Wednesday, January 13, 1999
Community Briefs
Laser technique may help cancer patients
Oral cancer kills 10,000 Americans every year and has one of the
worst survival rates of all cancers, largely because early
detection is difficult.
But the outlook for oral cancer victims may improve thanks to a
promising laser-based technique developed at UCI’s Beckman Laser
Institute.
Dr. Petra Wilder-Smith has found that fluorescent laser light
can identify pre-cancerous lesions in the mouth by making them
literally glow in the dark.
"The laser makes lesions show up that otherwise wouldn’t be
visible to the naked eye," Wilder-Smith said. The measuring
instruments are painless and pick up lesions within seconds.
Next, the research, performed to date on laboratory animals,
needs to determine if the results can be duplicated in humans.
UCI receives $5 million gift
The quest to understand the links between genes and cancer has
received a significant boost from the Robert R. Sprague Family
Foundation, which has pledged $5 million to UC Irvine to begin
construction of the next facility at the Irvine Biomedical Research
Center.
The gift from the foundation – administered by Corona del Mar
residents Robert and Margaret Sprague – will help provide more
science laboratories and teaching facilities on the campus’ western
edge that will specialize in the genetics of cancer.
"The extraordinary generosity of people like Robert and Margaret
Sprague is allowing UCI to make impressive advances in the global
fight against cancer," Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone said. "Their
gift, the latest of many they have made to the university, will
enable even more scientific achievements at the Irvine Biomedical
Research Center in the future."
The Irvine Biomedical Research Center focuses on 21st century
biomedical science capitalizing on UCI’s strengths in cancer
research, genetics, neuroscience and molecular medicine. When
completed, the research center will house UCI faculty research
laboratories and offices, combining basic science, clinical study
and product development to find new approaches to the diagnosis and
treatment of disease.
Enlarging fibers makes materials more sturdy
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National
Laboratory have shown that enlarging the ends of short fibers used
in composite materials simultaneously increases the overall
toughness and strength of the material.
Composite materials are used widely in the automotive,
aerospace, civil engineering and other industries requiring
lightweight but structurally sturdy parts.
The Los Alamos finding impacts a problem material scientists
have been trying to solve for decades: how to get effective load
transfer between fibers and the surrounding matrix without making
the composite more brittle, as happens when the fibers are tightly
bonded to the matrix.
The special fibers, shaped like a cartoon dog bone, anchor into
the matrix at each end because of their shape but bond only weakly
with the matrix along their length. This allows the fibers to help
carry the load. The experimenters designed the shape and size of
the enlarged fiber ends so they don’t experience the stresses that
usually snap fibers and limit a short-fiber composite’s
performance.
"People have been trying to solve this problem for the last
couple of decades," said Yuntian Zhu, who leads the research effort
at Los Alamos. "We’ve shown that this fairly simple mechanical
approach can provide a solution."
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.
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