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  • Academy eBriefings

  • eBriefing

    Green Building Solutions

    What's Working?

    A four-part series looking at the state of the art in green building technology and design.

    As a new eBriefing reports, cheaper sensors and more powerful information technology are converging in increasingly sophisticated computational tools for monitoring and optimizing energy performance.

    In this eBriefing

    • How high-performance stream computing is assisting in regional energy management
    • Model-based tools for optimizing building performance
    • Human factors in the building industry that engineers of smart technologies should consider
  • Recent eBriefings 

    November 11, 2009

    Green Building Solutions: What's Working?

    A four-part series looking at the state of the art in green building technology and design.

    As sensors become more ubiquitous and information technology becomes less expensive, increasingly sophisticated computational tools are being developed to monitor and optimize energy performance.

    November 4, 2009

    Type 2 Diabetes Disparities in Ethnic Minorities: Origin, Challenges, and Solutions

    Organizer: Mary Ann Banerji, MD (SUNY Downstate Medical Center)

    Minority populations in the United States bear a disproportionate burden of diabetes and related conditions. Causes include genetics, social factors, and a need for more culturally sensitive approaches from the healthcare industry.

    October 16, 2009

    Something Borrowed, Something New: Drug Discovery Approaches in Chemical Biology

    Speakers: John Koh (University of Delaware), Akira Kawamura (Hunter College, City University of New York), and Tom Kodadek (The Scripps Research Institute)

    From traditional Asian herbs to high-tech computational approaches, chemical biologists are using everything in their arsenal to identify promising new drug candidates.

    October 13, 2009

    Short RNAs in Stress and Longevity: Regulatory Pathways

    Speakers: Frank Slack (Yale University), Ramanjulu Sunkar (Oklahoma State University), Evgeny Nudler (New York University), Anthony Leung (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Irina Groisman (André Lwoff Institute), Germano Cecere (Columbia University)

    Researchers are identifying microRNAs and siRNAs that play roles in the molecular programs regulating the stress response and senescence.

    October 2, 2009

    Trends in Chemical Biology 2009: Year-End Meeting of the Chemical Biology Discussion Group

    Keynote Speaker: Adrian Whitty (Boston University)

    Graduate students and postdocs from chemical biology labs around the New York area describe efforts to find and synthesize molecules that bind to proteins or DNA in useful ways.

    September 28, 2009

    Pattern Recognition: Systems Approaches to Studying Cancer

    Speakers: Andrea Califano (Columbia University), Galit Lahav (Harvard Medical School), Chris Sander (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center), and Arnold Levine (Simons Center for Systems Biology)

    Computational and experimental tools for modeling cancer biology are helping to identify common patterns underlying pathogenicity at the cellular and genome levels.

    September 21, 2009

    Out of Line: Cell Polarity in Cancer Progression, Invasion, and Metastasis

    Speakers: Senthil Muthuswamy (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Enrique Rodriguez-Boulan (Weill Cornell Medical College), John Condeelis (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), and Ian Macara (University of Virginia School of Medicine)

    A change in cell polarity is one of the hallmarks of carcinogenesis, and understanding—and stopping—that transition is now one of the hottest topics in cancer research.

    September 18, 2009

    Regenerative Medicine: Progress in Stem Cell and Transplantation Research

    Organizers: Anthony Atala (Wake Forest University), Stacie Bloom (New York Academy of Sciences), Yilin Cao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Anita Chong (The University of Chicago), Stefanie Dimmeler (University of Frankfurt), Michael P. Sheetz (Columbia University), Qiming Zhan (Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences), Alex Zhang (Sanofi Aventis), Chunhua Zhao (Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences)

    Repairing damaged or diseased body parts has long been a goal of medical researchers. This international conference focused on the recent explosion of research progress and the challenges that remain.

    September 11, 2009

    Shortening the Food Chain: Farming in the City

    Speakers: Cynthia Rosenzweig (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies), Dickson Despommier (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), Ted Caplow (BrightFarm Systems)

    Climate change impacts, population growth, rapid urbanization, food safety concerns, and the destructive nature of conventional agriculture together argue for pursuing sustainable agriculture in cities.

    August 24, 2009

    Circadian Disruption and Cancer: Making the Connection

    Keynote Speaker: Russell J. Reiter (The University of Texas Health Science Center)

    Our bodies use light cues to regulate fundamental cellular processes. Has overexposure to light and shift work in industrialized societies caused cell growth and proliferation to go awry?

    August 20, 2009

    Zero Net Energy Buildings: Reality or Fiction?

    A four-part series on sustainable building design.

    Green architects and engineers are working to balance energy consumption and generation at the level of individual buildings. But how do we define "zero" energy, and how can we reach this goal?

    August 12, 2009

    Potent Pathways: Structure-Guided Drug Discovery with Protein Kinases

    Speakers: Susan Taylor (University of California, San Diego), Vincent Stoll (Abbott Laboratories), Harren Jhoti (Astex Therapeutics), and Stephen Burley (SGX Pharmaceuticals)

    Protein kinases play a key role in almost every major pathway in eukaryotic cells. Structural approaches, including a new method called fragment-based drug design, are identifying potential targets against diseases including cancer.

    August 11, 2009

    Dengue, Meningococcal, and Pneumococcal Vaccines: Strategies for Developing Countries

    Organizer: Albert Ko (Weill-Cornell Medical College)

    Regions of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America bear the greatest burden from infectious diseases, in part because life-saving vaccines have not been broadly implemented. How can they be delivered to those who need them most?

    August 5, 2009

    Folkman's Legacy: Angiogenesis and Cancer Therapeutics

    Keynote Speaker: William W. Li (The Angiogenesis Foundation)

    Judah Folkman pioneered the concept of treating cancer by attacking the tumor's supply lines—the capillary blood vessels that feed the tumor. A year after his death, researchers met to discuss new findings and persistent challenges.

    August 4, 2009

    Charge and Release: Electrostatics and Thermal Regulation in Smart Materials Design

    Speakers: Eric Dufresne (Yale University) and Steven P. Bitler (Landec Corporation)

    Researchers are developing "intelligent" materials that respond to changes in their environment in ways that solve engineering challenges. Products like "smart" food packaging have even begun entering the market.

    July 24, 2009

    A Dangerous Divide: The Two Cultures in the 21st Century

    Keynote Speakers: E.O. Wilson (Harvard University), John Edward Porter (Research!America), and Dean Kamen (DEKA Research)

    Fifty years ago, C.P. Snow identified a lack of understanding between scientists and literary scholars. Panelists at an Academy symposium, summarized in a new eBriefing, say the divide today is between scientists and the general public, with troubling consequences.

    July 23, 2009

    Therapeutics for Cognitive Aging: Preserving Mental Vitality across the Lifespan

    Organizer: Howard Fillit (Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation)

    There's no consensus about what cognitive aging is, but mental decline clearly affects most of us as we grow older. This eBriefing explores how cognitive aging relates to other neurodegenerative disorders and how it may be managed.

    July 16, 2009

    A Beautiful Machine: Investigating the Inner Workings of the Ribosome

    Speakers: Marina V. Rodnina (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry), Hani Zaher (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), and Ruben L. Gonzalez, Jr. (Columbia University)

    Imaging techniques and site-directed mutagenesis are revealing the details of translational fidelity and kinetics at the ribosome. Conformational changes in the ribosome appear to play a key role in these processes.

    July 13, 2009

    Improving Pediatric Health: Biobehavioral Approaches to Childhood Disease Management

    Keynote Speaker: David Krol (University of Toledo College of Medicine; Global Children's Dental Health Taskforce)

    The traditional approach to delivering pediatric health care is not effective in underserved populations. Practitioners are investigating comprehensive, community-based approaches that have been successful in other contexts.

    July 8, 2009

    BACE1 and Alzheimer's Disease: Targeting a Link in the Amyloid Pathway

    Speakers: David Riddell (Wyeth Research), Robert Vassar (Northwestern University), Lisa McConlogue (Elan Pharmaceuticals), Ishrut Hussain (GlaxoSmithKline R&D), and Jordan Tang (Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation)

    BACE1 is the enzyme that generates the toxic peptide amyloid-β in the brain. Researchers convened at the Academy to discuss efforts to develop a drug that targets BACE1 and prevents amyloid plaque build-up.