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New & Noteworthy
July 2014
New Commercialization for UVa Researchers
School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Medicine
Four researchers will receive a total of $550,000 from Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology’s Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund, a state resource to advance science and technology-based research, development and commercialization and drive economic growth in Virginia. Computer science professor Kevin Skadron, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Patrick Hopkins, and pharmacology professor Mark Kester received awards from the Matching Funds Program; while cell biology professor John Herr received an award from the Eminent Researcher Recruitment Program. CONTINUE READING
‘Land Grabbing’ Could Help Feed at Least 300 Million People
College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Crops grown on “land-grabbed†areas in developing countries could have the potential to feed an extra 100 million people worldwide, a study shows. The large-scale acquisition of land by foreign governments and business – more commonly known as “land grabbing†– is a contentious issue, particularly in Africa, where a large number of deals have taken place in regions facing food security problems and malnutrition. The study, by environmental scientist Paolo D’Odorico and Maria Cristina Rulli of Italy’s Politecnico di Milano, found that improved infrastructure brought about by foreign investment could increase the productivity of subsistence farmlands in countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The improvements could enable these lands to feed at least 300 million people around the world. CONTINUE READING
What Happens When the Right App Doesn’t Know What the Left App is Doing?
School of Engineering and Applied Science
In the home of the future, what happens when a health app wants to close a window to keep the pollen out, while an energy app wants it open to let the cool air in? Computer science professor Jack Stankovic is working on the solution. CONTINUE READING
Sneaky Bacteria Change Key Protein’s Shape to Escape Detection
School of Medicine, Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Every once in a while in the U.S., bacterial meningitis seems to crop up out of nowhere, claiming a young life. Part of the disease’s danger is the ability of the bacteria to evade the body’s immune system, but scientists are now figuring out how the pathogen hides in plain sight. The laboratories of Linda Columbus, an associate professor of chemistry and molecular physiology and biological physics, and Peter Kasson, an associate professor of molecular physiology and biological physics and biomedical engineering, explain that the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, one cause of meningitis, and its cousin Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is responsible for gonorrhea, have key-like proteins that allow them to enter human cells and do their damage. CONTINUE READING
Rebels and Mean Girls Not So 'Cool' When Older
Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences
Being one of the “cool†kids isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Teenagers who tried to act cool in early adolescence were more likely than their peers who didn’t act cool to experience a range of problems in early adulthood, according to a new decade-long study. Led by Joseph P. Allen, Hugh P. Kelly Professor of Psychology, the study appears in the journal Child Development. CONTINUE READING
Biomedical Researchers Put Collaboration Power Behind Muscle Study
School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Medicine
Silvia Blemker and Shayn Peirce-Cottler admit they didn’t know much about the angles each other was taking toward her study of muscle. But mutual interest in a grad student’s work led to collaboration, a big grant and research that is already finding new directions.CONTINUE READING
Speeding Up Research with a $3 Million NCI Grant
School of Medicine, Health System
After diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, the rest of the tissue samples are destroyed when they could be used for research. The Health System has been awarded more than $3 million from the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute to support and expand a critically important program that makes tissue samples available for research on diseases ranging from breast cancer to lung disease. The five-year grant enables a partnership with Eastern Virginia Medical School and the Medical University of South Carolina to collect samples there as well. “One of the bottlenecks in translational research is getting diseased human bio-samples to study,†said grant recipient Dr. Christopher Moskaluk, who chairs the Department of Pathology and is a leader of the NCI-designated Cancer Center. “There is a critical need for specimens, and we realized if we could get partners, we could increase the number of samples we could provide.†CONTINUE READING
Children's racial bias in perceptions of others' pain
Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
Children’s racial bias in perceptions of others’ pain: Angeline Lillard (Psychology) and Sophie Trawalter (Batten), along with graduate students Rebecca Dore and Kelly Hoffman, found that children as young as seven showed a racial bias in perceiving the pain experienced by other children, with the bias growing stronger in ten-year-olds. CONTINUE READING
Light + Sound = Medical Imaging 2.0
School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Medicine,
X-rays, MRIs, ultrasound, PET and CAT scans – with each advance in technology, physicians gained a new way to peer into the human body, helping them diagnose disease and track treatment with almost miraculous precision. But there is still information that eludes them. As a leading proponent of photoacoustic microscopy, Song Hu, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is quite literally illuminating some of the body’s closest-kept secrets, paving the way for better treatments of diseases like cancer. CONTINUE READING
Doing Something is Better Than Doing Nothing for Most People
Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences
Most people are just not comfortable in their own heads, according to a new psychological investigation. The investigation found that most would rather be doing something – possibly even hurting themselves – than doing nothing or sitting alone with their thoughts, said the researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Science. In a series of 11 studies, psychologist Timothy Wilson and colleagues here and at Harvard University found that study participants from a range of ages generally did not enjoy spending even brief periods of time alone in a room with nothing to do but think, ponder or daydream. The participants, by and large, enjoyed much more doing external activities such as listening to music or using a smartphone. Some even preferred to give themselves mild electric shocks than to think. CONTINUE READING
Researchers Find Being Poor Can Hurt Your Brain
College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
As shown in a recent episode of the popular Science Channel show called "Through the Wormhole," Eric Turkheimer, a professor of psychology, has done research that highlights the importance of environment. He conducted a study on twins to differentiate between the effects of nature and nurture, finding that for kids in the middle class and up, their genes played a large role in how they performed on IQ tests. CONTINUE READING
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