ORNL 2007 Biological & Environmental Research Report
Climate Change ORNL Review
ORNL Awarded $125M Bioenergy Research Center
Resurgence of Bioenergy ORNL Review2005 Awards and Achievements
Swaja elected AIMBE fellow
Richard Swaja was elected to the College of Fellows of
the American Institute of Medical and Biological
Engineering (AIMBE). He was officially inducted as
a fellow at the Annual AIMBE Meeting in February 2005 at
the National Academy of Sciences. The election was based
on his "many distinguished contributions to the
field as well as his demonstrated interest,
concern, and involvement with critical issues affecting
medical and biological engineering."
Since October 1, 2005, Dr Swaja has been the Director of the Life Sciences Division at ORNL. Between September 1999 and October 2005, he was on assignment to the National Institutes of Health as the Senior Science Advisor for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). In addition to supporting NIBIB science programs, he coordinated interagency, trans-NIH, and multi-organizational activities involving biomedical research and training.
Watson coordinates review of NRC airborne particulates research
ORNL scientist Annetta Watson was appointed by the National Research Council (NRC) to oversee the technical review of its fourth and final report on airborne particulate matter. As review coordinator, her job was to ensure that an independent examination was conducted according to NRC guidelines and that all reviewers' comments were carefully considered by the authoring committee. Watson was supported in this activity by program development funds made available through the directorate.
At the request of Congress and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, the NRC established the Committee on
Airborne Particulate Matter in 1998 as a standing
committee for the purpose of improving scientific
understanding of particulate matter and its human health
effects. This final report is the culmination of
the committee's 6 years of work. The document was
published in November 2004.
Committee on Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter. Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter. IV. Continuing Research Progress, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, Division on Earth and Life Sciences, National Research Council. The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. (www.nap.edu), 2004.
Thundat honored by APS and Scientific American
Thomas Thundat of ORNL received the Jesse W. Beams award
for research excellence at the banquet for the
Seventy-First Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section
of the American Physical Society (SESAPS). The Beams
Award, first presented in 1973, was established by
SESAPS to recognize especially significant or
meritorious research in physics, the major portion of
which was carried out in the ten-state SESAPS region in
the Southeast. The award is named for Jesse
Wakefield Beams, whose contributions include
construction of the first electron linear
accelerator; development of the magnetic ultracentrifuge,
with many practical applications in both the physical and
biological sciences; and improvement of the Cavendish
technique for the determination of the gravitational
constant.
Thundat was also chosen as one of the "Scientific American 50 Award" winners this year. The magazine notes "those who during 2003-2004 exhibited outstanding technology leadership in the realms of research, business and policy making." Thundat's award, which he shares with Jesse Adams, of the University of Nevada at Reno, is based on his work with microcantilevers for TNT detection.
FLC recognizes
ORNL microcantilever-based
research
The Photo-Molecular Comb™ Biomolecular Separator won a Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer in the 2004 Southeast Regional competition. It went on to win at the national level and was honored again in May 2005. The Photo-Molecular Comb was developed in the Life Sciences Division in a collaborative effort with other ORNL divisions and with Protein Discovery, Inc., a privately held life sciences company based in Knoxville, Tennessee.
ORNL developers are Thomas Thundat and Thomas Ferrell (Life Sciences), Gilbert Brown (Chemical Sciences), Robert Warmack (Engineering Science and Technology), and Russ Miller (Technology Transfer and Economic Development). Developers from Protein Discovery are Charles Witkowski, Jay Harkins, Dean Hafeman, and Kilin Dill.
The Photo-Molecular Comb separates proteins and other biomolecules for identification and analysis. The entire device is miniature; separations take place in a thin sieving layer on the surface of a semiconductor chip. The sieving layer-semiconductor interface is electrified when illuminated with a directed low-power light source, creating localized charges that attract, concentrate, transport, and separate biomolecules.
Unlike microfluidic devices, the Photo-Molecular Comb does not require prefabricated channels in the semiconductor.
The separation concept, developed under an ORNL Seed Money effort, has resulted in two pending patent applications and three new invention disclosures. Protein Discovery has licensed the technology from ORNL and has developed a product, the Serum ProfilerTM. With the Serum Profiler, Protein Discovery will provide customers in the clinical research and drug discovery and development industries with an ultrahigh-throughput system for preparing complex biological samples, such as human serum, for analysis via mass spectrometry. A cooperative research and development agreement is active with ORNL for continued research and development.
Thomas Thundat, Life Sciences Division (left), and Jay Harkins, Protein Discovery, Inc.
Borges participates in National Academies Toxicity Review
H. T. Borges of ORNL was selected by the National Research Council to serve on the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology's Subcommittee on Iodotrifluoromethane. The report, Iodotrifluoromethane: Toxicity Review, was released September 2004.
The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive
Medicine requested that the National Research Council
conduct an independent assessment of the toxicity of
iodotrifluoromethane (CF3I).
Iodotrifluoromethane is under consideration by the
U.S. Army (and others) as a replacement for halons as
fire suppressants in aircraft and ground vehicles;
consequently, there is a high potential for exposure. The
review identified significant concerns about
the validity of the canine cardiac sensitization studies
and physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling. This
review has identified for the U.S. Army, and others
considering the use of CF3I, critical information gaps
that must be addressed to provide a better understanding
of toxicity to ensure the safe application of this
chemical.
Committee on Toxicology, Subcommittee on Iodotriflurormethane. Iodotrifluoromethane: Toxicity Review, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, Division of Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. (www.nap.edu), 2004.
Pinnaduwage honored by American Physical Society
Lal A. Pinnaduwage has been elected a fellow of the
American Physical Society (APS). Pinnaduwage is a
researcher in the Life Sciences Division's Advanced
Biomedical Science and Technology Group and was a member
of the team that won an R&D 100 award in 2004 for
SniffEx, a system for detecting explosives. He was
selected "for his pioneering work in developing
micromechanical cantilever-based sensors for detection of
explosive vapors and elucidation of fundamental physical
principles underlying the thermally induced
nanodeflagartions for chemical selectivity."
Election to fellowship in the APS is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership and is in recognition of outstanding contributions to physics. The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize advances made through research, publication, and contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. It may also recognize significant contributions to teaching, service to APS, and participation in APS activities.
Jizhong Zhou elected ASM fellow
Jizhong Zhou, Distinguished R&D Staff Scientist in Microbial Genomics and Ecology at ORNL, was elected a fellow of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Induction was in June 2005 in Atlanta during the 105th General Meeting of ASM.
Zhou has authored more than 120 publications on microbial
genomics, molecular biology, molecular evolution,
microbial ecology, bioinformatics, bioremediation, and
theoretical ecology, and the first book on
microbial functional genomics in this emerging
field. His election signifies recognition of
his pioneering advances and leadership in developing and
applying integrated genomics technologies to address
research challenges in functional genomics of stress
responses and energy metabolism in environmental
microorganisms, and in understanding the diversity,
structure, mechanisms, and dynamics of microbial
communities and "extremophilic" (thriving in harsh
environments) metal-reducing bacteria important to
bioremediation, global changes, and carbon sequestration.
The American Academy of Microbiology is the honorific leadership group within ASM, the world's oldest life science organization. AAM is the only group of its kind devoted entirely to microbiologists and the science of microbiology. AAM fellows are elected through a highly selective, annual, peer-reviewed process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology (http://www.asm.org/Academy).
Vo-Dinh associate editor of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety
Tuan Vo-Dinh, an ORNL Corporate Fellow, has been named
associate editor of Ecotoxicology and
Environmental Safety. The journal focuses
on integrated mechanistic research on short- and
long-term pathways and interactions of substances and
chemical mixtures in environmental compartments; on
bioavailability, circulation, and assimilation in target
organisms; on the biological response of organisms and
damage mechanisms (endocrine disruption, genotoxicity);
and on a further fate in the food chain, including
humans. It also addresses novel technologies, techniques,
and methods, such as biomedical photonic technologies;
biomarkers, biosensors, and bioanalytical systems;
quantitative structure property and activity
relationships; and advanced high-performance
computational methods, models, and storage systems and
their applications in obtaining and processing
interdisciplinary ecotoxicological information.
ORNL Research to appear in the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology
An ORNL team, including Lee Hively and Vladimir Protopopescu, Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, and Nancy Munro, Life Sciences Division, will have an article describing their work on seizure forewarning published in the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology in December 2005. The research was supported by DOE Basic Energy Sciences and by the ORNL Office of Technology Transfer.
Forewarning of epileptic seizures is the goal of several research groups in the United States and elsewhere. Most researchers use brain wave data from highly invasive intracranial electrodes. ORNL is one of the leaders in successful forewarning from noninvasive, scalp EEG data. The article reports new developments in the ORNL approach via two-channel rather than previous single-channel analysis and an extended forewarning window of several hours. While still using customized parameters, the bipolar approach gave a total true rate above 90%, with a very low average rate of false positives.
The ORNL forewarning technology described in this paper has since been implemented on a personal digital assistant (PDA) device (SeizAlert) and was selected as a winner of a 2005 R&D 100 Award. SeizAlert is a prototype for a low-cost, compact, wearable device designed to alert the wearer and medical personnel of an impending epileptic seizure. In a real-life implementation, the alerting device would obtain EEG data from wireless sensors on the wearer's scalp and would analyze the data for interpretation and display in real time.
L. M. Hively, V. A. Protopopescu, and N. B. Munro. "Enhancements in epilepsy forewarning via phase-space dissimilarity," J. Clin. Neurophysiol. (accepted for publication, December 2005).
The SeizAlert epilepsy forewarning device won an R&D100 Award in 2005.
See More in the Awards Archive
 Office of Science |
Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
 Department of Energy |