New York, NY (February 12, 2004) -- Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have discovered that injecting a growth factor called PDGF-AB along with bone marrow cells into the heart can cause new heart cells to grow in scar tissue. The research, conducted in an animal model, has just been published in the "Online First" section of Circulation Research (March 19 print and online issue).The finding may one day lead to better treatments for heart attack, which can cause portions of the heart to die and form scar tissue. Many researchers are trying to use stem cells -- which are immature cells found in bone marrow -- to replace cells that are dead or damaged after a heart attack.
SEATTLE -- "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" Meteorologist Edward Lorenz once asked in postulating the "butterfly effect," the idea that the flapping of fragile wings could start a chain reaction in the atmosphere. In today's world of the Internet the question might be rephrased: Can a single e-mail from Brazil set off a torrent of action in Texas? Sociologists postulate that what a few influential leaders think and say can spread and grow and bring about big changes in the thinking of large numbers of people. The Internet offers a compelling new place to look for this phenomenon by studying very large groups and especially, seeing how groups change over time. (February 11, 2004)
Thirty years ago the determination of a protein structure required years of effort and typically was sufficient for a Ph.D. thesis. Today, due to advances in synchrotron X-ray sources and detectors, protein crystal structures can be calculated in just hours, "enabling many types of studies that were previously inconceivable," according to a leading researcher at Cornell.
New York, NY (February 11, 2004) -- Capsule endoscopy, the "camera pill" device already shown to be effective in diagnosing conditions of the small intestine, may now be an effective non-invasive alternative for diagnosing conditions of the esophagus such as Barrett's esophagus, a common result of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The paper, authored by Dr. Felice Schnoll-Sussman, a gastroenterologist at the Jay Monahan center for Gastrointestinal Health at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was recently presented at the meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
SEATTLE -- Most agronomists look to their laboratories, greenhouses or research farms for innovative new cropping techniques. But Jane Mt. Pleasant, professor of horticulture and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., has taken a different path, mining her Iroquois heritage for planting and cultivation methods that work for today's farmers. Mt. Pleasant studies what traditionally are known as the "three sisters": beans, corn and squash. These staples of Iroquois cropping are traditionally grown together on a single plot, mimicking natural systems in what agronomists call a polyculture. Though the Iroquois technique was not developed scientifically, Mt. Pleasant notes that it is "agronomically sound." The three sisters cropping system embodies all the things needed to make crops grow in the Northeast, she says. (February 11, 2004)
SEATTLE -- A Cornell University researcher is developing techniques for making photonic microchips -- in which streams of electrons are replaced by beams of light -- including ways to guide and bend light in air or a vacuum, to switch a beam of light on and off and to connect nanophotonic chips to optical fiber. Michal Lipson, an assistant professor at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., described recent research by the Nanophotonics Group in Cornell's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle on Sunday, Feb. 15. Her talk was part of a symposium on "21st Century Photonics." (February 11, 2004)
Madzuu is a village in Kenya's western highlands and Lake Victoria basin where the rainfall is abundant, and there is some access to urban markets. And yet about 61 percent of the village population earned less than 50 cents a day.
SEATTLE-- Oxygen was discovered more than 230 years ago, seized center stage in the 18th century chemical revolution and is still catching fire today. Oxygen has been the subject of space missions, environmental and biological sciences and of drama. It was also the subject of an unusual symposium, "It's All About Oxygen," today (Feb. 14) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle. Participants approached the subject from historical, theatrical and strictly scientific perspectives, including a presentation on the recent remarkable discovery of the presence of ozone in living cells, its production catalyzed by antibodies. (Ozone is a form of oxygen in which the molecule contains three atoms instead of the normal two.) (February 11, 2004)
If today's global statistics of more than 3 billion malnourished people are worrisome, try projecting 50 years into the future, when Earth's population could exceed 12 billion and there could be even less water and land, per capita, to grow food.
On the evening of Feb. 21, internationally renowned musician Yair Dalal will return to Ithaca for a performance of his unique style of Middle Eastern music.