Research

Confident multitaskers of the world, your attention please. Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while. Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car. These experts have some basic advice.

Researchers said yesterday that they have identified seven new genes connected to the most common form of diabetes - the latest result of an intensifying race between university researchers and private companies to find genes linked to a range of diseases. The findings, presented in three reports by university scientists and one report by a private company, offer novel insights into the biology of a disease that affects 170 million people worldwide. And the sudden spate of new results marks an acceleration, and perhaps a turning point, in the ability to find disease genes, the long-promised payoff from the Human Genome Project that began in 1989.

Dogged and determined scientists appear to have given mankind a remarkable gift: a method for creating personalized medical repair kits using skin cells from a patient's own body. The discovery, reached simultaneously by researchers in the United States and Japan, has enormous potential to provide lifesaving cures to people with a wide range of injuries and ailments - cures that avoid the prospect of rejection as well as the ethical concerns about destroying human embryos. Tempting as it would be, though, to declare that there is no longer any need for embryonic stem cell research, that's simply not the case.

Moving at "creep speed" amid a business lunch crowd yesterday, the miniature tank-like machine aroused little curiosity. Diners barely noticed as the contraption passed, unaware that it was monitoring temperature, humidity and air quality. An Army engineer operated the unit remotely, occasionally raising its arm above the diners to get a better view. After reviewing the data, he pronounced the atmosphere on the patio at Harford Community College safe -- even healthy -- for diners. "Oxygen is at 20.9 percent, right where it's supposed to be," said Shawn Funk, a mechanical engineer with the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The Johns Hopkins University has hired the state's former economic development chief, Aris Melissaratos, to oversee the university's flagging commercialization efforts and to recruit major corporate tenants into its budding research parks, officials said yesterday. Melissaratos, a popular secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development under Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., will start tomorrow in the new position: special adviser to the president for enterprise development.

WASHINGTON -- Canadian researchers furnished the strongest evidence to date linking the popular diabetes drug Avandia to an increased risk of heart attack in a scientific study released yesterday. Compared with other diabetes pills, Avandia's use was associated with a 60 percent higher risk of heart failure, 40 percent higher risk of heart attack and 30 percent higher risk of death in patients 65 and older, the researchers found. "The risks associated with these drugs may outweigh the benefits, at least for older populations," said Dr. Lorraine L. Lipscombe, the lead author of the study and a researcher at a health research agency funded by the Ontario government.

On Sunday, November 4, 2007, OLGA CASSELLA (nee Rosskopf) passed away in Rutland, VT due to complications from pulmonary hypertension and sarcoidosis. She owned her own Real Estate Brokerage and Appraisal business and also was a Recreational Pilot. She is survived by sisters, Ilma Rosskopf and Edda Rosskopf. Contributions can be made to: The Pulmonary Hypertension Association, (Phn) 301-565-3004 ext 116 or The Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research , 122 S. Michigan Ave, Suite 1700, Chicago, IL 60603.

At nearly $1.5 billion, the Johns Hopkins University led the nation's academic centers in funding for medical, science and engineering research for the 28th straight year in 2006, and it was tops for federally supported research and development, too, according to recent reports. The University of Maryland, Baltimore earned 35th place on the overall list, with $405.2 million, and the University of Maryland, College Park was 43rd with $354.2 million in private and public research dollars.

Hannah Pennington peered at the sample she had spread on a small slide. "I don't know what that red thing is," the 17-year-old senior said to her lab partners, assembled around a table in their science research class at Century High School in southern Carroll County. After further inspection of the sample freshly scraped from discs placed in a small body of water near the school, she said: "Ooh, it's a worm." "Keep it alive," her classmate Samantha Smith, 17, said. "We want to see him."

`Word choices' ease killing of embryos I found it ironic that Tricia Bishop's article on the use of word choices to manipulate legislation and public opinion itself contained manipulative language ("Word choices," March 11). For instance, Towson University health science professor Patricia Alt's statement that embryos are just "cells" is a blatant example of the sort of language used by those in favor of abortion and embryonic stem cell research in an effort to dehumanize embryos and fetuses.

BETHESDA - - President Barack Obama toured a Maryland cancer lab Wednesday to promote the awarding of $5 billion in new government health science grants, which he described as the "largest single boost to biomedical research in history." The National Institutes of Health grants, distributed in recent weeks to more than 12,000 projects around the country, are funded under the $787 billion federal stimulus program that Obama signed into law in February. In all, about $100 billion in stimulus money is to go to science and technology projects, according to the administration.

Clinton McCracken and Carrie John knew all about addictions and obsessive behavior. Both worked as postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and earlier this year published their conclusions from a study of "compulsions and habit formation." But their research might have taken too personal a turn. John, 29, a Wake Forest University graduate with a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology, died Sunday after apparently injecting herself with what McCracken called a "bad" batch of buprenorphine, a narcotic known on the street as "bupe" and commonly used to treat heroin addiction.

Bealefeld correct on accountability In reference to the article this week "Bealefeld urges accountability" (May 20), for the most part I agree with the Police Commissioner's comments. Mr. Bealefeld is right that those convicted of crimes against African-Americans usually receive a lighter punishment than those who commit crimes against whites. Why is that? All life is important. I have run a mentoring program for 13 years and have tried to instill good morals, principles and respect in our young men. But at the end of the day, after they have left my presence, parents, guardians and others must get involved.

The projects to be launched at a top-secret University of Maryland research center would make "Q" - James Bond's owlish gadget-meister - blink with tears of envy. In the coming months, teams of the nation's top theoretical mathematicians, behavioral scientists, software engineers and futurists will assemble to figure out how to make U.S. intelligence better, faster and more efficient. Aston Martins with twin machine guns and ejector seats? Flamethrower bagpipes? Jet packs? The missile-firing leg cast?

A large, port wine colored birthmark covers half of Jenna Heck's face, stretching above her right brow to the corner of her mouth. Bimonthly laser treatments have lightened the mark, but it continues to turn heads at the grocery store and incite whispers from her fellow preschoolers. Her mother, Ida Heck, uses every pause in conversation, each raised eyebrow, all the small, accidental gasps to educate those who don't know about Jenna's condition: Sturge-Weber syndrome. "Every time you go somewhere they say, 'Oh, what's wrong with her?

A year ago, Beth Singleton celebrated the accomplishment of two students being honored for outstanding project for the state at the National History Day competition. This year, her top student placed third in the fifth annual Howard County History Day competition. The gifted and talented resource teacher at Murray Hill Middle School has noticed an improvement in the caliber of participants at the annual countywide competition, held last month at Reservoir High School. "Everyone had really elevated the work that they had done," Singleton said.

The media research firm Arbitron Inc. said Tuesday that it is slashing 10 percent of its work force and cutting other expenses as new management refocuses the business and tries to deal with the weak economy. Under the plan, 110 full-time positions, including 80 in the Baltimore area, would be eliminated, company spokesman Thom Mocarsky said in phone interview. About 71 percent, or 767, of the company's 1,084 full-time employees work in Columbia, where the company moved its headquarters this month.

Media research firm Arbitron Inc. said yesterday that it is relocating its corporate headquarters from New York City to Columbia, where most of its employees work. Michael Skarzynski, Arbitron's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement that he and other executives should live and work in Columbia because it is where most of the company's research is done. "He wanted to be where the action is, where the people who will execute the decisions are," said Thom Mocarsky, an Arbitron spokesman.

Baby experts have been saying TV is bad for little brains for at least a decade. A lot of parents believe it's good. A study slated for release today in the journal Pediatrics says they both are wrong. Screen time does not help babies younger than 2 learn, but small amounts don't hurt them either, according to the study by researchers at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. The surprising new research isn't likely to be the last word on babies and TV. It's a controversial subject that has moved to the forefront of family conversations in recent years, as the number of television shows and videos marketed to infants has grown and parental time pressures have increased.

We keep hearing that President Barack Obama is intent on correcting the excesses of the previous administration, whether it's waterboarding or dirty air or international relations. But how about this: There exists the possibility that prisoners in American jails could be used for "voluntary" experiments - clinical trials for drugs, new surgical procedures and the like. It's a troubling piece of Bush-era business that the president could correct with the stroke of a pen. For more than two years, we, as members of a liaison panel advising the Institute of Medicine, have been waiting for an answer from the secretary of health and human services concerning the troubling potential for inmates in American prisons to be used for experiments.