Malaria affected 219 million people around the globe in 2010, according to the World Health Organization. This life-threatening disease, caused by plasmodium parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes, killed about 660,000 people in 2010 – mostly African children under the age of five.
As one of the most common childhood learning disabilities, specific language impairment – a delay in mastering language skills, despite normal hearing, education and intelligence – affects about 5 to 7 percent of all kindergartners.
By investigating the mechanisms of bone formation, researchers at the University of Akron may help develop treatments for bone-related diseases such as osteomalacia, more commonly known as rickets, and osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder in which bones break easily.
At the Ohio State Center for Catalytic Bioscavenger Medical Defense Research II, chemists Thomas J. Magliery and Christopher M. Hadad lead a team that employs sophisticated methods of protein engineering, high-throughput screening and computational chemistry.
Animals are in constant movement across the surface of the earth, and climate affects their movements, especially for migrating and flying animals. Understanding animal movement is pivotal to predicting and ensuring the survival of populations in the face of rapid global changes to climate, land-use and habitats.
A Cleveland Clinic research team is developing virtual models of human knee joints to better understand how tissues and their individual cells react to heavy loads – virtual models that someday can be used tounderstand damage caused by the aging process or by debilitating diseases, such as osteoarthritis.
Human sight depends on an organized choreography of the retina with its cone and rods cells, the optic nerve, the brain’s visual cortex and light – be it a sunny day or a dark, star-studded night.
Remarkably, in extremely poor illumination conditions, the retina can still perceive intensities corresponding to only a few photons. Rod rhodopsins enable this high sensitivity.
At The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC), cancer researchers turn to the multifunctional Nucleic Acid Shared Resource (NASR) Illumina Core to analyze genomic and epigenomic influences on the disease – and indirectly, the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
Researchers at The Ohio State University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) are using sophisticated scanners and powerful supercomputers to study how vitamin E can be used to reduce the extent of brain injury suffered by stroke patients.
“When two genes interact to cause a clinically important phenotype, we can leverage genotypic information at one of the loci in order to improve our ability to detect the other,” said Veronica Vieland, Ph.D., vice president for computational research and director, Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine.
