Health and Medicine

University at Buffalo chemists have developed a remarkably simple and effective biotechnological method for synthesis of novel proteins using amino acids that do not occur in nature by using unique, programmable ribozymes (enzymes made of RNA, or ribonucleic acid) that they evolved in the lab. The technology provides a potentially important new tool in the field of proteomics, where scientists are working to understand all of the proteins that have been identified through the human genome project.

Estrogen's ability to reduce a woman's risk of heart disease during her reproductive years may be based on a previously unexamined mechanism of the hormone: its anti-inflammatory effects.

The first study of vitamin D status in a group of Kashmiri women and their babies has revealed across-the-board deficiency of the nutrient, which increases the risk of rickets, osteoporosis, other bone disorders and muscle weakness in this population.

Osteoporosis, a disease of bone-thinning that puts women at risk of serious fractures, is underdiagnosed and undertreated, a study by University at Buffalo researchers presented today at the annual meeting of the Society for Epidemiological Research has found. Nearly half of 836 women in a population-based study who underwent screening for osteoporosis for the first-time were found to have undiagnosed disease, results showed. Moreover, follow-up a year later revealed that half of those diagnosed with osteoporosis did not begin treatment to slow progression of the disorder and a quarter failed to discuss the screening results with their physician

In a series of studies designed to define the role of dietary macronutrients in the initiation of arterial inflammation that predisposes a person to atherosclerosis, University at Buffalo researchers have found that a high intake of glucose, or eating a high-fat, high-calorie fast-food meal causes an increase in the blood's inflammatory components.

A drug used widely as an insulin sensitizer appears also to have a significant anti-inflammatory effect in diabetics, a property that could make it useful in helping to prevent heart disease in these patients, a study by endocrinologists at the University at Buffalo has found.

Contrary to its revolutionary promise as a gender-free zone, cyberculture, women cyberspace pioneers argue, reproduces the power dynamics of sexist and racist practices and has a mythology that perpetuates inequality. They speak their minds in "Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture" (MIT Press, 2002), a groundbreaking collection of theoretical and fictional writing co-edited by UB librarian Austin Booth.

The goal of the massive international project being coordinated at the University at Buffalo is no less than to produce a critical investigation of a major author's creative processes unparalleled in the history of literary scholarship. It involves the annotation, cross-referencing and publication in print and on DVD of the content of the 60 handwritten notebooks assembled by James Joyce and scores of assistants during the 16 years it took the author to write his masterwork, "Finnegans Wake."

Researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., have found that when fathers recover from substance abuse, their children exhibit significant improvements in psychosocial functioning.

If the men and women of the U.S. Army's 402nd Civil Affairs Battalion depart for their next trouble spot with toothaches, it will be through no fault of the School of Dental Medicine at the University at Buffalo. The UB dental school is offering first-priority, at-cost dental services to the soldiers in the unit as it prepares for possible mobilization. The collaboration is the first such between a dental school and an Army Reserve special operations unit, and, if successful, could be used as a model for dental support to Reserve battalions across the country.