Scientists have developed several ways – some simple and some involving new technologies – to hide objects from view.

University researchers John Howell and Joseph Choi not only overcame some of the limitations of previous devices, but created a cloaking device that uses inexpensive, readily available materials in a novel configuration: four standard lenses that keep the object hidden as the viewer moves up to several degrees away from the optimal viewing position.

You can see for yourself on the first floor at Carlson Science and Engineering Library, where the device will be on display through Aug. 25.

Howell, a professor of physics; Choi, a former PhD student in optics; and the University were awarded a patent for the Rochester Cloak lens configuration entitled “Paraxial Cloak Design and Device” (US 9,557,547 B2) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on January 31, 2017.

Howell had some thoughts about potential applications, including using cloaking to effectively let a surgeon “look through his hands to what he is actually operating on,” he said. The same principles could be applied to a truck to allow drivers to see through blind spots on their vehicles.

Read more here, and see a video that went viral with more than 1.7 million views.

The Medical Center and Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) held the first Rochester Summer Research Training Institute with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Scientists and Their Mentors recently. The three-day conference drew one of the largest groups of deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists in the nation.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are vastly under-represented in biomedical fields.  The Medical Center and RIT have partnered to identify unique barriers to science- and health-related careers faced by these individuals. Among them is a barrier to mentorship for students who are striving for health- or science-related careers.

The institute was a new approach to break down that barrier, bringing deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists at all levels of career development together from across the nation.

“I was especially impressed by the interaction and dialogue between students, postdoctoral trainees, junior faculty, and top national figures,” said Stephen Dewhurst, vice dean for research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry. “This kind of exchange and networking is exactly what we wanted to encourage when we set out to plan this meeting.”

A total of 85 participants attended the institute, which also included an interactive poster session, small group breakout sessions, and keynote speeches. Read more here.

Mice born into an oxygen-rich environment respond worse to the flu once fully grown due to an absence of certain lung cells, Medical Center researchers report. Their discovery provides a potential explanation for preterm infants’ added susceptibility to influenza and other lung diseases later in their lives.

The research, published in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, focuses on alveolar type II cells, which help to rebuild lung tissue after damage. When newborn mice are exposed to extra oxygen at birth — which causes their lungs to respond and develop similarly to those of preterm infants — they end up with far fewer of these cells once they reach adulthood.

Once exposed to influenza virus as adults, these mice then developed a much more severe disease than mice born in a traditional oxygen environment.

“We don’t know if this is exactly what happens in preterm infants,” said Michael O’Reilly,  professor of pediatrics. “But we do know that there’s a direct correlation between the loss of these cells and an inferior response to lung disease, and we do know that there’s something about that early oxygen-rich environment that causes a mouse to respond poorly to viral infection later in life. So this helps connect those dots.”

O’Reilly, who studies the developmental origins of lung disease, hopes to now pursue research on the life cycle of alveolar type II cells. The cells are abundant in the lungs of healthy infants, as they are responsible for producing pulmonary surfactant, a vital compound for the developing lung. As the lungs mature after birth, some of these cells may be pruned away. In theory, the lungs of premature infants take this process too far, pruning too many type II cells.

“Right now, we don’t really understand the biology of that,” said O’Reilly. “But once we do, that opens the door to exploring a potential treatment.”

Min Yee, technical associate in O’Reilly’s research group, was the article’s lead author. In addition to O’Reilly, William Domm,  Robert Gelein, Karen Bentley, Matthew Kottman, Paige Lawrence, and Patricia Sime were co-authors. Read more here.

Hochang Benjamin (Ben) Lee, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, will be the new John Romano Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry beginning in September, pending approval of the University Board of Trustees.

Lee is founding director and chief of Yale’s Psychological Medicine Service. He also directs Yale’s Psychological Medicine Research Center, which develops strategies to deliver psychiatric services to medical and surgical inpatients and prevent the onset of neuropsychiatric issues after major surgeries.

He succeeds Eric Caine, who is stepping down after leading the department for nearly 25 years.  Caine will remain on the faculty and continue his nationally funded research in suicide prevention.

Lee has devoted much of his career to proving that better integration of psychiatric care across health disciplines and departments will improve the general health status and quality of life for Americans who struggle with mental illness, and produce major savings to medical centers by lowering length of stays, cost of care, and readmissions.

Lee is also leading nationally-funded studies to determine how to prevent neuropsychiatric conditions in elderly patients after major surgery like coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

Read more here.

Steve N. Georas, professor of medicine, who has been installed as the inaugural Parkes Family Professor. Georas balances patient care with leadership of a National Institutes of Health-funded laboratory that studies how the lung’s immune system responds to inhaled particles, allergens, and viruses — and how this process breaks down in asthma, leading to potentially dangerous immune responses that can cause allergic airway inflammation and difficulty breathing. He is also working to develop techniques to identify people who are at greater risk of developing life-threatening asthma and need intensive therapies.  Read more here about the endowment of this professorship by the family of the late Mary M. Parkes.

Summer is just about here, and now is the time to learn a new programming language and catch up on your data analysis skills.

The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) will be hosting workshop training sessions for a 6-week period starting on July 18. Known as the “CIRC Summer School,” these workshops will consist of 9 topics. Each week will feature 2 topics, and each topic will span over 3 days of instruction, with the exception of Python, R, and MATLAB, which will span over 6 days of instruction.

Topics will include basic training in Linux, programming languages, data analytics tools, and visualization.

The courses are designed for beginners and extra emphasis will be placed on using these languages, libraries, applications, etc. specifically on BlueHive.

The classes will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings and afternoons in the University’s large-scale, interactive visualization facility, the VISTA Collaboratory, located on the first floor of Carlson Library. See the table on the registration page for the topics, dates, and times and to register for the sessions.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has new requirements for clinical trials. In order to be considered for publication, manuscripts submitted after July 1, 2018 must include a data sharing statement in the manuscript’s submission.

Data sharing statements must indicate the following:

• whether individual de-identified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared;
• what data in particular will be shared;
• whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.);
• when the data will become available and for how long;
• by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).

Clinical trials that begin enrolling after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan on ClinicalTrials.gov.

For more information about these new requirements contact researchhelp@urmc.rochester.edu

Shibo Wang, Computer Science, “Content-Aware Memory Systems for High-Performance, Energy-Efficient Data Movement.” 3 p.m., June 23, 2017. Wegmans Hall 2506. Advisor: Engin Ipek.

Nasrin Mostafazadeh, Computer Science, “From Event to Story Understanding.” 11 a.m., June 26, 2017. Wegmans Hall 2506. Advisor: James Allen.

Lifeng Xiao, Chemistry, “Part I: Studies toward the Total Synthesis of (-)-Apoptolidin A; Part II: Bone Targeted Bis-phosphonate Conjugates with Releasable Payloads as Prodrugs for the Treatment of Bone Metabolic Diseases.”  2 p.m., June 27, 2017. Hutchison Hall 473. Advisor: Robert Boeckman Jr.

Today:  PONS Luncheon Roundtable Series: Vision and Retinal Disease. Noon to 1 p.m., Louise Slaughter Conference Room 1-9555.  Krystel Huxlin, Duje Tadin, Mina Chung, and Jennifer Hunter will discuss current vision and retinal research at the University of Rochester. Refreshments will be provided. Hosted by the Pre-doctoral Organization for the Neurosciences (PONS). For more information on upcoming Neuro-related events, visit http://blogs.rochester.edu/pons/upcoming.

Today: Reducing Delay in Diagnosis of Malignancy Through Radiology Recommendation Tracking. Presented by Ben Wandtke, associate professor of imaging sciences. Special grand rounds seminar on new program to reduce delayed or missed diagnoses of malignancy by “closing the loop” on radiology recommendations. Noon to 1 p.m. Class of ’62 Auditorium (1-9425).

July 14: UNYTE scientific session, “Collaborate to Innovate Maternal & Child Health Translational Research.” 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Helen Wood Hall. Panel presentations, a poster session, interactive break-out groups, and a keynote address by Michele Caggana, deputy director of genetics and director of newborn screening at the Wadsworth School of Laboratory Sciences. For additional information and registration, go to UNYTE Scientific Session.