in the other. The new awards bring Irvine's total CIRM funding over the years to $96.25 million, most carried out at the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center (right) which opened its cutting-edge facility on campus 2 years ago.
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Tags: CA, Stem cell research, University of California Irvine, Southwest, California, 2012, Neuroscience, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Irvine, CIRM, UC Irvine
"High-risk, high-reward" life science research funding isn't something we hear about very often in these days of fiscal belt-tightening, especially coming from the private sector. Fortunately the NIH is still committed to supporting exceptional life science labs that take the road less travelled, with the Director's Transformative Research Awards and the Director's New Innovator Awards, because the potential payoff justifies the gamble taken. The NIH has standard criteria by which they evaluate grant proposals. Realizing that those criteria would enevitably leave out some of the most daring and ground-breaking research, they came up with the High Risk awards. 2012 Director's Awards from the NIH Common Fund (totalling some $155M) have gone to 81 investigators, and 5 of them are faculty members and heads of laboratories at Rockefeller University.
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Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, RNA research, New York, 2012, biology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NY, NIH, New York City, new research grants, Rockefeller, early career funding