Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • UW, PNNL tackle big data with joint computing institute

    The deluge of data coming from today’s countless electronic devices will be harnessed to take on the most pressing problems facing science and society at a new computational institute in Seattle.

    The Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing is being formed by the University of Washington and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Researchers associated with the institute will work to ensure the next generation of computers and the methods used to run them can address challenges ranging from climate change to energy management.

    “Computing has transformed science, engineering and society in remarkable ways,” said Doug Ray, associate director of PNNL’s Fundamental & Computational Sciences Directorate. “But as huge amounts of new data are generated daily by scientific instruments and household electronics, new technologies and approaches are needed to give that information more meaning. Researchers at the Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing will tackle ‘big data’ and help improve the quality of life for many U.S. citizens.”

    Located on UW’s campus, the institute will be a center of collaboration where UW and PNNL researchers jointly explore advanced computer system designs, accelerate data-driven scientific discovery and improve computational modeling and simulation. Scientists and engineers at the institute will also train future researchers in modern computational approaches.

    The institute’s research will aim to help solve a wide variety of the world’s growing problems. For example, improved computational techniques can help design a smart electric grid that reliably delivers energy to keep homes warm and lit. Better analysis of biological data can help determine the causes of disease and how to treat health ailments.

    Computer modeling can help explain how climate change impacts natural resources such as snow packs and the formation of greenhouse gas-capturing molecules in the atmosphere. And smartphone data can be used to improve urban life, such as decreasing idle traffic while also reducing carbon emissions from cars.

    “The expanded partnership between UW and PNNL will create tremendous new opportunities for both organizations,” said Ed Lazowska, UW’s Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering and director of the UW eScience Institute. “‘Big data’ is transforming the process of discovery in all fields. UW and PNNL have significant and complementary strengths; together we’ll be able to do amazing things.”

    UW and PNNL also hope to strengthen the Northwest’s economy. The institute will build on UW’s and PNNL’s existing and already-strong relationships with the region’s private technology industry. The institute will also help grow the region’s skilled workforce for UW, PNNL, the Northwest technology sector and beyond.

    Two co-directors will lead the institute: UW electrical engineering chair and Applied Computational Engineering Lab Director Vikram Jandhyala and PNNL Fellow Moe Khaleel, who directs PNNL’s Computational Science and Mathematics research division. PNNL is funding the time spent by both Jandhyala and Khaleel leading the institute. Institute members from UW and PNNL will jointly submit proposals to various funding agencies for new research projects.

    “This collaboration will open up new avenues for research at the interface of computational advances and applications, and is a great synergy for UW and PNNL,” Jandhyala said.

    “This will be an interdisciplinary place for UW faculty in computer science, electrical engineering and applied math to work with PNNL colleagues on areas such as computational physics, big data, cyber security and computing for the smart grid,” Khaleel said.

    The institute’s headquarters are inside UW’s Sieg Hall, but the institute will be broader than that specific location. Its research members will hail from many of UW’s numerous schools and colleges. And PNNL scientists and engineers will work from both Seattle and the national laboratory’s main campus in Richland.

    PNNL currently has two scientists who conduct DOE-funded research related to big data and nuclear physics from UW’s Seattle campus. About eight more PNNL researchers are expected to join them in Seattle by the end of 2013. All Seattle-based PNNL researchers involved in advanced computing will be associated with the institute. And initially more than a dozen of UW’s faculty members are expected to join the institute.

    Institute members will use computational resources already in place at their home institutions. In Seattle, that includes the Hyak supercomputer developed by UW’s eScience Institute and UW-IT. Richland resources include components of the PNNL Institutional Computing program, which features the Olympus supercomputer. Cloud resources will also be used extensively.

    Both UW and PNNL are well known for their contributions to advanced computing. UW is known for its computer science and engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics programs. UW’s eScience Institute has advanced data-driven discovery, and the university’s computational programs in physics, chemistry and astronomy are highly regarded.

    And PNNL is known for designing and programming high-performance computers and evaluating their performance. PNNL leads research in computational molecular science, multi-scale mathematics, regional climate modeling and the modeling of underground fluids such as water.

    More information on the institute from UW is online at http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/09/uw-pacific-nw-national-lab-join-forces-on-computing-research/.

     

  • A new point of reference for offshore energy development

    A new Department of Energy research facility could help bring the U.S. closer to generating power from the winds and waters along America’s coasts and help alleviate a major hurdle for offshore wind and ocean power development.

    Will Shaw, an atmospheric scientist at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will describe plans for the facility at an 11:45 a.m. talk today at the 93rd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, which runs through Thursday in Austin, Texas.

    The Reference Facility for Offshore Renewable Energy will be used to test technologies such as remote sensing designed to determine the power-generating potential of offshore winds and waters. Research at the facility will help verify that the technologies can collect reliable data and help improve those technologies. This knowledge provides potential investors confidence when reviewing offshore development proposals. Questions about the accuracy of offshore data from new measurement technologies have made some investors hesitant to back offshore energy projects.

    Current plans are for the facility to be located at the Chesapeake Light Tower, a former Coast Guard lighthouse that is about 13 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. Scientists representing industry, government and academia are likely to start research at the facility in 2015. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will shape and prioritize the research conducted there, while National Renewable Energy Laboratory will manage the facility’s remodeling and operations.

    PNNL will form an interagency steering committee to determine the facility’s research priorities and procedures. Research will primarily focus on offshore wind, but will also include underwater ocean energy and environmental monitoring technologies. Part of NREL’s renovation of the former lighthouse will include installing research equipment. Such equipment includes a meteorological tower that reaches 100 meters above sea level, which is the height of offshore wind turbine hubs.

    The harsh environment and remote locale of offshore energy sites makes new technologies necessary to assess the power-producing potential of offshore sites. Strong winds and high concentrations of salt, for example, mean data-collecting equipment needs to be heavy duty and extremely sturdy to operate offshore. And while land-based wind assessment is often done by placing meteorological equipment on a tower, the challenges of anchoring similar towers into the ocean floor can increase costs substantially. As a result, offshore energy developers are looking at new ways to gather precise wind measurements at sites of interest.

    Among the new technologies that are expected to be tested at the reference facility are devices incorporating LIDAR, also known as light detection and ranging, to measure offshore wind speeds. With these instruments, researchers measure wind strength and direction by emitting light and then observing when and how some of that light is reflected off of tiny bits of dust, sea spray or other particles blowing in the breeze. LIDAR devices for offshore wind measurement would be placed on buoys in the ocean. However, ocean waves move buoys up and down, which would also send the device’s light beams in multiple directions. So scientists have developed methods to account for a buoy’s frequently changing position to collect the wind data they need.

    That’s where the reference facility comes in. Mathematically corrected data from buoy-based LIDAR is a new ballgame for the wind energy industry. To prove that the data they collect are both reliable and accurate, wind assessment LIDAR devices would be placed both on buoys floating near the facility and also on the facility itself. Wind data would be collected from both sources and evaluated to determine the buoy-based technology’s accuracy.

    REFERENCE: Tuesday, Jan. 8, 11:45 a.m., Austin Convention Center, Room 6A:  “The Chesapeake Light Tower: A New Reference Facility for Offshore Renewable Energy,” Joel W. Cline, W.J. Shaw and A. Clifton, https://ams.confex.com/ams/93Annual/webprogram/Paper223295.html

    Credentials for the conference are available to working press and freelance science writers with the appropriate identification. For more information on obtaining press credentials, contact Rachel Thomas-Medwid of the American Meteorological Society at 617-226-3955 or [email protected].

  • Pesticides and Parkinson’s: UCLA researchers uncover further proof of a link

    For several years, neurologists at UCLA have been building a case that a link exists between pesticides and Parkinson’s disease. To date, paraquat, maneb and ziram — common chemicals sprayed in California’s Central Valley and elsewhere — have been tied to increases in the disease, not only among farmworkers but in individuals who simply lived or worked near fields and likely inhaled drifting particles.
     
    Now, UCLA researchers have discovered a link between Parkinson’s and another pesticide, benomyl, whose toxicological effects still linger some 10 years after the chemical was banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
     
    Even more significantly, the research suggests that the damaging series of events set in motion by benomyl may also occur in people with Parkinson’s disease who were never exposed to the pesticide, according to Jeff Bronstein, senior author of the study and a professor of neurology at UCLA, and his colleagues.
     
    Benomyl exposure, they say, starts a cascade of cellular events that may lead to Parkinson’s. The pesticide prevents an enzyme called ALDH (aldehyde dehydrogenase) from keeping a lid on DOPAL, a toxin that naturally occurs in the brain. When left unchecked by ALDH, DOPAL accumulates, damages neurons and increases an individual’s risk of developing Parkinson’s.
     
    The investigators believe their findings concerning benomyl may be generalized to all Parkinson’s patients. Developing new drugs to protect ALDH activity, they say, may eventually help slow the progression of the disease, whether or not an individual has been exposed to pesticides.
     
    The research is published in the current online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
     
    Parkinson’s disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions worldwide. Its symptoms — including tremor, rigidity, and slowed movements and speech — increase with the progressive degeneration of neurons, primarily in a part of the mid-brain called the substantia nigra. This area normally produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter that allows cells to communicate, and damage to the mid-brain has been linked to the disease. Usually, by the time Parkinson’s symptoms manifest themselves, more than half of these neurons, known as dopaminergic neurons, have already been lost.
     
    While researchers have identified certain genetic variations that cause an inherited form of Parkinson’s, only a small fraction of the disease can be blamed on genes, said the study’s first author, Arthur G. Fitzmaurice, a postdoctoral scholar in Bronstein’s laboratory.
     
    “As a result, environmental factors almost certainly play an important role in this disorder,” Fitzmaurice said. “Understanding the relevant mechanisms — particularly what causes the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons — may provide important clues to explain how the disease develops.”
     
    Benomyl was widely used in the U.S. for three decades until toxicological evidence revealed it could potentially lead to liver tumors, brain malformations, reproductive effects and carcinogenesis. It was banned in 2001.
     
    The researchers wanted to explore whether there was a relationship between benomyl and Parkinson’s, which would demonstrate the possibility of long-lasting toxicological effects from pesticide use, even a decade after chronic exposure. But because a direct causal relationship between the pesticide and Parkinson’s can’t be established by testing humans, the investigators sought to determine if exposure in experimental models could duplicate some of the pathologic features of the disease.
     
    They first tested the effects of benomyl in cell cultures and confirmed that the pesticide damaged or destroyed dopaminergic neurons.
     
    Next, they tested the pesticide in a zebrafish model of the disease. This freshwater fish is commonly used in research because it is easy to manipulate genetically, it develops rapidly and it is transparent, making the observation and measurement of biological processes much easier. By using a fluorescent dye and counting the neurons, the researchers discovered there was significant neuron loss in the fish — but only to the dopaminergic neurons. The other neurons were left unaffected.
     
    Until now, evidence had pointed to one particular culprit — a protein called α-synuclein — in the development of Parkinson’s. This protein, common to all Parkinson’s patients, is thought to create a pathway to the disease when it binds together in “clumps” and becomes toxic, killing the brain’s neurons. (See UCLA research using “molecular tweezers” to break up these toxic aggregations.)
     
    The identification of ALDH activity now gives researchers another target to focus on in trying to stop this disease.
     
    “We’ve known that in animal models and cell cultures, agricultural pesticides trigger a neurodegenerative process that leads to Parkinson’s,” said Bronstein, who directs the UCLA Movement Disorders Program. “And epidemiologic studies have consistently shown the disease occurs at high rates among farmers and in rural populations. Our work reinforces the hypothesis that pesticides may be partially responsible, and the discovery of this new pathway may be a new avenue for developing therapeutic drugs.”
     
    Other authors of the study included Lisa Barnhill, Hoa A. Lam, Aaron Lulla, Nigel T. Maidment, Niall P. Murphy, Kelley C. O’Donnell, Shannon L. Rhodes, Beate Ritz, Alvaro Sagastig and Mark C. Stahl, all of UCLA; John E. Casida of UC Berkeley; and Myles Cockburn of the University of Southern California. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
     
    This work was funded in part by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grants P01ES016732, R01ES010544, 5R21ES16446-2 and U54ES012078; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grant NS038367; the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (Southwest Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education, and Clinical Center); the Michael J. Fox Foundation; the Levine Foundation; and the Parkinson Alliance.
     
    The UCLA Department of Neurology, with over 100 faculty members, encompasses more than 20 disease-related research programs, along with large clinical and teaching programs. These programs cover brain mapping and neuroimaging, movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, neurogenetics, nerve and muscle disorders, epilepsy, neuro-oncology, neurotology, neuropsychology, headaches and migraines, neurorehabilitation, and neurovascular disorders. The department ranks in the top two among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • UCLA Urology receives $4.6 million gift to fund education, research and clinical services

    The UCLA Department of Urology has received a $4.6 million gift from the estate of Frank and Dorothy H. Clark, longtime benefactors who helped to create leading-edge pediatric and adult urology centers in Westwood and Santa Monica.
     
    The gift, from the Clarks’ testamentary trust, will help endow the Clark Urology Centers at UCLA’s Westwood and Santa Monica campuses, said Dr. Mark Litwin, chair of the urology department.
     
    “Frank was a tireless supporter of our faculty and programs in urology, and I am honored to have witnessed the relationship he forged with us,” Litwin said. “This generous and unconditional gift, the first installment of Frank’s bequest to the Clark Urology Centers, will support the department’s ongoing research, educational and clinical endeavors and is sure to inspire new innovations leading to improved treatments and, ultimately, cures for various urologic conditions.”
     
    In addition to supporting the Clark Urology Centers for adults in Santa Monica and Westwood, Clark played a critical role in the creation, in 1993, of the Clark Morrison Pediatric Urology Center, which enables UCLA to provide a comprehensive approach to the care of children with congenital conditions. The center’s goal is to minimize a child’s discomfort and stress while streamlining the diagnostic and treatment process.
     
    “These are shining examples of how, throughout his life, Frank remained an invaluable advocate and adviser to our department, as well as a consummate supporter of the university,” Litwin said.
     
    A UCLA alumnus, Frank Clark attended Hastings College of the Law but was called to active military duty in 1941, after Pearl Harbor was attacked. He served five years in the Office of Naval Intelligence and returned to Hastings after his discharge, graduating in 1946 as valedictorian. He served as executive vice president and general counsel to the May Department Store Co. for more than 25 years.
     
    In 1980, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Clark to the University of California Board of Regents, on which he served for more than 20 years, including a stint as its chair. In 2004, he received the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor awarded to an individual.
     
    When Clark died in 2008 at the age 90, his planned gift was set into motion. Dorothy Clark was well taken care of, but when she died in 2011, the majority of his remaining estate was bequeathed to the urology department.
     
    A gift of similar size will be made to the department next year, Litwin said.
     
    UCLA Urology consistently ranks among the top five in the nation the annual survey published by U.S. News & World Report. The department also has ranked first in competitive research funding from the National Institutes of Health for the last two years. The department focuses on translational research — bringing the best basic science from the laboratory bench to the bedside to the community.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Abrahamson named CIO at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

    Brian Abrahamson, an information technology veteran with extensive experience in both the public and private energy sectors, has been named chief information officer for the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

    The CIO reports to the laboratory director and directs the deployment, use, management and protection of information technology to increase PNNL’s research productivity and operational effectiveness. Abrahamson is replacing Jerry Johnson, who will take on a new role with DOE.

    Abrahamson joined PNNL in 2011 and has served as chief enterprise architect at PNNL, responsible for leading a laboratory-wide improvement agenda that enhanced PNNL’s information technology systems. Prior to joining PNNL, Abrahamson acted as CIO and chief architect for San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company, one of the nation’s largest investor-owned utilities. He also spent 10 years with the management consulting organization Accenture and has several years’ experience working in industry.

    Johnson, who joined PNNL in 1978 and has been CIO since 2004, will take on the role of senior policy and technical advisor to the Office of the Chief Information Officer at DOE. DOE requested the move as the agency works to refine its approach to cyber security and transform its information technology infrastructure and services. Johnson will remain on staff at  PNNL and split his time between Richland and Washington, D.C.

    Commenting on Johnson’s move, PNNL Director Mike Kluse said, “This is a win for DOE, PNNL and all of the national laboratories. DOE is getting a senior advisor with recent, relevant experience in cyber security, and he will help provide solutions that will guide DOE’s future information technology environment.” 

    Under Johnson’s leadership, PNNL was recognized as a CIO 100 award winner in 2008 and 2009, and was named to the InformationWeek 500 list — an annual ranking of the most innovative companies employing information technology in their businesses — five consecutive years. Johnson has been twice named to the InformationWeek Government CIO 50 list, a compilation of top CIOs in federal, state and local government.

    “In the modern workplace, information technology has the potential to transform the way we work, both internally and with our partners.  The perspective Brian brings from working with industry leading companies makes him well suited to take the baton from Jerry and capitalize on the laboratory’s IT investment so we can effectively tackle national challenges in energy, national security, environment and science,” said  Kluse. “He has demonstrated outstanding leadership and vision, has an ability to build strong partnerships and has a clear focus of what’s necessary to enable research.”

    Abrahamson has served in a leadership capacity on several committees in the utilities industry, including the Edison Electric Institute’s Technology Advisory Committee.  He previously served on the advisory board for Habitat for Humanity, and looks forward to getting involved locally in civic and economic development efforts in southeast Washington state.  He earned  a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Gonzaga University in Spokane.

  • Homeless schooling

    Each day en route to work I pass a perplexing sight – a large single parent family living and learning under a giant fig tree. The hustle and bustle of crowded Dar es Salaam contains a large green space by the coast – like NY’s Central Park. Within it resides Agnes and her six children.

    Lessons under the tree

    Curiosity finally got the better of me and I stopped by to chat this morning and hand out some sweets for the children. As usual, Agnes was spending the morning home schooling her children; aided by a blackboard and a hand drawn map of Africa.

    As I suspected Agnes trained and practiced as a teacher, before running foul of regulations. She’s lived for several years under the tree illustrated and clearly has a low regard for bureaucracy and rules that now no longer apply to her. Despite clearly being homeless and a ‘family in need’, it appeared that her children are relatively well nourished and healthy (I was asked for an anti-malarial bed-net) and that the home (or perhaps homeless) schooling was doing the trick.

    Her children spoke English confidently and I suspect were probably getting a better rounded primary education than many in formal schools – if UWEZO’s child literacy statistics are to be believed. At least the teacher was showing up regularly – which is not always the case according to one recent local survey.

    The lesson to me was I suppose that education comes in all shapes and sizes and formal schooling isn’t always the solution. I spent some time this week discussing how funds from Global Partnership for Education might support Tanzanian children and the relative merits of formal and non-formal delivery.

    Whether Agnes’s approach is a step too far in the non-formal direction must remain to be seen. Something to mull over during the Christmas break..

  • PNNL recognized for transferring innovations to the marketplace

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been recognized for creating technologies or processes that can store large amounts of renewable energy until it’s needed, fight cancer and detect explosives, and then moving the innovations to the marketplace.

    The Federal Laboratory Consortium announced today that the Department of Energy national laboratory in Richland is receiving three 2013 Excellence in Technology Transfer awards.  The consortium is a nationwide network that encourages federal laboratories to transfer laboratory-developed technologies to commercial markets. With these awards, PNNL has been honored by the FLC more than any other federal laboratory, collecting 78 awards since the program began in 1984.

    The 2013 awards will be presented April 25 at the consortium’s annual meeting in Westminster, Colo.

    Renewable energy storage batteries  

    Developing a technology that can smoothly integrate energy from variable and intermittent sources — such as wind and solar power — onto the electricity grid while maintaining grid stability has proven challenging. But PNNL researchers, with funding from DOE’s Office of Electricity, recently made significant progress in improving the performance of “redox flow” batteries, which hold promise for storing large amounts of renewable energy and providing greater stability to the energy grid. 

    First developed in the 1970s, redox flow batteries have shown promise for renewable energy storage but have been limited in their ability to work well in a wide range of temperatures, their relatively high cost and their limited ability to store energy, otherwise known as energy density. The PNNL-developed system incorporates two novel approaches to overcome the limitations of previous generations of redox flow batteries. The result is a dramatically improved operating range, higher energy density and lower cost for vanadium redox flow batteries.

    “Successful commercialization of DOE-sponsored technology development, such as this, is vital for creating the grid of the future, and sustaining U.S. leadership in advanced technology,” said Imre Gyuk, energy storage program manager at DOE’s Office of Electricity.

    License agreements with companies like UniEnergy Technologies LLC in Mukilteo, Wash., are expected to lead to commercial products for utilities, power generators and industry.

    Therapeutic delivery agent for treating cancers

    PNNL researchers created innovative “radiogel” products that allow medical personnel to deliver higher doses of radiation exactly where needed when fighting cancerous tumors that cannot be surgically removed. The treatment is effective, affordable and minimizes exposure to surrounding healthy tissues and organs. 

    The PNNL-developed, injectable radiogels allow for the delivery of insoluble yttrium-90 — a well-established medical radioisotope with many applications in cancer treatment — to a precise location for targeted radiation therapy. The radiogels dissolve and disappear once the yttrium-90 decays. 

    “This new technology will provide doctors with greater flexibility to safely direct radiation therapy to the interior of tumors, as well as to tumor margins following surgical removal,” said Darrell Fisher, who leads PNNL’s Isotope Sciences Program. “Commercialization of the new treatment will help make it readily available to patients.”

    DOE’s Office of Science provided funding to support early studies on radiogel material composition. A license agreement with Advanced Medical Isotope Corp. of Kennewick, Wash., has led to further development of radiogel products that will eventually be used to treat cancers of the liver, pancreas, brain, neck, and kidneys.

    Next-generation microchip — Ion Mobility Spectrometer

    Researchers at PNNL and Owlstone Ltd., in Cambridge, England, collaborated over a period of several years to successfully develop new technology with the potential to dramatically improve the ability to detect and identify very small amounts of chemicals, such as those that are telltale signs of hidden explosives or disease-revealing proteins in blood.

    The Ion Mobility Spectrometer on a Microchip, or IMS Microchip, overcomes limitations of previous sample analytical instruments by shrinking a key component — a channel through which molecules must travel. This advance improves performance by allowing higher electric currents to be effectively utilized in the separations process. The dime-sized chip provides dozens of channels through which ions travel to be separated and identified. 

    Owlstone scientists provided the microfabrication design and methods lying at the foundation of IMS Microchips, while PNNL provided its capabilities in ion mobility spectrometry and mass spectrometry to improve the detection limits and sensitivity of the next generation of analytical microchips. 

    The unique expertise and capabilities contributed by PNNL researchers were critical to Owlstone in its efforts to successfully develop a commercial IMS Microchip tailored to meet the needs of the mass spectrometry research community.

    More information about PNNL innovations available for license can be found online. Business inquiries can be directed to 1-888-375-PNNL or [email protected].

  • ‘Study partners’ play critical role in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease

    For Alzheimer’s disease researchers who conduct clinical trials, enrolling enough patients to make a trial meaningful is always a challenge. To enroll a single patient in a study requires not one but two participants — the patient and what’s known as a study partner. Study partners provide the patient with support and update researchers about the patient’s progress.
     
    A new UCLA study has assessed the prevalence of the various types of study partners in Alzheimer’s clinical trials — a patient’s spouse or “other” partners, like a patient’s adult child — and has discovered that who the study partner is can actually impact the results of the trials and the interpretations of those results.
     
    The study appears in the Dec. 19 online issue of the journal Neurology.
     
    “The role of the study partner is vital to the success of Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials,” said the study’s first author, Joshua D. Grill, an assistant professor of neurology at UCLA and a member of the UCLA Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research. “We count on them to ensure that the patient is taking their medications, drive them to appointments and, in general, report back how things are going.”
     
    In their analysis of 2,041 Alzheimer’s patients who had participated in six clinical trials, Grill and his colleagues found that 67 percent of these patients had a spouse as their study partner. Yet in the general population, more than two-thirds of all unpaid Alzheimer’s disease caregivers are patients’ children, children-in-law or grandchildren, and half of unpaid caregivers are under the age of 50.
     
    And importantly, the researchers said, as many as 90 percent of Alzheimer’s sufferers don’t have spouses.
     
    “But two-thirds of clinical trial participants do have spouses,” Grill said. “That confirms we are missing a huge population of people we are not enrolling. They’re out there, and we need to do a better job of recruiting them in order to expedite study of promising drugs for Alzheimer’s.”
     
    The team also found that, after controlling for confounding factors, the risk of dropout for the “other” study partner group — the group including adult children — was 70 percent higher than for the spouse study partner group.
    Grill added that factors such as race of the patient and the attitudes of caregivers can also impact recruitment for clinical trials.
     
    For example, only 5 percent of participants in the clinical trials the researchers looked at were Hispanic, and only 6 percent were African American. Those trial participants who had an adult child as their study partner were twice as likely as those with spouse partners to be Hispanic and nearly three times as likely to be African American.
     
    “Typically in Alzheimer’s disease trials, we don’t know if there are differences between minority patients and Caucasians in terms of a drug’s possible effectiveness,” Grill said. “But if we can do a better job with enrolling Alzheimer’s patients who have non-spousal study partners, we may get better with recruiting minorities as well, so that we can answer that type of question.”
     
    The current study doesn’t explain why clinical trial participants with non-spouse study partners were underrepresented. Adult-child study partners were more likely to be working and living apart from the patient, Grill said, “so it might simply be a question of logistics. But this will require further study.”
     
    Other authors of the study included Rema Raman, Karin Ernstrom and Paul Aisen from the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study at UC San Diego and Jason Karlawish of the University of Pennsylvania.
     
    The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging (AG016570, P30-AG01024, UO1-AG10483), the Sidell-Kagan Foundation, and the Marian S. Ware Alzheimer Program. Please see the full paper for author disclosures.
     
    The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA is part of the UCLA Department of Neurology, which encompasses more than 20 disease-related research programs, along with large clinical and teaching programs. These programs cover brain mapping and neuroimaging, movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, neurogenetics, nerve and muscle disorders, epilepsy, neuro-oncology, neurotology, neuropsychology, headaches and migraines, neurorehabilitation, and neurovascular disorders. The department ranked first among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding (2002–09). 
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Two PNNL researchers named American Physical Society Fellows

    Two scientists from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been named Fellows of the American Physical Society. Wayne Hess and Hongfei Wang were recognized for their “exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise.”

    APS fellows are nominated by APS members and selected by the APS Council. Fellows are limited to no more than one half of one percent of the society membership, which currently stands at about 50,000.

    Hess and Wang will be recognized at the annual APS meeting in March in Baltimore.

    Wayne Hess

    Hess is known for research on how materials respond to light. These materials can be used to perform chemical reactions driven by light or to convert light into electricity. Some of these materials are based on tiny particles of silver or gold that can absorb light strongly and then use that light efficiently. Hess also develops materials to improve advanced scientific equipment such as synchrotron light sources and high resolution electron microscopes.

    Hess regularly mentors post-doctoral fellows and college students, working to engage them in collaborative efforts between theory and experimentation. He has authored or co-authored more than 90 journal articles.

    Hess earned a bachelor’s degree and doctorate in chemistry from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and a master’s degree from the University of Oregon in Eugene.

    Hongfei Wang

    Wang was recognized for his original contributions to the development of “nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy” — an advanced laser-based method for better understanding the structure and dynamics of chemical systems — and for improving the understanding of how molecules interact with each other and with structures at places where gas, liquid or solids intersect. His research has implications for environmental and biological processes, such as improving protective coatings and controlling drug interactions.

    In the past decade, Wang systematically developed the theory and experimental methodology in surface nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy. At EMSL, Wang custom-built the first spectrometer with unprecedented resolution that can characterize surfaces and interfaces in ways never before possible. Together with the theory and methodology he had developed, this instrument provides deeper understanding of chemistry at surfaces and interfaces that are ubiquitous in natural and industrial processes. Such detailed knowledge can lead to building better solar cells and better catalysts for alternative energy.  This new instrument is available to the broad scientific community at EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a user facility at PNNL.

    Wang earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical physics at University of Science & Technology in China, and master’s and doctorate degrees in chemistry from Columbia University. Before joining PNNL in 2009, he was a research professor at the Institute of Chemistry in the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Beijing for 10 years.

    Hess and Wang join nine other PNNL staff as APS Fellows — Liem Dang, Michel Dupuis, Jean Futrell, Bruce Garrett, Bruce Kay, Greg Kimmel, Greg Schenter, Lou Terminello and Sotiris Xantheas.

    The American Physical Society is a non-profit membership organization working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities. APS represents 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world. Society headquarters are located in College Park, Md.

  • Scientists find drug that may help in fight against Duchenne muscular dystrophy

    Drugs that are currently being tested show promise for treating patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, an inherited disease that affects about one in 3,600 boys and results in muscle degeneration and, eventually, death.
                          
    Now, scientists at UCLA have identified an additional drug — one that is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is being used in humans — that provides a powerful boost to the therapy now being tested in clinical trials. They hope that when used in combination, the drugs will provide a one-two punch that will overcome the genetic mutations that cause Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), restore a missing protein needed for proper muscle function, and allow those affected by the disease to lead relatively normal lives.
     
    The drug, called dantrolene, was found after researchers examined thousands of small molecules using a high-throughput molecular screening technique that allows them to scrutinize many molecules at the same time, said the study’s senior authors, Dr. Stanley Nelson, a UCLA professor of human genetics, and Carrie Miceli, a UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics.
     
    Dantrolene is a muscle relaxant that is used to treat malignant hyperthermia, a rare, life-threatening disorder triggered by general anesthesia. It is also used in the treatment of severe muscle spasms.
     
    “Dantrolene is such an attractive candidate to test in this disease, as it is already approved and has been used safely in humans for decades, and we won’t have to go through the lengthy and costly drug development process,” Nelson said. “We were very pleased to find out that this drug seems to work synergistically with the drugs being tested now on boys with DMD.”
     
    The study appears Dec. 12 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine.
     
    The research by Miceli and Nelson, who are married, is driven by more than just scientific curiosity. Their youngest son, Dylan, 11, was diagnosed with DMD in 2004. While he’s still ambulatory — many DMD patients require the use of wheelchairs by about age 10 — Dylan can no longer run or climb stairs, and he can’t shoot a basketball over his head like other boys his age. Despite these challenges, Miceli said Dylan remains a happy, funny and engaged boy, full of life and passion.
     
    “We entered into this field because of the diagnosis of our son, but we hope our research can help many others,” she said. “There are drugs that can help manage the symptoms of the disease but nothing that changes its course dramatically. We’re trying to correct the defect that causes DMD with highly personalized genetic medicine.”
     
    DMD is caused by mutations in the Duchene gene, which is located on the X chromosome and is necessary for correct muscle-cell function. These mutations prohibit production of the protein dystrophin, causing the muscles, as well as the heart and respiratory system, to deteriorate. An exon — a sequence of DNA — or multiple exons are deleted in the mutant gene, causing the cellular machinery to “skip over” the exon; what was once a readable genetic instruction is thus rendered unreadable.
     
    The drugs being tested in boys with DMD now use small pieces of DNA called antisense oligonucleotides that act as molecular “patches,” allowing for the production of dystrophin. The trials thus far have shown that the exon-skipping therapy is working. However not enough dystrophin is being produced for fully normal muscle function. Nelson and Miceli sought out molecules that could give a boost to the exon-skipping drugs so that DMD patients could produce enough dystrophin for more normal muscle function.
     
    Miceli and Nelson, members of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA, used DMD patient–specific stem cells, reprogrammed them into muscle cells and then treated the cells with the exon-skipping drugs. The molecular screening technique then added the thousands of small molecules to the cells, and the results were analyzed by studying the treated cells to see which cells responded to which molecule. Dantrolene showed promise, Nelson said.
     
    In collaboration with Melissa Spencer, a professor of neurology at UCLA, the scientists tested the combination in a DMD mouse model. The animals were treated with dantrolene in combination with the exon-skipping drugs. The treated mice produced more dystrophin and showed improved muscle function. Tests showed the DMD mice treated with the combination therapy were significantly stronger than those that weren’t.
     
    DMD, the most common of childhood’s deadly DNA-linked diseases, generally leads to death by respiratory or heart failure in the teens or early 20s. Miceli and Nelson hope that their combination therapy could lead to longer life spans for boys with DMD.
     
    “Our hope is that these boys won’t have to die so young and suffer from the progressive muscle degeneration and the loss of mobility that they do now,” Miceli said. “We hope to find a therapy that at the least results in much more mild symptoms and delays by many years the onset of this disease.”
     
    Going forward, Nelson and Miceli will further their research with the goal of translating their findings from the bench to the bedside. The pair has received a $6 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to do longer-term studies of their drug combination therapy in mouse models to ensure that it can restore dystrophin levels to normal or near-normal levels. They also will explore whether DMD patients with other mutations can benefit from the combination therapy. They hope their work will result in clinical trials testing the exon-skipping drugs together with dantrolene or dantrolene-like drugs togetherin boys with DMD.
     
    “These findings highlight the value of combination therapies and the repurposing of FDA-approved medications as powerful translational strategies,” the study states.
     
    The seven-year study, conducted in three UCLA laboratories, was funded by the Foundation to Eradicate Duchenne, the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. It was performed within the Center for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at UCLA.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Prostate cancer now detectable using imaging-guided biopsy, UCLA study shows

     
    Groundbreaking research by a team of UCLA physicians and engineers demonstrates that prostate cancer — long identifiable only through painful, hit-or-miss biopsies — can be diagnosed far more easily and accurately using a new image-guided, targeted biopsy procedure.
     
    Traditionally, prostate tumors have been found through so-called blind biopsies, in which tissue samples are taken systematically from the entire prostate in the hopes of locating a piece of tumor — a technique that dates back to the 1980s. But the cancer now appears detectable by direct sampling of tumor spots found using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, in combination with real-time ultrasound, the researchers say.
     
    The findings are published Dec. 10 in the early online edition of the Journal of Urology and are scheduled for print publication in the journal’s January issue.
     
    The UCLA study indicates that the MRI–ultrasound fusion biopsy, which is much more accurate than a conventional blind biopsy, may lead to a reduction in the number of prostate biopsies performed and could allow for the early detection of serious prostate cancers.   
     
    The study involved 171 men who were either undergoing active surveillance to monitor slow-growing prostate cancers or who, despite prior negative biopsies, had persistently elevated levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein produced by the prostate that can indicate the presence of cancer . The UCLA biopsies using the new technique were done in about 20 minutes in an outpatient clinic setting under local anesthesia.
     
    Nearly all of the 1 million prostate biopsies performed annually in the U.S. are triggered by elevations in PSA levels, and about 240,000 new cases of prostate cancer are discovered each year. Thus, about 75 percent of biopsies are negative for cancer. However, many men with negative biopsies but elevated PSA levels may still harbor malignant tumors — tumors missed by conventional biopsies, said the study’s senior author, Dr. Leonard S. Marks, a professor of urology and director of UCLA’s active surveillance program.
     
    “Early prostate cancer is difficult to image because of the limited contrast between normal and malignant tissues within the prostate,” Marks said. “Conventional biopsies are basically performed blindly because we can’t see what we’re aiming for. Now, with this new method, which fuses MRI and ultrasound, we have the potential to see the prostate cancer and aim for it in a much more refined and rational manner.”
     
    The new targeting process is the result of four years of work funded by the National Cancer Institute and based at the Clark Urology Center at UCLA. 
     
    Since the mid-1980s, prostate cancer has been diagnosed using trans-rectal ultrasound to sample the prostate. Unlike most other cancers, prostate cancer is the only major malignancy diagnosed without actually visualizing the tumor as a biopsy is done, Marks said.
     
    With the advent of sophisticated MRI, the ability to image the prostate improved and provided a picture of tumors within the organ. However, attempting to biopsy the prostate with the patient inside an MRI machine proved to be cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming. But with the development of the new MRI–ultrasound fusion process, the biopsy can now be performed in a clinic setting.
     
    In the study, the volunteers first underwent MRI to visualize the prostate and any lesions. That information was then fed into a device called the Artemis, which electronically fuses the MRI pictures with real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound, allowing the urologist to see the lesion during the biopsy.
     
    “With the Artemis, we have a virtual map of the suspicious areas placed directly onto the ultrasound image during the biopsy,” Marks said. “When you can see a lesion, you’ve got a major advantage of knowing what’s really going on in the prostate. The results have been very dramatic, and the rate of cancer detection in these targeted biopsies is very high. We’re finding a lot of tumors that hadn’t been found before using conventional biopsies.”
     
    Prostate cancer was found in 53 percent of 171 study volunteers. Of those tumors found using the fusion biopsy technique, 38 percent had a Gleason score of greater than seven, indicating an aggressive tumor and one more likely to spread than a tumor with lower scores. Once prostate cancer spreads, it’s much more difficult to treat, and survival decreases.
     
    Robert Meier, a 58-year-old high school art teacher from Visalia, Calif., enrolled in Marks’ study after three of his prostate biopsies came back negative for cancer despite his climbing PSA levels.
     
    In 2008, Meier tore his rotator cuff, and as part of his pre-surgery exam, blood tests were done. His PSA was at six — four or lower is considered normal. His doctor sent him to an urologist, who performed tests to rule out everything else that could be causing high PSA levels, including infection and an enlarged prostate. The doctor found nothing. Meanwhile Meier’s PSA climbed to eight.
     
    A biopsy was performed and was negative. Meier’s PSA jumped to nine, and yet another biopsy came back negative. When his PSA reached 11.7, another round of biopsies was ordered.
     
    “These biopsies can be extremely painful and I was put in the hospital several times so they could be done under general anesthesia,” Meier said. “It takes about a month to recover.”
     
    Like his PSA levels, Meier’s anxiety was also rising. If he didn’t have prostate cancer, why were his levels going up?
     
    After a second opinion in Santa Barbara and months of being tested and treated with a medicine designed to shrink his prostate and lower his PSA, Meier was referred to UCLA and Marks in 2011. By then, his PSA was nearly 18, up more than 10 points in three years. An MRI ultimately revealed a prostate lesion, and he underwent a biopsy using the Artemis device. He did have cancer, and it was aggressive.
     
    “Dr. Marks told me that I had a cancer that could spread and it needed to come out now,” Meier said. “He told me that at my relatively young age and the severity of the tumor, I had no choice.”
     
    Meier’s prostate and 24 nearby lymph nodes were removed robotically at UCLA in February by Dr. Arnold Chin, an assistant professor of urology. Follow-up tests show that Meier is cancer free today.
     
    “This program works,” Meier said. “I had jumped through all these hoops and had all these tests with two different doctors and they found nothing. It took UCLA to determine that I had an aggressive cancer that could have killed me. I feel like I was in very good hands at UCLA.”
     
    The UCLA study team included doctor–scientists from urology, radiology, pathology, the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology (CASIT) and biomedical engineering.
     
    “Prostate lesions identified on MRI can be accurately targeted with MR-Ultrasound fusion biopsy in a clinic setting using local anesthesia,” the study states. “Biopsy findings correlate with the level of suspicion on MRI. Targeted prostate biopsy has the potential to improve the diagnosis of prostate cancer and may aid in the selection of patients for active surveillance and focal therapy.”
     
    The study was supported by the National Cancer Institute (RO1CA158627). The MRI and ultrasound fusion technology used in the study is described in this video.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • UCLA doctors remove man’s heart, replace it with total artificial heart

    Imagine living without a heart. It is possible — if you have a new artificial heart pumping blood through your body. You can even go to the supermarket, watch your kid’s soccer game or go on a hike.
     
    Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has performed its first procedure to remove a patient’s diseased heart and replace it with a SynCardia Temporary Total Artificial Heart. 
     
    Chad Washington, 35, underwent the seven-hour transplant surgery at UCLA on Oct. 29, led by Dr. Murray Kwon, an assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery. 
     
    The temporary pump will act as a “bridge” until Washington receives a new donor heart.
     
    “Historically, patients with a total artificial heart had to remain hospitalized while they waited for a transplant because they were tethered to a large machine to power the device,” Kwon said. “Today, however, this device can be powered by advanced technology small enough to fit in a backpack.”
     
    “It sounds like a loud grandfather clock going ‘tick-tock’ in my chest, but it doesn’t feel foreign. It’s there to help,” Washington said of the artificial heart. “I’m so glad to be living in an age where technology is moving so fast.”
     
    Washington, an aspiring chef is who is married and has a 4-year-old son, has suffered from heart disease since he was born. From the time he was 10 days old through adulthood, he underwent a series of heart-repair surgeries and had pacemakers and a defibrillator implanted. 
     
    Then his heart deteriorated. He received a heart transplant in February of this year, and for the first time in his life, he knew what it was like to live with a healthy heart. It gave him energy, and he was amazed that he could run 25 minutes on a treadmill.
     
    Unfortunately, after six months of functioning perfectly well, the donor heart started showing signs of a serious form of rejection that did not respond to therapy. Washington’s condition worsened. An immediate re-transplantation with a new donor heart was not an option because his body had built up antibodies that would likely attack a new heart.
     
    Thankfully, the artificial heart offered hope.
     
    “By removing the patient’s diseased donor heart, we removed the source of his end-stage heart failure,” said Dr. Ali Nsair, an assistant professor of cardiology at UCLA. “The total artificial heart — and being off immunosuppressant medications — allows his body to recover and get ready for a heart transplant in a few months.”
     
    Dr. Mario Deng, a professor of cardiology and medical director of the UCLA Advanced Heart Failure/Mechanical Support/Heart Transplant Program added that since the pump’s energy source is portable, Washington can go home and resume normal activities with his family while he waits for a new heart.
     
    “This ability to be at home with family is an important element in helping the patient to maintain a positive outlook during the waiting period,” Deng said.
     
    Approved by the Federal Drug Administration in 2004, the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart replaces both failing heart ventricles and the four heart valves. It works by providing a high volume of blood-flow through both ventricles, which helps to speed the recovery of vital organs and make the patient a better candidate for transplant surgery. 
     
    Once the total artificial heart is implanted, it is connected by two small air tubes known as “drivelines” to a large external driver that powers the heart while the patient remains hospitalized. When the patient’s condition stabilizes post-operatively, he or she can be switched over to the smaller 13.5-pound Freedom portable driver, which can be carried in a backpack, thus giving the patient the freedom to leave the hospital. 
     
    “This technology offers a lifeline for patients who are in severe heart failure and dying,” said Dr. Richard J. Shemin, professor and chair of cardiothoracic surgery at UCLA and surgical director of the UCLA Mechanical Circulatory Support Program. “These patients have run out of medical options and require a heart transplant. The total artificial heart offers advantages over other devices used for mechanical support of patients awaiting a heart transplant. With the new Freedom driver for powering the device, the patients can leave the hospital, live at home and undergo rehabilitation, improving their clinical condition and quality of life as they await their transplant.”
     
    While at home, Washington will follow an exercise and nutrition plan tailored to help him build up strength and improve his health in anticipation of receiving a second donor heart.
     
    “My family and I are so thankful for all of the support we’ve been getting from the doctors and staff here at the hospital, as well as our family and friends,” Washington said.
     
    Originally used as a permanent replacement heart, SynCardia’s Total Artificial Heart is currently approved as a bridge to transplant for people dying from end-stage biventricular heart failure. There have been more than 1,000 implants of the Total Artificial Heart worldwide, accounting for more than 270 patient-years of life. The wearable driver is currently undergoing an U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved investigational device exemption clinical study. For more information, visit www.syncardia.com.
     
    The UCLA Mechanical Circulatory Support Program, directed by Dr. Richard Shemin, professor and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UCLA, and Dr. Mario Deng, professor of cardiology and medical director of the advanced heart failure/mechanical support/heart transplant program, began in the early 1990s. Its primary mission is to provide cardiac support devices to patients while they await heart transplantation and to serve the rapidly growing heart failure population requiring lifetime mechanical circulatory support. For more information on the mechanical circulatory program and the heart transplant program at UCLA, visit http://transplants.ucla.edu/mcs.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter. 

  • Sunshine, biofuel & the tides, oh my!

    Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will present a variety of alternative energy-related research at the 2012 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, which runs Monday, Dec. 3 through Friday, Dec. 7 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Topics to be discussed include improving solar power forecasting, measuring the resources needed to grow algae for biofuel and predicting the environmental impacts of ocean energy. Summaries of some of PNNL’s noteworthy presentations are below.

    Forecasting clouds to improve solar power

    The sun’s fleeting nature has limited our ability to turn sunshine into electricity. While we can easily foretell when the sun will rise and fall each day, predicting the intermittent daytime shading created by continually morphing clouds is much more difficult. Repeated appearing and disappearing acts by clouds lead to large fluctuations in solar power generation, which makes balancing supply and demand on the power grid a challenge. But now PNNL scientists propose using a new approach to predict clouds from 5 minutes to about an hour ahead of time, giving grid operators a chance to adapt before solar power ramps up or down. Initially created for climate research, the approach uses an instrument called a total/diffuse pyranometer. Depending on their size, shape and thickness, clouds can affect light coming from the sun in many different ways to produce varying amounts of sunshine. Total/diffuse pyranometers enable scientists to measure direct and indirect solar radiation, both of which are used in different types of solar power generation. Next, the new approach uses a PNNL-developed method to forecast the clouds that will appear in the near future, what properties those clouds will have and how much direct and indirect solar radiation will make it past the clouds and onto the earth’s surface. PNNL’s Chuck Long will present the research.

    A24E-04: “Near-term forecasting of solar total and direct irradiance for solar energy applications,” 5-5:15 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 4, Room 3008, Moscone West.

    Digging for details on growing algae for biofuel

    Algae have been touted as a promising source of renewable fuel, but questions remain about whether the U.S. has the resources needed to grow it on a large scale. Ongoing PNNL research indicates that algal biofuel’s sustainability can be increased by carefully analyzing the resources available at specific growing sites. Current efforts are building on earlier PNNL research, which involved developing a detailed map of the nation’s freshwater and land resources to calculate algal biofuel production potential. PNNL researchers are digging deeper by also examining alternative water sources such as seawater, the nutrients needed to grow algae, real estate prices and costs to transport algal oil to existing refineries. The combined information will help determine the financial and environmental bottom lines of U.S. algal biofuel. PNNL’s Mark Wigmosta will present a poster that describes early results, including that the Gulf Coast region generally has the nation’s best water supplies and climate for growing algae.

    H53H-1632: “A high-resolution national microalgae biofuel production and resource assessment,” 1:40-6 p.m., Friday, Dec. 7, Hall A-C, Moscone South.

    Modeling tidal power’s environmental effect

    Extracting energy from the natural ebb and flow of the ocean’s tides could help wean the world off of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. But, with very few tidal power projects in existence, it’s difficult to know how such efforts could affect the marine environment. To help answer that question, PNNL scientists developed a detailed, 3-D computer model of a hypothetical bay where seawater enters through a coastal channel. They added tidal turbines to the digitized channel and ran simulations to find out how water flow could be impacted. They found that installing large numbers of turbines can decrease the flushing rate­ — the amount of time it takes to replace the bay’s water with new ocean water. The longer it takes to flush out a bay, the longer it takes to remove contaminants from river runoff and human activity. This could worsen the conditions of bays already experiencing low levels of dissolved oxygen. On the other hand, simulations also showed turbines increase mixing in the water column, which could breathe more life into a bay’s lower waters by transporting more oxygen from the surface. PNNL’s Taiping Wang will discuss the computer model and some of its simulation results.

    OS53D-07: “A Modeling Study of In-stream Tidal Energy Extraction and Its Potential Environmental Impacts in a Tidal Channel and Bay System,” 3:10-3:25 p.m., Friday, Dec. 7, Room 3024, Moscone West.

  • Why older adults become fraud victims more often

    Why are older people especially vulnerable to becoming victims of fraud? A new UCLA study indicates that an important clue may lie in a particular region of the brain that influences the ability to discern who is honest and who is trying to deceive us.
     
    Older people, more than younger adults, may fail to interpret an untrustworthy face as potentially dishonest, the study shows. The reason for this, the UCLA life scientists found, seems to be that a brain region called the anterior insula, which is linked to disgust and is important for discerning untrustworthy faces, is less active in older adults.
     
    “The consequences of misplaced trust for older adults are severe,” said Shelley E. Taylor, a distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA and senior author of the new research, which appears Dec. 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “A recent study estimates that adults over age 60 lost at least $2.9 billion in 2010 to financial exploitation, ranging from home repair scams to complex financial swindles. This figure represents a 12 percent increase from 2008.
     
    “Older adults seem to be particularly vulnerable to interpersonal solicitations, and their reduced sensitivity to cues related to trust may partially underlie this vulnerability.”
     
    Taylor and her colleagues report the results of two new studies in PNAS. In the first, 119 older adults between the ages of 55 and 84 (mean age 68) and 24 younger adults (mean age 23) looked at 30 photographs of faces and rated them on how trustworthy and approachable they seemed. The faces were intentionally selected to look trustworthy, neutral or untrustworthy.
     
    The younger and older adults reacted very similarly to the trustworthy faces and to the neutral faces. However, when viewing the untrustworthy faces, the younger adults reacted strongly, while the older adults did not. The older adults saw these faces as more trustworthy and more approachable than the younger adults did.
     
    “Most of the older adults showed this effect,” said Taylor, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and director of UCLA’s Social Neuroscience Laboratory. “They missed facial cues that are pretty easily distinguished.”
     
    The second study was conducted at UCLA’s Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, where participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans while looking at the faces. This study included 44 participants: 23 older adults between the ages of 55 and 80 (mean age 66) and 21 younger adults (mean age 33).
     
    The younger adults showed anterior insula activation both when they were making the ratings of the faces and especially when viewing the untrustworthy faces. In contrast, the older adults displayed very little anterior insula activation during these activities.
     
    “We wanted to find out whether there are differences in how the brain reacts to these faces, and the answer is yes, there are,” Taylor said. “We found a strong anterior insula response both to the task of rating trustworthiness and also to the untrustworthy faces among the younger adults — but the response is much more muted among the older adults. The older adults do not have as strong an anterior insula early-warning signal; their brains are not saying ‘be wary,’ as the brains of the younger adults are.
     
    “In younger adults, the very act of judging whether a person is trustworthy activates the anterior insula,” she added. “It’s as if they’re thinking they need to make this judgment with caution. This gives us a potential brain mechanism for understanding why older and younger adults process facial cues about trust differently. Now we know what the brain sees, and in the older adults, the answer is not very much when it comes to differentiating on the basis of trust.”
     
    “It’s not that younger adults are better at finance or judging whether an investment is good; they’re better at discerning whether a person is potentially trustworthy when cues are communicated visually,” she said.
     
    Taylor and her colleagues, including lead author Elizabeth Castle, identified that the anterior insula plays the role of telling us “Something’s not right here.”
     
    “Older adults are more vulnerable. It looks like their skills for making good financial decisions may be deteriorating as early as their early-to-mid-50s,” said Taylor, a founder of the field of health psychology who was honored in 2010 with the American Psychological Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
     
    The prototypical victim of financial fraud, Taylor said, is a 55-year-old male who is an experienced investor.
     
    “It’s people with money, who are comfortable with investing,” Taylor said. “Somehow they didn’t get the early warning from their brain that said ‘Don’t invest in that movie, don’t buy that land.’ The financial losses can be huge.”
     
    Castle, a UCLA psychology graduate student who analyzed the data for the brain-mapping study, said the scientists found a “robust” anterior insula response in the younger adults and a “minimal” response in the older adults.
     
    “One of the functions of the anterior insula is to sense bodily feelings and interpret these visceral states for the brain.” Castle said. “This is the response that we see lacking in older adults.
     
    “This neural mapping of bodily states forms the basis of ‘gut feelings’” she added. “This leads us to think that older adults have a diminished gut feeling that something is wrong when someone looks untrustworthy.”
     
    The life scientists did not find significant differences between women and men.
     
    This project is funded by the National Institute on Aging in an effort to understand the reasons for the vulnerability of older adults to financial fraud.
     
    ‘Just hang up’
     
    For Taylor, the topic is personal. Her father and aunt both lost money in financial scams.
     
    “My father was walked to the bank by someone he referred to as ‘such a nice man.’ The guy was a homeless man. Anybody looking at him should have picked up on the cues that said ‘Do not give this man $6,000.’ I still don’t know how my father could not pick up that this was not a nice young man,” Taylor said. Her father was in his mid-70s at the time.
     
    Her aunt bought jewels through the mail.
     
    “When I give talks on this work, I wear the ‘diamond’ earrings that she bought in the mail,” Taylor said. “They are glass.”
     
    What advice does Taylor offer older adults to avoid becoming victims of financial fraud?
     
    “I would tell older adults to just hang up on solicitors. Don’t talk to salesmen pushing investments — just say no. Do not go to the free lunch seminars where there are investment pitches. Stay away from these people,” she said. “I’m not saying that all of these are fraudulent, but the best thing that you can do if your brain isn’t helping you to make these discriminations is not to have to make them. Be very careful what you do with your money. I don’t talk to any solicitors on the phone.”
     
    A pivotal point is when people take money from their 401(k) accounts, including when they take required distributions, starting at age 70-and-a-half.
     
    “That’s when older adults tend to be targeted — 401(k) conversions, required minimum distributions and inheritances,” Taylor said. “These are points when people need to be wary, and many older adults are insufficiently wary.”
     
    What does an untrustworthy face look like?
     
    “The smile is insincere, the eye contact is off; it’s a gestalt,” Taylor said.
     
    (Unfortunately, the UCLA Newsroom is not able to post photos of the untrustworthy faces with this news release because conditions of the study prohibit our doing so.)
     
    Co-authors of the research also include Naomi Eisenberger, a UCLA assistant professor of psychology; Mark Grinblatt, professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management; and Ian Boggero, a former UCLA psychology research assistant.
     
    UCLA is California’s largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university’s 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Women with sleep apnea have higher degree of brain damage than men, UCLA study shows

    Women suffering from sleep apnea have, on the whole, a higher degree of brain damage than men with the disorder, according to a first-of-its-kind study conducted by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing. The findings are reported in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal SLEEP.
     
    Obstructive sleep apnea is a serious disorder that occurs when a person’s breathing is repeatedly interrupted during sleep, sometimes hundreds of times. Each time, the oxygen level in the blood drops, eventually resulting in damage to many cells in the body. If left untreated, it can lead to high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, diabetes, depression and other serious health problems.
     
    Approximately 10 years ago, this UCLA research team was the first to show that men with obstructive sleep apnea have damage to their brain cells.
     
    For this latest, multi-year study, “Sex Differences in White Matter Alterations Accompanying Obstructive Sleep Apnea,” the researchers looked at patients who were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea at the UCLA Sleep Laboratory. They compared the nerve fibers in these patients’ brains — known as white matter — to fibers of individuals without sleep problems and focused on unearthing the difference in brain damage between men and women with sleep apnea.
     
    “While there are a great many brain studies done on sleep apnea and the impact on one’s health, they have typically focused on men or combined groups of men and women, but we know that obstructive sleep apnea affects women very differently than men,” said chief investigator Paul Macey, assistant professor and associate dean of information technology and innovations at the UCLA School of Nursing. “This study revealed that, in fact, women are more affected by sleep apnea than are men and that women with obstructive sleep apnea have more severe brain damage than men suffering from a similar condition.”
     
    In particular, the study found that women were impacted in the cingulum bundle and the anterior cingulate cortex, areas in the front of the brain involved in decision-making and mood regulation. The women with sleep apnea also showed higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms, the researchers said.
     
    “This tells us that doctors should consider that the sleep disorder may be more problematic and therefore need earlier treatment in women than men,” Macey said.
     
    With this finding as a foundation, Macey said that the next step is for researchers to “untangle the timing of the brain changes” and find out if treating sleep apnea can help the brain.
     
    “What we don’t yet know,” he said, “is, did sleep apnea cause the brain damage, did the brain damage lead to the sleep disorders, or do the common comorbidities, such as depression, dementia or cardiovascular issues, cause the brain damage, which in turn leads to sleep apnea.” 
     
    Co-investigators on the study included Rajesh Kumar, Ronald Harper and Dr. Frisca Yan-Go of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and the departments of neurobiology and neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Mary Woo of the UCLA School of Nursing. All of the work for the study was performed at UCLA, with financial support provided by a grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research.
     
    The UCLA School of Nursing is redefining nursing through the pursuit of uncompromised excellence in research, education, practice, policy and patient advocacy. For more information, visit nursing.ucla.edu.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Team led by Argonne National Lab selected as DOE’s batteries and energy storage hub

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is part of a team led by Argonne National Laboratory that will receive $120 million from the Department of Energy to establish a new batteries and energy storage research hub called the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, or JCESR. PNNL will receive $15 million over five years. The announcement was made earlier today by DOE.

    JCESR will combine the R&D firepower of five DOE national laboratories, five universities and four private firms in an effort aimed at achieving revolutionary advances in battery performance. Advancing next generation battery and energy storage technologies for electric and hybrid cars and the electrical grid are critical to help reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil and lower energy costs for U.S. consumers.

    PNNL will tap into its extensive experience in fundamental and applied sciences, including advanced materials synthesis, characterization and modeling, as well as electrical grid infrastructure, grid storage and management, to help improve the performance, reliability and life-span of batteries. PNNL will also play an important role in developing new technologies for stationary storage to enable widespread use of renewable energy.

    Unique research tools and imaging expertise from researchers in EMSL, DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL, will help the team understand complex electrochemical reactions as they occur within working batteries, as well as determine why batteries ultimately fail.

    PNNL’s expertise in materials synthesis and processing will also contribute to the development of low-cost, high-capacity electrode materials for advanced batteries with unprecedented energy density and power.

    “This is a partnership between world leading scientists and world leading companies, committed to ensuring that the advanced battery technologies the world needs will be invented and built right here in America,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Based on the tremendous advances that have been made in the past few years, there are very good reasons to believe that advanced battery technologies can and will play an increasingly valuable role in strengthening America’s energy and economic security by reducing our oil dependence, upgrading our aging power grid, and allowing us to take greater advantage of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar.”

    JCESR will integrate efforts at several successful independent research programs into a larger, coordinated effort designed to push the limits on battery advances. Advancements in batteries and energy storage technology are essential for continued efforts to develop a fundamentally new energy economy with decisively reduced dependence on imported oil. Improved storage will be vital to fully integrating intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar into the electrical grid. It will also be critical to transitioning the transportation sector to more flexible grid power.

    Selected through an open national competition with a rigorous merit review process that relied on outside expert reviewers, JCESR is the fourth Energy Innovation Hub established by the Energy Department since 2010. Other Hubs are devoted to modeling and simulation of nuclear reactors, achieving major improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings, and developing fuels from sunlight. A fifth Hub focused on critical materials research was announced earlier this year and is still in the application process.

    JCESR will be centered at Argonne, outside of Chicago. The State of Illinois will provide $35 million to construct a 45,000-square-foot home for JCESR.

    JCESR will bring together some of the most advanced energy storage research programs in the U.S. today. JCESR partners include:

    From Washington’s Congressional delegation

    Congressman Doc Hastings: “PNNL’s world-class scientists and unparalleled facilities like EMSL will make significant contributions to this project. Whether it’s in the fields of energy, national security or Hanford cleanup the Lab’s work here in the Tri-Cities is important to our community and our nation — and this mission is no exception.”

    Senator Patty Murray: “Energy storage is a transformational technology that can help bring new clean resources onto the grid,” said Senator Murray. “Competition for this award was stiff, and I’m thrilled the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is part of the winning team. I’m proud to have supported federal funding for this effort, because I know America will lead the world in developing this game-changing innovation for our energy system and our economy.”

    Senator Maria Cantwell: “I applaud the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and its partners for submitting the winning proposal for the Department of Energy’s new Batteries and Energy Storage Innovation Hub. Improving energy storage is an essential building block of a smarter, cleaner, and more diverse electricity system. I strongly support developing new and innovative ways to increase U.S. energy capacity and reliability. This significant investment into PNNL’s efforts will help ensure Washington state continues to be at the vanguard of this emerging economic opportunity.”

  • Four PNNL scientists elected AAAS fellows

    Four Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their efforts to advance science or its applications.

    The PNNL honorees and the AAAS sections that elected them are: Nigel Browning, physics; Allison Campbell, chemistry; Anthony Peurrung, physics; and Douglas Ray, chemistry.

    The four will be honored at an induction ceremony Feb. 16, 2013 at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston, Mass. The four selections bring the Richland-based Department of Energy national laboratory’s total of AAAS fellows to 56.

    Nigel Browning

    AAAS is honoring Browning for his work in electron microscopy, a type of microscopy that can zoom in to see the features of molecules. Browning has been pushing the limits of electron microscopy and spectroscopy since the early 1990s, when he succeeded in applying new technology to determine the composition of individual planes of atoms — an unexpected feat, given the state of the field at that time.

    While at University of California, Davis in 2008, he received an R&D 100 award for developing dynamic transmission electron microscopy, or DTEM. This technology can zoom in on objects as small as a few nanometers big (a few billionths of a meter wide) and can catch a moment in time to reveal what happens over about 15 nanoseconds (15 billionths of a second long). This high resolution in time and space allows researchers to take snapshots of what is happening during chemical reactions, information that usually has to be inferred based on the final product. In one such determination, researchers revealed a never-before-seen chemical intermediate that blew in and out of existence in about 5000 nanoseconds, something they hadn’t been able to see before.

    Browning joined PNNL in 2011 with a particular goal of making DTEM, which requires the samples to be in a vacuum, work at normal pressures and temperatures. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Reading, United Kingdom in 1988 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1992.

    Allison Campbell

    AAAS honored Campbell for her work in the “synthesis of thin films for ceramics and biomaterial development.” Trained as a physical chemist, Campbell has been the director of EMSL, a DOE scientific user facility at PNNL, since 2005. As EMSL director, she leads the development of programs, instrumentation and facilities required to tackle problems of interest to DOE and the nation — and brings together scientists from around the world to address those problems. With more than 700 scientists from national labs and universities worldwide using EMSL resources yearly for collaborative research in energy and the environment, Campbell ensures EMSL is influential, innovative and provides unique capabilities to a wide variety of researchers.

    Campbell has earned multiple awards for her work in basic science and applied biomedical research. She studied the fundamentals of bone and teeth mineralization and invented a coating that helps artificial joints bond to bone. Her research has resulted in numerous publications, several patents, an Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium and an R&D 100 Award. She has also testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology regarding the value of research at DOE labs.

    Campbell earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in 1985 and a doctorate in chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1990.

    Anthony Peurrung

    For contributions to “radiation and nuclear material detection, and leadership in advancing the science and impact of national laboratories,” AAAS is honoring Peurrung, an associate laboratory director who oversees PNNL’s national security programs. One of his earliest accomplishments was in the field of plasma physics. Soon after he arrived at PNNL, he realized two independent groups of scientists were studying the same physics without realizing it. By bringing together mass spectrometrists and plasma physicists, Peurrung significantly improved the understanding of how ions behave in mass spectrometers — an insight that has led to significant improvements to the technology and a wide variety of applications.

    He invented an instrument that can detect buried explosives such as mines by exploiting an energy signature known as “neutron backscatter.” Also, he discovered a new way to detect enriched uranium based on the unique radiation signature uranium gives off. Other work helped clarify plutonium oxide’s radiation signature, which influenced nuclear arms control technology. After moving into management at PNNL, Peurrung led research to find new materials to better detect radiation. As associate lab director for national security, Peurrung has strengthened PNNL’s expertise in cyber security, non-proliferation technologies, nuclear fuels and materials, and explosives detection.

    Peurrung earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rice University in Texas in 1987 and a doctorate in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992.

    Douglas Ray

    AAAS will induct Ray into its next class for “distinguished contributions to physical chemistry and molecular spectroscopy, and for building a world-class chemistry organization at PNNL.” Trained as a laser spectroscopist, Ray’s most significant research used lasers and ion beams to determine the structure and dynamics of molecular clusters. For the past decade, he has been leading teams of scientists at PNNL, first as deputy director of EMSL and then as the director of PNNL’s Chemical Sciences Division. In chemical sciences, he led the establishment of the Institute for Integrated Catalysis, currently the largest non-industrial catalysis research and development effort in the United States.

    In 2006, he became the associate laboratory director for Fundamental & Computational Sciences. In this position, he leads more than 600 scientists in research ranging from earth system science to biological systems science, chemical and materials sciences, applied mathematics and computer science, and nuclear and particle physics focused on DOE’s missions. He is especially enthusiastic about developing new tools for research. Current areas of emphasis include chemical imaging and analysis to understand how biological systems function and to understand and control how chemical processes occur, as well as the development of new computational methods to handle the vast amounts of data generated by extreme-scale simulations and new instrumentation.

    Ray earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Kalamazoo College Michigan in 1979 and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985.

    The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association. In addition to organizing membership activities, AAAS publishes the journal Science, as well as many scientific newsletters, books and reports, and spearheads programs that raise the bar of understanding for science worldwide.

  • New behavioral strategies may help patients learn to better control chronic diseases

    One of the most important health problems in the United States is the failure of patients with chronic diseases to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses.
     
    In a study published in the current Journal of General Internal Medicine, UCLA researchers and their colleagues suggest that physicians take a serious look at tools and strategies used in behavioral economics and social psychology to help motivate their patients to assert better control over chronic diseases. Breaking large goals into smaller, more manageable parts, for example, may help patients better manage diseases such as diabetes, the researchers say.
     
    Diagnosing diseases and discovering effective treatments aren’t the only challenges facing health care professionals in the United States, said Braden Mogler, the paper’s lead author and a third-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
     
    “One of the big challenges is simply finding ways to help the many patients with chronic diseases understand why treatment is important and how to follow it,” Mogler said. “Many doctors often lack effective tools to encourage patients in these ways. There is a lot of research from the social sciences on human behavior and encouraging individual change, and this paper shows how that research can potentially be applied to doctor–patient interactions.”
     
    In the study, the researchers highlight the shortcomings of some approaches frequently used to try to get individuals to control their diseases, such as scaring patients, overwhelming them with technical information, and focusing on consequences that are far in the future.
     
    They then identify several tools used by psychologists and behavioral economists that can change behavior but which have not been employed often in medical care, and suggest that research on such alternative approaches is an urgent need. These approaches include: 
    • Helping patients form very specific plans to achieve their health goals — for example, identifying the time when they will take their medicines, having them determine what they will do if their prescriptions run out and they don’t have a doctor’s appointment, and giving them a place to record whether they took the medicines.
    • Breaking big goals into smaller tasks that get patients to their ultimate goal step-by-step — useful for goals like extreme weight loss, adhering to medication regimens and checking blood sugar every day, or exercising several times a week.
    • Using cash payments to patients as a motivator to get them on track but supplementing that with strategies that will increase their desire to stay healthy and live longer.
    If studies show these techniques make a difference, they might improve health and decrease health care costs, said co-author Dr. Martin Shapiro, chief of the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
     
    “Helping patients get their chronic diseases under control sometimes requires changing medications but mostly comes down to helping patients understand why treatment is important and how they can follow it in their busy lives,” Shapiro said. “There is a lot of exciting research on how we can help people change to achieve their goals in other fields, and we believe translating those ideas to health care is an important next step in medical research.”
     
    The study’s authors found that some of these techniques are being used to a limited degree in health care settings — helping patients quit smoking by settling on an exact quit date, for instance, has proven more effective than speaking in general terms about quitting soon. Still, many other potentially effective techniques have not been studied in medical settings, and the authors stress the need for clinical trials to evaluate their effectiveness.
     
    The National Institutes of Health (grant 1RC4AG039077), the UCLA/Drew Project EXPORT and the David Geffen School of Medicine Department of Medicine’s Chiefs’ Fellowship funded this research.
     
    Other authors are Suzanne B. Shu, Craig R. Fox, Noah J. Goldstein, Ronald Victor and José J. Escarce of UCLA. Victor is also affiliated with the Cedars–Sinai Heart Institute.
     
    General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research is a division within the Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. It provides a unique interactive environment for collaborative efforts between health services researchers and clinical experts with experience in evidence-based work. The division’s 100-plus clinicians and researchers are engaged in a wide variety of projects that examine issues related to access to care, quality of care, health measurement, physician education, clinical ethics and doctor/patient communication. The division’s researchers have close working relationships with economists, statisticians, social scientists and other specialists throughout UCLA and frequently collaborate with their counterparts at the RAND Corp and Charles Drew University.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Nov. 27 symposium looks at effect of environmental toxins on women’s reproductive health in L.A.

    WHAT:         
    The Iris Cantor–UCLA Women’s Health Education and Resource Center and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Office of Women’s Health present “Women’s Reproductive Health and the Environment in Los Angeles County: Best Practices,” a day of presentations and workshops focusing on the latest research into environmental toxins and how they affect the reproductive health of women living in Los Angeles County.
     
    Topics will include geography and environmental toxins, emerging science in the field, and personal actions women can take to protect both themselves and the environment.
     
    SPEAKERS:
    The event will feature the following speakers:
     
    Rachel Morello-Frosch
    Associate professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley
    “Where We Live and Risks to Health: Geography and Environmental Toxins in Los Angeles County”
     
    Gina Solomon
    Deputy secretary for science and health at the California Environmental Protection Agency and clinical professor of medicine at UC San Francisco
    “Taking Action to Protect Women’s Health: Emerging Science from Research to Policy”
     
    Martha Dina Arguello
    Executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility–Los Angeles
    “What Every Woman Can Do Now: Supporting Policy and Taking Personal Action”
     
     
    WORKSHOPS:
    The event will feature the following workshops:
     
    Community advocacy
    “Program Design and Lessons Learned from Salon Initiatives in Communities of Color”
     
    Public policy
    “Incorporating Reproductive Health into Environmental Initiatives”
     
    Applying research
    “Assessing Toxic Exposures in the Clinical Environment”
     
     
    WHEN:
    8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. on Tuesday Nov. 27
     
    WHERE:      
    California Endowment, Center for Healthy Communities (Yosemite Room)
    1000 North Alameda Street , Los Angeles, Calif. 90012 (map)
     
    PARKING | REGISTRATION:
    Free parking is available at the California Endowment, Center for Healthy Communities. There is no cost for attending the symposium. The event is open to health professionals, academicians, community and government agencies, health care facilities, and students. To register, please contact Daphne Alexander at 310-794-8063 or [email protected].
     
    MEDIA CONTACT:          
    Kim Irwin | 310-794-2262 (office) | 310-435-9457 (cell)

  • UCLA performs first ‘breathing lung’ transplant in United States

     
    First there was the “heart in a box,” a revolutionary experimental technology that allows donor hearts to be delivered to transplant recipients warm and beating rather than frozen in an ice cooler.  
     
    Now that same technology is being used to deliver “breathing lungs.” 
     
    The lung transplant team at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical successfully performed the nation’s first “breathing lung” transplant in mid-November. The patient, a 57-year-old who suffered from pulmonary fibrosis — a disease in which the air sacs of the lungs are gradually replaced by scar tissue — received two new lungs and is recuperating from the seven-hour surgery.  
     
    The groundbreaking transplant involved an experimental organ-preservation device known as the Organ Care System (OCS), which keeps donor lungs functioning and “breathing” in a near-physiologic state outside the body during transport. The current standard involves transporting donor lungs in a non-functioning, non-breathing state inside an icebox.  
     
    With the OCS, the lungs are removed from a donor’s body and are placed in a high-tech OCS box, where they are immediately revived to a warm, breathing state and perfused with oxygen and a special solution supplemented with packed red-blood cells. The device also features monitors that display how the lungs are functioning during transport. 
     
    “Organs were never meant to be frozen on ice,” said Dr. Abbas Ardehali, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the heart and lung transplantation program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “Lungs are very sensitive and can easily be damaged during the donation process. The cold storage method does not allow for reconditioning of the lungs before transplantation, but this promising ‘breathing lung’ technology enables us to potentially improve the function of the donor lungs before they are placed in the recipient.”  
     
    UCLA is currently leading the U.S. arm of the international, multicenter pivotal clinical INSPIRE study of the OCS, developed by medical device company TransMedics; Ardehali is the principal investigator for UCLA. The purpose of the trial is to compare donor lungs transported using the OCS technology with the standard icebox method. The INSPIRE trial is also underway at lung transplant centers in Europe, Australia and Canada and will enroll a total of 264 randomized patients. 
     
    According to Ardehali, in addition to potentially improving donor-lung function, the technology could help transplant teams better assess donor lungs, since the organs can be tested in the device, over a longer period of time. 
     
    In addition, it could help expand the donor pool by allowing donor lungs to be safely transported across longer distances. 
     
    “For patients with end-stage lung disease, lung transplantation can dramatically improve the patient’s symptoms and offer relief from severe shortness of breath,” said Dr. David Ross, professor of medicine and medical director of UCLA’s lung and heart-lung transplantation program and UCLA’s pulmonary arterial hypertension and thromboendarterectomy program. “The ‘breathing lung’ technology could potentially make the transplantation process even better and improve the outcomes for patients suffering from lung disease.”   
     
    The “breathing lung” device follows on the heels of TransMedics’ “heart in a box” technology, which delivers donor hearts in a similar manner. The multicenter national study of the heart technology, also led by UCLA, is ongoing. 
     
    Results of a preliminary OCS lung study conducted in Europe were published in the Oct. 10 edition of the journal Lancet. The findings showed good lung transplantation outcomes following preservation using the OCS system. Read the Lancet study. 
     
    UCLA’s lung and heart-lung transplant program is the largest lung transplantation program on the West Coast and leads the nation in patient outcomes. The program pioneers novel technologies in lung preservation, recipient immune monitoring and immunosuppression and is responsible for significant advances in transplantation for extremely ill and high-risk transplant candidates.
     
    For more information about UCLA’s lung transplantation program and the INSPIRE trial, visit www.transplant.ucla.edu/lung. 
     
    Headquartered outside Boston, Mass., TransMedics Inc. is a privately held medical device company founded in 1998 to address the vital, unmet need for better, more effective organ transplant technologies. For more information, visit www.transmedics.com.
     
    Ardehali has no financial ties to disclose.  
     
     For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.