Reserve a spot for the 9th annual Tar Heel Bus Tour
Moeser outlines UNC legislative priorities for 2006
Search for Shelton successor to move forward
Employee Forum: OS1 team cleaning process pilot concerns raised
Professorship named to honor father’s efforts
NC DETECT system receives national award
Honey, I shrunk the lab
Ancient World Mapping Center earns NEH grant
Scientists find ‘gatekeeper’ in blood clotting
Academy planned to benefit health-care professionals
Google search function added to the UNC web site
UNC competes in recycling competition
What ITS About: TAP to help UNC achieve information technology leadership
Botanical garden receives grant to enhance site, create research nursery
Researchers dispute claims that obesity issue is exaggerated
Reserve a spot for the 9th annual Tar Heel Bus Tour
Join the best and the brightest
On May 15, 35 of Carolina’s best and brightest new faculty and staff will embark on the Tar Heel Bus Tour’s ninth weeklong adventure across North Carolina to visit with farmers, factory and plant workers, artisans, community organizers, legislators and North Carolinians from all walks of life.
Farmer Steve Mitchell shows tobacco seedlings to faculty and administrators during a trip to his farm in Bunn on the first day of the 2004 Tar Heel Bus Tour. |
The bus tour, coordinated by University Relations since 1997 and hosted by the Carolina Center for Public Service, has shown its participants what makes each region of the state unique.
More importantly it gives an intimate view of how the University puts the state first, introducing new faculty and staff to Carolina’s culture of engagement with the state, and giving them an opportunity to observe how Carolina improves the lives of people in all 100 of the state’s counties.
The tour also encourages participants to think about ways that they can engage with each other across departmental lines, locally and across the state.
A survey conducted by Melanie Raterman, while a master’s of public administration student, found that one-third of bus tour alumni responding to a questionnaire said the bus tour helped them develop ideas for research projects benefiting the state.
These results come as the Chancellor’s Task Force on Engagement in North Carolina is formalizing a traditional belief at Carolina that the service the University renders the state is the measure not only of the University’s success, but of the state’s.
Last year’s first meeting of the task force charged the University with continuing the University's history of leadership and innovation throughout the South, responding to the state’s key needs in education, health and the economy, a focus of many of the bus tour stops statewide.
To apply for a seat on this year’s bus, fill out an online application form at www.unc.edu/bustour, or call the community relations office at 843-9846. Forms are due Feb. 15.
Moeser outlines UNC legislative priorities for 2006
Moeser |
State tax revenues have been higher than expected this year, which could signal more money than usual to bolster a state budget that has been repeatedly squeezed in recent years.
On Jan. 26, Chancellor James Moeser reviewed with the University’s Board of Trustees his set of overriding legislative priorities for the General Assembly’s short session set to begin in May.
The list contained no surprises, with compensation and benefits for faculty and staff at the top. Other priorities, in descending order, are money to cover enrollment growth, maintenance and repair of facilities, research and engagement.
Moeser said the passage of the 2000 bond referendum for campus construction helped the University unleash an unprecedented period of campus expansion. But the benefits of that expansion are literally undercut when money to meet maintenance expenses is not provided.
“It’s just smart business to maintain what you build,” Moeser said.
Moeser has said there is reason to be optimistic about the kind of support Carolina can expect next year. One reason was the state’s improving economic climate, he said. Another source of optimism, he said, was the bipartisan support that new UNC President Erskine Bowles brings with him to the job.
Bowles is both liked and respected by legislators, Moeser said. That trust and good will, Moeser hopes, will translate into legislators doing what they can to help Bowles succeed by responding favorably to budget recommendations forwarded by the UNC Board of Governors.
As for research, Moeser said the University must remain vigilant in protecting overhead receipts, which the federal government pays universities as reimbursement for indirect expenses associated with research. Moeser said those funds have been used to augment bond money and private donations in campus construction.
Engagement with the state is important as well, Moeser said, and funding will be needed to support initiatives that the Chancellor’s Task Force on Engagement in North Carolina expects to present to University trustees in May.
Search for Shelton successor to move forward
Chancellor James Moeser said he will move quickly to start the search for a successor to Robert Shelton.
The University of Arizona Board of Regents recently selected Shelton, UNC’s executive vice chancellor and provost, as the next president of the University of Arizona.
“On behalf of the Carolina community, I congratulate Robert for being chosen for this important position in American higher education,” Moeser said. “The University of Arizona has made an excellent decision by entrusting its future to Robert’s leadership.”
Faculty Chair Judith Wegner said Shelton would be missed. “He has been a wonderful colleague and a significant leader who has kept the University on a steady course toward the things that matter throughout his time here,” she said.
“We wish him all success and look forward to watching his contributions not only to his new university but to higher education at large,” she said. “The sorrow is, of course, that we won't have him here amongst us, and all of us will deeply feel that loss.”
“Over the past two years, I have gained a better understanding of the complex issues that must be addressed at the University,” Employee Forum Chair Ernie Patterson said. “I appreciate the leadership Robert Shelton has demonstrated. On behalf of the Employee Forum, we congratulate him on his selection as president of the University of Arizona. We want to thank him for his years of service to the University.”
Moeser said he planned to consult with the vice chancellors, deans and Faculty Advisory Committee members to identify an interim executive vice chancellor and provost who would not be a candidate for the permanent position.
Agrawal named KU law school dean
Agrawal |
Last week, law professor and interim dean Gail B. Agrawal was named dean of the University of Kansas School of Law.
Agrawal, who served as a law clerk to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, will succeed interim dean Michael Davis on July 1.
Agrawal has taught courses in health care law and regulation and professional ethics at the University law school since 1997. She rose to associate dean in 2003, senior associate dean in 2004 and last summer was named interim dean of the law school.
A native of New Orleans, Agrawal earned a bachelor of arts in sociology at the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree in health administration and a law degree from Tulane University. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Senior Judge John Minor Wisdom on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit before clerking for Justice O’Connor.
She is a member of the American Law Institute and has served on the boards of the American Health Lawyers Association and the American Liver Foundation.
Agrawal is the University of Kansas law school’s first female dean.
OS1 team cleaning process pilot concerns raised
Near the end of the 120-day OS1 team cleaning pilot of the Bioinformatics Building, Employee Forum members heard presentations from housekeeping employees and students about the process.
While the pilot was under way, housekeepers and students traveled to New Mexico and Texas last fall for on-site visits to facilities currently using OS1. Members of Student Action with Workers (SAW), who conducted their own site visits, said they spoke on behalf of housekeepers during the forum meeting.
Roberta Massey, a housekeeper and forum delegate, shared her experiences from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and the University of Texas in Austin.
She related negative feedback heard from housekeepers, especially at the University of Texas. These employees complained that, while the process is supposed to be structured, their department was not following the plan.
When employees on a team are out, for example, their positions are not filled for the shift and others must do extra work, she said.
Other complaints centered on the job rotation associated with team cleaning. OS1 asks housekeepers to be specialists for a certain length of time, whether cleaning bathrooms or vacuuming.
Under the current zone cleaning process at Carolina, each housekeeper cleans all areas of a designated area during the shift. Massey said housekeepers did not like being tied to one duty for months as they are on the Texas campus.
“I know I don’t want to come in and clean bathrooms for eight hours,” Massey said.
Housekeepers in Austin noted job losses they have witnessed since OS1 has been implemented. Massey related concerns that UNC employees would lose their jobs as well. SAW members cited job loss as a possible result of team cleaning. They suggested that Jim Alty, director of Facilities Services, had not been forthcoming during an earlier presentation to the forum when he said no job losses would result from a switch to team cleaning.
“As a result of team cleaning, we are actually adding positions,” Fred Moore, a forum delegate and assistant director for housekeeping training, responded. He said three positions have been created as a result of information gained during the pilot.
A major concern at UNC, Massey said, is that housekeepers have not been fully informed about the OS1 process. Delegates agreed that employees should receive timely, accurate information about the process and expectations.
“There is a lot of information out there that housekeepers need to know that they don’t know,” Massey said. “We are being told that OS1 is new wave cleaning, but we are not being told how OS1 will benefit us as housekeepers as opposed to what we are doing now.”
Delegates called for more information about the process to help housekeepers, management and the administration make an informed decision about the future of OS1.
“We need to look at this campus and come up with ways that we can encourage the administration to listen and hear the voices of all employees,” Employee Forum Chair Ernie Patterson said.
“If we are going to implement a system like this, we need to have a more frank, thorough and honest discussion about the pros and cons,” Employee Forum Vice Chair David Brannigan, a groundskeeper, said. “The way the pilot program has been put in place is lacking in any sort of empirical, objective reference to find out if it worked.”
Professorship named to honor father’s efforts
Sons of the late Joe Burton Linker, a longtime professor of mathematics at UNC, have established a professorship in their father's name.
Joe Burton Linker Jr. of Chapel Hill and Edward Markham Linker of Martinsville, Va., created the J. Burton Linker Distinguished Professorship in Mathematics, a $500,000 endowment to help recruit or retain an outstanding teacher and scholar. The professorship benefited from a $167,000 matching grant from the N.C. Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust.
“He was so well thought of, we just wanted to remember that and to honor his memory and his service,” said Burton Linker Jr., who graduated from Carolina in 1944.
Linker was born in Rockwell, in Rowan County. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Carolina, in 1918 and 1920. He received his doctorate in 1924 from Johns Hopkins University.
Recognized as a top scholar at Carolina, Linker earned membership in the Dialectic Society, Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Golden Fleece, the oldest and highest honorary society at the University.
He supported himself throughout his undergraduate career by working as a printer for The Daily Tar Heel, manually feeding single sheets into the campus newspaper's old printing press. That strenuous routine helped develop Linker’s upper body, and he became boxing champion of the Southern Conference, of which UNC was a member prior to the formation of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Appointed an instructor of mathematics in 1919, Linker left his alma mater during his 45-year career at Carolina only to serve in World War I as a commissioned Army officer, to attend Johns Hopkins and to serve in World War II.
As a professor, Linker disapproved of any attempts to water down material to make it easier; instead, he focused on making his lessons as clear as possible, according to a 1977 faculty resolution.
His high standards and unique treatment of material made his classes unforgettable for most of his students. Math 141, Differential Equations, practically became synonymous with his name.
Though he taught the same courses year after year, his students attested to his ability to make the material seem fresh, as though he were working the problems for the first time.
Linker also co-wrote four college mathematics textbooks. He retired from teaching in 1964.
He died in 1977, leaving behind his wife of 55 years, Ione Markham, who has since died; and three sons, Burton Jr., Edward and Robert Polk Linker of Charleston, who received his undergraduate degree in 1955 and medical degree in 1959 from UNC.
NC DETECT system receives national award
A computerized system developed by UNC and the N.C. Division of Public Health experts to detect bioterrorism and infectious disease outbreaks has received a prestigious national award for excellence.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) recently announced that the N.C. Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiological Collection Tool (NC DETECT) was one of two recipients of the 2005 Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence in the public health category. The Nicholas E. Davies Awards honor health-care organizations for their excellence in using and implementing health information technology.
NC DETECT formerly was known as the N.C. Bioterrorism and Emerging Infection Prevention System. The UNC School of Medicine’s department of emergency medicine developed NC DETECT in conjunction with the N.C. Division of Public Health.
The surveillance system gives public health officials at all levels statewide the ability to detect emerging infectious diseases, such as SARS, and indicators of potential bioterrorism, such as anthrax. In addition, the system monitors trends of normally occurring illnesses such as influenza, norovirus and varicella and tracks public health issues during and after natural disasters.
This system is intended to help public health officials quickly recognize when an outbreak of infectious disease or a bioterror attack is under way and launch containment efforts.
“We at NC DETECT are thrilled to have the good work being done in North Carolina recognized and honored by the Davies Award committee,” said Anna Waller, principal investigator for NC DETECT and research associate professor in the emergency medicine department. “Our project team members, both here at UNC and at the N.C. Division of Public Health, have worked very hard to design a public health surveillance system that is both useful and used. This collaboration has been critical to the success of NC DETECT.”
State Health Director Leah Devlin said the system would prove invaluable. “There has been a great deal of discussion recently about pandemic flu. This is one tool that will help us detect outbreaks of diseases like flu early. The entire state will benefit from NC DETECT.”
“Both of these award recipients in the Public Health Davies Award category have taken a huge step to improve care with the implementation of their respective reporting and surveillance systems,” said Steven J. Steindel, senior adviser for standards and vocabulary at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chairman of the selection committee for this public health award.
The NC DETECT project began in 1999, when UNC’s department of emergency medicine started developing a statewide emergency department database, named the N.C. Emergency Department Database (NCEDD), that could be used for clinical, administrative and research purposes.
The initial pilot project, involving the UNC Health Care System and the New Hanover Health Network, was funded with money from the CDC through the N.C. State Center for Health Statistics.
That successful pilot led to further CDC funding through the N.C. Division of Public Health for the rapid development of the database. NC DETECT now includes data from the NCEDD, the Carolinas Poison Center, the Pre-hospital Medical Information System, the Piedmont Wildlife Center and the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine laboratories.
In addition, NC DETECT is a partner in the N.C. Hospital Emergency Surveillance System (NCHESS), which works with 114 state hospitals to provide timely emergency department data for NCEDD, as well as fast access to hospital information for public health investigations.
Key figures in this project from UNC’s department of emergency medicine are Waller; John McLamb, adjunct assistant professor and director of the Division of Informatics; Amy Ising, adjunct research assistant professor; Terri Eubanks, project director; Matthew Scholer, assistant professor; and Debbie Travers, research assistant professor. In addition, the N.C. Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance Inc., has figured prominently in developing NC DETECT.
Honey, I shrunk the lab
Mike Ramsey has been doing some plumbing, but you’ll need a magnifying glass to see the pipes. And someday, you may carry one of his little laboratories around in your pocket.
by Jan McColm
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Winter 2006 edition of Endeavors, a publication of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development at UNC.
Mike Ramsey has a dream: one day you’ll be able to walk into a pharmacy and pick up a microchip for the blood test you need. You’ll take the chip home, insert it into an analyzer, and place your finger on it to extract a tiny sample of blood. Instant results.
Mike Ramsey, the Minnie N. Goldby Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, holds a “chip.”
(Photo: Steve Exum) |
How close is he to his dream?
Ramsey is a chemist and a pioneer in the field of microfluidics. In the mid-80s, Ramsey started thinking about how he could use tiny fluidic circuits-microplumbing, if you will — to shrink lab tests.
Ramsey’s idea was to take a chip about the size of the one that runs your computer and etch on it a series of interconnected channels. These channels would bring chemicals together and, under the control of a computer, mix them in a reactor — a reactor one million times smaller than a teardrop.
But getting the work funded wasn’t easy, and in the early days there were skeptics. Jim Jorgenson, also a professor of chemistry at Carolina and a graduate school classmate of Ramsey’s, says, “It’s not uncommon, particularly with really good ideas, to have trouble getting funded. The routine, mundane things are very easy to propose and very easy to get supporting data for, but really good ideas are hard to support because they actually are novel.”
Jorgenson, it turns out, was part of the inspiration for Ramsey early on. Jorgenson perfected reducing the size of DNA separation techniques. And the advantages of that — quicker, faster, cheaper — were not lost on Ramsey. “I knew we’d get automation at a scale that’s too small to be manipulated manually, typically six orders of magnitude below conventional technology,” he says. “That leads to a saving in reagents and a speed advantage.” As devices get smaller the distances that molecules have to travel get shorter. “We’d be able to do a chemical separation a lot faster,” he says.
But Ramsey’s graduate training and early career were in spectroscopy, a technique he was using to identify single molecules. So his switch to microfluidics was a pretty hard sell to funding agencies, “because I basically had no expertise in this area,” he says.
He looked at many different sponsors and their needs, adapting his ideas to fit the particular funding agencies. Early sponsors were interested in doing chemistry in very small packages out in the field. Among other things, they wanted to monitor the potential production of weapons of mass destruction. As in the U.N.? “Actually,” Ramsey says with a smile, “the applications were situations of cooperative and ‘noncooperative’ monitoring, to put it politely.”
With work ongoing for the Department of Defense and other government agencies, Ramsey’s vision broadened and he got to thinking about biotechnology. “Biotechnology problems are, in general, easier than searching for a small molecule out in the environment,” Ramsey says. There are typically higher concentrations of the substances you are testing or looking for and the ways to measure them tend to be less difficult.
Ramsey decided to work on restriction fragment analysis, more commonly referred to as DNA fingerprinting. “That’s when you take a chunk of DNA, chop it up into little pieces, and separate the pieces based on their size,” Ramsey says. As we all have slightly different DNA, the resulting fragments are unique for every individual: a DNA “fingerprint.”
Since it was developed twenty years ago, DNA fingerprinting has been routinely used to match crime-scene DNA with a suspect and to establish paternity. But the technique is time-consuming and expensive.
So Ramsey went back to his chips. “We mixed the reagents and DNA fragments together in a tiny reactor. Then, using a computer, we automatically injected those fragments into a separation device,” Ramsey says. They managed a DNA fingerprint in five minutes and published their results in the journal Analytical Chemistry in 1996. It’s an article that other scientists have cited more than two hundred times.
With this success, Ramsey turned his attention to biotechnology applications. He reasoned that, with vast libraries of potential drugs to screen, the pharmaceutical industry would be a natural user of microfluidics technology.
Screening potential molecules to determine which ones might eventually become drugs means carrying out lots of repetitive tests. By shrinking those tests down onto microfluidic chips, Ramsey has allowed machines to take over and screen more drugs at once.
“The chips are manufactured by photolithography, which is a technique that allows you to make many of the same thing side by side with very small incremental costs and with very good reproducibility,” Ramsey says. And with machines capable of running twelve simultaneous channels of samples, this parallelism increases the number of tests. “In the best-case scenario a company can run about fifty thousand samples in an eight-hour day,” Ramsey says.
These improvements in volume and speed potentially allow drug companies to test millions of possible new drugs against every protein that is known and then to refine them based on the results. “If you want to inhibit one particular protein, then you look at your results and see which drugs work best, and that tells us how to design a better drug,” Ramsey says.
In 1994, to push microfluidic technology into the marketplace, Ramsey cofounded Caliper Technologies, which formed a joint development agreement with Agilent Technologies. Their first product, a toaster-sized bioanalyzer, appeared in 1999. “It’s a Nintendo for scientists,” Ramsey says, as the different chips for proteins, DNA, and cell-based assays all fit into the same bioanalyzer.
In 1996, this “lab-on-a-chip” technology won Discover magazine’s Technology Award, a NOVA Award from Lockheed Martin Corporation, and an R&D 100 Award.
But Ramsey had come to a realization. He knew that Caliper and Agilent could invest more time and money in the technology than his research lab could, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to compete with them on the same technology-development programs. “We needed to think farther out,” Ramsey says.
So they shrank the size even more by moving into the realm of nanofluidics. Instead of one-millionth of a drop, think one-millionth of one-millionth of a drop.
At this scale, it’s possible to make a hole that’s smaller than a single strand of DNA. “The DNA has to contort to get through the hole,” Ramsey says, and this has opened up the possibility of a new method of sequencing DNA strands.
Since scientists finished sequencing the human genome in 2001, there have been all sorts of predictions about the future of medicine. But in reality, it still costs about ten million dollars and takes several weeks to sequence a genome. So if you and I are ever going to benefit from personalized medicine, DNA sequencing is going to have to be cheaper and faster.
That’s one area in which nanofluidics may be able to help.
DNA is a relatively simple structure, made up of four different molecules — called bases — that connect to each other to form a long chain. The order of these four bases determines our genes — much as the order of letters determines this sentence. Ultimately, genes make proteins that account for everything from our eye color to whether we have a disease such as cystic fibrosis. Sequencing DNA involves learning the order in which those four bases appear along the length of a gene.
A nanofluidic sequencer would force single DNA strands through an electrically charged nanopore. As DNA moved through the pore, it would interrupt the electrical current and cause the current to fluctuate. Ramsey’s hope is that each base will produce a unique and measurable current change, allowing the base to be identified.
That’s the theory. “But, it’s still conjecture whether that can actually be done,” Ramsey says. “If it can, then we’re talking about kilohertz DNA sequencing rates.”
To put that into context, nanofluidics technology would allow the sequencing of a complete human genome in fifty minutes. “The goal,” Ramsey says, with his tongue firmly in cheek, “is to have screening portals at the airport. We blow some air over a person, collect a few skin cells, and sequence their genome as they walk through.”
Whether or not that particular goal is ever achieved, Ramsey says, “it’s pretty clear that the next generation of sequencing machines will be microfluidics-based.”
So how close is Ramsey to his dream? Microfluidics technology is now routinely used both in research and drug discovery. And nanofluidics? “Who knows?” Ramsey says. “Maybe in ten years?”
J. Michael Ramsey is the Minnie N. Goldby Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. He was one of several Carolina faculty members to establish the Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, funded by a National Cancer Institute grant. The Office of Technology Development is the only UNC-Chapel Hill office authorized to execute license agreements with companies. For more information, contact OTD at (919) 966-3929 or visit research.unc.edu/otd/.
Ancient World Mapping Center earns NEH grant
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded $390,000 to the Ancient World Mapping Center to create a multilingual, online workspace for updating and expanding information about ancient geography.
The Ancient World Mapping Center promotes cartography, historical geography and geographic information science through innovative and collaborative research, teaching and community outreach.
Through the two-year NEH-funded project, “Pleiades: An Online Workspace for Ancient Geography,” the center will assemble an international community of scholars, teachers, students and enthusiasts to update information assembled for the “Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World.”
The atlas’s 99 maps recreate the world of the Greeks and Romans, from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent and into North Africa, from around 1000 B.C. to 640 A.D.
Richard Talbert, professor of history and classics, was the editor of the atlas and will be the principal investigator for the Pleiades project. Tom Elliott, center director, will become the Pleiades project director. The project's steering committee includes faculty across disciplines at UNC and at universities such as King’s College and University College in London, Duke University, Tufts University, Middlebury College, Ohio State University, the University of California at Merced, Trinity College in Connecticut and the University of Kentucky.
In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas, so the project exemplifies the “next generation” of using technology as a tool in preserving ancient humanities reference works, Talbert said.
“We want to spread the value of this information,” he added. “The research continues, and there are more discoveries being made. No matter where you are in the world, you should be able to tap into this system and add to the discussion.”
Initially, the online workspace will focus on the geographic area of western and central Asia Minor, where Talbert said new discoveries have been made since the publication of the hard-copy “Barrington Atlas.”
The online workspace will be built using the open-source, Plone content management system. Public hosting for the project will be provided by the Stoa Consortium at the University of Kentucky.
The NEH awarded the competitive grant to UNC in part because of the possible adaptability of the Pleiades project for preserving other large humanities reference works, Talbert added.
“One of the increasing concerns in the humanities is how you keep major reference works current,” he said. “Key reference works in the humanities — particularly geographic ones — are increasingly prone to obsolescence.”
For more information, visit the web sites of the mapping center, Plone and the Stoa Consortium at www.unc.edu/awmc, plone.org and www.stoa.org.
Scientists find ‘gatekeeper’ in blood clotting
New research from the School of Medicine has identified a protein that may control blood clotting by keeping blood platelets from sticking together.
Uncontrolled interactions between blood platelets such as those that occur during heart attacks and strokes contribute to these leading causes of death nationwide.
The study, which appeared in the
Jan. 17 edition of the Journal of Cell Biology, indicates that CIB1 binds to and keeps the platelet adhesion receptor GPIIb/IIIa in an inactive state, thus blocking platelet-to-platelet interactions in the blood.
Weiping Yuan, an assistant professor in UNC’s department of pharmacology and the study’s lead author, said CIB1’s role was as a “gatekeeper” of GPIIb/IIIa activation. “Originally, I was a little surprised. We expected CIB1 itself to activate GPIIb/IIIa, but that is clearly not the case. CIB1 keeps GPIIb/IIIa turned off until it should be activated.”
The UNC laboratory of Leslie V. Parise, professor of pharmacology and the new study’s senior author, discovered the protein CIB1 in 1997. It was found inside platelets as a protein that binds to GPIIb/IIIa.
Under normal conditions GPIIb/IIIa remains in a resting, inactive state that allows normal blood flow. However, during clotting, GPIIb/IIIa becomes active, binds platelets to one another and attaches them to the blood vessel wall, thus forming a clot.
GPIIb/IIIa also is the target of several anti-coagulation drug therapies used in the clinic today, but the study suggests that knowledge of how CIB1 functions may lead to new therapeutic approaches.
The report, which used platelet precursor cells, demonstrated that decreasing the amount of CIB1 in these cells makes GPIIb/IIIa more responsive, thus more likely to mediate blood clotting. Increasing the amount of CIB1 prevented GPIIb/IIIa activation.
“Our data suggest that CIB1 may be one of the body’s own natural anti-coagulants — as long as CIB1 is bound to GPIIb/IIIa, the platelet stays quiet. However, if a person doesn’t have enough CIB1 or their CIB1 isn’t functional, then their platelets may have the potential to be hyper-responsive and pathologically predisposed to clotting,” Parise said.
Additionally, the authors propose that CIB1 maintains the adhesion receptor in its inactive state by preventing the binding of another protein called talin to GPIIb/IIIa, which has been shown in other studies to be an adhesion receptor activator.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Academy planned to benefit health-care professionals
Taking the University to all county health workers statewide is the idea behind the N.C. Public Health Academy, a new initiative created by the School of Public Health-based N.C. Institute for Public Health.
The Duke Endowment has announced plans to fund the start of the academy with an $873,000 grant during a three-year period.
The Duke Endowment serves the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children's welfare and spiritual life.
The N.C. Public Health Academy will partner with the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) to provide conveniently accessible training and development for public health professionals. The academy will offer schools or specialty programs leading to credentialing, for categories of professionals such as health directors and medical residents.
More information is available at www.sph.unc.edu/nciph/.
Google search function added to the UNC web site
Searches on the University web site (www.unc.edu) are now performed using Google, considered by many to be the industry standard for searching web content.
The Google Search Appliance (GSA) was added to the University’s site on Jan. 30 by Information Technology Services. The GSA offers several enhancements, including better search results based on relevancy and priority, as well as a new interface. While www.google.com already indexes most of UNC's web pages, the GSA resides on the University’s network and can be customized to find documents that would not be found by the regular version of Google.
As part of the implementation that started in November, the ITS web systems team has already begun customizing the search system based on success rates for searches. To help improve search results, users are encouraged to use the link on the search page to contact the system administrator to provide feedback.
The search page also has links to advanced searches and a section on search tips. The systems team expects about 10,000 search hits per day.
Departments with customized search forms will still be able to access the old search engine until they transition their pages to use the new one. The old search engine will continue to update its collection for a few months.
Google search is now available by clicking the search link found on the Carolina home page, www.unc.edu, or by going directly to the search page at search.unc.edu.
UNC competes in recycling competition
UNC will participate in Recyclemania for the first time this year.
It started in February 2001, with Miami University and Ohio University competing against each other.
The two universities wanted a way to promote awareness and increase recycling rates at their schools.
Each year, participation has increased, with this year being the highest at 91 schools (only 47 schools participated last year). Four universities participating from the ACC are: Boston College, Duke University, Clemson University and Carolina.
In 2004, Recyclemania collaborated with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waste Wise Program to improve the competition through technical support, a web page and electronic reporting.
It has also received the National Recycling Coalition’s Outstanding Recycling Award.
There are two types of competition this year, but UNC is competing in the per capita contest.
Each university is competing to see which campus can recycle the most per capita.
The goals are to have a friendly recycling competition, increase recycling on campus, raise awareness, reduce overall waste, and expand to other campuses.
For more details and information, visit www.recyclemaniacs.org/index.htm or www.fac.unc.edu/WasteReduction/recyclemanianewsletter.pdf.
TAP to help UNC achieve information technology leadership
One of the lesser-known units of Information Technology Services (ITS) is Technology Assessment and Planning, or TAP. Like a concept car or a fashion show, TAP is at the cutting edge of discovery, pushing the boundaries of creativity to deliver truly unique and innovative solutions.
Information technology is among the most important investments Carolina can make for the next century — and possibly also the most expensive.
“We want to understand the new technologies and what they enable,” said John Oberlin, associate vice chancellor for technology planning and special projects in ITS. “Then we can accelerate the assimilation of the ones that fit the University's strategic direction.”
One of the most important strategies TAP will use in its mission is collaboration with other University units.
“TAP is just one of many assets we have to help Carolina achieve technological leadership,” said Oberlin. “It's not the only asset, by any means.”
Oberlin mentioned four current projects that draw on other divisions within ITS and another department on campus. Two, in collaboration with ITS Teaching and Learning, will work on “smart spaces” and advancing the work already done on technology-enabled classrooms. A third, together with ITS User Support and Engagement, will work on a radio frequency identification (RFID) based inventory.
The fourth may be the real concept car of the group.
Vandevar Bush, who invented the first digital computer, imagined 50 years ago that there could be a way for a person to organize and store all his personal knowledge. He envisioned cameras mounted on eyeglasses and other devices that seem primitive now, but the speed and memory of modern computers make his vision something that's very likely achievable in the next five to seven years.
In fact, that initial dream will be considerably enhanced by “context-based metadata” that will make the storage and retrieval of information even more efficient. TAP and Jane Greenberg in the School of Information and Library Science have jointly won a Microsoft Research Grant to develop this concept, called Memex. To learn more about Memex, visit ils.unc.edu/mrc/memex.html, a site developed by SILS to describe the pilot project.
Oberlin said he expected that faculty, staff and students will all have a role to play in advising TAP on future directions. Results of the research won’t be limited to Carolina. Other campuses in the UNC system, General Administration, statewide IT, and national organizations will all be watching TAP.
TAP aims at nothing less than promoting and enhancing the competitiveness of Carolina and the state.
For more information, visit its.unc.edu/teap/tap/.
What do you want to know
about technology at Carolina?
Information Technology Services (ITS) is the central organization providing all members of the Carolina community with computing services for academic and administrative endeavors. The Gazette columns What ITS About and LearnIT@unc provide readers with information technology news and updates on the educational opportunities ITS provides to all campus customers.
Do you have questions about technology or ITS? Send your question to us (Loretta Bohn, communications editor, at its_communications@unc.edu, and Elizabeth Evans, manager for training and education, at LearnIT@unc.edu), and if the issue is a topic of interest to the campus community, we’ll investigate and report our findings in a future column. Keep in mind that you can always visit the ITS Web site (its.unc.edu), the Help site (help.unc.edu) or the Help Desk at 962-HELP/-4357 if you have a pressing need.
Botanical garden receives grant to enhance site,
create research nursery
A recent $20,000 grant from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust will benefit the Mason Farm Biological Reserve. Part of the N.C. Botanical Garden, the reserve will support seed programs and provide space for large specimens. |
The North Carolina Botanical Garden was recently awarded a $20,000 grant for site enhancements and the establishment of a research nursery.
The grant, from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, will be used at the Botany Pond area of the Mason Farm Biological Reserve. The garden’s newly established native plant evaluation and selection program will be the focal point of the new nursery facility. The site also will support the garden’s seed program and will provide space for growing larger specimens to be added to display collections.
“This is very exciting and work that is much needed,” said Andrew Bell, associate director of the garden. “We plan to conduct seed germination studies to enhance our ability to propagate and grow native plants. The garden is launching new programs in seed collection and propagation and evaluating native plants for introduction into the nursery and landscape industries.” This is the first time the garden has received a grant from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, which is committed to supporting programs in education and research of ornamental horticulture.
The grant money will be partially matched with garden funds to make renovations to an existing greenhouse at the gardens and to install an irrigation system and shade structure for research and plant evaluations.
The research nursery will continue to serve UNC faculty and graduate students as a site for field studies, while garden staff explore seed germination and look for plants that are more resistant to diseases and insects and that are more adaptable to urban and sustainable landscapes.
Mason Farm Biological Reserve is located southeast of the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s main visitor site, off Mason Farm Road.
It protects natural areas, supports academic research and public education, and is a place for contemplation and appreciation of the natural world. Other undeveloped tracts contiguous with the reserve effectively create an approximately 900-acre natural area that connects with the 41,000-acre New Hope Game Lands to the south.
Researchers dispute claims that obesity issue is exaggerated
Two UNC researchers disagree with a prominent Colorado attorney's contention that talk of a national and global epidemic of obesity is exaggerated.
Writing in the February 2006 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology, University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos says that the “current rhetoric about an obesity-driven health crisis is being driven more by cultural and political factors than by any threat increasing body weight may pose to public health.”
UNC nutrition researchers June Stevens and Barry Popkin think that while he makes a few reasonable points, mainly he is just plain wrong.
Campos and colleagues present and discuss four “claims” that they consider untrue. Those claims are that:
Almost all countries are experiencing an obesity epidemic.
Mortality rates increase with increasing degrees of overweight as measured by body mass index.
The data linking overweight and obesity to adverse health outcomes are well established and incontrovertible.
Significant long-term weight loss is a practical goal and will improve health.
“So what if the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ is largely an illusion?” Campos wrote. “What if higher than average weight turns out to have neither much medical nor moral significance? The current scientific evidence should prompt health professionals and policy-makers to consider whether it makes sense to treat body weight as a barometer of public health. It should also make us pause to consider how propagating the idea of an ‘obesity epidemic’ furthers political and economic interests of certain groups.”
Stevens and Popkin, both nutrition professors at UNC, beg to differ.
“There is very strong evidence to indicate that ... the incidence of obesity is increasing in just about all of the countries in which we have information,” Stevens wrote.
She and most other health professionals see the upward shift in weight of most people of between about 6.5 pounds and 11 pounds as significant and say that it would be healthier if populations as a whole moved in the direction of preventing weight gain.
“Results differ depending on the population studied and the methods used, but the vast majority of studies show...an association between body mass index and mortality,” Stevens said. “Many studies in experimental animals have shown that those kept slender live longer than heavier animals.”
Obese animals that were made to lose weight had mortality comparable to the consistently lean rats, she said. Mortality among rats that lost weight was slightly higher but significantly lower than the consistently obese animals.
“There is ample evidence to support that adoption of a lifestyle that reduces excess weight by means of a healthy diet and increased physical activity will improve health,” Stevens wrote.
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