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NIAID reports ‘tremendous progress’ in biodefense research

Biomedical researchers in government, academia and industry have made tremendous progress working collaboratively towards developing countermeasures for bioterrorism, according to a report issued today on research funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health. The NIAID Biodefense Research Agenda for CDC Category A Agents–Progress Report describes myriad steps the Institute has taken since February 2002 to catalyze the development of vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for the most threatening bioterror agents. It was in February 2002 that NIAID convened the first Blue Ribbon Panel on Bioterrorism and its Implications for Biomedical Research, which provided NIAID with objective expertise on the Institute’s biodefense future research plans and helped identify the highest priority areas.

Marine Corps experience shown to enhance job prospects

When their tours of active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan are over, Marines who receive an honorable discharge may be welcomed back by some employers with a higher salary for their Marine Corps experience, Penn State researchers have found. Dr. Kevin Murphy, professor and head of the department of psychology and leader of the study, says, “About one-third of the employers included in the survey data we studied said they see a substantial economic benefit to hiring Marines and would be willing to pay between 10 percent and 50 percent more to get a person with Marine Corps experience.”

Study offers genetic clues to causes of mysterious skin disease

People suffering from scleroderma, a debilitating, sometimes-fatal skin disease, may one day benefit from a study that gives doctors their first look at the genes behind the poorly understood disease.
A team of scientists including Princeton geneticist David Botstein and led by his postdoctoral fellow Michael Whitfield (now at Dartmouth) found more than 2,700 genes with an unusual level of activity in people with scleroderma, which causes painful thickening of the skin, swelling and other tissue damage. The results could greatly improve doctors’ ability to diagnose the disease and may reveal possible avenues for treating it.

Non-human Molecule Is Absorbed by Eating Red Meat

A non-human, cellular molecule is absorbed into human tissues as a result of eating red meat and milk products, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, published online the week of September 29, 2003 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers also showed that the same foreign molecule generates an immune response that could potentially lead to inflammation in human tissues.

Even obesity specialists are biased against the obese

Obesity specialists from physicians and researchers to pharmacologists and psychologists, showed significant anti-fat bias according to a recent Yale study. ?The stigma of obesity is so strong that even those most knowledgeable about the condition infer that obese people have blameworthy behavioral characteristics that contribute to their problem, i.e. being lazy,? said Marlene Schwartz, associate research scientist in the Deparment of Psychology and lead researcher of the study published this month in the journal, Obesity Research. ?Furthermore, these biases extend to core characteristics of intelligence and personal worth.?

Paleontologist produces evidence for new theory on dinosaur extinction

As a paleontologist, Gerta Keller has studied many aspects of the history of life on Earth. But the question capturing her attention lately is one so basic it has passed the lips of generations of 6-year-olds: What killed the dinosaurs? The answers she has been uncovering for the last decade have stirred an adult-sized debate that puts Keller at odds with many scientists who study the question. Keller, a professor in Princeton’s Department of Geosciences, is among a minority of scientists who believe that the story of the dinosaurs’ demise is much more complicated than the familiar and dominant theory that a single asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago and caused the mass extinction known as the Cretacious-Tertiary, or K/T, boundary.

Aspirin reduces risk of first heart attack by one-third

Aspirin reduces the risk of a first heart attack by 32 percent, according to a report by researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute published in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. The paper, which is based on a meta-analysis of five major randomized clinical trials (55,580 participants, 11,466 women) in primary prevention, also found that aspirin reduces the combined risk of heart attack, stroke and vascular death by 15 percent.

Tai Chi class boosts shingles immunity

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researchers report that older adults in a 15-week Tai Chi class saw immunity factors that suppress shingles soar 50 percent. In addition, participants showed significant improvement in their physical health and ability to move through their day. Appearing in the September edition of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, findings of the randomized, controlled clinical trial are the first to demonstrate a positive, virus-specific immune response to a behavioral intervention.

U.S. aviation system in peril?

A report released yesterday by the National Research Council found that the nation’s air transportation system is “in peril,” as is the United States’ dominance in world aviation. “In the past, we have been the world leader in aviation and aviation technology. But that leadership is eroding rapidly,” said David Woods, who was a member of the report committee. Woods is a professor in the Institute for Ergonomics and co-director of the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab at Ohio State University. “Without a coordinated national vision, the U.S. aviation system and industry are in peril of falling into the shadow of other parts of the world,” he said.

Radical innovation helps dominant pharmaceutical firms most

A new study shows that dominant pharmaceutical firms introduce many more radical innovations than nondominant firms and that Wall Street values their innovations much more. In the October 2003 Journal of Marketing, authors Alina Sorescu of Texas A&M University, Rajesh Chandy of the University of Minnesota, and Jaideep Prabhu of Cambridge University report that more than two-thirds of radical pharmaceutical innovations come from “big-pharma” firms. Moreover, more than 70 percent of these innovations are invented in-house. During the 1991-2000 period, Glaxo SmithKline introduced the largest number of radical innovations among all pharmaceutical firms, followed by Roche and Merck.