News Article

Jul

2010

Meet 100-year-old salamander

The Scientist, July 20, 2010.

A blind, cave-dwelling amphibian appears to live for more than 100 years, an inexplicable feat that may eventually (when explained) provide insights into aging in other species.

But first, scientists have to unravel the mystery of how the species — known as “human fish” — achieves such longevity. “We cannot, at this time, say how this animal manages to survive such a long time,” said eco-physiologist Yann Voituron, from the Université Claude Bernard – Lyon, first author of the study published online today (July 21) in Biology Letters. Read More >

Apr

2010

Photos Surface Of The Day Einstein Died

WIRED Science blog, April 16th, 2010.

Ralph Morse, an ambitious photojournalist for Life magazine, covered a funeral in New Jersey on April 18, 1955. Now, 55 years later, Life.com is finally publishing the pictures he took that day during the funeral and cremation of Albert Einstein.

Einstein died of heart failure at age 76 earlier that morning at Princeton Hospital. The hospital’s pathologist removed his brain for preservation and study, in the hopes that scientists could figure out why he was so smart. Read More >

Dec

2009

Jupiter’s Moons Have Many Earth-Like Features

American Geophysical Union, GeoSpace Blog, December 18th, 2009.

I can imagine Galileo sitting in the dark, peering through his telescope and taking careful notes on the objects he saw orbiting Jupiter. Or maybe I saw it in some Space Channel documentary. Either way, the fact that in 1610 Galileo used a 30 times magnifying telescope to discover these moons blows my mind. The insights on the structure and atmosphere of these moons presented at P53B: The Galilean Satellites: 400 years of Discovery II blew my mind all over again.

The Galilean satellites, or Jupiter’s moons as they are known to lay-folk like myself, were the first objects found orbiting something other than Earth or the Sun. The four Galiean moons, seen from top to bottom in NASA image at the right, are Io, Europa, Ganymede (the big daddy of the bunch) and Callisto. All are more than 3000 km in diameter. Though they may be large for moons, Jupiter dwarfs them, weighing in at five thousand times more massive and causing them extreme tidal stress. Jupiter is also radioactive, bathing its moons in high-energy electron beams and radio emissions. Read More >

Dec

2009

The Climate Costs of Contrails

Americal Geographic Union GeoSpace Blog, December 17th, 2009.

Trucks belching emissions are obnoxious, but I don’t feel the same disgust when I see fluffy white contrails in the sky. Maybe I should.

Contrails are the artificial clouds formed by condensation of water and emissions from plane engines. New insights into their effects on climate were discussed during session A42A: Climate and Chemistry Impacts of Aviation and Aerospace Emissions I. Contrails form in ice supersaturation regions in the sky, where the relative humidity is over 100 percent. Their presence changes the sky’s radiative forcing, the energy balance between incoming and outgoing radiation, measured in Watts per square meter. Positive forcing warms the system, while a negative numbers tends to cool it. Read More >

Dec

2009

Less TV time may help overweight adults burn more calories, Stanford researcher says

Stanford University Medical Center, December 14th, 2009.

Adults may stave off weight gain by simply spending less time watching television, according to a new study led by a researcher now at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Overweight adults who cut television time in half were more active, burning more calories as a result.

“Taking away time spent in front of the television has the potential to improve a person’s activity levels,” said Jennifer Otten, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and lead author of the study, conducted at the University of Vermont. Read More >

Dec

2009

Muscle cell infusion shown to strengthen sphincters in animals in Stanford study

Stanford University Medical Center, December 4th, 2009.

A new study shows that muscle cells grown in the lab can restore an intestine’s ability to squeeze shut properly. The work, performed in dogs and rats, might ultimately help treat patients with conditions such as gastric reflux and fecal incontinence.

This technique may be used to strengthen sphincters, which are the bands of muscle that separate the major sections of your intestinal tract. Weakness in these areas can cause gastrointestinal esophageal reflux disease, or GERD, which affects 25 million adults in the United States. It is also a cause of fecal incontinence, or loss of control of the bowels, which afflicts more than 5 percent of adults under 40, especially women after childbirth; its prevalence increases with age. Read More >

Nov

2009

Menlo-Atherton High School wins prize for sleep program with Stanford class

Stanford University Medical Center, November 16, 2009

The California School Boards Association has awarded Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton a 2009 Golden Bell Award for its comprehensive sleep education campaign. The program was developed in collaboration with well-known sleep researcher William Dement, MD, PhD, the Lowell W. and Josephine Q. Berry Professor, and Mark Rosekind, PhD, a local sleep scientist and former director of the Center for Human Sleep Research at the Stanford Sleep Disorders and Research Center.

The program was designed to raise awareness among students of the importance of sleep and the dangers of sleep deprivation. Research over the past decade has indicated that teens require on average more than nine hours of sleep per night, but busy high school schedules and a naturally occurring shift in the internal biological clock of teens result in later bedtimes. According to researchers, the average adolescent lives with a significant “sleep debt” that affects safety, health, performance and mood.

Prize honors Pizzo for his work with children

Stanford University Medical Center, November 16th, 2009.

The Ronald McDonald House Charities have awarded their Medical Award of Excellence to Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the School of Medicine, for his contributions to childhood medicine. The award includes a $100,000 grant to donate to a charity of his choice.

The Medical Award of Excellence is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to improve the lives of children. The award was presented Nov. 7 in Rosemont, Ill. Read More >

Nov

2009

Seed grants to faculty support six community health projects

Stanford University Medical Center, November 16th, 2009.

The Stanford Office of Community Health awarded six seed grants to faculty members that promote community health through collaboration between Stanford and local agencies. The projects include community-health-oriented research and collaborations with community-based health centers, schools and hospitals and other nonprofits.

The seed grants, which total approximately $75,000, are funded as a part of the Clinical and Translational Science Award Stanford received last year from the National Institutes of Health. The aim of the grants program is to foster relationships between Stanford researchers and the local communities by “supporting the community partners and encouraging Stanford faculty to collaborate with them,” said Jill Evans, research program director for the Office of Community Health. Read More >

Nov

2009

Summer program for minority high school students receives $1.3 million in NIH funds

Stanford University Medical Center, November 2, 2009

The Stanford Medical Youth Science Program will receive a $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award from the National Institutes of Health, spread over the next five years. The grant will extend science educational opportunities to California’s low-income and underrepresented minority high school students.

The Stanford program’s aim is to increase diversity in science and health professions through encouraging low-income and underrepresented minority students to engage in science activities to develop critical thinking skills. The program’s faculty advisor, professor of medicine Marilyn Winkleby, PhD, said she hopes that increasing diversity will bring attention to large disparities in health occurring in these populations. The program also seeks to spur the creation of precollege science education programs at other universities. Read More >