Northwestern University researchers led by Teresa Woodruff, director of the Center for Reproductive Research at the University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, are approaching women’s infertility from a new direction.

Woodruff and her team are looking at ovaries themselves, and how eggs are selected for ovulation, rather than the more traditional methods of studying genes and hormones. Frank Miller, professor of radiology at Feinberg, and his colleagues are developing a new way to image ovaries, allowing researchers to closely study an organ that, being small and deep, has previously been difficult to examine.

Woodruff’s research was recently funded by a $6.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Original Article

Scientific American has a feature story on a New Jersey resident that has not paid a gas or electric utility bill in two years – because his house is powered by solar-generated hydrogen.  Part of the hydrogen he generates also goes to fuel his car.

The cost of this sunlight-capturing energy system?  Approximately $500,000.  But he thinks a similar system could be built today for only $90,000.

Original Article

A new study from Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences suggests that the version of a gene associated with ADHD may actually prove beneficial for certain populations.

The study looked at the body mass index (BMI) and height of males from a tribe called Ariaal in northern Kenya. Some members of this tribe continue to live their traditional nomadic lifestyle, while others have recently settled and started to grow crops.

It turns out that those who are living the nomadic lifestyle with the genetic variant associated with ADHD fared much better than the settled tribesmen who also had the variant. According to Dan Eisenberg, lead author on the study, this suggests that it’s “possible that, in a nomadic setting, a boy with this allele might be able to more effectively defend livestock against raiders or locate food and water sources, but that the same tendencies might not be as beneficial in settled pursuits such as focusing in school, farming or selling goods.”

Original Article

Scientists attending the opening of the first World Science Festival in New York City had harsh words for US politicians and the low priority they have given science in recent years.  Critics chided the government’s stagnant federal funding for research, and the views of some officials that intelligent design is a scientific alternative to evolution.

Somewhat surprisingly, even the 2008 presidential candidates seem reluctant to tackle the tough scientific issues facing our country. The Science Debate 2008 initiative, supported by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and hundreds of universities (including Northwestern), has invited the Clinton, McCain, and Obama camps to an organized debate on issues of science and technology. Thus far, none of the candidates have agreed to participate.

Original Article