UCSC physicist Alexander Sher named Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences

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• UCSC physicist Alexander Sher named Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences
• Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital to be expanded
• Innovations in anticoagulation for stroke prevention
• Videogamers no better at talking while driving
• North-East Passage soon free from ice again?
• Tale of 3 segregations
• Brandeis University Heller center to manage $5 million of Walmart jobs fund
• Advanced cancers destined to recur after treatment with single drugs that 'target' tumor cells
• NuSTAR opens out-of-this-world view thanks to Livermore Lab technology
• 'No-sleep energy bugs' drain smartphone batteries

UCSC physicist Alexander Sher named Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences Posted: 14 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) SANTA CRUZ, CA--The Pew Charitable Trusts has named Alexander Sher, assistant professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz, a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. Sher will receive a $240,000 award over four years to support his research on how the retina heals itself after laser surgery. Sher applies his background in physics to challenging problems in neurobiology, using custom-designed arrays of microscopic electrodes to probe the simultaneous activity of large numbers of neurons. This system, which he helped develop at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) at UC Santa Cruz, has been used in a number of studies, most recently in the development of a new type of retinal prosthesis for restoring sight to the blind and in fundamental research on the neurological basis of color vision. The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, identifies and invests in talented researchers in medicine or biomedical sciences. By backing them early in their careers, the program enables promising scientists to take calculated risks and follow unanticipated leads to advance human health. Sher is among 22 innovative young researchers chosen this year from the 134 candidates nominated by invited institutions. He is the fourth UCSC faculty member to receive this prestigious award. Sher began his career studying high-energy particle physics. As a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz, working with physicist Alan Litke at SCIPP, he began studying neural networks in the retina. Sher now heads his own research program investigating retinal function and development. The new project funded by his Pew Scholarship will explore how the retina responds to laser photocoagulation. This type of surgery is used to treat a variety of visual disorders, including diabetic retinopathy. Laser photocoagulation can stave off blindness by intentionally reducing metabolic load in the retina through destruction... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital to be expanded Posted: 13 Jun 2012 09:38 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Mumbai, June 13 - The Maharashtra government has decided to allot another five acres of land to the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital to enable it expand, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said here Wednesday. The land will be utilised by the hospital to set up dedicated cancer treatment wings for women and children and a headron beam therapy centre, Chavan said. Functioning under the Department of Atomic Energy since 1962, the hospital is the country's premier institution for treatment of cancer, cancer education and cancer research. It is currently located on a cramped four-acre campus in Parel in central Mumbai. The central government recently announced a grant of Rs.4.5 billion - to the hospital for expanding its facilities for women, children and purchasing a state-of-the-art headron beam therapy centre. Set up in 1941 with 100 beds for exclusive treatment of cancer patients, the hospital today is a 700-bed facility. On an average, it treats around 300,000 patients, or nearly 1,000 patients per day, suffering from all types of cancers, at the Parel complex. With 43,000 new cases each year from across Asia, the hospital provides primary care to 60 percent of all patients, and of these, 70 percent are treated virtually free. It also conducts 6,300 major cancer surgeries and gives radiotherapy and chemotherapy to another 6,000 patients. http://www.rxpgnews.com

Innovations in anticoagulation for stroke prevention Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Nice, 13 June 2012: New scientific findings in anticoagulation for stroke prevention are paving the way for updates to the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Guidelines for the management of atrial fibrillation. Some of these findings were presented during the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) sessions at Cardiostim 2012, 13-16 June, in Nice, France. Cardiostim is an international scientific congress in the field of electrophysiology and cardiac techniques. It is organised in collaboration with the ESC and EHRA, which is a registered branch of the ESC. Link to Cardiostim Experts from EHRA showcased the latest science in electrophysiology and cardiac techniques during 30 EHRA sessions at Cardiostim. Professor Gregory YH Lip (Birmingham, UK) and other EHRA members presented the most up to date findings in the field of anticoagulation for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation. The CHA2DS22-VASc score to assess stroke risk has now been validated in different independent populations. The CHA2DS2-VASc score outperforms other stroke risk scores including the older CHADS2 score in identifying very low risk patients who do not need any antithrombotic therapy, says Professor Lip. And in some of the validations the CHA2DS2-VASc score outperforms the CHADS2 score in predicting those who get a stroke subsequently. In the past, patients with a CHADS2 score of 0 were considered to be at low risk of stroke. But when these patients were substratified using the CHA2DS2-VASc score, these patients had stroke rates between 0.8-3.2% per year, if untreated (1). Professor Lip says: Thus, those patients with a CHADS2 score of 0 are not low risk at all and show that the CHADS2 score does not accurately define low risk patients. A net clinical benefit analysis balancing ischaemic stroke against intracranial bleeding based on a dataset of more than 180,000 patients with atrial fibrillation in Sweden found that patients with a CHA2DS2-VASc... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Videogamers no better at talking while driving Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) DURHAM, N.C. -- No matter how much time you've spent training your brain to multitask by playing Call of Duty, you're probably no better at talking on the phone while driving than anybody else. A study by the Visual Cognition Laboratory at Duke University wanted to see whether gamers who have spent hours in front of a screen simultaneously watching the map, scanning doorways for bad guys and listening to the chatter of their fellow gamers could answer questions and drive at the same time. The finding: not so much. It doesn't matter how much you've trained your brain, we just aren't set up to do this, said Stephen Mitroff, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. The lab study measured the performance of 60 undergraduate students on three visual tasks, and then repeated each task while the subject answered Trivial Pursuit questions over a speakerphone. This was meant to mostly mimic a cell phone conversation, Mitroff says without a trace of irony. The tasks were the video driving game TrackMania, a standard multiple-object tracking test that is something like a video version of a shell game, and a timed paper-and-pencil administration of hidden pictures puzzles from Highlights Magazine. The gamers, all men who regularly played first-person shooter games, were significantly better at driving TrackMania with a steering wheel and pedals than the non-gamers, beating them by about 10 seconds on average. The non-gamers, 19 men and seven women, did just as well as the gamers on the multiple moving objects test and the Highlights puzzles. It was difficult, acknowledges lead author Sarah Donahue who recently completed her Ph.D. at Duke, to find non-gaming men and gaming women on a college campus. Performance on the driving test was most harmed by talking on the phone, though it also declined on the other two tests. The gamers drove the racetrack about 2 seconds slower... http://www.rxpgnews.com

North-East Passage soon free from ice again? Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) North-East Passage soon free from ice again? Winter measurements show thin sea ice in the Laptev Sea, pointing to early and large-scale summer melt The North-East Passage, the sea route along the North coast of Russia, is expected to be free of ice early again this summer. The forecast was made by sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association based on a series of measurement flights over the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. Amongst experts the shelf sea is known as an ice factory of Arctic sea ice. At the end of last winter the researchers discovered large areas of thin ice not being thick enough to withstand the summer melt. These results were a great surprise to us, says expedition member Dr. Thomas Krumpen. In previous measurements in the winter of 2007/2008 the ice in the same area had been up to one metre thicker. In his opinion these clear differences are primarily attributable to the wind: It behaves differently from year to year. If, as last winter, the wind blows from the mainland to the sea, it pushes the pack ice from the Laptev Sea towards the North. Open water areas, so-called polynyas, develop in this way before the coast. Their surface water naturally cools very quickly at an air temperature of minus 40 degrees. New thin ice forms and is then immediately swept away again by the wind. In view of this cycle, differently sized areas of thin ice then develop on the Laptev Sea depending on wind strength and continuity, explains Thomas Krumpen. (See info charts) However, the expedition team was unaware of just how large these areas can actually become until they made the measurement flights in March and April of this year. In places the researchers flew over thin ice for around 400 kilometres. The EM Bird, the torpedo-shaped, electromagnetic ice thickness sensor of the Alfred Wegener Institute, was hung on a cable beneath the helicopter. It... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Tale of 3 segregations Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) EVANSTON, Ill. --- Unlike most whites, blacks and Hispanics tend to have neighbors from other racial groups who are disproportionately likely to be poor. This contributes importantly to the high poverty rates of the neighborhoods lived in by black and Hispanic families and to high poverty rates of schools attended by black and Hispanic children. Lincoln Quillian, professor of sociology and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, analyzed data from the 2000 census and found that the disproportionate poverty of blacks' and Hispanics' other-race neighbors plays an important role in creating racial disparities in neighborhood poverty. The other-race neighbors of black and Hispanic families are disproportionately likely to be poor regardless for black and Hispanic families of all income levels. Concentrated poverty in minority communities results from three segregations: racial segregation, poverty-status segregation within race and segregation from high- and middle-income members of other racial groups, according to the study. Past work has emphasized racial segregation and poverty-status segregation within race, but has missed the important role played by the disproportionately low-income levels of other-race neighbors of blacks and Hispanics. Quillian hopes his study continues to shed light on the phenomenon of concentrated poverty in neighborhoods and racial inequalities in neighborhood environments. Nationally there is evidence that as racial segregation has been slowly going down that income segregation has been going up, Quillian said. Blacks and Hispanics often are co-residing with poorer members of their racial groups. White middle-class families overwhelmingly live in middle-class neighborhoods and send their children to middle-class schools. But many black and Hispanic middle-class families live in working-class or poor neighborhoods and send their children to high-poverty schools.... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Brandeis University Heller center to manage $5 million of Walmart jobs fund Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) For many teens, summer has less structure, which can mean an increase in making poor choices. In an effort to keep at-risk teens engaged and working, the Walmart Foundation this summer has provided over $20 million in grant programs, of which the Center for Youth and Communities (CYC) in Brandeis' Heller School for Social policy and Management has received $5 million to support work and learning programs that will employ, educate and engage nearly 3,000 at-risk youth. Members of at-risk communities were identified, invited and encouraged to apply for the program. Cities that will take part include Phoenix and Maricopa County, Ariz.; New York City; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; Chicago; Detroit and Los Angeles. The Brandeis CYC will serve as the national program office, which provides grants of up to $800,000 to government and nonprofit agencies responsible for implementing strategies to keep at-risk youth engaged in productive activity. Through the Brandeis CYC, teens will have the opportunity to work 150 hours over a six-week period at hundreds of work sites, earning an average of $1200 for the summer. Researchers at the CYC will provide onsite assistance to grantees and monitor and evaluate the quality and impact of the work and learning programs. Susan P. Curnan, director of the CYC, and study leader for many summer youth initiatives, said the program is based on a strong partnership approach involving leaders in at-risk communities, Brandeis and Walmart. The challenging social and economic conditions in this country are such that no one entity can go it alone, says Curnan. Summers matter. Over the long-term, youth who participate in year-round programs or multiple summer experiences can improve educational outcomes, are less likely to drop out, have less difficulty getting and keeping jobs after completing their education and have higher lifelong earnings than those who do not. Evelyn Diaz, commissioner of the Chicago... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Advanced cancers destined to recur after treatment with single drugs that 'target' tumor cells Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Targeted cancer cell therapies using man-made proteins dramatically shrink many tumors in the first few months of treatment, but new research from Johns Hopkins scientists finds why the cells all too often become resistant, the treatment stops working, and the disease returns. In a study of 28 advanced colon cancer patients treated with the monoclonal antibody panitumumab, the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center team reports that drug-resistance tumor cell mutations appear in the blood of patients five to seven months later, and that low levels of these mutations exist in nearly all tumors before the therapy begins, making the cancers predestined to recur. These resistance mutations develop by chance as cancer cells divide so that tumors always contain thousands of resistance cells, says Luis Diaz, M.D., associate professor of oncology and director of the Swim Across America laboratory at Johns Hopkins, who says the findings likely apply to any targeted cancer therapy. The best chance for a cure is when a tumor is very small, but when the cancer is advanced, our research quantifies the probability that we can achieve cures with single-agent targeted therapies, says Bert Vogelstein, M.D., professor and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins and, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Long-term remissions of advanced cancers will be nearly impossible with single targeted agents, he adds. The Johns Hopkins scientists analyzed blood samples taken from 28 patients with advanced colorectal cancers. These patients were enrolled in a clinical trial of panitumumab, one of a new and growing class of monoclonal antibodies, or synthetic proteins that homes in on cancer cells' vital growth pathways. In the case of panitumumab, the agent targets a growth-factor receptor called EGFR. Patients most likely to respond to the drug also have normal copies of the KRAS gene in their tumors. Twenty-four of the 28 patients in... http://www.rxpgnews.com

NuSTAR opens out-of-this-world view thanks to Livermore Lab technology Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) For astrophysicist Bill Craig and his team, NASA's NuSTAR will open up a whole new world. In fact, NuSTAR will allow them to observe a new class of objects in space, called extreme objects, which have never been seen. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope (or NuSTAR), is the first focusing, high energy X-ray NASA satellite that will open the hard X-ray sky for sensitive study for the first time. It is scheduled for launch today (June 13) from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. For Livermore, the predecessor to NuSTAR was a balloon-borne instrument known as HEFT (the High Energy Focusing Telescope) that was funded, in part, by a Laboratory Directed Research and Development investment in 2001. NuSTAR takes HEFT's X-ray focusing abilities and sends them beyond Earth's atmosphere on a satellite. The optics design and the proposed production process for NuSTAR are based on those used to build the HEFT telescopes. NuSTAR will be hundreds of times more sensitive than any previous hard X-ray instrument, which will greatly improve image resolution. It will orbit Earth at an altitude of about 600 kilometers for three years, allowing researchers to take a census of black holes. They hope to measure both the rate at which black holes are growing and the accretion rate at which material has fallen into black holes over time. It's rare you get the chance of increasing a sensitivity factor by more than 100 times better than current methods, Craig said. This is really a game changer. The Laboratory was involved in both the design and testing of the X-ray optics that will fly on NuSTAR. The lead optics engineer for the telescopes, Todd Decker, worked for NuSTAR while on leave from the Lab. As the manager of the payload (instrument) for NuSTAR, Craig was responsible for developing and integrating the instrument components and will be very involved in the science output (in addition to his role as LDRD director). Others at the Lab,... http://www.rxpgnews.com

'No-sleep energy bugs' drain smartphone batteries Posted: 13 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have proposed a method to automatically detect a new class of software glitches in smartphones called no-sleep energy bugs, which can entirely drain batteries while the phones are not in use. These energy bugs are a silent battery killer, said Y. Charlie Hu, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering. A fully charged phone battery can be drained in as little as five hours. Because conserving battery power is critical for smartphones, the industry has adopted an aggressive sleep policy, he said. What this means is that smartphones are always in a sleep mode, by default. When there are no active user interactions such as screen touches, every component, including the central processor, stays off unless an app instructs the operating system to keep it on. Various background operations need to be performed while the phone is idle. For example, a mailer may need to automatically update email by checking with the remote server, Hu said. To prevent the phone from going to sleep during such operations, smartphone manufacturers make application programming interfaces, or APIs, available to app developers. The developers insert the APIs into apps to instruct the phone to stay awake long enough to perform necessary operations. App developers have to explicitly juggle different power control APIs that are exported from the operating systems of the smartphones, Hu said. Unfortunately, programmers are only human. They make mistakes when using these APIs, which leads to software bugs that mishandle power control, preventing the phone from engaging the sleep mode. As a result, the phone stays awake and drains the battery. Findings are detailed in a research paper being presented during the 10th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services, or MobiSys 2012, June 25-29 in the United Kingdom. The paper was written by doctoral students Abhinav Pathak and... http://www.rxpgnews.com

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