Health and Medicine

As he packed off the army knapsack used by renowned "wartime poet" Robert Graves, Robert Bertholf -- curator of the University at Buffalo Poetry and Rare Books Collection -- reflected on the value of the items he often sends to museums from around the world. The knapsack was sent last month to the Imperial War Museum in London, where it is part of the exhibition, "Anthem for Doomed Youth: Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War." It is one of four major exhibits in which the UB Poetry and Rare Books Collection, which is quietly achieving international notoriety for its significance, is participating over the next few months.

A study centering on two emerging theories on the causes of diabetes in adults will be conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo over the next three years, funded by a $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Piero Bianco produces movies. Not films that chronicle the human condition, a la Hollywood. His subject is human biology at its most basic -- the translocation and unwinding of DNA by a DNA motor protein. Bianco is the first to record on videotape in real time a molecule of a particular DNA motor protein in the process of "unzipping" a double strand of bacterial DNA.

The role of plant-based estrogens in modifying breast-cancer risk is the subject of a five-year research study and intervention to be conducted by nutritional epidemiologists at the University at Buffalo.

A new, patented nanotechnology that one day may allow cancer patients to receive treatments through an MRI procedure in a doctor's office is being developed by scientists at the University at Buffalo's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics and a French nanotechnology firm, Nanobiotix, Inc.

Diabetic women who use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) were more likely to have their blood glucose under control, and have lower cholesterol levels than women who never used hormone therapy, a study by University at Buffalo epidemiologists has found.

University at Buffalo scientists have been awarded a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to use new technologies, such as grid computing, data mining and collaborative environments, to enhance protein-structure determination, a key tool in the rational drug-design process, where the discovery of new pharmaceuticals is based on precise knowledge of protein structures.

Can people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) reduce their symptoms by learning to alter the brain's processing of pain signals? Researchers at the University at Buffalo and the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) think the answer is "yes."

Juliana Read, a doctoral candidate in the University at Buffalo who previously was a genuine arachnophobe, is conducting research to determine whether an hour of treatment can produce clinically significant reductions in anxiety among those afraid of spiders.

University at Buffalo family-medicine researchers, in a new four-year study, are testing whether linking people in a psychiatric emergency to a primary-care physician and then following them closely will improve patients' mental and physical health care and save money in the process.