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Department of Energy awards Lab high marks for scientific research

The Department of Energy has awarded UT-Battelle a performance evaluation of "A" for the quality and productivity of the company's research and development and for its science and technology program management at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. DOE's "report card" comes after an evaluation of performance from October 2005 though September 2006.

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1. Energy Dept. Awards $11.2 Million for Hydrogen Research
   05-15-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   The U.S. Department of Energy has announced $11.2 million in awards for research aimed at overcoming the scientific challenges associated with the production, storage and use of hydrogen. Brookhaven is one of six institutions that will receive part of $5.6 million over three years for studies on nanoscale catalysts.
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2. Open Science Grid Receives $30 Million Award to Empower Scientific Collaboration and Computation
   09-25-2006 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   Scientists on the track to discovery got good news this month when a powerful computing tool received critical government funding. A five-year, $30 million award to the Open Science Grid Consortium, announced by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, will operate and expand the Open Science Grid, a computing environment used by scientists to harness computing resources and scientific data from around the world.
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3. Brookhaven Lab's Ralph James Honored with Harold Wheeler Award from Engineering Society
   01-31-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Long Island Section has chosen Ralph James as the recipient of the Harold Wheeler Award. James is the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy, Environment & National Security at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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4. Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
   02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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5. ORNL's Zinkle receives E.O. Lawrence Award
   02-07-2007 · Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
   Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Steven J. Zinkle has been named a winner of the Department of Energy's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, which honors midcareer scientists and engineers for exceptional contributions in research and development.
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6. Lab-on-a-chip device from Berkeley Lab to speed proteomics research
   05-02-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Future proteomics research should see a substantial acceleration with the development of a new device that provides the first monolithic interface between mass spectrometry and silicon/silica-based microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" technologies. This new device, called a multinozzle nanoelectrospray emitter array, was developed by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
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7. Brookhaven Lab Chemist Radoslav Adzic Receives Electrochemical Society Award
   05-04-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   Radoslav Adzic, a senior chemist at Brookhaven Lab, has been named the recipient of the 2007 Research Award of The Electrochemical Society's Energy Technology Division. The award recognizes Adzic's outstanding research contributions to the field of novel electrochemical energy technologies, such as fuel cells.
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8. 2007 NSLS-CFN Joint Users' Meeting Focuses on Synery, Importance of Securing NSLS-II
   06-11-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   As BNL aligns key scientific facilities and tools meant to make it a leader in U.S. energy research, government and Lab officials say the time has come to fight for and secure the last piece of the puzzle - the National Synchrotron Light Source II.
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9. Chi-Chang Kao Named Chair of the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven Lab
   10-10-2006 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
   Chi-Chang Kao, a physicist and leader in synchrotron light research, has been named Chair of the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) Department, effective October 1. Kao had served as interim NSLS Chair since mid-January, after Steve Dierker stepped down to lead the development of the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a proposed scientific user facility that would produce x-rays more than 10,000 times brighter than the current NSLS.
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10. 2007 NSLS-CFN Joint Users' Meeting Focuses on Synergy, Importance of Securing NSLS-II
    06-08-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
    As BNL aligns key scientific facilities and tools meant to make it a leader in U.S. energy research, government and Lab officials say the time has come to fight for and secure the last piece of the puzzle - the National Synchrotron Light Source II.
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