College of Veterinary Medicine dean Dr. Warwick Arden, who’s also serving as provost, was on WUNC’s The State of Things today for a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from the Easley scandal to NC State research to the proposed research lab in Butner to his childhood in Australia.
You can find the audio on The State of Things‘ home page.
Zootoo Pet News recently interviewed Ola Harrysson, an associate professor of engineering, about his work in osseointegrated prosthetics. Unlike traditional prosthetic limbs, which can be removed, osseointegrated prosthetics attach to the bone.
The osseointegrated prosthetic becomes a part of the pet’s leg and in all cases the animal has been able to ambulate normally using the prosthetic. It is our hope that these animal patients will be able to live a normal life after the procedure and will be able to walk and run like any other pet. The owners still have to be very involved in the process for the procedure to be a success.
A few months ago, we posted a CBS video on Cassidy, a dog who had received this kind of implant here at NC State. We first wrote about the work of Harrysson and veterinary medicine professor Denis Marcellin-Little in 2003.
NC State holds campus budget forum for students, faculty and staff (PowerPoint available). . . . UNC System might have to raise raise tuition, the N&O reports. . . . Former provost Larry Nielsen meets with grand jury. . . Interim provost and vet school dean Dr. Warwick Arden named president of Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. . . . Aerospace engineering Ph.D. student building autonomous glider with a goal of a 141.7-mile cross country flight without human intervention. . . . Director of College of Engineering’s K-12 outreach program wins presidential award. . . . Former Wolfpack baseball star Aaron Bates ’07 makes a splash in his first games with the Boston Red Sox. . . . Technician covers the opening of the Lonnie Poole Golf Course. . . . Wolfpack golfer Brad Revell says practicing with roommate, friend and national champion Matt Hill “shows you what you need to do.” . . . Monty Montegue ’80, design principal at BOLT Group, discusses creativity and innovation in business on WFAE’s Charlotte Talks. . . . Former NC State women’s basketball assistant coach named president of the board of the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund.
NC State News Services has posted two interesting research stories on the university’s home page. The first, which went up today, describes robotic bats that engineers are developing to use “for everything from indoor surveillance to exploring collapsed buildings.”
They’re modeling micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) after bats, which offer increased maneuverability and performance. “We are trying to mimic nature as closely as possible because it is very efficient,” Stefan Seelecke, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, told News Services. They have already assembled the skeleton (which weighs less than 6 grams) and are completing the joints, muscular system and wing membrane.
Over in the College of Veterinary Medicine, efforts to compare human and canine tumors to narrow the search for genes involved in human brain cancer have paid off. Researchers have found that a gene believed to be involved in meningiomas — tumors that grow between the brain and the skull — is not as key to tumor formation as previously thought. Genomics professor Matthew Breen talks about studying cancer in dogs and humans:
“By looking at tumors seen in both humans and dogs we have a simple way to narrow the search: we compare the affected areas of a human chromosome with related areas on dog chromosomes. This works because dogs and humans are genetically similar and both get the same kinds of cancers. While we share much of our genetic material, the DNA of a dog is organized differently to our own and this makes it possible to isolate smaller ’shared’ regions of genetic data rather than looking at an entire chromosome.”
(Photograph by Gheorghe Bunget, NC State)
The News & Observer wrote today about a joint effort of the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center to study non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that’s found often in humans and dogs. The researchers are hoping to identify the cancer’s cause and develop better treatments for both humans and dogs.
Cancer researchers have traditionally relied on mice, which are plentiful and easily engineered, for their models, injecting them with tumors to study the effects. A mouse’s physiology is far different from a human’s, so drawing conclusions based on mouse research and connecting them to human cancer treatment has proved difficult, said Dr. Kristy Richards, a professor of medicine and genetics who works at UNC-CH’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dogs, on the other hand, are much more similar genetically to humans. Researchers are recruiting dogs diagnosed with lymphoma to collect tissue samples.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is the fifth-leading cause of cancer deaths among human patients, and the mortality rate for dogs is higher, clinical sciences professor Steven Suter told NC State’s News Services. “This is another example of ‘One Health,’ the concept of comparative medicine that acknowledges human and animal health relies on a common pool of medical and scientific knowledge and is supported by overlapping technologies and discoveries.”
(Photograph courtesy of Flickr user parl)
NPR’s Talk of the Nation recently featured Stanley Coren, author of The Modern Dog, and Matthew Breen, professor of genomics in the College of Veterinary Medicine, to discuss advances in canine science. Breen, left, specifically talked about “what the canine genome reveals about human cancer.” He won the Excellence in Canine Health Research Award from the American Kennel Club’s Canine Health Foundation (CHF) in 2007 for his role in mapping the canine genome. Last summer, he did two interviews with the CHF about his research. Listen here and here.
(Photograph Courtesy of NC State News Services)
Larry Nielsen resigned as NC State provost today, effective May 22, and will rejoin the faculty of the College of Natural Resources, where he was dean from 2001 to 2005. In his statement, Chancellor James L. Oblinger said:
The provost cited among his reasons for resigning the professional and personal anguish caused by continuing newspaper reports implying that his hiring of Mary Easley was done under pressure and improperly influenced by political motives. I have known Larry for eight years. I know him to be a good and honest person who is incapable of willfully damaging the integrity of North Carolina State University.
Chancellor Oblinger has written a letter to the editor of The News & Observer. Dr. Warwick Arden, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, will serve as interim provost, and the university will conduct a national search to fill the provost position.
Update: Watch Chancellor Oblinger’s 1 p.m. press conference at WRAL.com.
Update #2: Chair of NC State’s BOT resigns.
Update #3: Chancellor Oblinger tells a reporter at a groundbreaking that “it’s in the best interest of the university” that Easley resign.
CBS’s The Early Show recently featured Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little, an orthopedic surgeon in the College of Veterinary Medicine, in a report about a three-legged dog, Cassidy, who became the first canine in the world to receive a permanent artificial leg. Marcellin-Little attached a titanium socket made in a lab in NC State’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering to the German Shephard mix’s right rear tibia last summer. In March, X-rays showed the bone was fusing with the rod, which “could one day lead to better prosthetics for wounded combat veterans and others.” Marcellin-Little told The News & Observer that he was “a little bit shocked” that Cassidy could walk so easily so quickly.
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