Research

Yesterday the Department of Energy – that's the infamous 3^rd federal department that Rick Perry would get rid of, if he could just remember not to forget it – officially unveiled a super-speedy internet research network that connects supercomputing centers in three states. The DOE says the new network, dubbed the Advanced Networking Initiative (ANI), will lead to a dramatic data transfer speed improvement in research involving, among other interesting stuff, climate data and astrophysics visualizations.

Funding Could Help Uncover Novel Therapeutic Target for Neurodegenerative Disorder

JUPITER, FL, October 26, 2010 — The Scripps Research Institute has been awarded a $500,000 grant by the Michael J. Fox Foundation to study a pair of genetic mutations that could lead to a new and potentially vital therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease, a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder.

Philip LoGrasso, PhD, a professor in molecular therapeutics and senior director for drug discovery at Scripps Florida, is the principal investigator for the project.

LA JOLLA, CA – September 8, 2011 – Stem cells show great potential to enable treatments for conditions such as spinal injuries or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and also as research tools. One of the greatest problems slowing such work is that researchers have found major complications in purifying cell mixtures, for instance to remove stem cells that can cause tumors from cells developed for use in medical treatments. But a group of Scripps Research scientists, working with colleagues in Japan, have developed a clever solution to this purification problem that should prove more reliable than other methods, safer, and perhaps 100 times cheaper.

The work appears in the current edition of the journal Cell Research.

WASHINGTON - March 22, 2010 - The U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today created a joint research program that designates nearly $50 million to develop climate system models that provide insights on climate variability and impacts on ecosystems.

"Climate change and its impacts on the land, crops and animals raise some of the most serious issues faced by producers and by society at large," said Roger Beachy, director of USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. "It is important to understand its potential effect on our world and how we can proactively mitigate its consequences. Accurate and reliable scientific information is critical to sustain economically viable agricultural operations."

March 18, 2010 -- WASHINGTON -- NASA's Operation IceBridge mission, the largest airborne survey ever flown of Earth's polar ice, kicks off its second year of study when NASA aircraft arrive in Greenland March 22.

The IceBridge mission allows scientists to track changes in the extent and thickness of polar ice, which is important for understanding ice dynamics. IceBridge began in March 2009 as a means to fill the gap in polar observations between the loss of NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, and the launch of ICESat-2, planned for 2015. Annual missions fly over the Arctic in March and April and over Antarctica in October and November.

ARPA-E’s 3rd funding opportunity to focus on grid-scale energy storage, electrical power technology, and building energy efficiency

March 2, 2010 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. – At the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit today, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $100 million in Recovery Act funding will be made available to accelerate innovation in green technology, increase America’s competitiveness and create new jobs. Today’s announcement comes as some of the nation’s top energy leaders and members of the scientific research community have gathered to ensure U.S. leadership in clean energy technologies.

GOES-P has improved severe weather, solar storm detection capabilities

March 4, 2010 -- NOAA and NASA officials announced a new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), launched tonight, successfully reached its initial orbit, joining four other GOES spacecraft that help NOAA forecasters track life-threatening weather and solar activity.

The new satellite, GOES-P, lifted off at 6:57 pm EST from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and separated from the launch vehicle at 11:18 pm EST. The first signal from the satellite was captured at the same time.

Gene Network-Based Analysis Reveals Unexpected Results

LA JOLLA, CA – March 1, 2010 – The underlying causes of the debilitating psychiatric disorder schizophrenia remain poorly understood. In a new study published online in Genome Research March 2, 2010, however, scientists report that a powerful gene network analysis has revealed surprising new insights into how gene regulation and age play a role in schizophrenia.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have launched a joint effort to gather enhanced climate data from spaceborne climate observation instruments planned for a group of satellites now under development.

The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Mission includes a fleet of satellites tentatively scheduled for launch later this decade that will gather data for long-term climate projections. The CLARREO mission will provide an accurate climate record of the complete spectrum of energy that Earth reflects and radiates back into space, measurements that should provide a clearer understanding of the climate system.

Scientists report discovery of heaviest known antinucleus and first antinucleus containing an anti-strange quark, laying the first stake in a new frontier of physics

March 4, 2010 -- UPTON, NY — An international team of scientists studying high-energy collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has published evidence of the most massive antinucleus discovered to date.