Focus: Hidden - DC Metro

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In an attempt to address the significant problem of childhood obesity in the United States territory, Puerto Rican officials have proposed a $500 - $800 fine for parents whose children have obesity and have not improved after parent-focused education. While some public and pediatric health organizations have called the bill “unfair,” The Obesity Society (TOS) and The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) go further to call it a misguided policy that ignores the core scientific understanding of obesity as a disease.

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WHO: More than 14,000 biomedical researchers from industry, government, nonprofits, the private sector and academia WHAT: Experimental Biology, the convergence of six scientific societies’ annual meetings WHEN: March 28 – April 1, 2015 WHERE: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center

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The Endocrine Society and Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR®) are co-sponsoring a Congressional briefing on February 17 that will focus on the importance of including female subjects in both preclinical and clinical biomedical research, which could potentially revolutionize medical research and scientific discovery.

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Eric Arnesen, a specialist in the history of race, labor, politics and civil rights was officially installed as the George Washington University’s James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor in Modern American Labor History.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have isolated a peptide, a type of biological molecule, which binds strongly to lithium manganese nickel oxide (LMNO), a material that can be used to make the cathode in high performance batteries. The peptide can latch onto nanosized particles of LMNO and connect them to conductive components of a battery electrode, improving the potential power and stability of the electrode.

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Mechanosensation is one of our fundamental physiological processes, on par with sight and smell, but how it works on a cellular level remains poorly understood, holding back development of effective treatments for mechanosensory disorders like chronic pain. Now, a team of researchers has identified a new model organism that may help elucidate the cellular mechanisms behind mechanosensation: the ordinary duck.

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Food dyes can give cakes, candy and sodas brilliant colors of the rainbow. Now a team of food scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey has found that food coloring may be able to play more than its traditional esthetic role in food presentation.

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Researchers have reversed some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in mice using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging-guided focused ultrasound.

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Editor's Note: For more about the New Voices Fellowship, visit www.aspennewvoices.org or email [email protected]. Follow all the fellows on Twitter here and the fellowship at @aspennewvoices.

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On the heels of a year marked by bold zero deforestation commitments the first ever comprehensive ranking of the powerbrokers that control the global supply chains that drive over half of tropical deforestation finds that only a small minority are equipped to tackle this problem. Deforestation and land use change cause more than 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, undermine regional water security, and threaten the livelihoods of more than one billion people worldwide.

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The American Thyroid Association (ATA) has championed the effort to include a daily serving of iodine in multivitamin/mineral supplements intended for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and it applauds the new guidelines released by the U.S. Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) advising manufacturers to include 150 micrograms of iodine to these daily supplements.

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Incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk is a lightweight, biodegradable wonder material with numerous potential biomedical applications. But although humans have been colonizing relatively placid silkworms for thousands of years, harvesting silk from territorial and sometimes cannibalistic spiders has proven impractical. Instead, labs hoping to harness spider silk's mechanical properties are using its molecular structure as a template for their own biomimetic silks.

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A short nap can help relieve stress and bolster the immune systems of men who slept only two hours the previous night, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

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Low levels of 25-OH vitamin D in childhood were associated with subclinical atherosclerosis over 25 years later in adulthood, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

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Knowing how cells exert force and sense mechanical feedback in their microenvironment is crucial to understanding how they activate a wide range of cellular functions, such as cell reproduction, differentiation and adhesion. Now a more fine-grained picture of adhesion mechanics is emerging, thanks to a new tool developed in Illinois in recent years called a "tension gauge tether," which allows scientists to measure cell mechanics at the single-molecule level.

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A new multiferroric film keeps its electric and magnetic properties even when highly curved, paving the way for potential uses in wearable devices

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Nancy Rudner, an adjunct professor at the George Washington University School of Nursing, offers tips on how to maintain healthy New Year's resolutions for life.

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With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, the American Sociological Association (ASA) has sociologists available to discuss topics ranging from dating, love, and consumerism to weddings, sex, and sadness.

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On Friday, the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) drafted and submitted a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding the proposed rule on refinements to the current framework of the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

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The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) is partnering with the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (AMFDP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create the ASN-AMFDP Award and improve diversity in kidney health. The ASN-AMFDP Award will support the career development of a kidney research scholar and future health care leader from a historically disadvantaged background for 4 years.

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Patients with soft tissue sarcoma of an extremity treated with preoperative image-guided radiotherapy have fewer long-term side effects than a historical control group treated with preoperative, non-image-guided RT, according to results of a trial published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

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The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) commends the February 5, 2015, decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide coverage for annual lung cancer screening via low-dose CT screening for those at highest-risk for lung cancer.

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The Louisiana Consortium for Neutron Scattering, or LaCNS, was granted $4.9 million of funding for three years from the U.S. Department of Energy.

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The Consortium for Health and Military Performance’s Human Performance Resource Center (HPRC) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) today announced an important new partnership created to provide robust educational resources designed to help service members understand and navigate the potential dangers associated with dietary supplements.

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NIBIB-funded researchers have developed a novel 3D vaccine that could provide a more effective way to harness the immune system to fight cancer as well as infectious diseases. The vaccine spontaneously assembles into a scaffold once injected under the skin and is capable of recruiting, housing, and manipulating immune cells to generate a powerful immune response. The vaccine was recently found to be effective in delaying tumor growth in mice.

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Not unlike an urban restaurant, the success of a bacterial cell depends on three things: localization, localization and localization. But the complete set of controls by which bacteria control the movement of proteins and other essential biological materials globally within the confines of their membrane walls has been something of a mystery. Now, researchers have parsed out the localization mechanisms that E. coli use to sort through and organize their subcellular components.

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A large percentage of the world's population -- fully one third, by the World Health Organization's estimates -- is currently overweight or obese. This staggering statistics has made finding ways to address obesity a top priority for many scientists around the globe, and now a group of researchers at the University of Wyoming has found promise in the potential of capsaicin -- the chief ingredient in chili peppers -- as a diet-based supplement.

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Good drugs are hard to design: they must not only effectively treat a medical condition, but they must also do so without having side effects that outweigh their benefits. Sometimes, toxic side effects aren’t discovered until late in development, when substantial time and money have already been invested. Now, researchers have devised a new drug screen that capitalizes on the tendency of toxic compounds to alter the properties of the lipid bilayer that encases cells.

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By employing derivatives of humanin, a naturally occurring peptide encoded in the genome of cellular mitochondria, researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev are working to interrupt necrosis, buying precious time for tissues whose cellular mechanisms have called it quits.

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The American Medical Group Foundation (AMGF) has been awarded a $150,000 grant over 12 months by United Health Foundation to help support its national Measure Up/Pressure Down® high blood pressure campaign.

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• A simple test performed with the FDA-approved medication furosemide, along with a measurement of urine output, can predict which patients with acute kidney injury will later require dialysis. • The test could help clinicians safeguard patients’ kidney health.

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• Researchers have shown that the messenger protein IL-6, which is rapidly produced at high levels during an acute inflammatory form of kidney disease, potently dampens activation of tissue-destructive immune cells called macrophages. • The findings may have broad clinical implications because elevated IL-6 is observed in many different inflammatory diseases, and macrophages are often crucially involved in their pathogenesis.

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A report from a summit organized last year by the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Society of Anesthesiologists,® the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, and The Pew Charitable Trusts summarizes manufacturing, regulatory, and economic issues related to drug shortages, as well as potential solutions.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the most influential and closely followed magazine in the world devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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To predict Earth’s future, geologists use particle accelerators to understand its past.

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Prostate cancer patients with detectable prostate specific antigen (PSA) following radical prostatectomy should receive earlier, more aggressive radiation therapy treatment, according to a study published in the February 1, 2015 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

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The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) sent a letter to the White House yesterday asking the President to preserve the ability for its member multispecialty medical groups and integrated health systems to provide advanced imaging services to their patients.

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The Endocrine Society today commended the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) for revamping its Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program in response to widespread outcry from the physician community.

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Holographic video displays, featuring 3-D images, are about to "go large" and become a lot more affordable at the same time, thanks to the work of a team of Brigham Young University researchers and their collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Two New York University researchers have taken inspiration from avian locomotion strategies and created a pump that moves fluid using vibration instead of a rotor. Their results will be published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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By combining micro-imprinting and electro-spinning techniques, researchers at Shanghai University’s Rapid Manufacturing Engineering Center have developed a vascular graft composed of three layers for the first time. This tri-layered composite has allowed researchers to utilize separate materials that respectively possess mechanical strength and promote new cell growth - a significant problem for existing vascular grafts that have only consisted of a single or double layer.

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The Washington Women’s Wellness Center and the National Center for Advanced Pelvic Surgery have become the first and only obstetrics and gynecology offices in the District of Columbia to receive the SCOPE certification from the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG). The Safety Certification in Outpatient Practice Excellence (SCOPE) certification for Women’s Health is a recognition awarded to medical practices that are leaders in delivering the best possible health care to women.

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AACN has expressed support and concern over specific provisions outlined in the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 Budget that would impact the nursing workforce, critical healthcare research, and primary care practice.

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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, under the brand name Vyvanse, to treat moderate to severe binge eating disorder (BED) in adults, a first of its kind prescription drug specifically indicated for BED. TOS says that understanding the differences between obesity and BED is important for clinicians, as BED is an eating disorder that affects only a portion of those with the medical disease obesity.

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Three exceptional ASTRO staff members have been promoted to new positions: Emily Wilson has been named Executive Vice President; Dave Adler promoted to Vice President of Advocacy; and Anne Hubbard promoted to Director of Health Policy, as announced by ASTRO’s Board of Directors and effective immediately.

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South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Ph.D. candidate Anne-Marie Suriano has been selected to receive the 2015 Science Graduate Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.