DCbrief | Office of Federal Relations

Coordinated messaging key to federal support: Cooper

In an era of budget cutting and belt-tightening, how can science get more support from the federal government? Through more assertive self-promotion, continuous and coordinated messaging and creative marketing. That was the message U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., gave to Chemical Biology graduate students and post-doctoral fellows during a talk last week entitled, "Dawn or dusk for science funding?" Last year Cooper helped launch the "Golden Goose Award" to educate Congress and the public about the value of funding basic scientific research. These awards should come out not every year, but every month, he said. "We live in not just a 24-hour news cycle. We live in a one-hour news cycle," Cooper said. "To hold the public's attention, you have to grab it." MORE

Team's payload design tops fourth consecutive year at NASA rocket contest

A biohybrid fueled ramjet engine design paid off as a Vanderbilt rocket climbed into blue skies today over an Alabama farm near Huntsville. For the fourth year in a row the Best Payload Design award went to the Vanderbilt Aerospace Club in the 12th annual NASA University Student Launch Initiative Sunday, April 21, in a field at Bragg Farms in Toney, Ala. This is the sixth year the club has entered the national rocketry competition. The Initiative presents a challenge of designing and building rockets that will fly to a target altitude of one-mile high (5280 ft) and demonstrate and document the engineering process to build it. Teams submit reviews of a preliminary design, critical design and flight readiness prior to coming to Huntsville. They conduct a launch readiness review before the competition flight. The duration of the competition is about nine months. MORE

Prosthetic limb advances could help victims of the Boston Marathon bombings

The tragic April 15 bombing at the Boston Marathon took the lives of three people and has left dozens of people with serious injuries, many of whom have lost limbs. Vanderbilt mechanical engineer Michael Goldfarb, an expert in the field of prosthetic devices and director of the Center for Intelligent Mechatronics, says dramatic advances in technology could help give these victims artificial legs that work much better than ever before. In the last few years Goldfarb and his colleagues have developed the first bionic lower limb prosthetic with powered knee and ankle joints that operate in unison. It is the type of prosthetic that many of the Boston victims with severe leg injuries will need because most had their legs amputated above the knee. This bionic leg comes equipped with sensors that monitor its user's motion. It has microprocessors programmed to use this data to "sense" and predict what the person is trying to do and operate the device in ways that facilitate these movements. MORE

Understanding cultural motivations in the Boston Marathon bombings

As Americans attempt to grapple with the motives behind the Boston Marathon bombings, it is important not to see the two Chechen brothers suspected in the deadly attacks through the same prism, according to Konstantin Kustanovich, associate professor of Russian. Kustanovich, who came to the U.S. from Russia when he was 28 and has lived in the U.S. for 38 years, watched the unfolding of developments after the attacks in Boston with rapt intensity. He is currently on sabbatical to write a book tentatively titled Two Worlds a World Apart: Crosscultural Study of Russia and the U.S. Among other topics, the book explores perceptions of America among Russian immigrants, expatriates and visitors in the past 20 years. Although the Tsarnaev brothers were culturally Muslim, their alleged crime was likely based on their individual experience and psychological makeup rather than religion, Kustanovich believes. "The vast majority of Muslims in the U.S. live productive and peaceful lives," he noted. MORE

Tracking gunfire with a smartphone

You are walking down the street with a friend. A shot is fired. The two of you duck behind the nearest cover and you pull out your smartphone. A map of the neighborhood pops up on its screen with a large red arrow pointing in the direction the shot came from. A team of computer engineers from Vanderbilt University's Institute of Software Integrated Systems has made such a scenario possible by developing an inexpensive hardware module and related software that can transform an Android smartphone into a simple shooter location system. Six years ago, the Vanderbilt researchers, headed by Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Science Akos Ledeczi developed a system that turns the soldiers' combat helmets into mobile "smart nodes" in a wireless network that can rapidly identify the location of enemy snipers with a surprising degree of accuracy. In the past few years, the ISIS team has adapted their system so it will work with the increasingly popular smartphone. The research was supported by [a] Defense Advance Research Project Agency grant. MORE

Latest research on key education policies to be presented April 27 – May 1

The latest research on the nation's key education issues will be presented by Vanderbilt University Peabody College faculty April 27 – May 1 at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in San Francisco. A sampling of Peabody research being presented is listed below.

Examining associations between teaching and learning processes and children's development in large-scale preschool interventions
Effective high schools: insight from the national center on scaling up effective schools
Contributions of basic cognitive processes to school-based mathematics learning: uncovering the neural pathways
Knocking on the Ivory Tower: Connecting teacher qualifications and preparation to student outcomes

MORE

Food variety drives overeating in mouse model of obesity syndrome

Defective signaling through the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) is the most common cause of severe childhood obesity. But while this form of obesity results largely from hyperphagia (abnormally increased appetite for and consumption of food), it is not necessarily high-fat or sugary foods that stimulate the behavior. That's what Brandon Panaro and Roger Cone, Ph.D., professor and chair of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, found in a study published online April 8 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Understanding the reward value of different foods could help in designing specific dietary recommendations for children with melanocortin obesity syndrome, the researchers concluded. This research was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. MORE

Setting mosquito hearts racing

Although mosquitoes are the "vector" that spreads a number of infectious diseases including malaria, dengue and yellow fever, they possess a specialized immune system that fights off many undesirable invaders. The primary cells involved in the insect's immune defense are located in its circulatory system and are pumped throughout the insect's body by its hose-like heart. Despite its central role, scientists don't know very much about how the mosquito's heart works. To begin answering this question, [Julián Hillyer] the assistant professor of biological sciences decided to investigate how the mosquito's heart is regulated. With the assistance of colleague Willi Honegger, professor emeritus of biological sciences, they were able to trace its primary point of origin to a specific set of neurons in the mosquito's brain. "This shows for the first time that the adult mosquito's circulatory system is under partial control of the mosquito's brain," said Hillyer. The research was funded by [a] National Science Foundation grant. MORE

Interdisciplinary health course boosts global experience

A recent addition to interdisciplinary electives illustrates how Vanderbilt educators are working to bring future health care providers together to prepare for work in an increasingly global and multicultural world. Neerav (Nick) Desai, M.D., assistant professor of Adolescent Medicine, and Lindy Fenlason, M.D., assistant professor of Pediatrics, co-direct the Nicaragua Global Health Course, offered through the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). They recently returned from this year's trip to provide health education and services in Nicaragua. Desai said as much as the trip is about service, students gain enormously from the experience. The course is a 12-week elective, with instruction from the Schools of Nursing and Medicine, the Center for Latin American Studies and VIGH. It culminates in a short trip to Nicaragua, designed to build on relationships fostered over the last four years with Nicaraguan community providers. MORE

M. Eric Johnson named dean of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management

M. Eric Johnson, a former associate professor at Vanderbilt University and current associate dean at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, will return to Nashville as the dean of Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management. Johnson, responsible for seven research centers and initiatives at Dartmouth as well as its top-rated MBA program, begins work at Owen July 1, pending approval by the Vanderbilt Board of Trust. "The return of Eric Johnson to Vanderbilt marks the start of an exciting new era at the Owen Graduate School of Management," said Provost Richard McCarty. "Eric is one of the leading scholars of supply chains and the impact of information technology on corporations. He is also a proven leader whose record of accomplishments at Dartmouth is enviable by any measure." MORE

April 26, 2013

Vanderbilt University

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