FYI…UCSF in the News is a daily summary of news stories published worldwide that highlight UCSF, its affiliated programs, and issues that affect the University.  To read the full news story, click the individual headlines listed below.

On the second Wednesday of each month, FYI…UCSF in the News includes an additional "Research Roundup" section that lists research papers authored by UCSF faculty and published in the journals Cell, Health Services Research, JAMA, Lancet, Nature, NEJM, Nursing Research, and Science.

UCSF PRINT AND ONLINE COVERAGE

  • Heeding the computer's call to exercise (Associated Press (AP) - Berkeley Bureau)
    Researchers at Stanford University, who studied sedentary people for a year, found that automated exercise reminder phone calls had about the same get-up-and-go power as calls from human counselors Dr. Rachelle Bernacki, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research, said she was impressed at how well the computer-generated calls worked. (AP Story)
  • Data presented on race and serosorting (Bay Area Reporter)
    One of the great mysteries is why black men who have sex with men have a rate of HIV infection that is at least twice that of white MSM. Gregorio Millett conducted a meta-analysis of behavioral data looking for answers. The researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented the data at the 2007 National HIV Prevention conference in Atlanta in early December. Wayne Steward, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco is quoted.
  • The California Poison Control System Offers Holiday Safety Tips (Digital50)
    The holiday season should be filled with laughter and joy. But the season can also bring some potential dangers. The California Poison Control System offers some advice about real holiday dangers to look out for, but in case of any potential poisoning or for more information contact the California Poison Control System at www.calpoison.org or by calling (800) 222-1222. The CPCS is part of the University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy and responsible to the California Emergency Medical Services Authority.
  • Vested interests shouldn't decide who gets grants at stem cell institute (Fresno Bee)
    Internal conflicts continue to undermine the credibility and mission of California's quasi-public stem cell agency, the Institute for Regenerative Medicine. On Friday, the institute tossed out 10 of 58 grant proposals filed by scientists vying for $85 million designed to bring junior faculty into the field of stem cell research. None of those 10 scientists did anything wrong. Yet the institute's staff was forced to disqualify their proposals because certain university administrators -- who are also on the oversight board -- filed letters in support of the researchers' grant applications. Who are the administrators? We don't know. Institute officials were declining to name names. Yet according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers, the researchers who lost out worked for the University of California at San Francisco; UCLA; the University of Southern California and UC San Diego.
  • Today's Dream Hearts of Harvest (Modesto Bee, The)
    When a child is born with a heart defect and is rushed away for lifesaving surgery at a place such as Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital or the University of California at San Francisco Children's Hospital, all a parent can think of is getting to that child's side as soon as possible. And the people at Hearts of Harvest Foundation believe that's all those parents should have to think about. The organization raises money for hospitals and other groups to pass on to families facing unforeseen costs.
  • Science appoints Bruce Alberts as editor-in-chief (Nature)
    Biochemist Bruce Alberts, an American known best for his seminal textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell and an advocate of international scientific cooperation, will take over as editor-in-chief of the journal Science beginning in March. Alberts served as president of the US National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005, and is currently co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, an Amsterdam-based international collaboration of science academies from 15 countries. He is based at the University of California, San Francisco.
  • Back Talk What’s New in the World of Medicine (Newsweek)
    Benjamin J. Davies, M.D., Clinical Instructor of Urology, University of California, San Francisco writes in response to the Newsweek article, "Fat, Carbs and the Science of Conception." Have any of these doctors treated infertile couples? Have any of these "new" findings ever been proved to help infertile couples? They explain associations found retrospectively between diet and fertility. It’s pure data mining, and it is the softest kind of science we have-it is riddled with problems that no statistical models can account for.
  • Horizons foundation hosts grantee appreciation luncheon (San Francisco Bay Times)
    Horizons Foundation, a philanthropic social justice organization, serves the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community throughout the Bay Area and beyond. For over 25 years, they have been meeting the needs, advancing the rights, and celebrating the lives of LGBT people through a diverse range of programs, services, and initiatives. The cornerstone of Horizons Foundation’s grant-making portfolio is their annual Community Issues grants, which are awarded to LGBT organizations and projects throughout the nine Bay Area counties, including Lesbian Health & Research Center at UCSF - $5,607 for a comprehensive program of activities to enhance clinical practice and inform policy about the health needs of LBT women.
  • Dr. Stephen J. Mathes, UCSF reconstructive surgery innovator, dies (San Francisco Chronicle)
    A memorial service will be held Jan. 24 for Dr. Stephen J. Mathes, a professor emeritus at UCSF whose groundbreaking work in plastic and reconstructive surgery served as a model for surgeons worldwide. The university said Dr. Mathes died Nov. 20 after a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Mary McGrath, a UCSF plastic surgeon; his mother, Norma Mathes of Cookson, Okla.; his sons, David Mathes of Seattle, Brian Mathes of Boston and Edward Mathes of San Francisco; two brothers, Paul Mathes of New Orleans and Peter Mathes of Cookson; and two grandchildren.
  • In-house hospital doctors shorten stays, study finds (San Jose Mercury News)
    The largest study to date of the impact of "hospitalists" reveals that these in-house hospital doctors can help shorten patients' stays and reduce their costs. Just as notable is what hospitalists can't do: change the odds that a patient will die or soon return to the hospital for care. Dr. Andrew Auerbach, a University of California-San Francisco associate professor and hospitalist who is the senior author of the study, said he was surprised to see that hospitalists did not improve patients' mortality rates, a trend that has been seen in smaller, previous studies. Dr. Robert Wachter, chief of the hospitalist program at UCSF and the man who coined the term in 1996, suggests one possible reason: In recent years, primary care doctors who didn't want to oversee their patients' hospital care have ceded that care to hospitalists, while doctors who still want to see their patients may provide superior care than the doctors who gave it up. (Also ran in Contra Costa Times)
  • Errors Make Up Part of Expertise (Scientific American)
    Even experts make subtle errors. But working with songbirds, researchers Evren Turner and Michael Brainard of the University of California, San Francisco, find that what looks like pure error may be built-in trial and error. Which may be important for continued expertise.

UCSF TELEVISION COVERAGE

  • Songbirds change their tune in search of perfect pitch (CBC Television Network)
    Minor changes in repeated actions could be part of an unconscious effort to improve performance, said U.S. researchers who studied subtle variations in the pitch of a bird's song. Researchers Evren Turner and Michael Brainard of the University of California, San Francisco, suggest their findings, which appear online Wednesday in the British scientific journal Nature, shed new light into why everyone from high-performance athletes to musicians vary in even the most highly practised skills. One possible explanation is that the nervous system is either unable to control such variation or does not consider it relevant to the action, the researchers said.

UCSF HEADLINES

  • NCIRE board of directors announces changes (UCSF News Office)
    At its annual meeting on November 13, 2007, the Board of Directors of the Northern California Institute for Research and Education (NCIRE) announced the departure of three members and the appointment of three members.
  • Expert on Adolescents and HIV Joins UCSF AIDS Prevention Center (UCSF Today)
    Marguerita Lightfoot, PhD, has been named the director of the Technology and Information Exchange Core (TIE) at UCSF's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). She joins UCSF from UCLA, where she was co-director of the Intervention Core in the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) in the Department of Psychiatry.