- Pelotonia fueling breakthrough efforts in cancer battle
In 12 years, Pelotonia has raised more than $225 million. Even with COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020, Pelotonia riders planned their own individual or socially distanced small-group activities and raised $10.5 million. It's also funded these five initiatives that have produced some amazing work and breakthroughs.
- The root of a solution to water pollution?
Almost half of Ohio’s lakes, wetlands and streams are tainted with nutrient runoff — fertilizers and animal manure, intended for land, but carried into bodies of water by rain and gravity. Once in the water, those chemicals threaten plant and animal life, water supplies for humans and local economies that depend on water recreation. Could floating islands peppered with nutrient-chomping plants be part of a solution?
- Six things to know about Lake Erie’s algal blooms
The harmful algal blooms that manifest on Lake Erie in the summer can be as murky a concept to understand as they look. But it’s important to recognize the distinct and sometimes dangerous impact these blooms can have beyond the Great Lakes’ banks: Harmful algal blooms are capable of producing toxins that can cause skin rashes, GI problems and varying degrees of damage to a person’s liver, kidneys and nervous system.
- Recruiting your own immune system to fight cancer
When traditional means of fighting cancer — surgery, chemotherapy — don’t work, doctors sometimes try a more novel approach: immuno-oncology or immunotherapy. Currently, only about 20% of cancer patients are able to use immunotherapy to fight cancer. But that number is rising, according to Dr. Zihai Li, founding director of Ohio State’s Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology (PIIO).
- VR training helping disaster response
Doug Danforth and Nick Kman have developed a VR training tool to help teach Ohio State’s medical students, emergency medicine residents, and first responders SALT triage. Danforth, who has a background in designing VR simulations for medical students, and Kman, a FEMA first responder and professor of emergency medicine, collaborated with other medical center faculty and designers from the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD).
- Video games with a healing touch
How can gaming technology — or virtual reality — be a rehabilitation tool that engages someone recovering from a traumatic brain injury? How can it get them to enjoy the rigorous work? That’s the world Lise Worthen-Chaudhari lives in. Her revolutionary gaming therapy, Embedded Arts, helps patients recovering from brain injuries increase their range of motion control by creating abstract art through motion sensors.
