Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • School of Nursing clinic fights spread of TB on L.A.’s skid row

  • Stop hyperventilating, say energy efficiency researchers

    A single advanced building control now in development could slash 18 percent — tens of thousands of dollars — off the overall annual energy bill of the average large office building, with no loss of comfort, according to a report by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

    “An 18-percent boost in building energy efficiency by modifying a single factor is very, very good,” said team leader Michael Brambley. “The savings were much greater than we expected.”

    The report is based on extensive simulations of the impact of one type of advanced building control now in the offing in the building industry. The device is capable of customizing the level of ventilation by sensing the number of people in different areas or zones of a building and then adjusting fan speed and air movement accordingly.

    That’s a big change from the way most sensor-based ventilation systems operate now: Currently, if there is even a single person in a room, ventilation runs full blast, as if the room is full.

    But a room with just a few people doesn’t need nearly as much ventilation as a crowded room. Why have a fan pushing around air for ventilation for 100 people if there’s only one individual in the room? It’s like airing out your house completely because there’s one small whiff of bacon still in the kitchen.

    “This is the reason you often feel cold when you’re in a big space like a conference room or cafeteria without a lot of people,” said engineer Guopeng Liu, the lead author of the report. “Technology available today doesn’t detect how many people are in a room, and so air flow is at maximum capacity nearly constantly. That creates a big demand to re-heat the air before it enters the rooms. It takes a lot of energy to keep you comfortable under those circumstances.”

    Current occupancy sensors have helped the nation save significant amounts of energy by automatically turning off lights when they’re not needed. But the team estimates that the more advanced versions still to come — which count the number of people in rooms — will save approximately 28 times as much energy, when used both for lighting and ventilation, compared to current sensors.

    The project began three years ago when Liu began exploring the idea of adjusting air flow to different zones of a building based on the precise number of people in a room. That “decision” of how much air to move takes place in a piece of equipment known as a variable air volume terminal box. The new sensors that count people are likely to become available within the next few years. While they are currently very expensive, the technology is improving rapidly and the cost is expected to come down, Brambley noted.

    “We undertook this study to try to determine if this is a technology worth pursuing vigorously. The answer, clearly, is yes. Using the number of people in a room as a factor in determining the level of air flow offers great promise for saving energy and money,” said Brambley.

    To do its study, the team focused on a prototypical large commercial office building whose footprint is 160 feet by 240 feet — about 80 percent the size of a football field. The model building is 12 stories and also has a basement, giving it a total of about 500,000 square feet. Such buildings in the United States take up more than 4.4 billion square feet. To visualize the size, think of the land area covered by Seattle — and a little bit of its suburbs — as a giant one-story building.

    Brambley’s team programmed the simulation to heat a building if temperatures dipped below 70 degrees Fahrenheit and to provide cooling at temperatures beginning at 75 degrees. Numbers were set back 10 degrees on the evenings and weekends. Occupancy patterns were estimated based on past studies.

    In 13 of the nation’s 15 climate regions, the PNNL team estimates that the advanced controls would save at least $40,000 annually for each building similar in size to the one modeled in the study. In two cities, Baltimore and Fairbanks, the savings stretch to more than $100,000 each year, because of the greatly reduced need to heat new air being pumped in from the cold outdoors. Even in the two cities where the savings would be the least, El Paso and Miami, estimated savings come to $33,400 and $23,500, respectively.

    “While buildings have gotten much more efficient in the last two decades, there are still huge gains to be had,” noted Brambley.

    Since just a small percentage of office buildings in any given year are newly built, Brambley and Liu say a prime target for these advanced controls is retrofitting existing buildings. Liu notes that technology has leaped forward since 1989 — the year the average large office building was built – offering huge energy gains even with the expense of retrofitting.

    Since heating and cooling and related equipment usually draw much more energy than lighting, those systems offer a greater opportunity for savings. The team found that advanced controls for ventilation offer about eight times as much savings as advanced controls for lighting, where lights are turned off more quickly than is now common after everyone leaves a room. When the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system alone is considered, the advanced controls cut energy usage of the HVAC system by nearly 40 percent.

    A stumbling block to the new technology is that certain advanced controls might require modification to some building codes. For instance, current codes require some ventilation at all times no matter how many people are present. Brambley thinks the options are worth considering, given the energy savings at stake.

    In addition to Brambley and Liu, mechanical engineer Jian Zhang and engineer Robert Lutes contributed to the project. The work was support by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

    Reference: J. Zhang, R.G. Lutes, G. Liu and M.R. Brambley, Energy Savings for Occupancy-Based Control (OBC) of Variable-Air-Volume (VAV) Systems, funded by the U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, through the Building Technologies Program.

  • After-school exercise and nutrition programs can help reduce childhood obesity

    UCLA RESEARCH ALERT 
     
    FINDINGS:                            
    Research has shown that children from low-income neighborhoods are at higher risk of being obese and overweight than children from affluent neighborhoods; in fact, one-third of low-income children enter kindergarten either overweight or obese.
     
    In an effort to address this issue, UCLA researchers implemented and evaluated the effectiveness of a pilot after-school health-promotion program that focused on increasing students’ opportunities for physical activity and healthy snacks — and boosting their knowledge about physical activity and nutrition — at four low-income, diverse elementary schools in Los Angeles County (four additional school sites were used as comparisons). The study involved students in grades 3 through 5.
     
    After-school staff members were trained by UCLA researchers to implement the evidence-based, sequential nutrition and physical activity curriculum. Data were collected by researchers on students’ nutrition and physical activity knowledge and behavior, and their height and weight measurements, at the beginning and end of the academic year.
     
    Results showed that the proportion of children who were obese or overweight in the intervention group decreased by 3.1 percent by the end of the school year, compared with a 2.0 percent reduction among children in the comparison group. The study found mixed results regarding diet and physical activity knowledge and behavior. 
     
    The authors conclude that enhancing after-school physical activity opportunities through evidence-based programs can potentially benefit low-income children who are overweight or obese.
     
    IMPACT:                              
    Findings from this study indicate that after-school programs have the potential to provide opportunities for enhanced physical activity and the development of healthy habits in children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families who may have limited access to nutritious foods and environments conducive to physical activity outside of school.
     
    In addition, as approximately 60 percent of the students in the study were Asian-American, the study helps address the dearth of published research on childhood obesity among Asian-Americans. This is an important public health concern, given that Asian-Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the U.S., and the literature suggests that current definitions of obesity underestimate the disease risk among this subgroup, the study authors said.
     
    AUTHORS:                           
    Study authors included Dr. Wendy M. Slusser, Michael L. Prelip, Mienah Z. Sharif and Janni J. Kinsler of UCLA; Jennifer Toller Erausquin of the North Carolina Division of Public Health; and Daniel Collin of California State University Long Beach.
     
    JOURNAL:                           
    The article, “Improving Overweight Among At-Risk Minority Youth: Results of a Pilot Intervention in After-School Programs,” is published in a supplement to the current edition of  the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
     
    FUNDING:                           
    The study was supported by funds from the California Vitamin Settlement Fund (#20063972).

  • New alternative to surgery lets doctors remove suspicious polyps, keep colon intact

    Millions of people each year have polyps successfully removed during colonoscopies. But when a suspicious polyp is bigger than a marble or in a hard-to-reach location, patients are referred for surgery to remove a portion of their colon — even if doctors aren’t sure whether the polyp is cancerous or not. 
     
    Since only 15 percent of all polyps turn out to be malignant, many patients are unnecessarily subjected to the risks of this major surgery. Now there is an alternative.
     
    A UCLA team of surgeons and gastroenterologists has been performing a new, minimally invasive procedure to remove large and hard-to-reach polyps while keeping the colon intact. The procedure, which combines two minimally invasive techniques, has currently been performed at only a handful of medical centers in the United States.
     
    In the June issue of the journal Surgical Endoscopy, the UCLA researchers present their experiences using the new technique — known as CELS, for combination endoscopy and laparoscopy surgery — and offer the first comparison of the new technique and standard surgery.
     
    “The CELS approach combines the best of minimally invasive techniques and may prove to be a viable option for select patients,” said senior author Dr. James Yoo, an assistant professor of surgery and chief of the colon and rectal surgery program for the UCLA Health System and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
     
    For the study, the team compared outcomes for five patients who underwent the new procedure with outcomes for nine patients who received standard surgery to remove suspicious polyps between August 2008 and October 2012.
     
    The new technique starts out like a colonoscopy, with a gastroenterologist advancing an endoscope inside the colon. The endoscope, a device with a small video camera and a light attached, lets doctors to look inside the body cavity. Once a polyp is in sight and the gastroenterologist is ready to remove it, the surgeon uses minimally invasive surgical tools, inserted through two to four tiny incisions in the abdomen, to carefully maneuver and manipulate the colon, allowing the gastroenterologist better access to the polyp. 
     
    If the polyp is in a tricky location, such as a fold of the colon, the surgeon can gently undo the fold temporarily. If the polyp is large and deeply embedded, the surgeon can monitor the outside of the colon with a tiny camera and, if needed, perform minor wall repair to the colon after the polyp is removed.  
     
    Once the polyp is removed, it is immediately taken to the lab for analysis to determine if it’s benign or cancerous, while the team and patient wait in the operating room. The analysis takes about 30 minutes. If the polyp turns out to be cancerous, the team proceeds with the standard surgery to remove the affected portion of the colon.
     
    According to the UCLA report, all polyps were successfully removed with the new CELS procedure, and the complication rate was lower than with standard surgery. Four out of the five patients who had the CELS procedure, and six out of nine patients who received standard surgery, were found to have benign polyps.
     
    The procedure time and hospital stay were shorter with the new procedure, the researchers found. Operating time averaged 159 minutes, compared with 205 minutes for standard surgery, and the median hospital stay was one night with the new procedure and five nights with standard surgery.
     
    “The majority of patients in the study had a benign polyp,” Yoo said. “We found that the new procedure can be performed safely with outcomes that compare favorably with standard surgery for these select patients.”
     
    In the majority of the CELS cases, findings from the quick lab analysis were accurate. However, one patient’s final pathology report, which came back a week later, showed that the polyp was cancerous, so that patient was scheduled for standard surgery.
     
    Yoo noted that in the future, newer imaging methods and lab analysis may make it easier to differentiate between a benign and malignant polyp. 
     
    “Although this is a small study with one institution’s experience, newer technology is helping doctors raise the bar and offer more minimally invasive procedures with less down-time and trauma for the patient,” said Dr. Eric Esrailian, co-chief of the division of digestive diseases for the UCLA Health System and the Geffen School of Medicine, who was part of the UCLA team.
     
    Physicians note that patients who successfully undergo the CELS procedure still require follow-up endoscopic evaluation and that surgery is still the standard treatment for cancer or cancerous polyps — or if the polyp cannot be removed endoscopically even with the CELS technique.
     
    The next step in research, according to the UCLA team, is a multi-institutional study to further examine use of the CELS approach to better characterize its impact on surgery.
     
    The study received no outside funding.
     
    Additional authors included Minna K. Lee, Formosa Chen, Marcia McFory Russell, Jonathan Sack and Anne Y. Lin.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Hormone therapy for endometrial cancer targets connective tissue, not tumor cells

    The female hormone progesterone has been used for several decades as a therapy for endometrial cancer, which starts in the lining of the uterus. Yet scientists didn’t understand the mechanisms behind the therapy or its site of action.
     
    Now, a new a study from the G.O. Discovery Lab team at UCLA and UCLA collaborators shows that progesterone, rather than directly targeting tumors, eliminates tumor cells indirectly by binding to progesterone receptors in connective tissue cells (stroma) in the tumors’ microenvironment.
     
    Like breast and prostate tumors, endometrial cancer is regulated by hormones. But unlike therapies for those cancers, in which drugs block hormone signaling, progesterone therapy actually stimulates its hormone receptor, the researchers found.
     
    While doctors know that a certain subsets of patients will benefit from progesterone treatment, prescribing the therapy is like shooting in the dark because it’s unclear in advance which women will respond and which may have resistant tumors, according to the study’s senior author, Dr. Sanaz Memarzadeh, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the G.O. Discovery Lab at UCLA. Therefore, while progesterone can be effective as a therapy in endometrial cancer, its use is not widely embraced in clinical practice, she said.
     
    “When viewing tumors under the microscope, clinicians often focus on the cancer cells and neglect the supporting stroma in the microenvironment,” said Memarzadeh, who also is a researcher at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. “In this study, we found that all of the progesterone anti-tumor effects are in fact mediated through the stroma, even though it makes up a minor fraction of the tumor. I believe these exciting findings are going to surprise the clinical community and change the way people look at patterns of hormone-receptor expression in endometrial tumors.”
     
    The results of the three-year study, done using a specially developed laboratory model created by Memarzadeh’s team that closely mimics human endometrial cancer, appear in the early online edition of Cancer Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. 
     
    Memarzadeh and her team showed that when progesterone receptors are deleted from stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment, progesterone therapy won’t work. However, in a model of hormone-resistant endometrial cancer, they found that tumor cells became sensitive to hormone therapy when the progesterone receptors were returned to adjacent cells in the microenvironment.
     
    “We were really surprised to find that when we added back the progesterone receptor to the microenvironment, tumors that before did not respond to the treatment simply melted away,” said the study’s first author, Deanna Janzen, a senior research associate with the G.O. Discovery Lab. “Making one genetic change in the tumor microenvironment — deleting or adding back the progesterone receptor — completely changed the biology of the tumor. That was a striking finding.”
     
    Going forward, Memarzadeh and her team will translate this work into studies of human samples of endometrial cancer to see if their findings apply to patients. They hope to discover biomarkers that indicate response or resistance to hormone therapy. They also plan to find and test drugs that can reverse progesterone resistance, making cells sensitive to hormone therapy. This approach will provide a potential combination therapy that could prove effective for women with disseminated endometrial cancer.
     
    Currently, the most common treatment for early-stage endometrial cancer is a hysterectomy, followed by radiation and/or chemotherapy. Doctors may prescribe progesterone to endometrial cancer patients who are seeking to preserve their fertility, although they don’t know whether it will be effective. Therefore, finding biomarkers that indicate a response to therapy would provide clinicians with a valuable tool, Memarzadeh said.
     
    Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States. About 49,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year alone, and about 8,000 women in the U.S. will die from their cancers. The chance of a woman being diagnosed with this cancer in her lifetime is about one in 38, according to the American Cancer Society.
     
    “This finding may have critical clinical implications, as it demonstrates that modulation of the tumor microenvironment can reverse hormone resistance in endometrial tumors,” the study states. “In future work, we will test if stromal-specific delivery of DNA methyltransferase inhibitors may be an effective way to re-sensitize hormone refractory endometrial cancers to progesterone therapy.”
     
    Ultimately, the G.O. Discovery Lab team hopes to develop a simple test so that, after biopsy and analysis of an endometrial tumor, physicians will be able to figure out whether or not their patient is a good candidate for hormonal therapy.
     
    The study was funded by the Veterans Administration Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, the Scholars in Translational Medicine Program, a Mary Kay Award, a Charles Drew University/UCLA National Institutes of Health grant (U54-CA-143931), a Sidney Kimmel Foundation award, the Concern Foundation, and a UCLA Cancer Research Coordinating Committee grant.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Antihistamines may increase pregnancy risks for women with severe morning sickness

    Women with a severe form of morning sickness who take antihistamines to help them sleep through their debilitating nausea are significantly more likely to experience premature births or have low–birth-weight babies, a UCLA study has found.
     
    The findings, the first to link antihistamine use to adverse pregnancy outcomes, are important because babies born at 37 weeks or earlier often are hospitalized longer than full-term babies, can experience problems breathing and feeding, are more prone to infection and can suffer from developmental problems. Women with morning sickness who are considering taking such medications should know the risks, said Marlena Fejzo, the study’s lead author an assistant professor of research in obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA.
     
    The severe morning sickness, called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), is the same condition that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, recently experienced. Its cause is unknown and the symptoms are intense: The continuous nausea and vomiting can be so violent that women in the study reported suffering from detached retinas, blown eardrums, cracked ribs and torn esophagi, Fejzo said. The symptoms can last for several months or the entire pregnancy.
     
    “It was surprising to find the link between antihistamines and adverse outcomes as these are over-the-counter medications that are used commonly by women with HG during pregnancy,” said Fejzo, who had undiagnosed HG during her first pregnancy and nearly died during her second and lost the baby. “Women and their healthcare providers should be aware of the risk for adverse outcomes when deciding which medications to take to treat their HG symptoms.”
     
    The study appears June 10 in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.
     
    The six-year study compared pregnancy outcomes in two groups of women. The first was composed of 254 women with HG who were sick enough to require treatment for dehydration with intravenous fluids. The second was made up of 308 women with normal or no morning sickness during pregnancy. The researchers found women with HG had four times the risk of adverse outcomes, confirming a link between HG and adverse outcomes that had been shown in several previous studies.
     
    The study then compared women with HG who suffered adverse outcomes to women with HG who had good outcomes. Researchers looked at whether any of more than 35 medications and treatments that are commonly used by women with HG were linked to bad outcomes. They found that more than 50 percent of HG patients who experienced adverse outcomes took over-the-counter medications containing antihistamines.
     
    Fejzo also found that the medications were reportedly effective in less than 20 percent of the women who took them.
     
    “Some doctors will suggest that their HG patients take Unisom to help them sleep through their nausea,” Fejzo said. “Our findings show not only that the use of antihistamines is linked with adverse outcomes, but also that they’re not that effective. Women with HG should be aware of that so they can make educated decisions on how to treat their HG symptoms.”
     
    Adrienne Downs of Culver City, Calif., experienced some nausea and vomiting during her first two pregnancies, but nothing out of the ordinary. Her third pregnancy has not been so run-of-the-mill. Early in the pregnancy, she suffered from constant nausea, vomiting approximately every 20 minutes around the clock. She was hospitalized twice for five days each time, and had to get intravenous fluids to treat her severe dehydration and malnutrition.
     
    “I literally could keep nothing down for months,” Downs said. “I couldn’t even get up out of bed and take care of my family. It was horrible. I was very scared for my baby. How would it get any nutrition if I couldn’t eat or drink?”
     
    Downs lost 12 pounds in three weeks. Her mother had to move in to take care of her and her sons, ages 4 and 2. 
     
    Now that she is past 21 weeks gestation, Downs’ symptoms have subsided somewhat, but she still can only keep down fluids. She has gained back some of the weight she lost. Although she did not take antihistamines to treat her HG symptoms, Downs said the findings are important.
     
    “As pregnant moms, we want to be the best ‘house’ for our babies that we can,” she said. “I had never heard of this condition before I got it, so I’m glad that UCLA researchers are studying HG and may one day find the cause.”
     
    HG is diagnosed in up to 2 percent of pregnant women, although rates are higher in China. Fejzo said much more work needs to be done to understand the short- and long-term effects of medication use during pregnancy. For example, she and her team are studying women with HG pregnancies to determine if the violent nausea and vomiting have any effects on the children later in life.
     
    “We desperately need support for research into HG to determine its cause so that medications can be designed that are safe and effective,” Fejzo said. “The greatest risk factor for HG other than a previous HG pregnancy is having a sister who had HG, which increases the risk by 17-fold. This suggests a genetic component is at work.”
     
    Fejzo and her team are collecting saliva from women with HG and women with normal pregnancies and are studying the DNA they extract for genes that may predispose women for HG. She hopes that once a cause is discovered, drugs can be developed to either prevent or more effectively treat the condition.
     
    The study was funded by the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA rated among nation’s top pediatric hospitals by U.S. News

    Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA has been recognized as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report and is among a select group of hospitals to be ranked in all 10 of the specialty areas reviewed in the magazine’s 2013–14 “Best Children’s Hospitals” survey.
     
    Nationally, the hospital was recognized for excellence in the following categories: nephrology (ranked No. 8), gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery (11), diabetes and endocrinology (12), orthopedics (17), neurology and neurosurgery (24), heart and heart surgery (26), neonatology (33), cancer (39), urology (40) and pulmonology (44).
     
    “These rankings acknowledge our dedicated doctors, nurses and staff, who proudly deliver great care and compassion to the children and families at Mattel Children’s Hospital,” said Dr. Sherin Devaskar, the hospital’s physician-in-chief and UCLA’s assistant vice chancellor for children’s health, who holds the Mattel Executive Endowed Chair in the UCLA Department of Pediatrics.  
     
    “Most notably, among the ranked hospitals in California, our diabetes–endocrinology, gastroenterology and nephrology specialties ranked in the top two, and our orthopedic specialty ranked in the top three programs,” Devaskar said.
     
    The rankings highlight the top 50 U.S. hospitals in each of the 10 specialty areas. Eighty-seven hospitals were ranked in at least one specialty. In California, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA was one of only three hospitals ranked in all 10 categories.
     
    U.S. News introduced the “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings in 2007 to help families of sick children find the best medical care available. The rankings offer families an exclusive look at quality-related information at the individual hospital level.
     
    Each hospital’s reputation among doctors was only a small part of what U.S. News factored into its rankings. Three-quarters of the score was determined by an analysis of patient outcomes and data on the structural resources each hospital has for pediatric care.
     
    To gather data, U.S. News used two surveys: a clinical questionnaire sent to 179 pediatric hospitals and a separate reputational assessment in which 1,500 physicians — 150 pediatric specialists and subspecialists in each category — were asked where they would send the sickest children in their specialty if location and expense were not a concern.
     
    For each hospital, survival rates, the adequacy of nurse staffing, the volume of procuedures and much more can be viewed at http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/pediatric-rankings. The rankings will be published in U.S. News’ “Best Hospitals 2014″guidebook, available beginning in August.
     
    “Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA deserves high praise,” said Avery Comarow, the health rankings editor at U.S. News. “Ranking shows the dedication and expertise that Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA brings to the care of children who need those qualities the most. We think it is important to identify and call attention to pediatric centers like this one.”
     
    Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, one of the highest-rated children’s hospitals in California, is a vital component of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, ranked the fifth best hospital in nation and best in the western United States by U.S. News & World Report. Mattel Children’s Hospital offers a full spectrum of primary and specialized medical care for infants, children and adolescents. The hospital’s mission is to provide state-of-the-art medical and surgical treatment for children in a compassionate atmosphere and to improve the understanding and treatment of pediatric diseases.  
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Bullock honored by Royal Society of Chemistry

    Morris Bullock, a Laboratory Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and director of the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, was selected to receive the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Homogeneous Catalysis Award. The organization presents the award every two years.

    Bullock was recognized for his “seminal work on transition metal hydrides, his pioneering use of inexpensive metals for homogeneous catalysis and the development of a new programme on molecular electrocatalysis.”

    Catalysts speed up chemical reactions and are used to make a wide variety of industrial processes more efficient, including production of commercial chemical products, food processing, and energy production from alternate sources. Additionally, catalysts are used to improve fuel efficiency and reduce harmful emissions. Homogeneous catalysis focuses on using catalysts that are in the same liquid “phase” as the other substances.

    Transition metal hydride catalysts have metals bonded to hydrogen. Replacing precious metals such as platinum with less expensive catalysts such as iron and nickel can result in both cost-savings and decreased environmental impacts. Additionally, the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis is focused on developing a comprehensive understanding of how chemical and electrical energy is stored and utilized for applications in the development of non-fossil fuel sources.

    As part of the award, Bullock has been invited to deliver a lecture at four universities within the United Kingdom between October 2013 and May 2014. The award, including a medal, certificate, and £2000 honorarium, will be presented at a symposium associated with one of the lectures.

    Bullock joined PNNL in 2006 and has more than 110 publications overall during his career. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1979 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a doctorate in chemistry in 1983 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    The Royal Society of Chemistry is the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences and is supported by a worldwide network of members and an international publishing business. Their activities include education, conferences, science policy and the promotion of chemistry to the public.

  • UCLA earns elite ranking on survey of state physician groups’ patient-care capabilities

    The UCLA Medical Group has earned a four-star ranking, the highest achievement possible, in the California Association of Physician Groups’ (CAPG) seventh annual Standards of Excellence survey.
     
    The survey is a voluntary, critical self-assessment for the CAPG’s 150 medical group members in California. It tallies the “tools” required for health care systems to deliver a better patient experience, better population health and better affordability, as outlined in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim initiative.
     
    This year, 36 organizations achieved elite status, which involved intense testing and documentation.
     
    “The UCLA Medical Group is honored to receive this important recognition and we are very proud of our four-star rating,” said Dr. Samuel A. Skootsky, chief medical officer of the UCLA Faculty Practice and Medical Group. “Participation in this survey has encouraged us to continually improve upon our capabilities in care coordination and case management to the benefit of the patients we serve — and to demonstrate our commitment to healing humankind one patient at a time.”
     
    “The architects of health care reform have set the bar not merely to get by but to far surpass all expectations for truly coordinated patient care,” said Dr. Wells Shoemaker, CAPG’s medical director. “We know from the experience of our member groups that it takes determined leadership, synchronized initiatives across hundreds of physicians, and leading-edge tech tools to honor the individual patient experience, improve the health of populations, and hone the efficiency of our country’s health care system.
     
    The Standards of Excellence survey assesses medical groups’ practices in four key domains:
     
    Care management practices
    Providing timely, safe, effective, efficient care and constantly working to improve care.
     
    Health information technology
    Technical tools required to support care management practices, as well as individual care coordination, population awareness, performance measurement and feedback.
     
    Accountability and transparency
    Responding to the demands of the people the medical groups serve.
     
    Patient-centered care
    Developing and maintaining a high-quality service culture in the nation’s most diverse state.
     
    “CAPG’s Standards of Excellence documents precisely those features,” Shoemaker said.” Organizations that excel in the survey’s four key domains join a truly elite category of pioneering health care organizations.”
     
    The California Association of Physician Groups represents 150 groups that employ or contract with nearly 60,000 California doctors and provide care to 18 million Californians.  CAPG is committed to improving healthcare for Californians and supports a progressive and organized system of healthcare delivery, which focuses on coordinated treatment plans and comprehensive coverage, including the most current preventive services and exams.  This allows physicians to focus on illness prevention and proactive management of patients in order to maintain their optimum level of health.
     
    The UCLA Health System, which comprises the UCLA Hospital System and the UCLA Medical Group and its affiliates, has provided a high quality of health care and the most advanced treatment options to the people of Los Angeles and the world for more than half a century. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, and UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica (which includes the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital) deliver hospital care that is unparalleled in California. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is consistently ranked one of the top five hospitals in the nation and the best in the western United States by U.S. News & World Report. UCLA physicians and hospitals continue to be world leaders in the full range of care, from maintaining the health of families to the diagnosis and treatment of complex illnesses.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • $18 million to study deadly secrets of Flu, Ebola, West Nile viruses

    Viruses such as Ebola, West Nile and Influenza all have the potential to kill people they infect, but antiviral drugs either don’t exist or are losing effectiveness. A new $18 million study led by pathobiologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with support from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory seeks to provide a detailed molecular understanding of how humans respond to these viral pathogens. The study’s goal is to design and develop new drugs to thwart infection.

    The plan is ambitious, seeking to build virtual models of organs the viruses attack — the liver and the lung — and to validate their accuracy with experiments in animals in five years. To acquire enough molecular data to create the models, PNNL researchers will perform high-throughput experiments that allow them to make thousands of measurements at a time. About a third of the funding, or $6.6 million, will support the PNNL team’s effort to gather data and model the data on computers.

    Computational scientist Katrina Waters and analytical biochemist Richard D. Smith will lead the PNNL team. Research teams from Wisconsin, Washington University in St. Louis and Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., will infect mice and cell cultures and prepare the samples in laboratories with the appropriate safeguards. The samples will be sent to PNNL and EMSL, the DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL campus.

    At PNNL, researchers will explore four different molecular profiles of the animal tissue and cell culture samples that show:

    • Which proteins are produced by genes within the cells;
    • Which proteins are active based on the most common molecular accessory found on proteins, a phosphate. Traditionally, researchers have chosen many successful drug targets based on this fact;
    • Which cellular processes are occurring based on metabolic products;
    • The collection of fats that serve as either structural components, energy stores or as signals within cells.

    All this data will paint a picture of what is going on during infection. To see that picture, the team will combine these and other available data in state-of-the-art computer models. By predicting how bodies behave when infected by the viruses, these computer programs will help researchers find new approaches to prevent or fight infection.

    Click here to read the entire release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Making sense of patterns in the Twitterverse

    If you think keeping up with what’s happening via Twitter, Facebook and other social media is like drinking from a fire hose, multiply that by 7 billion — and you’ll have a sense of what Court Corley wakes up to every morning.

    Corley, a data scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has created a powerful digital system capable of analyzing billions of tweets and other social media messages in just seconds, in an effort to discover patterns and make sense of all the information. His social media analysis tool, dubbed “SALSA” (SociAL Sensor Analytics), combined with extensive know-how — and a fair degree of chutzpah — allows someone like Corley to try to grasp it all.

    “The world is equipped with human sensors — more than 7 billion and counting. It’s by far the most extensive sensor network on the planet. What can we learn by paying attention?” Corley said.

    Among the payoffs Corley envisions are emergency responders who receive crucial early information about natural disasters such as tornadoes; a tool that public health advocates can use to better protect people’s health; and information about social unrest that could help nations protect their citizens. But finding those jewels amidst the effluent of digital minutia is a challenge.

    “The task we all face is separating out the trivia, the useless information we all are blasted with every day, from the really good stuff that helps us live better lives. There’s a lot of noise, but there’s some very valuable information too.”

    The work by Corley and colleagues Chase Dowling, Stuart Rose and Taylor McKenzie was named best paper given at the IEEE conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics in Seattle this week.

    Immensely rich data set

    One person’s digital trash is another’s digital treasure. For example, people known in social media circles as “Beliebers,” named after entertainer Justin Bieber, covet inconsequential tidbits about Justin Bieber, while “non-Beliebers” send that data straight to the recycle bin.

    The amount of data is mind-bending. In social media posted just in the single year ending Aug. 31, 2012, each hour on average witnessed:

    • 30 million comments
    • 25 million search queries
    • 98,000 new tweets
    • 3.8 million blog views
    • 4.5 million event invites
    • 7.1 million photos uploaded
    • 5.5 million status updates
    • The equivalent of 453 years of video watched

    Several firms routinely sift posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media, then analyze the data to see what’s trending. These efforts usually require a great deal of software and a lot of person-hours devoted specifically to using that application. It’s what Corley terms a manual approach.

    Corley is out to change that, by creating a systematic, science-based, and automated approach for understanding patterns around events found in social media.

    It’s not so simple as scanning tweets. Indeed, if Corley were to sit down and read each of the more than 20 billion entries in his data set from just a two-year period, it would take him more than 3,500 years if he spent just 5 seconds on each entry. If he hired 1 million helpers, it would take more than a day.

    But it takes less than 10 seconds when he relies on PNNL’s Institutional Computing resource, drawing on a computer cluster with more than 600 nodes named Olympus, which is among the Top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world.

    “We are using the institutional computing horsepower of PNNL to analyze one of the richest data sets ever available to researchers,” Corley said.

    At the same time that his team is creating the computing resources to undertake the task, Corley is constructing a theory for how to analyze the data. He and his colleagues are determining baseline activity, culling the data to find routine patterns, and looking for patterns that indicate something out of the ordinary. Data might include how often a topic is the subject of social media, who is putting out the messages, and how often.

    Corley notes additional challenges posed by social media. His programs analyze data in more than 60 languages, for instance. And social media users have developed a lexicon of their own and often don’t use traditional language. A post such as “aw my avalanna wristband @Avalanna @justinbieber rip angel pic.twitter.com/yldGVV7GHk” poses a challenge to people and computers alike.

    Nevertheless, Corley’s program is accurate much more often than not, catching the spirit of a social media comment accurately more than three out of every four instances, and accurately detecting patterns in social media more than 90 percent of the time.

    Public health, emergency response

    Much of the work so far has been around public health. According to media reports in China, the current H7N9 flu situation in China was highlighted on Sina Weibo, a China-based social media platform, weeks before it was recognized by government officials. And Corley’s work with the social media working group of the International Society for Disease Surveillance focuses on the use of social media for effective public health interventions.

    In collaboration with the Infectious Disease Society of America and Immunizations 4 Public Health, he has focused on the early identification of emerging immunization safety concerns.

    “If you want to understand the concerns of parents about vaccines, you’re never going to have the time to go out there and read hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of tweets about those questions or concerns,” Corley said. “By creating a system that can capture trends in just a few minutes, and observe shifts in opinion minute to minute, you can stay in front of the issue, for instance, by letting physicians in certain areas know how to customize the educational materials they provide to parents of young children.”

    Corley has looked closely at reaction to the vaccine that protects against HPV, which causes cervical cancer. The first vaccine was approved in 2006, when he was a graduate student, and his doctoral thesis focused on an analysis of social media messages connected to HPV. He found that creators of messages that named a specific drug company were less likely to be positive about the vaccine than others who did not mention any company by name.

    Other potential applications include helping emergency responders react more efficiently to disasters like tornadoes, or identifying patterns that might indicate coming social unrest or even something as specific as a riot after a soccer game. More than a dozen college students or recent graduates are working with Corley to look at questions like these and others.

    Working with Corley on this project are Dowling, a research associate; Rose, an engineer who was crucial to creating the computing power necessary to do the research; and McKenzie, a former intern and now a graduate student at the University of Oregon Department of Economics.

    Funding for this project comes from PNNL’s Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program. Corley also receives funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the U.S. Department of State.

  • Fat chance: Scientists unexpectedly discover stress-resistant stem cells in adipose tissue

    Researchers from the UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have isolated a new population of primitive, stress-resistant human pluripotent stem cells that are easily derived from fat tissue and are able to differentiate into virtually every cell type in the human body without genetic modification.
     
    The cells, called multi-lineage stress-enduring stem cells from adipose tissue (Muse-AT), were discovered by “scientific accident” when a piece of equipment failed in the laboratory, killing all the stem cells in an experiment except the Muse-AT cells.
     
    The UCLA team further discovered that not only are Muse-AT cells able to survive severe stress, they may even be activated by it, said Gregorio Chazenbalk, an associate researcher with UCLA Obstetrics and Gynecology and the senior author of the research.
     
    These pluripotent cells, isolated from fat tissue removed during liposuction, expressed many embryonic stem-cell markers and were able to differentiate into muscle, bone, fat, cardiac, neuronal and liver cells. An examination of their genetic characteristics confirmed their specialized functions, as well as their capacity to regenerate tissue when transplanted back into the body following their “awakening.”
     
    “This population of cells lies dormant in the fat tissue until it is subjected to very harsh conditions,” Chazenbalk said. “These cells can survive in conditions in which usually only cancer cells can live.
     
    “Upon further investigation and clinical trials,” he added, “these cells could prove a revolutionary treatment option for numerous diseases, including heart disease and stroke and for tissue damage and neural regeneration.”
     
    The results of the two-year study are published June 5 in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.
     
    Purifying and isolating Muse-AT cells does not require the use of a cell sorter or other specialized high-tech devices, the researchers said. The cells are able to grow either in suspension, forming cell spheres, or as adherent cells, forming cell aggregates very similar to the embryoid bodies derived from human embryonic stem cells.
     
    “We have been able to isolate these cells using a simple and efficient method that takes about six hours from the time the fat tissue is harvested,” said Chazenbalk, who is also a scientist with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. “This research offers a new and exciting source of fat stem cells with pluripotent characteristics, as well as a new method for quickly isolating them. These cells also appear to be more primitive than the average fat stem cells, making them potentially superior sources for regenerative medicine.”
     
    Currently, embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells — skin cells turned into embryonic-like cells — are the two main sources of pluripotent cells. However, both types can exhibit an uncontrolled capacity for differentiation and proliferation, leading to the formation of unwanted teratomas, or tumors. Little progress has been made in resolving that defect, Chazenbalk said.
     
    Muse cells were originally discovered by a research group at Tokohu University in Japan and were derived from bone marrow and skin, rather than fat. That research group showed that Muse cells did not produce teratomas in animal models. Further research on the Muse-AT cells isolated at UCLA will need to be done to determine whether that cell population avoids the production of teratomas.
     
    In addition to providing a potential source of cells for regenerative medicine, Chazenbalk said the Muse-AT cells may lead to a better understanding of cancer cells, the only other cells known to display such stress resistance.
     
    Going forward, Chazenbalk and his team will use Muse-AT cells in animal models to regenerate damaged or dysfunctional tissue to determine how efficiently the cells grow and perform in the body and to gauge their potential for future clinical use.
     
    “Because lipoaspiration is a safe and non-invasive procedure and Muse-AT cell isolation requires a simple yet highly efficient purification technique, Muse-AT cells could provide an ideal source of pluripotent-like stem cells,” the study states. “Muse-AT cells have the potential to make a critical impact on the field of regenerative medicine.”
     
    The study was funded by the UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institutes of Health (through the cooperative agreement U54 HD071836) and by the department of stem cell biology at Japan’s Tohoku University.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Built to battle: Students build ‘sumo robots’ using circuit board designed by PNNL volunteer

    Tri-Cities students at Delta and Kamiakin high schools are nearly finished building dozens of mini robots using a circuit board designed by Duane Balvage, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory electrical technician.

    Balvage has volunteered as a guest instructor for the past two years at Delta High School, southeast Washington’s only science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, school. Last year he started redesigning the circuit board students are using this spring to build “sumo robots”.

    The bots are built to duel inside a circular ring called a “dohyo”, named after the ring in which real-life sumo wrestlers compete. Unlike remote-controlled robots, sumo robots are self-automated, meaning they use sensors and programming to hunt down and push their opponents out of the dohyo. Both schools plan to hold competitions at the end of the school year.

    Jim Hendricks has been teaching students how to build sumo robots for 11 years, the last 4 years as an instructor of Delta High School’s engineering technology class. But when Balvage saw the circuit board his stepson was using last year in Hendricks’ class, he thought he could make improvements. He said the old board, like a closed box, made it difficult for students to learn what was going on inside.

    Balvage designed the new circuit board with a layout that students could learn from. He also added six sensors instead of two, LED lights that indicate a sensor is working, and a dual power supply that increases battery life beyond one match.

    But the improvements don’t end with the physical board. Balvage also created instructions and a 3D digital model to help students learn about electronics as they build their bots. And for the last few months, he’s been volunteering to visit Delta High School weekly to help students design, build and troubleshoot their robots.

    Hendricks said Balvage brings a lot to his class.

    “He explains things in a very simple way, where kids-and teachers-can understand it,” Hendricks said.

    Balvage has designed and built electrical technology at PNNL for four years. In one of his current projects, he is designing a finger-sized circuit board packed with instruments that measure the forces acting on fish as they pass through hydroelectric dam turbines. The circuit board will be placed in an upgraded version of PNNL’s “Sensor Fish“, which helps scientists evaluate how dams affect migrating fish.

    Balvage said his job at PNNL is to build electronic devices and systems that work more efficiently and seamlessly. He hopes the students he interacts with will take to heart his philosophy of improving technology.

    “If I can use what I know to help students learn, they might take this path,” Balvage said.

    For more about Sensor Fish, click here.

  • Common gene known to cause inherited autism now linked to specific behaviors

    The genetic malady known as Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of inherited autism and intellectual disability. Brain scientists know the gene defect that causes the syndrome and understand the damage it does in misshaping the brain’s synapses — the connections between neurons. But how this abnormal shaping of synapses translates into abnormal behavior is unclear.
     
    Now, researchers at UCLA believe they know. Using a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome (FXS), they recorded the activity of networks of neurons in a living mouse brain while the animal was awake and asleep. They found that during both sleep and quiet wakefulness, these neuronal networks showed too much activity, firing too often and in sync, much more than a normal brain.
     
    This neuronal excitability, the researchers said, may be the basis for symptoms in children with FXS, which can include disrupted sleep, seizures or learning disabilities. The findings may lead to treatments that could quiet the excessive activity and allow for more normal behavior.
     
    The study results are published in the June 2 online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
     
    According to the National Fragile X Foundation, approximately one in every 3,600 to 4,000 males has the disorder, as does one in 4,000 to 6,000 females. FXS is caused by a mutation in the gene FMR1, which encodes the fragile X mental retardation protein, or FMRP. That protein is believed to be important for the formation and regulation of synapses. Mice that lack the FMR1 gene — and therefore lack the FMRP protein — show some of the same symptoms of human FXS, including seizures, impaired sleep, abnormal social relationships and learning defects.
     
    “We wanted to find the link between the abnormal structure of synapses in the FXS mouse and the behavioral abnormalities at the level of brain circuits. That had not been previously established,” said senior author Dr. Carlos Portera-Cailliau, an associate professor in the departments of neurology and neurobiology at UCLA. ” So we tested the signaling between different neurons in Fragile X mice and indeed found there was abnormally high firing of action potentials — the signals between neurons — and also abnormally high synchrony — that is, too many neurons fired together. That’s a feature that is common in early brain development, but not in the adult.”
     
    “In essence, this points to a relative immaturity of brain circuits in FXS,” added Tiago Gonçalves, a former postdoctoral researcher in Portera-Cailliau’s laboratory and the first author of the study.
     
    The researchers used two-photon calcium imaging and patch-clamp electrophysiology — two sophisticated technologies that allowed them to record the signals from individual brain cells. Abnormally high firing and network synchrony, said Portera-Cailliau, is evidence of the fact that neuronal circuits are overexcitable in FXS.
     
    “That likely leads to aberrant brain function or impairments in the normal computations of the brain,” he said. “For example, high synchrony could lead to seizures; more neurons firing together could cause entire portions of the brain to fire synchronously, which is the basis of seizures.”
     
    And epilepsy, Portera-Cailliau said, is seen in up to 20 percent of children with FXS. High firing rates could also impair the ability of the brain to decode sensory stimuli by causing an overwhelming response to even simple sensory stimuli; this could lead to autism and the withdrawal from social interactions, he noted.
     
    “Interestingly, we found that the high firing and synchrony were especially apparent at times when the animals were asleep,” said Portera-Cailliau. “This is curious because a prominent symptom of FXS is disrupted sleep and frequent awakenings.” 
     
    And, he noted, since sleep is important for encoding memories and consolidating learning, this hyperexcitability of brain networks in FXS may interfere with the process of laying down new memories, and perhaps explain the learning disability in children with FXS.
     
    “Because brain scientists know a lot about the factors that regulate neuronal excitability, including inhibitory neurons, they can now try to use a variety of strategies to dampen neuronal excitation,” he said. “Hopefully, this may be helpful to treat symptoms of FXS.”
     
    The next step, said Portera-Cailliau, is to explore whether Fragile X mice indeed exhibit exaggerated responses to sensory stimuli.
     
    “An overwhelming reaction to a slight sound or caress, or hyperarousal to sensory stimuli, could be common to different types of autism and not just FXS,” he said. “If hyperexcitability is the brain-network basis for these symptoms, then reducing neuronal excitability with certain drugs that modulate inhibition could be of therapeutic value in these devastating neurodevelopmental disorders.”
     
    Other authors on the study included Peyman Golshani of UCLA and James E. Anstey of the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine. The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD R01HD054453 and NINDS RC1NS068093), the FRAXA Research Foundation, and the Dana Foundation.
     
    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.

  • Simple screening test at UCLA catches newborn’s hidden heart condition

    Before he was discharged from UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, baby Gaël Villegas received the standard panel of newborn screenings to check for genetic and metabolic diseases and hearing. The results showed a healthy baby.
     
    Then, one more screening — a non-mandatory test that the UCLA Health System routinely offers — was performed to check for critical congenital heart disease, or CCHD.
     
    The test, known as a pulse oximetry screening, detected a problem. Baby Gaël was soon diagnosed with a condition that prevented his blood from flowing properly, and he was transferred to Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA in Westwood. At seven days old, he underwent a six-hour open-heart surgery with Dr. Hillel Laks, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at UCLA, to repair the defect. Had it been left undetected and untreated, Gaël would have eventually ended up back in the hospital in serious condition.
     
    “Without the screening, we would have taken him home thinking that he was perfectly healthy,” said Gaël’s father, Davis Villegas. “When they did the test and told us about his heart condition it was hard news to get, but now we see that it was a blessing in disguise. It was better to know about the problem from the beginning so they could fix it.”
     
    While UCLA has been performing pulse oximetry tests voluntarily for the past year as part of its overall program to provide the best methods for early detection and the prompt initiation of appropriate therapies for CCHD, recently passed legislation mandates that all babies born in California hospitals be screened for CCHD starting July 1.
     
    “This test is important because it enables us to discover critical congenital heart disease in some babies at a time when they are not yet showing any other signs or symptoms,” said Dr. Jeffrey Smith, a professor of neonatology at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA who oversees screenings in the newborn nursery at the hospital’s Westwood campus. “If the problem is not detected before discharge from the hospital, these babies are at risk for rapidly becoming seriously ill or even dying at home. Early detection using pulse oximetry screening gives the baby the best chance for a good outcome.”
     
    The simple, non-invasive, low-cost test takes only a few minutes to perform. A nurse attaches a probe to a baby’s foot or hand with an adhesive wrap to estimate the percentage of hemoglobin that is saturated with oxygen. Low levels of oxygen can signal a potential problem. If a problem is detected, the infant is then given a diagnostic echocardiogram. Pulse oximetry screening does not detect all congenital heart diseases, so it is possible that a baby with a negative screening result may still have a problem.
     
    “As pediatric cardiologists, we see the devastating effect that delays in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease can have on these babies when they present later with problems that could have been prevented,” said Dr. Mark Sklansky, a professor and chief of pediatric cardiology at UCLA. “Newborn pulse oximetry screening, along with the recent revision of prenatal ultrasound screenings to expand the routine evaluation of the unborn baby’s heart, exemplifies how the field is recognizing the need to move toward earlier detection of heart defects.
     
    “Early detection provides the opportunity to plan ahead for appropriate delivery and immediate initiation of the appropriate management of the heart defect once the baby is born,” he said. “For major forms of congenital heart disease, early detection facilitates optimal outcomes.”
     
    Congenital heart disease represents the most common form of birth defect, as well as the leading cause of birth-defect related death. Congenital heart defects occur in one out of every 100 live births. Approximately 25 percent of these are classified as critical congenital heart defects, requiring intervention within the first weeks or months of life. Complex congenital heart defects can range from a hole between the chambers of the heart to the absence of one or more valves or chambers.
     
    “We are pleased that California is one of the nation’s early adopters of this important screening, and we hope that all states will implement this test as a routine part of their neonatal screening programs,” said Dr. Thomas Klitzner, the Jack H. Skirball Professor of Pediatrics and director of the Pediatric Medical Home Program at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA. Klitzner participated on both the national and state task forces that developed the protocols for screening newborns for critical congenital heart disease using pulse oximetry.
     
    For more information on Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, visit www.uclahealth.org/mattel.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Research conducted with a large new battery in Oregon will help make the U.S. electric system smarter and more efficient

    MAY 31, 2013 – Research conducted with a large new battery unveiled today in Oregon will help make the Northwest’s and the nation’s electric system smarter and more efficient, officials said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

    Portland General Electric‘s 5-megawatt, lithium-ion energy storage system was shared with the public today at the utility’s Salem Smart Power Center in South Salem, Ore. The energy storage facility is part of PGE’s contribution to the Battelle-led Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. Half of PGE’s $23-million portion of the regional project was paid for with U.S. Department of Energy funds. The regional demonstration is a five-year, $178-million project that launched in 2010.

    “The Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project is a successful public-private partnership involving 17 organizations across five Northwest states,” said Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, which oversees regional smart grid demonstration projects. “It is a highly innovative project demonstrating transactive energy management, which is a promising, cost-effective way to integrate variable renewable energy, energy storage and demand response at scale. The celebration of the Salem Smart Power Center makes it clear that Oregon is helping to lead the way on energy storage commercialization and grid modernization.”

    Hoffman was a featured speaker at today’s ceremony, as was Ron Melton, who directs the regional demonstration project for Battelle.

    The battery is part of a highly reliable, localized power zone called a microgrid that will enable about 500 southeast Salem customers to tap into a power reserve during electricity disruptions such as blackouts. The battery and microgrid are examples of the innovative technologies and methods being tested through the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project.

    The energy storage system will respond to regional grid conditions with the help of a key aspect of the demonstration called transactive control. Transactive control is based on technology from DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is managed by Battelle. The technology helps power producers and users decide how much of the area’s power will be consumed, when and where. This is done when producers and users automatically respond to signals representing future power costs and planned energy consumption. The cost signals originate at Battelle’s Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center in Richland, Wash. They are updated every five minutes and sent to the project’s participating utilities, including PGE.

    The automated signals allow project participants to make local decisions on how their piece of the smart grid project can support local and regional grid needs. Participants are now gathering data to measure how the signal can help deliver electricity more effectively, help better integrate wind power onto the power grid and more. The Salem battery will use the signal to coordinate its charge and discharge cycles with the power grid’s supply and demand.

    “Two-way information exchange in the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project allows grid operators to make the existing electric grid more efficient, while also exploring how using other technologies such as PGE’s energy storage system, smart appliances and wind power can bolster the reliability of our system,” said Carl Imhoff, who manages Battelle’s Electricity Infrastructure Market Sector in Richland.

    PGE’s role

    As an investor-owned utility that serves about 830,000 customers in 52 Oregon cities, PGE is testing several smart-grid technologies in the Salem area for the demonstration project. Beyond the energy storage system unveiled today, PGE is working to integrate renewable power sources to the power grid. It is also implementing a demand-response program with residential and commercial customers to help meet peak demand. All these resources will be optimized with the automated transactive control signal.

    “Together with our project partners and customers, we are demonstrating smart grid technologies to help Oregon and the nation learn how to build intelligent energy resources for the future while continuing to deliver long-term value for customers,” said Jim Piro, PGE president and CEO. “We are proud of the collaboration, hard work and ingenuity that went into this project, and thank our Salem customers who volunteered to participate in this important study.”

    Click here for more information from PGE about the Salem Smart Power Center.

    Building the business case

    As a primary partner in the project, the Bonneville Power Administration is leading the development of a regional business case for investing in smart grid infrastructure and technologies.

    “New, smarter technologies can help us make the most of the region’s renewable resources, improve how we operate the power system and bolster its resilience,” said Elliot Mainzer, BPA’s deputy administrator. “We’re looking closely at the benefits and economics so we can tell Northwest electric utilities and ratepayers which ‘smart’ investments will provide long-term value.”

    BPA is working to support utilities in the project as they unite to address both regional and utility requirements. Communication and collaboration between utilities is key to making this all work, especially considering that five states are involved, with everything from large investor-owned utilities to smaller publicly-owned utilities. They have varying goals, but are working together to enhance the economics, reliability and integration of renewables for the power system. BPA has taken a lead role in assuring that the utility perspective is addressed as well as the regional perspective so the needs of electricity consumers throughout the Northwest are met.

    A regional collaboration

    The Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project was co-funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through DOE, as well as the project’s utility and vendor partners.

    As part of the project, Battelle leads a collaborative group that includes the Bonneville Power Administration and 11 Northwest-based utilities:

    • Avista Utilities — Spokane, Wash.
    • Benton PUD — Kennewick, Wash.
    • City of Ellensburg — Ellensburg, Wash.
    • Flathead Electric Cooperative — Kalispell, Mont.
    • Idaho Falls Power — Idaho Falls, Idaho
    • Lower Valley Energy — Afton, Wyo.
    • Milton-Freewater City Light & Power — Milton-Freewater, Ore.
    • NorthWestern Energy — Butte, Mont.
    • Peninsula Light Company — Gig Harbor, Wash.
    • Portland General Electric — Portland, Ore.
    • University of Washington/Seattle City Light — Seattle, Wash.

    The demonstration project also involves a diverse team of technology providers, including Alstom Grid, IBM/Netezza, 3TIER Inc. and Quality Logic Inc. Washington State University and Central Washington University are also directly involved.

  • Atheer’s augmented reality platform bring the web’s information to you, not to a screen

    I’m a big believer that the future of the web is taking the information and relationships that we currently have online and making them part of our real lives. Not through putting screens in more places, but by bringing the digital life seamlessly into our real ones.

    That’s why the augmented reality platform by a startup called Atheer is so interesting. It purports to overlay the internet onto your real world, and lets you call up and view online information using natural gestures or spoken commands. The startup showed off a pair of glasses running the platform at the D11 conference Thursday. Atheer co-founder and chief executive Soulaiman Itani explains in the article in Phys:

    “This is like putting the Xbox and the Kinect and the Internet in your pocket running on a battery.”

    The glasses and the technology that Atheer is using could be complimentary or the next iteration of what Google  is trying to do with Glass. Yes, that interaction is still more oriented at delivering information via a screen, as opposed to making information fit with the world around you. Google Goggles, the service that let you use your smartphone camera and Google’s computer vision to find out information about landmarks and places, might be a better example of how the Atheer system is supposed to work.

    Regardless, such systems are coming, and developers and designers need to start thinking about how we convey information. Think about how long it took for people to recognize the shift in web design from the desktop and laptop to mobile. With wearables we open that entire field up to a greater degree.

    Instead of just thinking about screen size, context will take a greater role. Not just based on location and device, but on the information itself that users need. Why should you ever get the weather on a screen if you could instead have a shelf in your closet slide out with the appropriate gear for the day’s forecast? Why send a calendar reminder to a screen on a phone, when making a wristband vibrate or making your car honk (I personally need this to make it to meetings on time) might be more effective?

    This may seem a bit far-fetched, but the challenge of Google Glass isn’t just about privacy or distracted driving, but understanding what information fits best in the context of glasses. We may think we want it all, but a little restraint and thoughtful design is going to make the integration of technology into more of our devices and deeper into our lives more than a tech gimmick, but something we can’t understand how we lived without.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • Good move: HTC reportedly scraps Windows RT tablet plans

    Earlier in May, HTC was rumored to be entering the Microsoft Windows RT tablet market and now, just a few weeks later, those plans are over. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported HTC’s change in course on Thursday due to weak demand for Windows RT. Instead, the company is expected to move forward on a 7-inch Android tablet.

    Acer Iconia W510I didn’t like the idea of an HTC Windows RT slate for several reasons. First, while the Windows RT product does suit some people’s needs very well, there’s no indication it’s a big seller or that there’s a huge market for such a device. Part of the problem is the cost: For about the same price, consumers can buy a full Windows 8 tablet with similar battery life.

    And HTC simply doesn’t have the experience with Windows to engineer a hit right now. In 2007, the company created a Windows hybrid, the HTC Shift, that flopped outside of geek circles. (Sadly, I’m in those circles!)

    I realize HTC is trying to diversify its product line. It did just that, albeit in a small way, earlier today with a “Nexus Experience” version of the HTC One. But Windows RT isn’t yet a horse I’d back in this race if I were HTC. A few weeks ago I said:

    “A better idea for HTC might be to get its smartphone house in order. It’s definitely on the right path with the HTC One; it’s a top-notch Android smartphone. If the phone is successful, I supposed the company could re-invest profits into designing a Windows tablet or two, but it might be better to continue improving the smartphone line first.”

    For the moment, Android is both hurting and helping HTC. It helps because it allowed the company to stand out a few years ago as an early Android adopter. But now, Samsung’s Android strategy is sucking most of the profits from this smartphone market, no matter how good the HTC One is. A 7-inch Android tablet might not be a standout product either — we already have the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire and others — but at least the Android tablet market has a big lead on market for the Windows RT slates.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • Twitter Lends ‘Certified’ Status To Eleven Products

    Back in August, Twitter launched the Twitter Certified Products Program aimed at making it easier for Twitter users to find the “right” Twitter tools. The company announced today that the program is expanding with a handful of new partners.

    In fact, there are eleven new products that have earned Twitter Certified status. These are: Brandwatch, BuzzFinder, Curatorr, Engage Manager, Flowics, NTT DATA, Offerpop, Scup, TRUE TELLER SocialDesk, SocialGuide Intelligence, and Wayin.

    “Since we introduced the program last summer, our goal has been to help businesses find tools and services that make them more successful on Twitter,” says Twitter Certified Program manager Zach Hofer-Shall. “To date, Certified Products have been largely U.S.-focused; this new group includes companies from Europe, Japan and Latin America –– extending the program’s global footprint and empowering brands and publishers around the world.”

    “In reviewing these, you’ll notice another change: we’re simplifying the certification identity by creating a new Product badge, which will include analytics and engagement companies,” he adds. “Our certification program remains 100% focused on products that extend Twitter’s value for businesses, and we see the scope of these reaching beyond traditional definitions of engagement and analytics. As business needs for Twitter functionality evolve, we’re expanding the program to meet these needs. We hope the new badging opens more doors for innovation around business applications.”

    Twitter says it will continue to expand the program with small quarterly classes of products. If you have a product you want to be included, you can apply here.

  • Google Expands Google Maps Business Photos Program

    Google announced that it is expanding its Google Maps Business Photos program into seven new countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland.

    The program is part of Google’s quest to make every inch of the public earth available for visual perusal via computer or smartphone, and certainly fits in well with the redesigned Google Maps interface.

    “The Business Photos program enables merchants to create 360-degree, interactive tours of their establishments,” says Deborah Schenker, Program Manager, Google Business Photos. “This imagery is published on Google so potential customers can look inside and explore businesses before they go.”

    “If you are a business owner in any of these locations, joining the program is easy,” adds Schenker. “Simply hire a Trusted Photographer or Agency in your area to take pictures of your business. Using Street View technology, the photographer will then create panoramic images from the photo shoot and upload them into Google. These images will be available automatically to anyone who searches for your business on Google.com, Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile and on your Google+ page or Places for Business listing.”

    Don’t forget, if you get Google’s “trusted” photographers to take pictures of your business, you can get creative.

    If you can’t find an available photographer, Google says it will help you.