Ohio State Research In Three Consecutive Issues of Science

Five papers in three weeks a first; signifies frequency and quality of research

#1 - Ju Li, along with colleagues, showed that aluminum -- one of nature’s best conductors of electricity -- may behave like a ceramic or a semiconductor in certain situations, solving a decades-old mystery about the metal’s behavior. When it comes to forming tiny structures in computer chip circuits and nanotechnology, aluminum may endure mechanical stress more than 30 percent better than copper, which is normally considered to be the stiffer metal. <more>

#2 and #3 - Jiyan Ma discovered the mechanism behind how prions – pieces of protein molecules– can kill nerve cells in the brain and lead to some serious degenerative diseases. The key seems to lie in how one particular protein misfolds within an organelle inside the cell, transforming itself into a new agent and then poisoning the neuron in which it was made. had two reports published in Science. His first paper offers the best explanation to date of how these diseases – transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSE – are able to destroy individual nerve cells and ultimately kill patients.

His second paper proposes an answer to a puzzle that has boggled researchers trying to understand how the non-infectious forms of these diseases initially gain a foothold. If proven true, then the new findings may have implications for new therapies against these diseases and even offer warnings concerning specific therapies for other maladies. <more>

#4 - Lonnie Thompson provided a detailed analysis of six cores retrieved from the rapidly shrinking ice fields atop Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro which shows that those tropical glaciers began to form about 11,700 years ago. The analysis also supports Ohio State University researchers’ prediction that these unique bodies of ice will disappear in the next two decades, the victims of global warming. Thompson, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State and leader of an expedition in 2000 to retrieve these cores, called Kilimanjaro’s ice fields "stagnant" and said they are "wasting away." <more>

#5 - James Todd developed a new way to use a decade-old imaging method to directly compare the brains of monkeys with those of humans. The method uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) – a technique that measures blood volume and flow and blood-oxygen levels in the brain. It also provides an indirect measure of neuronal activity in different regions of the brain. <more>


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