The Ohio State University

onCampus

• Help
• Buckeye Link
• Map
• Find People
• Webmail
• Search

  Search Ohio State Go

A new angle on tennis injuries

February 1, 2012

Markerless image capture allows scientists to better examine a player’s natural motion

By Pam Frost Gorder, Research Communications

A new approach to motion capture technology is offering fresh insights into tennis injuries — and orthopedic injuries in general.

Researchers studied three types of tennis serves and identified one in particular, called a “kick” serve, which creates the highest potential for shoulder injury.

Continue reading ‘A new angle on tennis injuries’

Children don’t give words special power in their world

January 18, 2012

To a kid, for example, a pen isn’t a pen just because someone calls it a pen

By Jeff Grabmeier, Research Communications

New research challenges the conventional thinking that young children use language just as adults do to help classify and understand objects in the world around them.

In a new study involving 4- to 5-year-old children, researchers found that the labels adults use to classify items — words like “dog” or “pencil” — don’t have the same ability to influence the thinking of children.

Continue reading ‘Children don’t give words special power in their world’

Greenland rising

January 4, 2012

By Pam Frost Gorder, Research Communications

An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons — and large portions of the island’s bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.

Continue reading ‘Greenland rising’

Focus on testing hurts students in HS health classes

December 7, 2011

They’re better prepared when they feel they’re learning information because it’s important

By Jeff Grabmeier, Research Communications

High school health classes fail to help students refuse sexual advances or endorse safe sex habits when teachers focus primarily on testing knowledge, a new study reveals.

Continue reading ‘Focus on testing hurts students in HS health classes’

Breakthrough scientific discoveries no longer dominated by the very young

November 16, 2011

By Jeff Grabmeier, Research Communications

Scientists under the age of 40 used to make the majority of significant breakthroughs in chemistry, physics and medicine — but that is no longer the case, new research suggests.

Continue reading ‘Breakthrough scientific discoveries no longer dominated by the very young’

‘Freshman 15’ just a myth, nationwide study reveals

November 16, 2011

By Jeff Grabmeier, Research Communications

Contrary to popular belief, most college students don’t gain anywhere near 15 pounds during their freshman year, according to a new nationwide study.

Rather than adding “the freshman 15,” as it is commonly called, the average student gains between about 2.5 and 3.5 pounds during the first year of college.

Continue reading ‘‘Freshman 15’ just a myth, nationwide study reveals’

Researchers do gene therapy without a needle

November 2, 2011

By Pam Frost Gorder, Research Communications

For the first time, researchers have found a way to inject a precise dose of a gene therapy agent directly into a single living cell without a needle.

The technique uses electricity to “shoot” bits of therapeutic biomolecules through a tiny channel and into a cell in a fraction of a second.

L. James Lee and his colleagues describe the technique in Nature Nanotechnology, where they report successfully inserting specific doses of an anti-cancer gene into individual leukemia cells to kill them.

They have dubbed the method “nanochannel electroporation,” or NEP.

“NEP allows us to investigate how drugs and other biomolecules affect cell biology and genetic pathways at a level not achievable by any existing techniques,” said Lee, who is the Helen C. Kurtz Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices at Ohio State.

There have long been ways to insert random amounts of biomaterial into bulk quantities of cells for gene therapy. And fine needles can inject specific amounts of material into large cells. But most human cells are too small for even the smallest needles to be of any use.

NEP gets around the problem by suspending a cell inside an electronic device with a reservoir of therapeutic agent nearby. Electrical pulses push the agent out of the reservoir and through a nanometer- (billionth of a meter) scale channel in the device, through the cell wall and into the cell. Researchers control the dose by adjusting the number of pulses and the width of the channel.

In prototype devices, they used individual strands of DNA as templates for the nanometer-sized channels.

Lee invented the technique for forming strands of DNA into precise patterns so that they could work as wires in biologically based electronics. But for this study, gold-coated DNA strands were stretched between two reservoirs and then etched away, in order to leave behind a nano-channel of precise dimensions connecting the reservoirs within the polymeric device.

Electrodes in the channels turn the device into a tiny circuit, and electrical pulses of a few hundred volts travel from the reservoir with the therapeutic agent through the nano-channel and into a second reservoir with the cell. This creates a strong electric field at the outlet of the nano-channel, which interacts with the cell’s natural electric charge to force open a hole in the cell membrane — one large enough to deliver the agent, but small enough not to kill the cell.

In tests, they were able to insert agents into cells in as little as a few milliseconds, or thousandths of a second.

First, they tagged bits of synthetic DNA with fluorescent molecules and used NEP to insert them into human immune cells. After a single 5-millisecond pulse, they began to see spots of fluorescence scattered within the cells. They tested different pulse lengths up to 60 milliseconds — which filled the cells with fluorescence.

To test whether NEP could deliver active therapeutic agents, they inserted bits of therapeutic RNA into leukemia cells. Pulses as short as 5 milliseconds delivered enough RNA to kill some of the cells. Longer pulses — approaching 10 milliseconds — killed almost all of them. They also inserted some harmless RNA into other leukemia cells for comparison, and those cells lived.

At the moment, the process is best suited for laboratory research, Lee said, because it only works on one cell or several cells at a time. But they are currently developing a mechanical cell-loading system that would inject up to 100,000 cells at once, which would potentially make clinical diagnostics and treatments possible.

“We hope that NEP could eventually become a tool for early cancer detection and treatment — for instance, inserting precise amounts of genes or proteins into stem cells or immune cells to guide their differentiation and changes — without the safety concerns caused by overdosing, and then placing the cells back in the body for cell-based therapy,” Lee added.

He sees potential applications for diagnosing and treating leukemia, lung cancer and other tumors. He’s working with researchers at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center to explore those possibilities.

Courts likely will decide states’ preservation duty

October 19, 2011

Researchers suggest using public trust doctrine to ‘rescue’ wildlife from politics

by Emily Caldwell

When a species recovers enough to be removed from the federal endangered species list, the public trust doctrine - the principle that government must conserve natural resources for the public good - should guide state management of wildlife, scientists say.

In the Sept. 30 issue of the journal Science, the researchers note that the public trust doctrine holds that certain natural resources, including wildlife, have no owners and therefore belong to all citizens. So, they add, when federal statutory law no longer offers protection to a species, the public trust doctrine imposes upon states an obligation to conserve the species for their citizens.

The researchers cite the case of the gray wolf, which lost federal protection in the northern Rocky Mountains last spring under a rare Congressional legislative rider. This rider was passed after courts had reversed three previous US Fish and Wildlife Service attempts to delist the wolf in the region, which includes Idaho, Montana and parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

The merits of protecting gray wolves have been hotly debated for years in the northern Rocky Mountains, where public opinion varies considerably among livestock owners, hunters and wildlife advocates. Idaho and Montana have launched public hunts aimed at reducing wolf populations since federal protections were lifted.

Wolf advocates fear that heavy-handed “lethal management” of wolves could deplete the population so rapidly that the species will require federal protections again. Under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government monitors a species for at least five years after it is delisted, but state wildlife agencies take over management.

Lost in these bitter arguments is any attempt to clarify state agencies’ obligation to their citizens, said Jeremy Bruskotter, assistant professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and lead author of the Science paper.

The wildlife trust doctrine, a branch of the public trust doctrine, defines that obligation, the paper’s authors argue. The public trust doctrine has roots in ancient Roman and English common law, but its application to wildlife in the United States dates to the late 19th century. In an 1896 case, Geer vs. Connecticut, the US Supreme Court ruled that the wildlife trust doctrine imposed on states a duty “to enact such laws as will best preserve the subject of the trust and secure its beneficial use in the future to the people of the state.”

“If you recognize a wildlife trust doctrine, and that the state has the obligation to maintain these populations in perpetuity not just for current residents but for future residents, then there is a degree of protection for species in the absence of the statutory protection,” Bruskotter said.

The researchers note that natural resource agency professionals are likely to be aware that all wildlife are communally owned by each state, but western politicians’ open hostility toward this formerly protected species raises the question: What are states actually going to do?

“Some of the rhetoric about the killing of wolves might be political showmanship. But when they make exaggerated claims - for example, comparing wolf restoration to the resurrection of the T. rex, which was done in Utah - that adds layers of ambiguity and fear. Conservationists wonder if they will try to eliminate wolves and wonder if they can do it,” Bruskotter said. “But the public trust doctrine holds that if state politicians were to intervene to try to prevent the maintenance of a viable wolf population, they could be taken to court. There is a legal mechanism to prevent that type of action.”

While case law exists to define the reach of the public trust doctrine, additional case law would be beneficial to firmly establish states’ obligations in the management of species no longer covered by federal protection, the authors contend.

“If this obligation is going to be more than just understood, there will need to be case law established, which is going to require somebody to take things to court to see what those obligations are,” said Sherry Enzler, a co-author of the paper and a public trust scholar at the University of Minnesota.

“It’s not about protecting any particular species. It’s about how we ensure we have adequate protection for all imperiled species under state-led management,” Bruskotter said.

Bruskotter and Enzler co-authored the article with Adrian Treves of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

High social status makes people more trusting

October 5, 2011

By Jeff Grabmeier, Research Communications

When you start a new job, your boss may be more likely to trust you than you are to trust him or her, a new study suggests.

The reason has to do with the role that social status plays in relationships.

In three separate experiments, researchers found that high-status people tended to trust people more in initial encounters than did people with lower status. One experiment showed why: High-status people rated others as more benevolent, which led them to trust more.

Continue reading ‘High social status makes people more trusting’

Antennas in your clothes?

September 21, 2011

New design could pave the way

By Pam Frost Gorder, Research Communications

The next generation of communications systems could be built with a sewing machine.

To make communications devices more reliable, Ohio State researchers are finding ways to incorporate radio antennas directly into clothing, using plastic film and metallic thread.

Continue reading ‘Antennas in your clothes?’

keep looking »