|
Pacific Cooperative
Studies Unit Receives $400,000 to Battle Invasive Species
The UH Manoa Pacific
Cooperative Studies Unit (PCSU) received $150,000 from the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and $250,000 from the Hawai‘i Community Foundation through
the Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species. The money will be distributed
to the Invasive Species Committees on Kaua‘i, Maui, Moloka‘i, O‘ahu
and the Big Island.
PCSU provides support for the committees, allowing them to focus on putting
teams into the field to try to control alien invasive species found in the islands
such as coqui frogs, miconia and fire ants. The committees also try to prevent
future invasions of species, such as the brown tree snake and West Nile virus.
Read the press
release.
UH Exploring Neutrino
Mass
A team of UH Manoa scientists and their international colleagues announced results
from experiments at KamLAND, an underground neutrino detector in central Japan.
The experiments show that anti-neutrinos emanating from nearby nuclear reactors
are "disappearing," which indicates they have mass and can oscillate
or change from one type to another. Since anti-neutrinos are the anti-matter
counterpart to neutrinos, these results provide independent confirmation of
earlier studies involving solar neutrinos and show that the Standard Model of
Particle Physics, which has explained fundamental physics since the 1970s, is
in need of updating. The results also point the way to the first direct measurements
of the total radioactivity of the earth.
"This new result from the KamLAND collaboration is a landmark discovery
in the study of one of nature’s fundamental constituents, neutrinos,"
said John Learned, a physics professor. "We now know the solution to the
long running solar neutrino puzzle, and we have evidence for the most peculiar
behavior of these particles transmuting into each other as they fly even shorter
distances on earth."
For more information, read the press
release or visit the discovery
and UH
involvement Web sites.
U.S. Surgeon General
Delivers Keynote Address at Health Disparities Symposium
 Vice
Admiral Richard H. Carmona, surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service,
was the keynote speaker at the Eighth Research Centers in Minority Institutions
International Symposium on Health Disparities on Dec. 8. Carmona spoke about
"The Strategic Plan of the U.S. Public Health Service to Eliminate Racial
and Ethnic Disparities in Health." . The School
of Medicine organized the symposium, which continues through Dec. 11.
The symposium features keynote addresses and plenary lectures by leading researchers.
There will also be scientific sessions that will highlight the environmental,
cultural, socio-economic, biobehavioral and genetic aspects of racial and ethnic
disparities in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, asthma and
autoimmune diseases, infant mortality and pre-term birth and neurological diseases.
Approximately 300 researchers in biomedicine and health from Alabama, California,
Florida, Georgia, Hawai‘i, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Tennessee,
Texas, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are attending.
Read the press
release or visit the symposium
Web site.
|
