New Strategy Proposed For Designing Antibody-based HIV Vaccine

Most vaccines that protect against viruses generate infection-fighting proteins called antibodies that either block infection or help eliminate the virus before it can cause disease. Attempts to create a vaccine that induces antibodies that prevent HIV infection or disease, however, have so far been unsuccessful. But several recent studies suggest promising new research directions for the development of an antibody-based HIV vaccine, according to John R. Mascola, M.D., deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues.

These studies demonstrate that, contrary to widespread belief, it is not uncommon for people infected with HIV to naturally make antibodies that can neutralize a variety of HIV strains. These antibodies do not protect people from the virus because they arise years after HIV infection is established. However, if a vaccine could prime the body to make these broadly neutralizing antibodies before exposure to HIV, they could potentially prevent infection or hold the virus at bay until an army of immune cells assembles to limit viral replication.

Based on these findings, Dr. Mascola and colleagues recommend a research strategy that uses naturally occurring, broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies for the ultimate design of an antibody-based HIV vaccine.

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What Is Good Science?

Scientific knowledge is important in today's knowledge society. Research is the guarantor of the quality of knowledge, though it is often not clear how scientific research guarantees the reliability of knowledge. How different can scientific ideals be, and how alike are they despite everything? In her dissertation, the historian of ideas Rangnar Nilsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, examines what fits within the frames of the domains of authorised scientific knowledge.

The author of the dissertation has compared the way researchers in three different disciplines describe and assess quality within their own disciplines. The disciplines studied are political science, literature studies and physics. The aim is to investigate how the internal view on the quality and legitimacy of research and science varies within the research communities and how it can be linked to different conditions of the scientific activity.

The study is based on judgements of what constitutes good and bad science and research in statements of opinions written by subject experts on the work submitted as qualifications by candidates for academic positions. It covers two periods between 1950 and 1995. This allows similarities and differences between the subjects as well as changes and constant features over time to be analysed.

In the study, the variation in researchers' conceptions and descriptions of their own science is linked to some internal conditions such as which research objects are studied and the conditions they place on the work.

Nilsson establishes that the nature of the objects seems to be able to influence the aim towards internationalisation or to reaching out to the public with their work and results.

The physicists consider internationally presented research to be better and more credible, while the literature researchers are much more interested in the researchers' efforts to disseminate their research to the general public in different ways. This difference may be linked to the conditions of the two research areas. The physicians' research objects are equally accessible to researchers around the world, and in time equally inaccessible to the public around the world. This may have contributed to the greater internationalisation of physics (and possibly other areas of natural science). The literature researchers' objects, however, are easier to share with the Swedish general public, as the subject has traditionally devoted itself more to Swedish than foreign literature.

Political science shows a clear shift towards greater interest, over time, in internationalised research. In internal quality evaluations, however, there is little interest in the candidates' contacts with the surrounding community. This is despite the fact that political scientists so often seem to appear in media in different contexts, and that their research has come to deal with topical political processes and events to a high degree. In their intra-disciplinary evaluations, political scientists are seen as focusing much more closely on their own research community than any of the other disciplines. Maybe this is because the social sciences are relatively young disciplines in which clearly professionalised researchers have set the agenda from the start.

This makes it clear in the dissertation that different factors influence the researchers' own view on the scientific activity and their own work.

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Organizations Announce Competition to Promote Research in Zero Gravity

The Heinlein Prize Trust announces the Microgravity Research Competition to reward innovation in the use of microgravity to advance biotech, nanotech, combustion, metallurgy, and other fields. Sponsored by the Trust and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the competition offers a $25,000 prize and transportation to and from Low Earth Orbit for the winning experiment aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

"Decades of demonstrations have shown that the microgravity of space provides a unique window on biological and physical processes," says Art Dula, Trustee of the Heinlein Prize Trust. "Because of substantial recent funding by NASA and the private sector, access to microgravity will soon be more commonplace. This opens an incredibly exciting opportunity for the research community."

The Heinlein Prize Trust is a non-profit foundation which promotes the commercial uses of space. It provides financial prizes to commercial space entrepreneurs, enhances public awareness of commercial space, and uses space to inspire students about opportunities of the next frontier. SpaceX is developing a family of launch vehicles and spacecraft intended to increase the reliability and reduce the cost of both manned and unmanned space transportation, ultimately by a factor of 10. With the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 vehicles, SpaceX says it offers highly reliable/cost-efficient light, medium and heavy lift capabilities for spacecraft insertion into any orbital altitude and inclination.

The winning experiment will be launched into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, the organizations say. NASA recently selected Falcon 9 / Dragon to transport cargo to the International Space Station.

The Microgravity Research Competition is open to U.S. universities and non-profits organizations with industry partners. The winning team will also get to witness the launch of their experiment from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"SpaceX is excited to offer our Dragon spacecraft as a platform for in-space experimentation services to mainstream researchers," says Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and CTO. "We plan to fly 'DragonLab' missions starting in 2010 for this express purpose."

In space, there is no gravity-induced convection, sedimentation, hydrodynamic shear force, hydrostatic pressure, or mass transfer, according to the competition announcement. Experiments in microgravity can reveal novel mechanisms fundamental to cell processes, disease processes, and the adaptation of living systems to changes in physical forces, it says.

The announcement, available online, provides an overview of microgravity's practical applications and details on the competition. Proposals are due March 20.

The application and judging process will be supported by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. The winner will be announced April 18, at the Awards Banquet for the 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition hosted by the Rice Alliance.

"We very pleased to participate in this important competition," says Brad Burke, managing director, Rice Alliance, "because of the important role of commercializing the promising technology research and innovations."

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Galaxy Zoo -- An Internet Superstar

Since Galaxy Zoo's launch in July 2007, some 150,000 members of the public, inspired by the opportunity to be the first to see and classify a galaxy, have helped professional astronomers via this online mass-participation project to carry out real scientific research.

Two of Galaxy Zoo's founders, Chris Lintott, from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and Kate Land reflect on the project's success in September's Physics World.

While there has been a range of computer programs that make use of the idle time of users' PCs to churn through scientific data, like ClimatePrediction.net for modelling global warming, Galaxy Zoo was the first of its kind to engage computer users and ask them to apply their own brain power to help sort one type of galaxy from another.

With almost a million galaxy images provided by the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico, the Galaxy Zoo team knew it was a tall order. However, even on the day of launch after a small news item on Radio 4's Today programme, the site was receiving more than 70,000 classifications each hour.

As Lintott and Land write, "An attractive feature of the project was that these galaxies had literally never been looked at before with the human eye – so people really felt that they were helping with original and unique contributions."

The original impetus for the project was a research dilemma that required a complete reassessment of 50,000 images. Existing criteria used to define elliptical galaxies – colour, density profile and spectral features – appeared to leave out a small fraction of important elliptical galaxies that were undergoing star formation.

The 150,000 amateur astronomers have helped make more than 50 million classifications, thereby helping the researchers obtain a good statistical error for each one. For about a third of the 900,000 galaxies, more than 80 per cent agreed on the morphology which gave the researchers an astoundingly good starting point.

Advances in our understanding of the universe have already been made and a selection of journal articles has already been published. The researchers are now developing Galaxy Zoo to make a more detailed classification of a smaller set of galaxies plus a deliberate search for more unusual objects.

The founders write, "As we develop the citizen science that powers Galaxy Zoo, we can expect many new discoveries to follow. After all, having 150,000 co-authors is an excellent motivator when it comes to writing papers."

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Michael J. Fox Foundation Awards $2.4M For Parkinson's Research

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson's Research today announced approximately $2.4 million in total funding to nine research teams under its Target Validation initiative. This annual MJFF program provides intellectual and financial resources to help push potential Parkinson's drug targets forward toward clinical trials and ultimately the nearly 5 million Parkinson's patients worldwide.

Founded in 2000, the foundation is named for the famed actor who suffers from Parkinson's. The foundation says it has funded $123 million in research to date.

"The discovery of a new potential therapeutic target generates great excitement among patients and researchers," says Katie Hood, CEO of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. "But to attract an industry sponsor with the resources and expertise to chaperone it through optimization, preclinical work and ultimately clinical testing, that target needs a critical mass of evidence behind it, demonstrating that it is involved in the disease and that manipulating it impacts symptoms or progression. MJFF's Target Validation program helps accumulate this evidence, reducing the risk of investment for industry and building the case for prioritization of the
most promising targets in the pipeline."

Target validation is an essential and historically under-resourced phase of drug development in which researchers work to determine whether a molecule or mechanism of interest is a true drug target, the foundation says. While researchers have continued to identify novel targets in recent years through genetic, biochemical and epidemiological studies, a lack of funding for validation studies has long been a major roadblock to the efficient translation of these discoveries into practical therapies that benefit people living with Parkinson's.

Projects funded in this cohort of Target Validation awardees fall into three categories: targets for therapies to alleviate symptoms of Parkinson's; approaches focused on dyskinesias, the excessive, uncontrollable movements brought on by long-term dopamine replacement therapy; and targets with potential to slow or stop progression of Parkinson's, something no currently approved treatment has been proven to do.

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X-48B Blended Wing Body Flight Tests Enter Second Phase

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and The Boeing Co. are expanding the flight envelope for the X-48B blended wing body research aircraft.

Flight tests with the 500-pound, remotely piloted test vehicle are now in a second phase involving higher speed regimes. The 21-foot wing span test aircraft is flying without its slats deployed. Slats are flight control surfaces on the leading edges of wings which, when extended, allow an aircraft to take off, fly and land at slower speeds.

Potential benefits of the aircraft under investigation include increased volume for carrying capacity, efficient aerodynamics for reduced fuel burn and possibly significant reductions in noise due to propulsion integration options. In these initial flights, the principal focus is to validate the research on the aerodynamics and controllability of the shape, including comparisons of the flight data with the extensive wind-tunnel database.

X-48B flight testing is taking place at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. NASA Dryden is providing critical support to a Boeing-led project team that also includes the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, and Cranfield Aerospace Ltd., of Bedford, England.

"The first flight in the slats-retracted configuration marked another milestone in aviation history and the performance of the X-48 aircraft continues to exceed our expectations," says Tim Risch, NASA X-48B project manager. "This flight milestone reinforced the productive relationship of
the NASA, Boeing and Air Force team and NASA's continued commitment to developing the concepts, tools and technologies for the aircraft of the future."

"We want to fully understand the aerodynamics of the blended wing body design all the way up to and beyond stall, so that we can learn how to fly a blended wing body aircraft as safely as any other large transport aircraft with a conventional tail," says Norm Princen, Boeing's X-48B chief
engineer. "This latest phase of the flight testing is one more step in the process and we are looking forward to progressing on to more risky flight maneuvers in the months ahead."

Initial envelope expansion flights of the aircraft, known as Block 1, consisted of 11 flights and incorporated slow-speed testing with bolt-on leading edge slats in the extended position. Block 2 flights began on April 4. The X-48B first flew on July 20, 2007.

Now with a clean leading edge, the subscale aircraft, dubbed Skyray, takes off and lands at speeds of about 75 knots compared to 60 knots in Block 1. Data will be taken up to a maximum speed of 118 knots.

At least eight flights are scheduled for Block 2. A total of six phases are slated for the project, each progressively increasing the level of risk. The final phase, Block 6, is designed to push the aircraft's flight parameters by testing the departure limiter, a critical part of the flight
control software that is designed as a safety feature to prevent the aircraft from departing controlled flight.

NASA's participation in the blended wing body research effort is focused on fundamental, advanced flight dynamics and structural design concepts within the Subsonic Fixed Wing Project, part of the Fundamental Aeronautics Program managed by NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington.

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RAND Corp., Samueli Institute Create Endowment to Study Alternative, Complementary, Integrative Medicine

The RAND Corporation and the Samueli Institute have created an endowment to support independent policy research on complementary, alternative and integrative medicine, organization officials announced today.

The Samueli Institute Fund for Policy Studies in Integrative Medicine at RAND will be established with a $2 million gift from the Samueli Institute and $1 million in funding from RAND. The Samueli Institute is a nonprofit scientific research organization based in Alexandria, Va., and RAND is a nonprofit public policy research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif.

"Many hospitals and other medical providers are looking to integrate complementary and alternative medical practices into their current treatment systems, but they often are unsure which ones have demonstrated value," says James Thomson, president and CEO of RAND. "This gift will make possible the type of high-quality research needed to answer those questions."

"Currently, patients are left on their own when attempting to integrate complementary and alternative practices with their conventional care," says Wayne Jonas, president and CEO of the Samueli Institute. "Proper integration requires good evidence and sound policies. This endowment and chair will provide the nation and patients with objective analysis and effective solutions for guiding the health care system and personal care, toward better integration."

Ian Coulter, a senior health policy analyst at RAND who has been named as the Samueli Institute Chair in Policy for Integrative Medicine at RAND, says alternative and complementary medicine can include approaches such as acupuncture, chiropractic, spirituality, naturopathy, herbal medicine, yoga and meditation. Integrative medicine refers to the combination of alternative approaches with traditional biomedicine.

"Millions of Americans are using some form of complementary or alternative medicine in addition to biomedical treatment, but very little research has been done to establish which treatments are most effective, for what conditions and under which circumstances," Coulter says. "In some cases, a particular kind of complementary or alternative medicine may work best as an adjunct therapy, such as using acupuncture to combat nausea from chemotherapy. In other cases, the alternative therapy may be the best treatment by itself."

Then there's the question of how to integrate complementary, alternative and integrative medicine into a mainstream medical practice, Coulter said. The research fund, which will be managed by RAND Health, will address that question. The fund also will support:

• Descriptive studies that will define complementary and alternative medicine practices and identify what kinds of health problems they can effectively treat.
• The creation of innovative research methods for investigating complementary, alternative and integrative medicine.
• The development of an evaluation process for health care systems' performance, including regulation, quality of care, financing and costs in relation to the integration of complementary and alternative medicine with traditional biomedicine.
  

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Forecast: Slowing Economy Dampens Research and Development Spending

Total funding for research and development (R&D) is expected to increase just 3.3 percent in 2008 from the $355 billion funded in 2007 to the $367 billion expected to be funded in 2008, according to the annual Battelle R&D Magazine forecast.

The generally sluggish movement of R&D funding and performance continues the enterprise's pattern of small year-to-year changes. The dampening of overall spending on R&D can be attributed to some developing
trends including:

-- Restructuring of the major corporate R&D approaches in industry
-- Significant growth of the practice of off-shore out-sourcing of R&D
-- Shift in federal government priorities as a result of world events
-- Growth of the federal deficit.

"There is little doubt that there are some basic problems facing the U.S. research environment, not the least of which include consideration of energy, environment, and the economy," says Battelle senior researcher and
study co-author Jules Duga. "And to a degree not seen in recent years, the average person on the
street is calling for long-term relief from high energy costs, improved (but non-intrusive) security, and resolution of environmental problems."


Funding By Sector

-- The federal government is expected to spend $25.2 billion funding R&D efforts in 2008, a 1.16 percent increase over the $24.9 billion spent in 2007
-- Industrial investments in R&D are expected to reach $258.7 billion in 2008, an increase of 3.4 percent over 2007 levels of $250.3 billion
-- Academia and other non-profits are expected to expend $70.5 billion on R&D in 2008. Academia is forecasted to increase by 5.3 percent from $51.9 billion in 2007 to $54.6 billion in 2008. Non-profit expenditures on
R&D are expected to increase by 4.3 percent from $15.3 billion in 2007 to $16 billion in 2008
-- Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDC) is a new category to the annual R&D Forecast. The 36 centers are established by various government agencies and are designed to carry out special long-term
research programs on behalf of their parent agencies. Funding for 2007 was $12.7 billion which is expected to drop by 2.3 percent to $12.4 percent in 2008.

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New Study Finds Why Even Momentary Sadness Increases Spending

How you are feeling has an impact on your routine economic transactions, whether you’re aware of this effect or not.

In a new study that links contemporary science with the classic philosophy of William James, a research team finds that people feeling sad and self-focused spend more money to acquire the same commodities than those in a neutral emotional state. The team’s paper, “Misery is not Miserly: Sad and Self-Focused Individuals Spend More,” will be published in the June edition of Psychological Science and will be presented at the Society for Social and Personality Psychology’s Annual Meeting on Feb. 9.

The new study follows up on earlier research that established a connection between sadness and buying. Researchers Cynthia Cryder (Carnegie Mellon University), Jennifer Lerner (Harvard University), James J. Gross (Stanford University), and Ronald E. Dahl (University of Pittsburgh) have now discovered that heightened self-focus drives the connection -- a finding that expands understanding of consumer behavior and, more broadly, the impact of emotions on decision-making.

In the experiment, participants viewed either a sad video clip or one devoid of human emotion. Afterward, participants could purchase an ordinary commodity, such as a water bottle, at various prices. Participants randomly assigned to the sad condition offered almost 300% more money to buy the product than “neutral” participants. Notably, participants in the sadness condition typically insist, incorrectly, that the emotional content of the film clip did not carry over to affect their spending.

Self-focus helps to explain the spending differences between the two groups. Among participants “primed” to feel sad, those who were highly self-focused paid more than those low in self-focus. Notably, sadness tends to increase self-focus, making the increased spending prompted by sadness difficult to avoid.

Why might a combination of sadness and self-focus lead people to spend more money? First, sadness and self-focus cause one to devalue both one’s sense of self and one’s current possessions. Second, this devaluation increases a person’s willingness to pay more for new material goods, presumably to enhance sense of self.

Notably, the “misery is not miserly” effect may be even more dramatic in real life, as the low-intensity sadness evoked in the experiment likely underestimates the power of intense sadness on spending behavior. The effect could extend to domains beyond purchasing decisions, causing people to engage in increased stock trading, for example, or even to seek new relationships-- without conscious awareness that they are being driven by their emotions.

The study is an early step toward uncovering the hidden impact of different, fluctuating, and what would otherwise seem irrelevant emotions on our day-to-day decisions.

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Aeronautics Associate Administrator Departs NASA for Intelligence R&D Post

Lisa Porter, NASA's associate administrator of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, announced Wednesday her decision to leave the agency, effective Feb. 1.
Porter is leaving NASA to become the first director of the Intelligence
Advanced Research Projects Activity.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin expressed his appreciation for
Porter's service since she was selected to head the aeronautics directorate
in October 2005.

"While I am very excited about this new opportunity, I am of course saddened by the thought of having to say goodbye to each of you," Porter said. "I am confident that you will all continue to excel and make the nation and the world stand up and take notice of the first 'A' in 'NASA.'"

As the associate administrator for the Aeronautics Mission Directorate, Porter managed the agency's aeronautics research portfolio and guided its strategic direction, which includes research in the fundamental aeronautics of flight, aviation safety and the nation's airspace system.

Porter co-chairs the White House National Science & Technology Council's Aeronautics, Science and Technology Subcommittee. Comprised of federal departments and agencies that fund aeronautics-related research, the subcommittee wrote the nation's first presidential policy for aeronautics research and development.

Porter came to NASA following her service as a senior scientist in the Advanced Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While there, she created and managed programs in diverse technical areas ranging from fundamental scientific research to multi-disciplinary systems-level development and integration efforts.

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Reprogramming The Debate: Stem-cell Finding Alters Ethical Controversy

When University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers succeeded in reprogramming skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, they also began to redefine the political and ethical dynamics of the stem-cell debate, a leading bioethicist says. R. Alta Charo, a UW-Madison professor of law and bioethics, says the scientific finding could have far-reaching effects on the social dimensions of the ongoing controversy over embryonic stem cell research.

"This is a method for creating a stem cell line without ever having to work through, at any stage, an entity that is a viable embryo," Charo says. "Therefore, you manage to avoid many of those debates with the right-to life community."

The research alters the debates surrounding both human embryonic stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. For ordinary embryonic stem cell research, it offers a means of obtaining pluripotent cell lines from a non-embryonic source. For cloning research, it offers a means to make customized, pluripotent cell lines without having to create an intermediate embryo that is a "clone" of an adult person, she says.

Charo says the discovery could remove objections from critics on both the right and left wings of the political spectrum.

To derive embryonic stem cells, it is necessary to remove critical cells from an embryo, resulting in its destruction. That triggers opposition from right-to-life critics of the research, who cite moral and ethical concerns. The research has also generated opposition from some members of the women's movement who object the use of stimulating drugs in women who agree to donate eggs for cloning research aimed at creating specialized embryonic stem cell lines.

The latest findings have the potential to render both of those objections moot, since the research showed that introducing four genes into cells derived from skin cells, called human fibroblasts, resulted in cells that essentially share all the features of embryonic stem cells - but without using or destroying embryos.

"It holds a great deal of promise for freeing this whole area of research from those two main sources of friction," Charo says. The discovery also creates questions about the future of government funding for traditional embryonic stem cell research, which in recent years has been a contentious political issue.

"It's going to fuel those who call for preferential federal funding only for non-embryonic stem cell research and it will certainly complicate any efforts to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research at the federal level," she says. Twice, Congress has passed legislation to overturn the Bush administration policy on embryonic stem cell research and allow funding for research using any embryonic stem cell lines, not just those designated by the administration in 2001. Twice, President Bush has vetoed it.

"Any piece of research like this that suggests that we can get cell lines that are equally usable without having to go through an embryo in intermediate steps is going to undermine any effort on the part of Congress to overturn the Bush policy," she says.

The latest discovery, however, is likely to suggest avenues of research that are already eligible for federal funding. Recently, the White House directed the National Institutes of Health to emphasize the funding of research that examines alternative means for obtaining pluripotent cell lines whose usefulness is comparable to that of human embryonic stem cells.

"No matter how well this new technique can be used for many of the disease-research and disease-treatment applications foreseen for embryonic stem cell and cloning research, however, calls for criminalization or wholesale de-funding of embryonic stem cell and cloning research are not warranted," Charo adds. "Criminalizing any area of science, as opposed to merely regulating it, would be contrary to the political and constitutional traditions of academic and scientific freedom, as well as the historical spirit of inquiry that characterizes this country."



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Workshop Calls for Greater Research Focus on Environmental Causes of Autism

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) last Friday released a report from the April 18-19 workshop Autism and the Environment, demonstrating a marked shift in the research agenda from heritability factors to toxic environmental exposures in the development of autism.

The National Autism Association (NAA) and SafeMinds have long called for a paradigm shift from children with autism are genetically defective to children with autism are sick and their illness is treatable. The groups hope that the recognition of environmental factors (including vaccines and heavy metals) in autism will lead to effective treatments for those with autism and prevention for susceptible infants.

In response to a request from the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, the two-day workshop included the nation's leaders in autism research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Autism community advocates from SafeMinds, NAA and Autism Speaks were also invited participants of the workshop, plus scientists from Harvard, the MIND Institute, Columbia University, and more. The experts discussed strategies for developing a broad research agenda focusing on autism and environmental exposures.

Presentations emphasized the urgency to combat the growing national health crisis of autism and focused on the mechanisms by which environmental factors (including vaccines, chemicals, infectious agents, or physiological or psychological stress) can affect children's neurodevelopment. In addition, discussions addressed the infrastructure needs of identified research opportunities -- tools, technologies, and partnerships.

In his introductory remarks, William Raub, science advisor to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, expressed his hopes that the workshop would "prove to be an important milestone in autism research." He states: "The planning committee recognized that vaccine constituents, especially organic chemicals used as preservatives or adjuvants, obviously qualify as environmental agents that warrant attention. . . . . Other aspects of the autism challenge deserve similar attention, especially the paucity of effective treatments."

Autism experts identified a broad range of research priorities, including: biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment of differing subtypes of autism; rigorous analysis of effective treatments; a comparison of the health outcomes of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, immune system and anti-viral therapies, and the need for more effective chelators.

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NASA Selects 120 Small Business Innovation Research Projects

NASA has selected 120 proposals for negotiation of Phase 2 contract awards in the Small Business Innovation Research program, known as SBIR. The selected projects have a total value of approximately $72 million. NASA will award the contracts to 102 small high technology firms in 27 states.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program - with offices at NASA headquarters in Washington and all of the agency's field centers - collaborates with U.S. industry to develop pioneering technologies, infuse them into agency missions and transition them into commercially available
products and services.

The SBIR program supports NASA's mission directorates by working with them to competitively select ventures that address critical research and technology needs for agency programs and projects. The effort addresses specific technology gaps in mission programs and strives to complement other agency research investments. Program results have benefited NASA efforts, including modern air traffic control systems, Earth observing spacecraft, the space shuttle, the International Space Station and rovers on Mars.

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Telescope Funding In Peril

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Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research Announces $1.2 Million to Advance Development of Drug Targets

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) announced $1.2 million in total awards to four research teams working to advance potentially disease-modifying therapeutic targets for PD along the drug development pipeline. The funding was awarded under the Novel Approaches to Drug Discovery for Parkinson's Disease program, made possible by funding from Elan Corp., plc, a
neuroscience-based biotechnology company.

"For successful translation into real-world PD therapies, early stage therapeutic approaches must be chaperoned through the necessary preclinical and clinical stages of drug development," says Sarah Orsay, MJFF's CEO. "The Foundation uses creative strategies to provide the opportunity for researchers working on novel therapeutic strategies to partner with first class, large industry organizations. If projects funded under Novel Approaches to Drug Discovery for Parkinson's Disease warrant further development, Elan has the option to participate more actively and further
the progress made by the awardees -- taking us that much closer to our
shared goal of delivering new treatments to patients."

Novel Approaches complements the foundation's annual Target Validation initiative, whose awardees were announced last month. Whereas the latter program supports initial work to determine the validity of cellular proteins and pathways as potentially promising drug targets, Novel Approaches seeks to push work forward in developing therapies against targets that already have some promising initial data. Both programs provide critical resources for underfunded stages of the drug development process and reflect the Foundation's emphasis on bridging early discovery work and late-stage translational research to reduce industry's risk around investment in new PD therapeutics.

The Novel Approaches program is also an important element of the foundation's increasing engagement with pharmaceutical and biotech company partners. This engagement is multi-pronged, including not only funding industry researchers under any Foundation initiative, but also working with companies as strategic partners to accelerate the rate at which new PD therapeutics are brought to market. Awardees under Novel Approaches include both academic and industry scientists.

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Sex on the Brain

New evidence on sex differences in people’s brains and behaviors emerges with the publication of results from the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Sex ID Internet Survey. Survey questions and tests focused on participants’ sex-linked cognitive abilities, personality traits, interests, sexual attitudes and behavior, as well as physical traits.

The Archives of Sexual Behavior has devoted a special section in its April issue to research papers based on the BBC data. BBC Science, in collaboration with researchers in the United Kingdom and North America, designed their research project on psychological sex differences in conjunction with their TV documentary, Secrets of the Sexes.

The project culminated in the creation of the BBC Internet Survey, which was posted on the BBC Science and Nature website. In just three months (February-May 2005), more than 250,000 people from all over the world responded to the full survey. Some initial results were presented in July 2005 in the program, Secrets of the Sexes. The complete dataset has been analyzed since, with key findings published in the current issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

The BBC summaries of the articles are available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/articles/results/.

Included in the April issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior is a paper on methodology, describing the study’s history, rationale, ethics and methodological considerations, namely the advantages and limitations of internet-based research.

Stian Reimers, from the Department of Psychology at University College London in the UK, says in this paper, “Much is made of the different agendas of science and the media, and the tensions that can occur when the two interact. Although this tension is not likely to disappear in the near future, it is hoped that this project can serve as an example of how positive interaction between the two professions can have beneficial consequences for both.”


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Researchers Find Ceiling Height Can Affect How a Person Thinks, Feels, Acts

For years contractors, real estate agents and event planners have said that whether building, buying or planning an event, a higher or vaulted ceiling is always better. Are they right? Until now there has been no real evidence that ceiling height has any influence or advantage with consumers.

But recent research by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, suggests that the way people think and act is affected by ceiling height. Meyers-Levy and co-author Rui (Juliet) Zhu, assistant professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia and a Carlson doctoral alum, found that, depending on the situation, ceiling height will benefit or impair consumer responses.

The paper “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use,” will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” says Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling can stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.

“Depending on the activity or the desired outcome, ceiling height can make a big difference in how the consumer processes the information presented,” says Meyers-Levy.

This work has important implications for retailers of all types who are faced with consumers whose thought processes might influence what products they buy, how they process point-of-purchase information and even sales persuasion strategies, the researchers say. Careful attention to this important design aspect of retail spaces can pay off for those with one eye on the ceiling and the other on the bottom line, they add.

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Video Games Shown to Improve Vision

According to a new study from the University of Rochester, playing action video games sharpens vision. In tests of visual acuity that assess the ability to see objects accurately in a cluttered space, game players scored higher than their non-playing peers.

“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “After just 30 hours of training, people who normally don't play video games showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see small, closely packed letters more clearly.”

Most of the factors that affect a normal person's ability to read an eye-chart are optical (size of the eye, the shape/thickness of the cornea and lens) and video games will not change those factors. However, there are some types of visual deficits that aren't optical in nature but are instead neural. “It is our hope that video game training can help these people,” says Bavelier.

Only certain games create this effect; first-person action games. Shooting games, such as Unreal Tournament, improved vision. More sedate games, such as the puzzle game Tetris, showed no effect. “When people play action games, they’re changing the brain’s pathway responsible for visual processing,” says Bavelier. “These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life.”
This could mean that video games will find a future role in the medical world. Patients with visual impairment from conditions such as amblyopia (commonly known as 'lazy-eye'), or even normal aging of the brain, could use video games as rehabilitation therapy.


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Research Shed Light on Computer Frustrations That Plague Older Adults

A number of evolving social changes highlight the importance of making computer technology accessible and usable for older adults. For instance, older adults are using email increasingly to keep up their social contact with others and are using the Internet to look up health information.

An innovative research study was conducted at the University of Alberta which analyzed the performance outcomes of older adults when being tested on the computer and Internet.

What researchers found can be applied as a ‘best practice’ when teaching older adults how to use computer technology. Research found that older adults feel less confident about their computer knowledge than younger adults. Older adults are also concerned about how memory issues may impact their performance.

"This lack of confidence is a major factor in older adults’ ability to become proficient with computer technology, which unfortunately results in less computer use," says Patricia Boechler from the University of Alberta.

The study also highlights the obstacles older adults experience such as a significant decrease in sensory keenness, particularly with vision and hearing, as well as a decrease in motor skills due to health problems, such as arthritis and tremors.

Boechler notes, "Often a large challenge for older adults when using the computer is navigating the mouse and keyboard, which is commonly due to a health problem like arthritis."

Boechler, Foth, and Watchorn studied approximately 40 older adults by having them complete computer exercises and measured their results to undergraduates who previously completed the exercises. The study gives a list of recommendations to help even the playing field for older adults such as increasing font sizes to accommodate vision problems, ensuring that verbal instructions are delivered at an appropriate volume with minimal noise distractions and giving demonstrations of the tasks ahead of time to reduce anxiety.

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Birds of a Feather: Analysis Suggests People of Similar Income, Education Gravitate Toward Same Neighborhoods

Residential neighborhoods throughout U.S. metropolitan areas have become increasingly divided into high- and low-unemployment sections, and an analysis by an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that people may be "sorting"themselves by both income and education.

The analysis was conducted by Christopher Wheeler, writing in theMarch/April issue of Review, the Reserve Bank's bimonthly journal of economic and business issues. The publication is also available online at the St. Louis Fed's web site.

The rate of unemployment is one of the most basic indicators used togauge the economy's health. As the economy fluctuates between periods ofexpansion and recession, corresponding changes in the rate of unemploymentare observed.

Between 1980 and 2000, the aggregate national unemployment rate fell from 6.3 percent to 3.9 percent, suggesting that workers in the United States faced better unemployment prospects in 2000 than in 1980.

"Yet, underlying these figures," says Wheeler, "is a trend that is not widely known: Unemployed workers became increasingly concentrated in certain neighborhoods within the nation's metropolitan areas. That is, neighborhoods in the United States became increasingly polarized into two groups: those with high rates of unemployment and those with low rates."

Wheeler investigated three possible explanations for this trend:

• Urban decentralization; that is, the gradual movement of people from the central cities to the suburbs. "This may have reduced the employment opportunities of households that continue to live in historical city centers," says Wheeler, "thereby creating a cluster of joblessness within those inner-cities."
• Changes in the labor market, such as declining union membership and the shift of employment away from manufacturing toward other sectors, may have reduced the employment opportunities for workers in certain neighborhoods more than others. "For example," says Wheeler, "if a city's low-to-middle-income communities are populated primarily by manufacturing workers, a decline in the manufacturing sector could result in higher unemployment in those areas. By the same token, if the residents of another neighborhood are employed predominantly in high-paying professional services, then a rise in the demand for those services may result in more jobs."
• Possible increase in the extent to which skilled and un-skilled workers are segregated across residential areas. "In other words, independent of either urban decentralization or shifts in union and industrial activity, the degree to which high- and low-skilled workers live in the same neighborhoods may have decreased over time could lead to a rising concentration of unemployed people." Analyzing unemployment data across nine broad industrial sectors, Wheeler finds little evidence to support the first two explanations. His results, however, did reveal a strong association between unemployment concentration and measures of both income segmentation and the segregation of college graduates across neighborhoods.

"A rising concentration of those who are unemployed seems to be related to an increase in the extent to which households have separated themselves into certain neighborhoods by both income and education," concludes Wheeler.


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