“NASA awards radiobiology research grants - Investors Business Daily” plus 4 more |
- NASA awards radiobiology research grants - Investors Business Daily
- Chopra emphasizes biology of happiness - Pueblo Chieftain
- TEDMED 2009 - Day 1 - Medagadget.com
- NASA Awards Space Radiobiology Research Grants - SpaceRef
- TEDMED Sessions Seek the Patterns in Health Care and Life Sciences ... - Xconomy
| NASA awards radiobiology research grants - Investors Business Daily Posted: 28 Oct 2009 08:33 AM PDT NASA awards radiobiology research grantsWASHINGTON, Oct 28, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The U.S. space agency says it is funding 12 proposals from nine states to investigate questions about the effects of space radiation on human explorers. NASA said it selected $13,7 million in proposals from researchers in Alabama, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Officials said the ground-based studies will address the impact of space radiation on astronaut health, including risk predictions for cancer and models for potential damage to the central nervous system and the heart. "The proposals funded this year using systems biology and state-of-the-art cell and molecular biology approaches will lead to improved understanding and identification of approaches to mitigate the risks to astronauts living in space," said Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist for NASA's Human Research Program Space Radiation Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. A list of the selected principal investigators, organizations and proposals is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/acd/radiobology_research_grants.html.
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| Chopra emphasizes biology of happiness - Pueblo Chieftain Posted: 27 Oct 2009 07:33 PM PDT
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| TEDMED 2009 - Day 1 - Medagadget.com Posted: 28 Oct 2009 08:12 AM PDT Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Yesterday we settled into our hotel room in San Diego, grabbed a burger, and went straight to session one of TEDMED. The first set of speakers consisted of a beat poet and performance artist Sekou Andrews, synthetic geneticist Craig Venter, regenerative medicine gurus Daniel Kraft, Anthony Atala, and Damien Bates, magician Eric Mead, "ER" and "Law and Order SVU" writer Neal Baer, geographic medicine popularizer Bill Davenhall, and songwriter Jill Sobule. Sekou Andrews kicked off the conference with an energetic, free-flowing poem of sorts about health care, rhyming a mash-up of medical terms and concepts to get the crowd excited for the conference at hand. After him, Craig Venter took the stage and chatted about synthetic biology and how his team synthesized the entire bacterium of Mycoplasma genitalium from four bottles of nucleotides (for a good overview of synthetic biology, take a look at this New Yorker piece). The main idea that kept emerging in his talk is that the DNA of a life form is analogous to the software and then all of the hardware is sculpted upon its code. It intuitively made sense, but the team was surprised when they actually were able to transplant the DNA of one bacterium into another, which lead the recipient organism to undergo physiologic metamorphosis. Next we heard from a series of speakers involved with regenerative medicine. Daniel Kraft (flashback: MarrowMiner) spoke of the role of stem cells in medicine and how he discovered a better way to harvest them from the pelvis. Anthony Atala, from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, talked about the various methods his research center is using to grow specific tissues and organs. He described much of the tissue creation process as sort of building the layers of a cake, with each tissue type placed one on top of the other. For linearly organized organs, such as arteries, this isn't so much of a problem, because you can just grow layers upon layers of tissues. However, for the more complicated, highly solid organs with lots of blood vessels, this methodology breaks down, and the scientists have to either use some sort of pre-made matrix or need to harvest tissues from other sources and de-cellularize them, leaving behind only the collagen scaffold that can be populated by cells. To wrap up the hard science part of things, Bill Davenhall talked about the importance of adding more environmental data to patients' charts, under the hypothesis that living in some environments predisposes a person to certain diseases, and this sort of geo-medicine data might be useful to practicing clinicians. Lastly, Neal Bear, writer and producer of "ER" and "Law and Order SVU", discussed story telling in medicine, and Jill Sobule sang a lighthearted song about the apocalypse (surprisingly not as depressing as it sounds). That's all for today. Note that all of these talks will be later made available online for free at TEDMED.com. Click the "Post" button only once! This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| NASA Awards Space Radiobiology Research Grants - SpaceRef Posted: 28 Oct 2009 06:46 AM PDT - NASA, MSGI Partner for Solar Energy and Nanotechnology - NASA Selects Engineering Evaluation and Test Contractor - Ball Aerospace Selected by Thales for Iridium NEXT Integration Role - Recovery Act: NASA Solicitation: Commercial Crew Enabling Initiative - Upgrades to Launch Complex 40 - Boeing Submits Proposal for NASA's Exploration Ground Launch Services - NASA Ames Celebrates 70th Anniversary with Exhibits in Mountain View - JPL's 'Green' Space Flight Building Debuts with Ribbon-Cutting - NASA Ames Scientist to Demonstrate Cell Phone Chemical Sensor - Florida Lawmakers Tout Northwest Florida as Aerospace, Aviation Center - Governors Riley, Barbour and Jindal Announce Launch of The Aerospace Alliance This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| TEDMED Sessions Seek the Patterns in Health Care and Life Sciences ... - Xconomy Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:09 AM PDT Life Sciences, health care, peopleBruce V. Bigelow 10/28/09It may be that TEDMED founder Richard Saul Wurman is the Brett Favre of emcees, or perhaps he's like Al Pacino in Godfather III, who proclaims in exasperation, "Just when I thought I was out—they pull me back in!" But after a five-year hiatus, TEDMED has returned this week (opening last night at San Diego's Hotel del Coronado), and Wurman, who is both the TEDMED chairman emeritus and lead master of ceremonies, stepped back onstage for what must be a familiar role. He is the folksy glue that brings the sometimes-esoteric show back to Earth as leading thinkers in medicine, health care, and life sciences deliver 15- to 20-minute talks about their work and big ideas. So, for example, after J. Craig Venter, a leader in genomic sequencing and synthetic biology, ended his presentation last night, Wurman took the stage and reassured the crowd by saying, "I've heard Craig speak a number of times. And I don't understand it all…" The four-day TEDMED symposium, which costs $4,000 per person to attend (and is sold out), follows a format similar to the first conference in Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) that Wurman established in 1984. Chris Anderson acquired rights to that TED business in 2001 and Boston entrepreneur (and Xconomist) Marc Hodosh got rights earlier this year to TEDMED and its focus on health care. Wurman told us he had agreed to help Hodosh out this year, and between sessions he often helped the audience by identifying themes they would likely see emerging in presentations to come. "Maps are also patterns, and patterns are the threads that run through this conference," Wurman said. "They are the constructive tissue that holds ideas together." Those emerging ideas include: —J. Craig Venter, the co-founder and CEO of San Diego-based Synthetic Genomics, said about 21 million genes have been discovered since the first genome was sequenced in 1995—"and over 20 million have been taken from the deck of my sailboat." (Venter's sailboat, the Sorcerer II, embarked from San Diego in March on an expedition to collect and sequence marine organisms.) Venter also outlined synthetic biology research that aims to transplant a chromosome from one cell into another cell—and turn it into a different species. Venter says, "I think it's possible we'll have the first species powered by a synthetic chromosome by the end of this year, although that's something I've been saying now for two years." —Anthony Atala, a urologist and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, showed how researchers are using "smart biomaterials" to patch damaged organs and grow new heart valves, blood vessels, liver, muscle, skin, ears, and even fingers. Still, Atala said, "90 percent of patients on transplantation waiting lists are waiting for kidneys." He also noted that the organs with lots of blood vessels—the heart, liver, and kidney—are the hardest to grow. —Bill Davenhall, who leads the health and human services marketing team at ESRI, the Redlands, CA, company that specializes in geographic information systems, argued for the creation of new programs and training in "geo-medicine"—and for ensuring that GIS data can be included in electronic health records. He demonstrated his point with a map that shows geographical areas in mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states where heart attacks occur far more frequently than other parts of the country. Davenhall, who said he suffered a heart attack in 2001, associates environmental factors in the places where he has lived with the higher incidence rate. He grew up with high levels of sulfur dioxide in Scranton, PA, before moving to Louisville, KY, with high levels of chloropene and benzene. He now lives east of Los Angeles in Redlands, CA, which has high levels of airborne particulates, carbon dioxide, and ozone. He told the audience, "Doctors never ask me about my place history. But if I wanted to have a heart attack, I've lived in the right places." Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call 858-202-0492 This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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