Pelotonia 13 registration begins with less than 200 days to go
Whether you want to ride, volunteer or just raise funds for cancer research as a virtual rider, all three opportunities are now open for registration at pelotonia.org. Ohio State faculty, staff and students are automatically members of Team Buckeye (teambuckeye.osu.edu), which raised $2.2 million of the $16.9 million raised in 2012 with help from 1,635 riders among 84 pelotons.
The Aug. 9-11 ride is expected to draw more than 6,000 bicyclists who will pedal across varying distances from Columbus to Gambier depending on their fundraising goals. Pelotonia 2013 participants, who can be as young as 14 with a parental waiver, can choose a 25-, 50-, 75-, 100-, 155- or 180-mile ride. Team Buckeye 2013 is led by by captain Shelley Meyer and co-captain Craig Krenzel.
New lab to profile next-gen lithium-ion batteries
The Ohio State University Research Reactor is home to a new facility suitable for lithium-ion battery study where neutrons are used to probe the lithium atoms within the batteries.
Overseen by Professor L. Cao, the facility uses a technique called neutron depth profiling that applies a beam of neutrons originating in the OSURR core to a lithium-containing sample inside a high-vacuum chamber. By detecting the escaping charged particles, the number of lithium atoms and their depth profile can be evaluated, showing the efficiency of lithium-ion transfer in a new generation of lithium-ion batteries.
Cao joined Ohio State in 2010 after working as a post-doctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
USAC launches new staff newsletter
The University Staff Advisory Committee has launched a newsletter for all university staff. USAC Update provides news briefs on events, activities and policies in which the committee is involved. The first issue went out the week of Jan. 13 and was e-mailed to all staff. Printed copies also will be made available at several campus locations. Visit usac.osu.edu/usac_update for more information.
Huntington International Fellowship announced
Those studying a language with interest and supporting work in international business and trade should apply for a Huntington International Fellowship for study abroad. The Huntington funds are awarded to assist students who want to spend an extended time abroad to enhance language fluency, knowledge of a foreign culture and understanding of the workings and environment of international commerce. Apply by Feb. 15. For more information, visit flc.osu.edu/undergraduate/scholarships/huntington.
Apply for grants to support outreach and engagement
Requests for proposals are available for the 2013 Engagement Impact Grants, OSU CARES/OSU Extension Seed Grants and Service-Learning Grants. The grants aim to establish and/or expand innovative, creative, scholarly outreach and engagement initiatives that can have a substantial impact within the university and community. The submission deadline is March 8. For more information, visit outreachgrants.osu.edu.
$1.8M grant aims to revolutionize hearing loss improvement
Eric Healy, an associate professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, and DeLiang Wang, professor of Computer Science and Engineering, were awarded a five-year $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. They will develop an algorithm to improve speech reception in noise by hearing-impaired listeners.
“Poor reception of speech in background noise is the primary complaint made by the millions who have hearing loss,” Healy said.
Healy and Wang, together with graduate students Sarah Yoho and Yuxuan Wang, have recently provided the first demonstration of intelligibility improvements by hearing-impaired listeners. All listeners in their study demonstrated improvements in sentence recognition following processing. Further, these improvements were often quite substantial, as many listeners who were unable to understand any speech at all demonstrated near-perfect sentence recognition after processing.
This work has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of hearing loss.
Healy was elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2012. Only persons who have attained eminence in acoustics or who have rendered outstanding service to acoustics may be elected to honorary fellowship.
Renowned geneticist joins The James
Internationally renowned uterine cancer researcher and geneticist Paul Goodfellow will lead a new team of three researchers devoted to gynecologic oncology research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. Goodfellow comes to Ohio State from Washington University School of Medicine, where he was a professor of Surgery, of Genetics and of Obstetrics and Gynecology. His hiring was the direct result of the Pelotonia fundraiser in support of cancer research.
“As a geneticist, I’m interested in the genetics of tumor cells and how gene changes influence how aggressively cancer cells will spread,” said Goodfellow, who has a doctorate of Biology/Pediatrics from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He also has a master’s of science in Plant Pathology from the University of Tennessee.
Throughout his career, Goodfellow’s research has made important contributions to improving women’s healthcare. He also has embraced his role in mentoring gynecologic oncologists in basic science and in translational research, helping to develop the next generation of physician scientists, including one of his former fellows, David Cohn, who is now director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Ohio State.