Grants

A University of Texas at Arlington multidisciplinary research team has been awarded a grant from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities that will link those transportation essentials to needed services like employment centers, educational opportunities and medical access.

Generating spin waves with uncommonly short wavelengths, and developing a first-of-its-kind, tabletop soft X-ray microscope to see and study these waves, are the ambitious goals of a new Colorado State University project, funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation.

'We know from our own pilot data that exercise training has considerable promise for improving cognition in this population,' explained Dr. Wylie. 'We hypothesize that treadmill exercise training will result in significant improvements in MS-related cognitive impairment. This research may foster the development of exercise training guidelines that can be used by clinicians to improve cognition and brain health in individuals with MS.'

Protocadherin-15 is crucial in allowing the inner ear to detect sound and balance information and pass it on to the brain, and mutations in protocadherin-15 cause hearing loss. This research provides insight into how protocadherin-15 is important for hearing, and how it could be targeted with drugs to repair its function and restore hearing.

What effect do large-scale weather patterns have on Bavarian forest ecosystems? What role is played by regional climate conditions? What do school pupils know about climate change? Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have been investigating these questions in a new joint project named BayTreeNet with the help of so-called talking trees.

Dr. Zhihua Hua received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Grant for his work on how plant cells remove old or abnormal proteins, with implications for crop breeding and seed production.

With more than $2 million from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a team at GW led by Chiara Manzini, PhD, will study the CC2D1A gene and its role in the development of autism in males versus females.

In exfoliation glaucoma, a protein dandruff clogs the outflow pathway for the fluid in our eyes. Scientists have evidence that variants of the same gene that enables us to make connective tissue by crosslinking proteins is associated with this unusual glaucoma.