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Three Organizations Form Alliance To Address Global Malnutrition
"Three internationally known organizations based in St. Louis - the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children"s Hospital" - have entered into a partnership, known as the Global Harvest Alliance (GHA), which aims to "create inexpensive, nutritionally complete food to help the world"s hungry and undernourished," the AP/Google.com reports. Alliance researchers will focus on several of the most successful approaches used to combat malnutrition and attempt to further enrich foods already used to fight it. "In addition, the alliance aims to help testing and distribution of crops genetically modified to boost nutritional content. They hope to provide the crops cheaply to farmers to produce more nutritious foods," writes the AP/Google.com (Taylor, 7/29).
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CircuLite Awarded NIH Grant To Develop The Synergy(R) Micro-Blood Pump For Children And Infants With Life-Threatening Heart Conditions
CircuLite®, Inc. announced that it has been awarded a Fast-Track Phase I-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the development of a pediatric circulatory assist device based upon CircuLite"s Synergy Pocket Micro-pump. CircuLite, who will collaborate with the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the grant, has received funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH to support the first phase of the grant. The total potential award for Phase I and Phase II could reach up to $3.7 million. Synergy is a micro-blood pump, the size of a AA battery, that can be implanted superficially in a "pacemaker-like" pocket. Synergy is the first and smallest device designed for partial circulatory support (up to 3L/min) and long-term use in adult patients with Class IIIb and early Class IV heart failure. Synergy is currently in a CE Mark clinical trial at multiple centers in Europe.
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New Data Demonstrate Advanced Features Of Hydrofiber(R) Technology
Researchers with ConvaTec Wound Therapeutics presented a series of in vitro studies demonstrating the advanced features and fluid handling capacity of the company"s proprietary dressings containing Hydrofiber® Technology this week at the 19th Conference of the European Wound Management Association.
Medical Devices

Brain Section Multitasks, Handling Phonetics And Decision-Making

A front portion of the brain that handles tasks like decision-making also helps decipher different phonetic sounds, according to new Brown University research. This section of the brain - the left inferior frontal sulcus - treats different pronunciations of the same speech sound (such as a "d" sound) the same way. In determining this, scientists have solved a mystery. "No two pronunciations of the same speech sound are exactly alike. Listeners have to figure out whether these two different pronunciations are the same speech sound such as a "d" or two different sounds such as a "d" sound and a "t" sound," said Emily Myers, assistant professor (research) of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University. "No one has shown before what areas of the brain are involved in these decisions." Sheila Blumstein, the study"s principal investigator, said the findings provide a window into how the brain processes speech. "As human beings we spend much of our lives categorizing the world, and it appears as though we use the same brain areas for language that we use for categorizing non-language things like objects, said Blumstein, the Albert D. Mead Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Brown. Researchers from Brown University"s Department of Neuroscience and from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati also took part in the study. Details will be published in the July issue of the journal Psychological Science. To conduct the research, scientists studied 13 women and five men, ages 19 to 29. All were brought into an MRI scanner at Brown University"s Magnetic Resonance Facility. An MRI machine, with its powerful magnet, allows technicians to measure blood flow in response to different types of stimuli. Subjects were asked to listen to repetitive syllables in a row as they lay in the scanner. The sounds were derived from recorded, synthesized speech. Initially subjects would hear identical "dah" or "tah" sounds - four in a row - which would reduce brain activity because of the repetition. The fifth sound could be the same or a different sound. Researchers found that the brain signal in the left inferior frontal sulcus changed when the final sound was a different one. But if the final sound was only a different pronunciation of the same sound, the brain"s response remained steady. Myers and Blumstein said the study matters in the bid to understand language and speaking and how the brain is able to understand certain sounds and pronunciations. "What these results suggest is that [the left inferior frontal sulcus] is a shared re used for both language and non-language categorization," Blumbstein said. Financial support for the study came from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), an Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and the Ittleson Foundation. Mark Hollmer Brown University


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