But women may not have to endure the medical costs, stress and potential complications that accompany such invasive biopsies forever. A University of Florida biomedical engineering researcher is making progress on an “optical biopsy” that has the potential to determine whether growths are cancerous without ever puncturing the skin.

“At this stage, it is just too early for optical tomography to be a screening tool,” said Huabei Jiang, the J. Crayton Pruitt Family professor of biomedical engineering, who has spent more than a decade developing the technique at UF and Clemson University. “But you can pretty much say that it is highly likely it can become a diagnostic tool, an adjunct to X-ray mammography.”

Surgical biopsies have long been the gold standard for determining whether growths are cancerous. But at least three out of four biopsies following mammograms conclude that observed abnormalities are benign and that no intervention was needed, Jiang said. Depending on if the biopsies are performed with needles or surgery, that can mean added cost, recuperation and potential scarring or other complications — all ultimately unnecessary.

Jiang has devoted much of his career to an alternative: “phase-contrast diffuse optical tomography,” a screening technology that roots out breast cancer not with cutting tools and laboratory tests but with light and computing power.

He recently completed the third generation of his apparatus — a bed with an array of fiber optic laser lights and detectors mounted within a hole where the patient places her breast.

Light from the harmless lasers enters the breast and scatters. Most gets absorbed in the tissue, but some reaches the detectors. With enough light hitting the detectors from enough different directions, there is sufficient data for Jiang’s computer algorithms to create an image of the breast’s interior. This image suggests either benign conditions or some of the telltale signs of cancer that are completely invisible to standard X-ray mammograms — for example, a high density of blood vessels snaking around a likely tumor.

But the image is just one indicator. In Jiang’s newest apparatus, undergoing tests at the Tampa-based Moffitt Cancer Center, fiber optic lights span 10 different wavelengths, or colors. Light with these colors changes in predictable ways when they strike certain compounds, such as oxygenated hemoglobin, water or lipids. Just as light collected from distant planets can reveal the composition of their atmospheres to astronomers, so light collected from these collisions can indicate chemical evidence of cancer.

A third technique, known as index refraction or phase contrast, provides information on cellular size and density — both factors that play into determination of cancer in laboratory biopsies.

“What he’s done is introduce a whole new optical property that is pretty clever,” said Steve Ponder, of the phase contrast element of Jiang’s research. “It’s another tool, and he’s reported good success, and it did increase sensitivity.”

Ponder is director of advanced development for the Fort Lauderdale-based Imaging Diagnostic Systems Inc., which makes breast imaging devices that rely on similar technologies to those Jiang is developing.

Over the past 10 years, Jiang and his graduate students have tested their evolving device on a total of about 200 patients, he said. In a 2008 paper in Academic Radiology, his most recently published clinical paper, he obtained 35 images from 33 patients and compared his findings with the results of the women’s traditional biopsies.

His main conclusion: His technique correctly identified biopsy confirmed malignancies nearly 75 percent of the time, with the most accurate results from older patients, whose softer breasts make abnormalities more prominent. Jiang said he has since boosted the accuracy rate to 91 percent in a study involving 144 women, but he is still readying that study for publication. More research and more patients are needed, he said.

“It’s still not enough for us to say, ‘O.K.’,” he said. “But we have some confidence.”

The National Cancer Institute has provided the bulk of about $2 million in research support for Jiang’s efforts. His current collaborators include Moffitt Cancer Center, a UF partner institution.

After years of genetic sequencing, University of Florida researchers are beginning to harness the insects’ ability to churn wood into fuel. That ability involves a mixture of enzymes from symbiotic bacteria and other single-celled organisms living in termites’ guts, as well as enzymes from the termites themselves.

The team from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences spent two years dissecting and analyzing gene sequences of more than 2,500 worker termite guts. In total, they identified 6,555 genes from the termites and associated gut fauna involved in the digestive process.

As the researchers reported Oct. 15 in the online journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, they’ve begun to identify which of these genes encode for enzymes that could significantly improve the production of cellulosic ethanol, a fuel made from inedible plant material that the U.S. Department of Energy estimates could replace half of our gasoline if the production process could be made more cost effective.

“Termites are very unique creatures, and this research helps give the most complete picture of how their systems collaborate to, very efficiently, break down really tough biological compounds to release fermentable sugars,” said UF entomologist Mike Scharf, who leads the research.

The team has identified nearly 200 associated enzymes that help break down the problematic plant compound lignocellulose. This compound is the most costly barrier to wide-scale production of cellulosic ethanol because it must be broken down by intense heat or caustic chemicals.

Termites, however, are able to almost completely break down lignocellulose through simple digestion.

“The termite gut is a complicated and exotic package of biodiversity that manages these tasks with an efficiency that you really have to admire,” said Claudia Husseneder, a specialist in the molecular biology of termites at Louisiana State University who was not associated with UF’s research. “Mike’s work is on the cutting edge of understanding this system.”

In September, Scharf and the Savage, Maryland-based Chesapeake-PERL Inc., received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help develop his work into a product that can be used to help manufacture cellulosic ethanol.

Termites and their associated single-cell symbiotic organisms probably won’t have much to do with the processes that result from the work—except for their genes, of course. Scharf said that enzyme-producing genes will be transferred to a more controllable creature.

This has commonly meant that the genes would be transferred into genetically modified fungi or bacteria. However, Scharf said the genes would likely be transferred into other insects, such as caterpillars, to produce the enzymes on an industrial scale.

“Insects have played an important role in how this planet functions for millions of years,” Scharf said. “They still have a lot they can teach us. There are still many ways we can learn to benefit from Earth’s six-legged inhabitants.”

“Most economists think the recession is over, but people are afraid to spend money as unemployment keeps going up, which creates problems for every sector of the real estate market,” said Timothy Becker, director of UF’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, which conducts the quarterly survey.

Florida’s unemployment rate climbed to 11 percent in September, its highest level since 1975, Becker said. That, along with a large number of foreclosures, places Florida near the bottom of states expected to recover from the economic downturn, he said.

“Florida was the first one into the recession and it’s probably going to be the last one out,” he said.

The latest survey finds commercial real estate the weakest sector of the economy, with no improvement expected until the job market turns around, Becker said. As retailers struggle, they are asking landlords for rent abatements, and instead of expanding, are deciding not to renew leases and even close stores, he said.

“Discount retailers like the Dollar Store and Dollar Tree seem to be weathering the hard times, but in most cases retailers are not doing well,” he said.

In some cases, though, vacant storefronts may be a sign that some retailers have departed for fancier venues, Becker said. Retailers with money on hand are able to find better locations at better rents than were available in the past, he said.

“One of our respondents said that the old adage of ‘location, location, location’ really means something right now in the ability to lease at premiere locations,” he said. “It’s the second-tier properties that are struggling.”

The state’s high unemployment rate also has taken its toll on the housing sector, Becker said. Although the foreclosure market is “going gangbusters” right now because of extremely low prices, total sales of single-family homes will probably decline as people’s uncertainty about whether they will continue to have jobs grows, he said.

Survey respondents expressed fear about another large wave of housing foreclosures if more people lose jobs and fall behind on their mortgage payments, Becker said. “There is a lot of speculation that there could be a double-dip recession, where we recover just a little bit and then go back into recession again,” he said.

An $8,000 tax credit available to first-time home buyers is scheduled to be phased out after November, Becker said. The foreseeable end to that government initiative, along with the high unemployment rate and large number of foreclosures, has resulted in fewer new homes, he said.

“Builders are being very selective about what they build,” he said. “They don’t want to get into a situation where they have large inventories again.”

One positive finding in the survey was increasing optimism about one’s own business outlook, Becker said. Respondents believe that an expected wave of foreclosures in the commercial real estate market will lower depressed prices even further, offering tremendous opportunities for future investment, he said.

Although the outlook for readily available capital has not improved as banks continue their reluctance to lend money, survey respondents believe that foreign investment may provide some relief, Becker said. With the favorability of exchange rates for the Euro against the dollar and the availability of desirable commercial property at low prices, international investors are starting to enter Florida’s real estate market, he said.

“Everybody thinks that Florida will rebound because we have so much going for us – the sun shines every day and there are a lot of advantages to living here, he said. “Foreign investors see that too and believe their prospects are good for long term investments.”

Until some of the uncertainties in the marketplace are resolved, though, including the fate of foreclosures and availability of financing, it is unlikely that confidence in Florida’s real estate markets will make steady gains, Becker said.

“As one of our respondents put it, ‘Uncertainty is the most dangerous market condition delaying recovery,’” he said. “While there are going to be improvements some quarters and declines other quarters, we’re mostly going to be bouncing along the bottom for awhile.”

The quarterly report is the most extensive survey of Florida professional real estate analysts and investors conducted on an ongoing basis. The 268 participants in the most recent survey represent 13 of the state’s urban regions and up to 15 property types.

The mysterious die-offs are likely a result of an accumulation of factors, which might include chemicals found in and around the hives, they say.

Led by UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences bee specialist Jamie Ellis, the researchers have finished a first round of testing on bee larvae exposed to the pesticides most commonly found in bee hives. The work gives crucial insight to how the larvae react to these pesticides, which are usually only tested on adult bees.

More importantly, the work sets the stage for the researchers to test how the bees react to combinations of these pesticides.

Just like mixing the wrong medications can have deadly and unpredictable results in humans, chemical mixes pose a quandary for the bee industry. Bees are commonly exposed to multiple pesticides that are either applied to or nearby their hives.

“Beeswax, honey and pollen can contain low mixtures of fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides. The larvae develop in the presence of and consume these mixtures,” Ellis said. “Any one of these pesticides may not be that harmful to the developing larvae. However, it is possible that combinations of the pesticides can interact.”

The U.S. bee industry is responsible for pollinating $15 billion worth of crops each year. By some estimates, bee pollination is responsible for as much as a third of the food we eat.

The work, funded by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, would be among the first to look at such combinations of chemicals introduced at the larval stage. At an Oct. 22 meeting of NAPPC, Ellis presented the initial results, which examined the individual effects of two herbicides, two fungicides and five insecticides commonly found in bee hives.

To study these pesticides, the researchers transferred individual larvae to special containers where they were given a typical diet containing a dose of the pesticide.

Some of the pesticides yielded surprising results. For example, the bees seemed to show an erratic response to two pesticides commonly used to get rid of hive-infecting Varroa mites. This could mean that some bees have become resistant to the pesticide while others have not, said Mike Scharf, a UF entomologist and co-primary investigator on the project.

“There’s a really complex and unpredictable interaction of chemicals and genetics at play,” Scharf said.

Even more so, he said, when the bees are exposed at the larval stage. Pesticide exposure at this developmental stage could have significant effects on the adult bees.

Later research will reintroduce these adult bees into the hive to see how the pesticide-exposed bees react to common stressors such as Varroa mites and bacterial infections.

“It is going to be a lot of work to run through all these scenarios, but at the end of the day, it’s the only way to really find out how all these factors come together,” Ellis said. “It’s worth the work. Bees are a fundamental part of our ecosystem and our food chain.”

“Florida leads the nation in bicyclists killed in traffic crashes, even outpacing California, which has about twice its population,” said Dan Connaughton, a professor in UF’s department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management and the program’s director. “Other than the motor vehicle, there is no other commercial product that leaves more children injured than bicycles.”

Statistics from the Florida Department of Transportation show that 118 bicyclists were killed and 4,380 were injured in the state in 2008, he said.

About 90 percent of children’s deaths on bicycles occur when they dart into traffic from a driveway or when they cycle through a stop sign, Connaughton said. The vast majority of bicycle fatalities result from head injuries, with some studies estimating that the simple act of properly wearing a bicycle helmet reduces the risk of head injury by up to 85 percent, he said.

The mission of the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program is to reduce injuries and fatalities by teaching children the lifelong skills needed to be competent, as well as predictable, cyclists and pedestrians.

Connaughton received a three-year contract from the Florida Department of Transportation’s Safety Office to administer statewide workshops to “teach the teachers” bicycle and traffic safety tips they can pass on to their students. Using curriculums specifically designed for elementary, middle and high schools, Connaughton works with certified cycling instructors around the state in delivering the free workshops. Workshops are currently scheduled in Alachua County on Thursday, with others to be held in Pinellas and Lee counties later this fall.

For younger children, the curriculum covers such basics as safely crossing streets, traffic signals and related laws, and school bus safety, said Connaughton, who is an expert in sport safety and risk management. The curriculum also addresses traffic and bicycle laws, helmet importance and correct use, how to perform a bicycle safety inspection, how to navigate a bicycle while sharing the road, and other traffic and bicycle safety skills, he said.

“We feel it’s extremely important to educate our youth at a young age,” he said. “Our hope is that as they become more knowledgeable and experienced pedestrians and bicyclists, that some of these skills will translate into them becoming safer motor vehicle drivers.”

According to the National Safety Council, the total cost of bicycle injuries and deaths is almost $5.4 billion a year, Connaughton said.

“Besides saving lives, this program has a tremendous impact on the state’s economy,” Connaughton said. “By cutting down on the number of cars on the road, we reduce traffic congestion as well as our dependence on fuel and the environmental costs associated with it. And with the rise in obesity, getting young people to be more active eliminates a substantial number of health problems and the costs that go with them.”

The program works with Safe Routes to School programs throughout Florida to encourage more children to walk or bike safely to school and ties in with the goals of the Florida Department of Transportation’s Pedestrian/Bicycle Program, he said.

Bicycle use has increased in the United States as more people recognize the importance of physical activity and as rising gas prices make it a popular commuting alternative, Connaughton said. “Along with the greening of America, there are more people on bicycles than ever before,” he said.

The success of American Lance Armstrong in winning the Tour de France seven years in a row also has created an interest in bicycling, particularly the sport of racing, he said.

The program and its instructors also train law enforcement personnel and recreation leaders to teach bicycle safety in their local communities. Future plans call for developing a university curriculum to educate college students about traffic and bicycle safety in Florida, he said.

The program estimates that each trained teacher passes the information on to 100 children per year. The training workshops cover outside on-bike skill practice and classroom instruction with curriculum overviews, including interactive videos and activity worksheets.

School districts interested in hosting traffic and bicycle safety training workshops can contact the program at 352-392-4042, ext. 1370. More information about the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program can be found at: http://www.hhp.ufl.edu/safety/index.html.

The research has broad political implications in that it contradicts the so-called “God gap” theory that white religious Christians are conservative and more likely to vote Republican, said UF researcher Kenneth Wald. He and political scientists from two other universities presented the results to the American Political Science Association in September.

“We are able to uncover considerable evidence of a religious left among Christians, and the big news is that it matters electorally,” Wald said. “Having a strong communitarian view of faith is associated with voting for Democratic candidates. Because of favorable political circumstances, we’re in an age where we’re likely to see a flowering of the religious left.”

The religious left is likely to become more visible and influential with Barack Obama as president and the Democrats controlling Congress, Wald said. It was Obama’s experience as a Chicago community organizer that led him to discover the power of religion to change society, and he has taken steps to broaden the focus of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships from religious right organizations to include a broader array of religious communities, he said.

“I have no doubt that broadly speaking the religious left feels welcome in Washington in ways they haven’t been since the Clinton administration,” he said.

American commentators, scholars and the public have assumed Republicans are more religious because studies have gauged devotion by such traditional measures as daily prayer, Scripture reading and regular church attendance, Wald said. Such individual acts of piety are important to evangelical Protestants, who tend to vote Republican, he said.

“We sensed there was a style of religious attachment that is less individualistic and more focused on the social and communal aspects of people’s lives,” Wald said. “This orientation is much more based on who one’s friends and family are and how involved one is with the life of the religious community.”

The researchers first proposed broadening the scope of questions about religious practices in the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study survey of 675 people, and the ANES later incorporated them into its regular 2008 presidential election year survey of 2,100. Respondents who scored high on these newly included communal measures of religiosity were much more likely to vote for Democratic candidates for both Congress in 2006 and president in 2008, he said.

These Christians tend to place a high value on sacramental beliefs, social rituals, respecting the authority of church leaders and being active members of a religious community, Wald said. They generally believe that God reaches people through baptisms, the consecration of bread and wine at communion and other forms of collective worship, he said.

Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, such as Episcopalians, Presbyterians, some Lutherans and members of the United Church of Christ, are more likely than evangelical Protestants to fit into this category, he said.

“In Protestant evangelical Christianity you commit to a doctrine, which is an act of individual will,” Wald said. “The idea is that every believer can read the Bible and have a relationship with God without the need for an intermediary.”

When asked whether “avoiding sin” or “helping others” was more important to being a good Christian, evangelical Protestants surveyed were more likely than mainline Protestants or Catholics to answer “avoiding sin,” Wald said. For Roman Catholics, about two-thirds selected “helping others” over “avoiding sin,” he said.

“Unlike evangelicals, the people who relate to the communal aspects don’t stand out on abortion and same-sex marriage,” he said. “What they really tend to care about are economic issues like unemployment and fair wages that have an immediate effect on human suffering.”

Wald did the study with Stephen Mockabee at the University of Cincinnati and David Leege at the University of Notre Dame.

“Our results suggest that religion may be even more important to electoral behavior,” Wald said. “When citizens mobilize on behalf of political causes, they shouldn’t give up on the churches and just assume that ‘more religious’ means ‘more conservative.’”

Georgetown University government professor Clyde Wilcox praised the study, saying the findings help “recast the entire discussion over the ‘God gap’ into one in which different religious world views and styles are mobilized into politics in different ways.”

“Consumers are more optimistic this month about their current personal finances and less optimistic about the U.S. economy in both the short and long term,” said Chris McCarty, survey director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. “They remain bullish on buying opportunities and are likely to be even more optimistic when they see the drastically lower prices in the coming months from retailers trying to boost holiday sales among the most cautious U.S. consumers since the Great Depression.”

However, as the holidays approach, most forecasts predict no growth in retail sales over what turned out to be an extremely disappointing 2008 season, McCarty said.

“Floridians should prepare for more bad news through the first quarter of 2010,” he said. “If retail sales growth is as low as expected, sales tax revenues will not meet expectations.”

With decreasing revenues and increasing costs, the state could see a $2.6 billion budget deficit, McCarty said. “That will mean increased taxes and fees and certainly more cost-cutting by the Florida Legislature as the spring session unfolds,” he said.

September’s final consumer confidence index dropped two points from the initial reported reading of 74 when an additional week of interviews were included in survey results at the end of the month, McCarty said. Florida’s consumer confidence index had slowly inched up from 67 in July to 71 in August and 72 in September before stalling in October, he said.

“The revision downward and the flat reading this month is more in line with what we had been expecting,” McCarty said. “Given the economic environment in Florida and the U.S., the preliminary reading of 74 last month seemed high.”

Two of this month’s five components increased while three declined. Perceptions as to whether it is a good time to buy big-ticket items rose three points to 83 and perceptions of personal finances now compared with a year ago rose three points to 45. Expectations about U.S. economic conditions over the next year fell three points to 71, while expectations about U.S. economic conditions over the next five years fell three points to 81. Perceptions of personal finances a year from now fell one point to 80.

Florida’s economic picture remains mixed, when housing, the stock market and retailing are all taken into consideration, McCarty said.

“Home prices in most Florida markets have held steady over the past few months although they are down an average of 43 percent from the peak values reached in June 2006,” he said. “It is unclear how much of this stability is due to activity from first-time home buyers who took advantage of the $8,000 tax credit due to expire Dec. 1.”

The most recent mortgage applications survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed a large decline in applications for both new mortgages and refinancing, suggesting that sales may fall in the coming months without the tax rebate, McCarty said. Potentially, this could decrease home prices even more, even though prices are already down to 2002-2003 levels, he said.

In other bad news, unemployment in Florida has risen to 11 percent, McCarty said. With retail sales remaining quite low, that will likely contribute to further unemployment in many of the state’s metro areas as the holiday season unfolds, he said.

And as unemployment rises, the number of Floridians on Medicaid will continue to climb, increasing costs to taxpayers, he said.

The research center conducts the Florida Consumer Attitude Survey monthly. Respondents are 18 or older and live in households telephoned randomly. The preliminary index for October was conducted from 408 responses. The index is benchmarked to 1966, so a value of 100 represents the same level of confidence for that year, he said.

In Florida, one of the main suppliers is Richard Raid, a professor with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Owls can’t chew, so they rip prey apart with their beaks and swallow it in big chunks. The pellets are blobs of undigested fur and bones the birds regurgitate after a meal.

Raid gathers 3,000 to 5,000 pellets each year from farms in the Everglades Agricultural Area. He leads workshops at schools, clubs and museums where he shows children how to carefully pick apart the pellets, identify the creatures inside, and arrange the bones into complete skeletons.

The experience may sound cringe-inducing, but it teaches children about biology and predator-prey relationships, says Raid, a plant pathologist at UF’s Everglades Research and Education Center in Belle Glade.

“I have an expression: With kids, if cute is good, gross is better,” he said. “The more unpleasant you can make something, the more it interests them.”

Raid says teachers often tell him his workshop was the most memorable lesson of the year.

“That’s gratifying,” he said.

But becoming a pellet magnate wasn’t something Raid set out to do. Instead, it developed from another project he’s pursued for more than a decade.

Raid helps farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area install owl nesting boxes, because the birds provide low-cost, sustainable rodent control. The pests, particularly cotton rats and marsh rabbits, cause up to $30 million in damage each year to the area’s 700,000 acres of sugar cane, rice and vegetable crops.

A nesting pair of barn owls can eat 1,000 rodents per year. The area now has hundreds of nesting boxes and some of the highest barn-owl concentrations in the country, Raid says.

Along the way, he realized there was a demand for owl pellets, so Raid started gathering and sterilizing them and giving them to local teachers. These days his supply goes partly to educators. The rest are sold to biological supply dealers who pay about 50 cents per pellet, money Raid uses to support the program.

Nationwide, owl pellet gathering is worth perhaps $2 million to $3 million per year, but it’s growing at 25 to 30 percent annually, says Chris Anderson, owner of Owl Brand Discovery Kits in Portland, Ore.

Anderson’s company, founded in 1996, employs 12 full-time gatherers and ships at least a quarter million owl pellets each year, he said. They gather owl pellets from about 1,000 sites in Western states, mainly on private land.

“It’s very relationship driven,” Anderson said. “You’re asking to poke around someone’s property.”

And the job presents some unique challenges.

“I’ve had floors fall out from underneath me in old, abandoned houses,” he said. “I’ve been dive-bombed by owls.”

As raptors go, barn owls are fairly docile, Raid says, usually preferring to flee when people approach their nests. But he adds, “I’ve had a talon or two come in contact with me.”

The pellets are usually retrieved from nesting boxes, or places owls roost, such as old barns and pump houses. A barn owl can expel two or three pellets each day. The best time for gathering is in the spring and fall, because there’s little rain and pellets stay intact long enough to dry out. Here, fresh is not best, Raid says. Pellets less than 24 hours old are messy.

“For those I definitely wear gloves,” he said. “They’re the consistency of a big wad of chewing tobacco that’s just been spit out.”

The mandarin hybrid — a mix of the sweet Clementine and the colorful, bell-shaped Minneola — has a rich taste and strong aroma, said UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences plant breeder Fred Gmitter.

The new sweet-tart fruit may be best described as a mandarin with a tangy punch.

“Many old-timers in citrus have said this is the best-tasting citrus they’ve ever had,” Gmitter said.

The fruit, which has a patent pending and is also known as LB8-9, has been in the works since 1985.

Mark McLellan, IFAS’ dean for research, said he believes the time that went into breeding this variety will be worthwhile.

“Sugar Belle is positioned in a unique market window, and its flavor characteristics are expected to make this variety a consumer favorite,” he said. “We’re very excited to offer it on behalf of the university.”

Recently, Florida Foundation Seed Producers Inc., a direct support organization of UF, awarded an exclusive U.S. license to the New Varieties Development and Management Corporation.

Funded by the Florida Citrus Commission, the not-for-profit corporation was set up in 2005
to help assure Florida growers access to new patented citrus varieties, manage new varieties and direct resources to citrus breeding research.

The corporation was granted the exclusive license for the fruit through the university’s Invitation to Negotiate process, designed to benefit everyone from IFAS to citrus growers.

“It’s becoming more common for grower-backed organizations to help monitor the markets for growers and ensure that everyone has a chance to be successful,” said John Beuttenmuller, the intellectual property and licensing director for Florida Foundation Seed Producers, which led the ITN process.

In that process, a company is selected to deliver new cultivars to the public. In return, the company pays royalties back to the Florida Foundation Seed Producers and the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, to be reinvested in breeding and development programs.

Sugar Belle is a unique variety, said the corporation’s executive director, Peter Chaires. He believes it will make a big splash in the $52 million specialty citrus market.

Chaires describes its flavor almost like one would describe a fine wine.

“It has a flavor that takes it to the top of the show wherever it goes. It’s got a very, very deep flavor,” he said. “I don’t want to say it’s rich, but it’s a very deep, complex flavor.”

Despite strong ties to the citrus industry, UF has never before released a citrus cultivar developed solely by its scientists — likely because citrus breeding is an excruciatingly slow endeavor. The average time for new citrus — from creation to its commercial release — can be up to 20 years.

And in this case, what became the UF’s inaugural citrus variety could just as easily have been plowed under.

Gmitter, who arrived at UF’s Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred as an assistant professor in 1985, was a young plant breeder desperate for citrus trees to work with. After locating a small tract of trees left by a retired professor, Gmitter went for a look.

“I went out in early November of my first year … This one tree had beautiful, bright orange fruit. The best citrus I’d ever eaten in my life,” Gmitter said. Those trees were used to create his new cultivar.

UF officials hope Sugar Belle will be as lucky when it comes to reaching consumers — which could be as early as this year, in some markets.

The fruit matures early, so it should be a good fit for the December holiday market, Chaires said. It can be grown in a manner to produce low-seeded fruit. And with his organization keeping tabs on how the fruit fares in groves and the economics of the citrus market, he believes the new fruit has the potential to be a big hit.

“Every time we’ve tested it with different groups, it’s been wildly popular,” he said.

Eating more plant-based foods, which are rich in substances called phytochemicals, seems to prevent oxidative stress in the body, a process associated with obesity and the onset of disease, according to findings published online in advance of the print edition of the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics.

To get enough of these protective phytochemicals, researchers suggest eating plant-based foods such as leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes at the start of a meal. Using what is known as a phytochemical index, which compares the number of calories consumed from plant-based foods compared with the overall number of daily calories, could also help people make sure they remember to get enough phytochemicals during their regular meals and snacks, said Heather K. Vincent, the lead author of the paper.

“We need to find a way to encourage people to pull back on fat and eat more foods rich in micronutrients and trace minerals from fruits, vegetables, whole grains and soy,” said Vincent, an assistant professor in the UF Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine Institute. “Fill your plate with colorful, low-calorie, varied-texture foods derived from plants first. By slowly eating phytochemical-rich foods such as salads with olive oil or fresh-cut fruits before the actual meal, you will likely reduce the overall portion size, fat content and energy intake. In this way, you’re ensuring that you get the variety of protective, disease-fighting phytochemicals you need and controlling caloric intake.”

The researchers studied a group of 54 young adults, analyzing their dietary patterns over a three-day period, repeating the same measurement eight weeks later. The participants were broken into two groups: normal weight and overweight-obese.

Although the adults in the two groups consumed about the same amount of calories, overweight-obese adults consumed fewer plant-based foods and subsequently fewer protective trace minerals and phytochemicals and more saturated fats. They also had higher levels of oxidative stress and inflammation than their normal-weight peers, Vincent said. These processes are related to the onset of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and joint disease, she added.

“Diets low in plant-based foods affect health over the course of a long period of time,” Vincent said. “This is related to annual weight gain, low levels of inflammation and oxidative stress. Those are the onset processes of disease that debilitate people later in life.”

Oxidative stress occurs when the body produces too many damaging free radicals and lacks enough antioxidants or phytochemicals to counteract them. Because of excess fat tissue and certain enzymes that are more active in overweight people, being obese can actually trigger the production of more free radicals, too.

Because many phytochemicals have antioxidant properties, they can help combat free radicals, Vincent said. Phytochemicals include substances such as allin from garlic, lycopene from tomatoes, isoflavones from soy, beta carotene from orange squashes and anythocyanins from red wine, among others.

“People who are obese need more fruits, vegetables, legumes and wholesome unrefined grains,” she said. “In comparison to a normal-weight person, an obese person is always going to be behind the eight ball because there are so many adverse metabolic processes going on.”

Instead of making drastic changes, people could substitute one or two choices a day with phytochemical-rich foods to make a difference in their diets, Vincent said. For example, substituting a cup of steeped plain tea instead of coffee or reaching for an orange instead of a granola bar could increase a person’s phytochemical intake for the day without even changing the feeling of fullness. Over time, replacing more pre-packaged snacks with fresh produce or low-sugar grains could become a habit that fights obesity and disease, Vincent said.

“We always want to encourage people to go back to the whole sources of food, the nonprocessed foods if we can help it,” Vincent said. “That would be the bottom line for anyone, regardless of age and body size, keep going back to the purer plant-based foods. Remember to eat the good quality food first.”

Currently, there are no recommendations for how much of these plant compounds people should be getting each day, says Susanne Talcott, an assistant professor of food science and nutrition at Texas A&M University. Using the phytochemical index could be a good way to come up with these recommendations, she said.

Like Vincent, Talcott also cautions people to try and stick to the whole sources of foods and be wary of processed foods that promise benefits from added plant compounds.

“Consumers should stick with what we have known for decades and eat fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables,” she said. “Stick with those kinds of foods rather than reaching out for a tropical wonder pill or juice.”

UF Tech Connect received the Award of Excellence in Technology Commercialization from the University Economic Development Association. The center reported helping client companies generate more than $86.9 million in private investments and create more than 77 jobs in Fiscal Year 2008.

UF Tech Connect was one of three finalists, along with the University of South Florida and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

“We are thrilled to be recognized for our contribution to the regional and state economy,” said Chris Brown, UF Tech Connect coordinator, who accepted the award at the 2009 Summit of the University Economic Development Association Oct. 11-13 in San Antonio.

“The UF Tech Connect program plays an important role in bringing together UF faculty, entrepreneurs and investors,” said Jane Muir, director of UF Tech Connect. “We’re honored to be recognized as a leader in the creation of high-tech companies and jobs in the state.”

UF Tech Connect is at the pulse-point of the region’s high-tech startup activity and serves as a magnet for entrepreneurs and investors seeking new opportunities. The center also develops new programs and sponsors events that foster new business creation.

“The UF Tech Connect program plays an important role in helping to commercialize university discoveries by helping create technology-based startup companies,” said Win Phillips, UF vice president for research.

Established in 1976, the University Economic Development Association focuses on the nexus between higher education institutions and economic development partners. Many EDA-funded University Centers choose to join this professional organization for a number of reasons, including UEDA’s efforts to:

• promote the role of higher education in economic development;
• provide valuable training and networking opportunities to members; and
• increase the effectiveness of, and the appreciation for, higher education in regional and national economic development strategy.

To learn more about UEDA go to http://www.universityeda.org/.

Headquartered at the University of Florida Office of Technology Licensing, UF Tech Connect was created as a partnership between UF and the U.S. Economic Development Administration to provide a venue for bringing together the necessary elements to create companies.

As the University of Florida’s main commercialization center, OTL has in-depth experience in technology management and commercialization. For more information about UF Tech Connect, visit http://www.otl.ufl.edu/ or contact Chris Brown, coordinator, at 352-846-1840.

New trends in hospital design are helping health-care systems to better choreograph care and provide a soothing yet energy-efficient environment.

Consider the Shands Cancer Hospital at the University of Florida, which opens Nov. 1. The new 500,000-square-foot, $388-million medical tower is an extension of the Shands at UF academic medical center on its new south campus. The tower will feature 192 private beds and will house the Shands Critical Care Center for emergency and trauma services. Medical teams will serve a variety of inpatients, including those receiving diagnostic and therapeutic oncology care.

“Through academic medicine, we offer patients novel diagnostic and treatment options by expert physicians, researchers and teachers, and skilled and compassionate nurses and clinical teams,” said Timothy Goldfarb, Shands HealthCare CEO. “Now we have added a truly innovative, healing setting that incorporates industry best practices and therapeutic design to enhance our patient’s overall health-care experience. This is the hospital of tomorrow.”

Shands and Gainesville Regional Utilities partnered to establish the GRU South Energy Center to provide 100 percent of the hospital’s energy needs. The onsite power plant will ensure uninterrupted power, independent of the city’s energy grid, regardless of a prolonged outage elsewhere in the community. It will efficiently convert fuel into electricity and provide 46 percent savings compared with traditional fossil fuel-burning generations. Officials estimate this will save 27 million kilowatts per year, enough to power about 3,000 homes.

The commitment to use environmentally sustainable construction methods to build the hospital has earned Shands HealthCare the silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design designation per the U.S. Green Building Council rating system.

“We used insulated windows that are treated to reduce solar glare and white rooftops designed to reflect heat,” said Brad Pollitt, Shands HealthCare vice president for facilities. “The facility’s air-conditioning heat wheels help to recover lost energy and irrigation and drainage systems use reclaimed water. We provide showers for employees who bike to work and special parking for hybrid cars.”

Pollitt says that Shands is now being considered for gold-level LEED certification and will be one of a few academic medical centers nationwide to achieve this rating.

“Opening the Shands Cancer Hospital at UF marks a milestone for us,” said Dr. David S. Guzick, UF senior vice president for health affairs and president of the UF&Shands Health System. “It will enable us to meet the growing needs of cancer patients, advance our ability to care for emergency and critical care patients and ensure our long-term commitment to meeting the region’s health-care needs.”

In designing the building, hospital facilities teams worked with architects whose expertise is health-care environments. Nursing and medical staff provided input to incorporate features such as nurse stations that improve sight lines to patients and monitoring systems and details that give patients control of their environment, allowing them to adjust lighting and window shades with the click of a remote. There is abundant natural light on each floor and hallway lights are wall-mounted or recessed so patients aren’t subjected to blinding glare as they are wheeled from place to place.

“Every planning and design decision we made as a team was centered on patient comfort and ease for hospital staff in providing safe and healing care,” said Laura Stillman, principal-in-charge/project director at Flad Architects.

“The new building is light-filled, welcoming and easily navigable for patients, families and staff – and we believe it offers hope to those who will experience it,” she added.

In 2009, more than 100,000 cancer cases will be diagnosed in Florida, second only to California in the nation’s cancer cases. In north Florida alone, at least 4,500 new cases are diagnosed annually. One in seven adults treated at Shands at UF has a cancer-related condition.

The new tower also includes the Shands Critical Care Center at UF, which combines an emergency department and Level I trauma center. The emergency room has 62 treatment areas and provides clinical teams the capacity to treat 100,000 patients a year. The trauma center has four large treatment rooms and is strategically located directly beneath the rooftop helipad that can hold the weight of two helicopters at once – making care a brief elevator ride away when every moment counts.

In addition, in mass-casualty situations the emergency department capacity can be quickly doubled. The private exam rooms have break-away doors, are 18 inches wider than code requirements and can hold side-by-side beds.

The hospital also includes 12 high-tech operating rooms designed to accommodate anticipated evolutions in robotics and 3-D imaging; surgical intensive and intermediate care units; and a bone marrow transplant unit, outpatient clinic and stem cell lab. A full-spectrum radiology department features the “crown jewel” of imaging, the Aquilion ONE 320-detector row CT scanner. The $2.5-million diagnostic tool, the second Shands HealthCare has acquired, helps physicians diagnose cancer, and it can detect stroke and heart disease in minutes, replacing dozens of other tests that typically take hours or even days. Shands was the first in Florida and one of only a handful in the nation to acquire this technology.

Ultimately, hospital officials worked hard to create a setting that underscores their commitment to hope and healing, from the Garden of Hope, which provides a place for quiet reflection, to the Sanctuaries of Silence and Peace, areas for meditation and prayer.

“As our clinical teams focus on each patient’s medical and physical condition, the beautifully designed building creates a healing environment and helps us support their emotional well-being,” Goldfarb said.

Some studies indicate that design improvements lead to improved patient outcomes, although more research needs to be done, according to Robert Cassidy, editor-in-chief of Building Design+Construction magazine, based in Oak Brook, Ill.

“There’s great value in saving energy, improving day-lighting and providing views of nature and other amenities, such as healing gardens and family centered patient rooms and facilities,” Cassidy said. “One of the ways the patients and families evaluate a health-care setting is how bright and cozy it is. Whether those elements have a benefit in reduced length of stay or other clinical benefits is not scientifically proven, but our gut tells us they do.”

That’s the goal of a $12.2 million National Center for Research Resources grant awarded today to the University of Florida and collaborators at Cornell University, Indiana University, Weill Cornell Medical College, Washington University in St. Louis, the Scripps Research Institute and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. The funding stems from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

During the next two years, researchers will implement a new type of networking system at the seven schools that eventually will link researchers across the country and world to like-minded peers and potential collaborators.

By making it easier for scientists to find each other, researchers will be able to improve their ongoing studies and forge collaborations that could lead to new discoveries, said Michael Conlon, interim director of biomedical informatics for UF and the principal investigator on the grant.

“The goal of the program is national networking of all scientists,” Conlon said. “Scientists have problems finding each other. We often find that researchers have pretty good networks with students or with scientists at institutions where they received their degree or worked before. But they don’t always know people even at their own institutions.”

The new program will draw information about scientists from official, verifiable sources and make it available using a type of technology called the Semantic Web.

For example, information about researchers’ positions will come from their employers and a listing of their published articles will come from the journals, while researchers will provide information regarding their interests. Although users will still view the information on what looks like regular Web pages, the software developed by Cornell researchers actually collects the facts a person wants and assembles its own page.

“The Semantic Web is a collection of facts, rather than pages. It is really for computers to search and find things and present them in a reasonable way,” Conlon said. “It’s a next-generation type concept.”

The idea for a database of researchers first sprouted at UF when two librarians at UF’s Marston Science Library proposed using Cornell’s VIVO software at UF to help scientists better find research articles published by UF faculty members.

Touted as a research discovery tool, VIVO is open-source software that allows people to search all publicly known information about a specific topic or researcher in one site. On Cornell’s VIVO site, a search for the word “cancer,” for example, yields dozens of results, but they are broken up into categories like “people,” “opportunities” and “topics.” Clicking on “topics” takes one to another set of subgroups that allows searchers to more quickly find exactly what they want.

“I saw the power VIVO had to show the research coming out of an institution,” said Valrie Davis, a UF outreach librarian for agricultural science who teamed with UF librarian Sara Russell Gonzalez to propose using VIVO at UF after seeing it presented at a conference. “VIVO is an open source tool to connect people with common research interests. It’s going to link people together. I think that is the most important part of this grant.”

The grant supports a National Institutes of Health goal to establish a national network of scientists. The NIH also wanted such a network to contain verifiable data. Using VIVO was a perfect fit, Conlon said.

“Five years of time, energy and imagination created VIVO, and now that work is paying off in ways we had only imagined before,” said Anne R. Kenney, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian at Cornell. “This major partnership enables us to extend the capabilities of all of our institutions and reach further than we would be able to alone. Creating strong connections between institutions is a fundamental building block in advancing the mission of 21st-century research libraries.”

Initially, each institution involved in the grant will establish its own network of researchers. Librarians will implement the software and will offer support to researchers once they begin using it. Within two years, the team hopes to have the network connected across the country. Eventually, Conlon says the researchers would also like to broaden the scope of the project to include researchers around the world.

“We think this will have a huge multiplier effect and will allow researchers to find new partners and other ways to use their research,” said Judith Russell, dean of the University Libraries at UF. “For years, librarians have helped researchers find the information they need. This is another type of critical information scientists need.”

Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and UF, among others, found that many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests — including legumes, palms, avocado and banana — have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate and geological structure.

The study, which appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined more than 2,000 megafossil specimens, some nearly 10 feet long, from the Cerrejón Formation in northern Colombia. The fossils are from the Paleocene epoch, which occurred in the 5- to 7-million-year period following the massive extinction event responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs.

“Neotropical rainforests have an almost nonexistent fossil record,” said study co-author Fabiany Herrera, a graduate student at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “These specimens allow us to actually test hypotheses about their origins for the first time ever.”

Herrera said the new specimens, discovered in 2003, also provide information for future studies that promise to provide an even stronger understanding of the plants that formed the earliest Neotropical communities.

Many previous assumptions and hypotheses on the earliest rainforests are based on studies of pollen fossils, which did not provide information about climate, forest structure, leaf morphology or insect herbivory.

The new study provides evidence Neotropical rainforests were warmer and wetter in the late Paleocene than today but were composed of the same plant families that now thrive in rainforests. “We have the fossils to prove this,” Herrera said. “It is also intriguing that while the Cerrejón rainforest shows many of the characteristics of modern equivalents, plant diversity is lower.”

The site, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded the fossil for the giant snake known as Titanoboa, described by UF scientists earlier this year.

“These new plant fossils show us that the forest during the time of Titanoboa, 58 million years ago, was similar in many ways to that of today,” said Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch, who described Titanoboa but was not part of the rainforest study. “Like Titanoboa, which is clearly related to living boas and anacondas, the ancient forest of northern Colombia had similar families of plants as we see today in that ecosystem. The foundations of the Neotropical rainforests were there 58 million years ago.”

Megafossils found at the Cerrejón site made it possible to use leaf structure to identify specimens down to the genus level. This resolution allowed the identification of plant genera that still exist in Neotropical rainforests. With pollen fossils, specimens can be categorized only to the family level.

Researchers were surprised by the relative lack of diversity found in the Paleocene rainforest, Herrera said. Statistical analyses showed that the plant communities found in the Cerrejón Formation were 60 percent to 80 percent less diverse than those of modern Neotropical rainforests. Evidence of herbivory also showed a low diversity level among insects.

The study’s authors say the relative lack of diversity indicates either the beginning of rainforest species diversification or the recovery of existing species from the Cretaceous extinction event.

The researchers estimate the Paleocene rainforest received about 126 inches of rainfall annually and had an average annual temperature greater than 86 degrees. The Titanoboa study, which used different methods, estimated an average temperature between 89 and 91 degrees. Today the region’s temperatures average about 81 degrees.

Herrera is now comparing fossils from the Cerrejón site to specimens from other Paleocene sites in Colombia to see how far the early rainforest extended geographically. He is also examining fossils from a Cretaceous site to determine differences in composition before and after the extinction event.

“The economic benefits of an advancement like this in a health care field are tremendous, particularly in a state like Florida where there are so many elderly and people with hearing impairments,” said Alice Holmes, a professor in UF’s Department of Communicative Disorders at the College of Public Health and Health Professions. “If you develop a hearing loss, you may end up having to retire early or go on disability. By keeping people functioning in society, it has all sort of positive outcomes.”

At the suggestion of one of Holmes’ patients at UF’s hearing clinic, who was severely hearing impaired, she and other UF researchers pioneered a way to program digital hearing aid devices and cochlear or inner ear implants, based on speech sounds such as “aba,” “ata” and “asha” instead of tonal beeps. People with hearing loss can now hear spoken words much more clearly and their hearing aid devices can be adjusted in a fraction of the time, Holmes said.

“I really think we have the possibility of revolutionizing how digital hearing devices can be programmed,” said Holmes, who collaborated with Rahul Shrivastav, another UF professor in communicative disorders, and Purvis Bedenbaugh, a former UF neuroscience professor. “Our next step is looking into the possibility of accomplishing the same thing with cell phones.”

After UF researchers received a patent, Lee Krause, Holmes’ patient whose training in computer engineering led him to propose the idea of using speech sounds, started the company Audigence Inc. in Melbourne to develop and market the software.

Audigence, which now has 12 employees, is licensing the technology to a hearing aid company in Orlando, Holmes said. “We’re hoping to have the product launched in October at the national meeting of the Academy of Dispensing Audiology in Clearwater,” she said.

In addition, a major clinical trial is now under way with an international hearing aid company that could result in another licensing agreement within the next year, she said.

The arrival of these products on the market will offer economic benefits to audiology clinics as well as improving the lives of their patients, Holmes said. By being able to program hearing aids quicker with better results, audiologists can see greater numbers of patients in a shorter period of time, she said.

An estimated 31 million Americans have hearing loss that could be helped by some form of amplification, yet only about 20 percent of them use hearing aids, Holmes said. Besides the stigma attached to hearing aids, many people who should wear them give up because they are adjusted incorrectly, she said.

“Hearing loss, particularly in the older population, is second only to arthritis as a permanent disability,” she said.

The problem with the traditional method for programming hearing aid devices is it relies on standardized formulas developed for the average patient, while the UF technology customizes the tuning to a patient’s individual hearing deficiencies, Holmes said. Hearing loss occurs at different pitches, which vary from one person to the next, she said.

Krause, chief executive officer and president of Audigence, had lost so much hearing that he needed a cochlear implant, an electrical device that is attached in one’s head and stimulates auditory nerves. Krause continued to have difficulty understanding human speech, especially on the phone, but that changed when it was programmed by speech sounds, Holmes said.

“We do conference calls probably every other day and he leads the calls,” she said. “I almost think he hears better than I do at times.”