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Iowa State physicist leads team designing detector for international particle collider

04-13-2007 · EurekAlert!

John Hauptman, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy, is leading an international team that's designing a detector for the proposed International Linear Collider. The collider would be about 19 miles long and accelerate electrons and positrons to nearly the speed of light. The particles would collide at the center of the machine at extremely high energies. Collider detectors would record those collisions. Physicists expect the collisions to create new particles and help them understand how the universe works.

Keywords: iowa, state, physicist, leads, team, designing, detector, international, particle, collider, lead

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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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Overconfidence leads to bias in climate change estimations
12-15-2006 · EurekAlert!
Just as overconfidence in a teenager may lead to unwise acts, overconfidence in projections of climate change may lead to inappropriate actions on the parts of governments, industries and individuals, according to an international team of climate researchers.
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Iowa State astronomer helps discover planet that offers clues to Earth's future
09-12-2007 · EurekAlert!
Iowa State University's Steve Kawaler helped an international team of astronomers make the first discovery of a planet orbiting a star near the end of its life. The news provides a preliminary picture of what could be the Earth's destiny in four to five billion years. The discovery will be announced in the Sept. 13 issue of the journal Nature.
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Iowa State engineer develops technology to quickly find leaks in spacecraft
10-02-2007 · EurekAlert!
A research team led by Dale Chimenti, an Iowa State University professor of aerospace engineering, has developed a low-cost sensor that can help astronauts detect leaks on spacecraft such as the International Space Station.
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The midnight ride of the CMS tracking detector
12-20-2007 · EurekAlert!
Scientists of the US CMS collaboration today joined their international colleagues in announcing the successful installation of the world's largest silicon tracking detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. On Wednesday, Dec. 12, the six-ton CMS Silicon Strip Tracking Detector was carefully lowered 90 meters into the underground collision hall at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. Installation began on Saturday, Dec. 15, and concluded early Sunday morning.
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Iowa State professor's genome research published in the latest issue of Science
10-11-2007 · EurekAlert!
An Iowa State University professor is part of team that is published in Science for sequencing and annotating the genome of the green algae chlamydomonas.
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Revolutionizing prosthetics 2009 team delivers first DARPA limb prototype
04-26-2007 · EurekAlert!
An international team has developed a prototype of the first fully integrated prosthetic arm that can be controlled naturally and provide sensory feedback, and allows for eight degrees of freedom -- a level of control far beyond the current state of the art for prosthetic limbs.
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Study finds wives have greater power in marriage problem-solving behavior
07-05-2007 · EurekAlert!
Men may still have more power in the workplace, but apparently women really are "the boss" at home. That's according to a new study by a team of Iowa State University researchers.
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Iowa State researchers look for smaller, cheaper, 1-dose vaccines
01-15-2008 · EurekAlert!
An Iowa State team of researchers is hoping to find a way to produce vaccines that work better, use smaller doses and require only one trip to the doctor's office.
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Johns Hopkins researcher leads international effort to create 'proteinpedia'
02-07-2008 · EurekAlert!
A researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins. Reporting in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, the research team describes how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their own research.
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