Awards will fuel scientists' work

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Cell phone safety studied

John Bucher, a reserved scientist who will play a key role in the public debate over the health risks posed by cell phones, doesn't like to discuss his own calling habits.

His reticence is understandable: The 5-year, $25 million health study is meant to settle the question of whether long-term exposure to radiation from cell phones can cause cancers.

The study overseen by Bucher, associate director of the National Toxicology Program in Research Triangle Park, is the U.S. government's response to rising concerns about the ubiquitous phones.

Duke scientists receive research grants

Two Duke scientists are among 100 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.

The award is the highest honor given by the federal government to young professionals in the early stages of research careers.

Duke's Chris Dwyer and Adrienne Stiff-Roberts, both assistant professors in the department of electrical and computer engineering, were honored.

Stimulus funds to give scientific research a boost in N.C.

Triangle area researchers won a massive infusion of $145 million in federal stimulus money Wednesday for scientific projects large and small including an ambitious effort to seek cancer treatments by unraveling the complex genetics of tumors.

Of the 521 grants awarded to the state, 415 are in the 4th Congressional District, which includes the Triangle. The big winners were UNC-Chapel Hill, with 186 grants worth more than $60 million, and Duke University, with 181 grants totaling more than $75 million.

The stimulus bill enacted this year included $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, which opened the financial spigot to projects that might have otherwise taken years to fund.

California native wins Nobel Prize in medicine

A scientist who grew up in Davis and graduated from Davis Senior High School in 1979 was among three researchers who on Monday shared the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Carol Greider, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said she was at home in Baltimore folding laundry Monday morning when she received the news that she had won the world's most prestigious science prize.

On Monday evening, as she celebrated with friends and family, Greider said she never had finished folding.

Research clarifies a rare autism

The brains of children who have a rare, severe form of autism lack the ability to build nerve cell connections that lead to learning and knowledge, but scientists at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill have discovered there may be a way to intervene.

The researchers, working on animal models, studied a particular brain feature of Angelman syndrome -- a rare autism that results from a genetic disruption that affects brain function.

Children with the disorder begin to lag behind their peers at about 12 months. Most never learn to talk, and many cannot walk. The impairments occur because their brains cannot properly process sensory information. Normally, everything a baby hears, sees and touches creates a cascade of connections and disconnections between neurons in the brain that are cognitive building blocks.