Notable Findings in Physical Sciences

Working with engineer L. Ben Freund, physicists Jay Tang, Peter Tsang, and Guanglai Li discovered what may be nature's strongest glue, found on the "feet" of a bacterium known as Caulobacter crescentus. The team found that the water-loving bacteria could handle a pulling force of 70 newtons per square millimeter - making it more than twice as strong as commercial "super" glue. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may point the way to new surgical adhesives.

In Nature, physicist Gang Xiao reported a first: creating a "spin triplet" supercurrent through a ferromagnet over a long distance (left). The feat is not supposed to occur under quantum physics theory. But the work will be a boon to the budding field of "spintronics," where the spin of electrons, along with their charge, is harnessed to power computer chips and circuits.

In chemistry, Dwight Sweigart, Jeffrey Reingold, Sang Bok Kim, and Gene Carpenter created a new class of compounds that promise to produce prescription drugs more cheaply as well as provide models for hydrogen storage - a key feature for clean energy production and use. The work landed in top journals, including cover stories in Chemical Communications and Angewandte Chemie, and prompted two patent filings.

Chemists Richard Stratt and Guohua Tao made a discovery that may rewrite the rulebook for chemical reactions. In a paper published in Science, they described an example of molecular motion in a chemical reaction that destroys - rather than creates - friction. The super-fast molecule, which makes a whopping 270 trillion rotations per minute, literally pushes away molecules that surround it in solvent.

Massive Mussel Die-Off

In the March issue of Ecology, a pair of Brown scientists detailed how an oxygen-starved "dead zone" that formed in Narragansett Bay wiped out an estimated 4.5 billion blue mussels during the summer of 2001.

Ph.D. candidate Andrew Altieri and Associate Professor Jon Witman, both in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, studied nine mussel reefs in the bay before and after the "dead zone" formed and found that one reef was killed and the rest nearly wiped out. One year later, only one of the nine reefs was recovering. The result was a sharp reduction in the reefs' ability to filter minute algae from the bay - a process that helps control the formation of suffocating "dead zones" in the first place.

Sleep Stars

Brown Medical School Professor Mary Carskadon chaired a National Sleep Foundation task force that released a startling March poll on teen-agers and sleep. The poll found that only 20 percent of teens got enough sleep on school nights. Yet 90 percent of parents thought their teens got enough sleep during the week. Judy Owens, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics, served as spokesperson for the poll.

Fresh Insights on Aging

In a February paper in Science, biologist John Sedivy strengthened the case for a strong connection between aging cells and aging bodies by providing evidence that non-dividing or "replicatively senescent" cells can be found in large numbers in old baboons. The research, also conducted by postdoctoral student Utz Herbig and undergraduate Mark Ferreira, is the first to quantify the presence of these cells in any species.

In two February reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leslie Gordon, M.D., an assistant research professor of pediatrics at Brown Medical School, laid out research findings on progeria, a rare and fatal genetic condition that causes accelerated aging in children. The reports detail the damage a mutant protein does to blood vessel cells of humans and mice with progeria. The discoveries offer increased hope for a cure for the condition and provide critical insight into a common disease associated with aging Ð adult heart disease.

Record Temperatures

Geologists Kira Lawrence, Tim Herbert and Zhonghui Liu created the longest continuous record of ocean surface temperatures dating back 5 million years.

The record shows slow, steady cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific, a finding that challenges the notion that the Ice Ages alone sparked a global cooling trend. Published in Science, the results may help scientists create computer simulations that better predict future climate change. They also point to the oceans near Antarctica as the key region to monitor to predict further warming in the tropical Pacific.

Stimulating Ocean State Research

At a Rhode Island State House news conference in April, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed announced a $6.7-million National Science Foundation grant to the state. The funding is Rhode Island's first under the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) initiative. The grant spins out of a collaboration led by Brown and the University of Rhode Island, and will help boost life science research at eight state colleges and universities. Vice President for Research Andries van Dam led the effort for Brown.

The University will receive $1.5 million to create the Rhode Island Center for Proteomics, start a graduate research fellows program with URI, and help identify and recruit minority faculty and graduate students. Reed also announced another first - a Department of Defense EPSCoR grant that will go the Department of Computer Science.

Landmark Mental Health Study

Compared with adults, children and teen-agers with bipolar disorder struggle with longer-lasting and more rapidly changing symptoms. This is the initial finding of the largest, most comprehensive study of young people with bipolar disorder, conducted by researchers at Brown Medical School, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Martin Keller, M.D., was the principal investigator for the Brown team, which also included Henrietta Leonard, M.D., and Jeffrey Hunt, M.D. Results of the study on bipolar disorder, which affects an estimated 750,000 American children and teens, were reported in February in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Handmaidens of Healthy Eggs

Human eggs rely on granulosa cells, which surround the eggs and deliver critical nutrients and hormones. Biologists Richard Freiman and Ekaterina Voronina shed light on how these handmaidens grow in a February paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The pair, with colleagues at the University of California-Berkeley, discovered that two proteins team up to turn on about two dozen genes inside granulosa cells. This subset of genes, in turn, writes the genetic code for proteins that cause granulosa cells to multiply and nurture developing eggs. The finding sheds important light on the biochemical processes underpinning fertility.

Treating Alcoholism in Doctor's Office

The Brown Medical School played a key role in a recent nationwide study that found that alcoholism can be successfully treated in primary care settings.

COMBINE (for Combining Medications and Behavioral Interventions for Alcoholism) is the largest study ever conducted of drug and behavioral treatments for alcohol dependence. It included 1,383 subjects at eleven clinical sites across the country. Brown Medical School oversaw the largest site, enrolling 133 patients through Roger Williams Medical Center.

Robert Swift, M.D., was principal investigator of the Roger Williams site and an author of the report, which appeared in JAMA.

"Medical care works - and alcoholics don't need to check into a specialty treatment program to get it," said Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior and associate director of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown Medical School. "We found that just nine 20-minute sessions with a medical professional, in conjunction with naltrexone or intensive counseling, yields good clinical results."

Richard Longabaugh, a clinical psychologist and professor of research in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, was a co-investigator at the Brown site, and was one of the report's authors.