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.

“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.

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.”

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.”

“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.”

Oysters are typically considered safest to eat in cooler months (September through April) because the shellfish-infecting bacteria in the genus Vibrio flourish best in warm temperatures.

Even in the “r” months, slurping an oyster opens some people to infection from these bacteria, which can cause fever, nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea and has even led to finger amputation when it’s given a chance to penetrate a cut or skin lesion.

However, a new quick and inexpensive diagnostic test developed by DuPont Qualicon and refined by UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences could make weeding out pathogen-loaded oysters much more practical and efficient. Oysters are a $14 million industry in the Sunshine State, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The test is based on a technology dubbed “quantitative polymerase chain reaction,” or QPCR diagnostics. Given a small sampling of oyster, shrimp or ahi tuna, the system tracks genetic material found in three harmful species of Vibrio by amplifying their DNA into large amounts that are easily detected.

This is the first time this technology could be used in detecting pathogens in seafood on an industrial scale. So, after initially developing the basic lab-bench test, DuPont turned to UF to prepare it for commercial use and regulatory approval.

“Whether you have raw oysters or if you’re trying to validate some sort of treatment method, the old way of testing these bacteria in oysters just isn’t very practical because it’s pricy and takes about a week,” said Anita Wright, a UF food science professor whose Florida Sea Grant work is validating and expanding applications of the new test for seafood processing and research purposes.

This USDA-funded research evaluates treatments such as freezing, high pressure, irradiation, or mild heating, and is funded by the Florida Gulf Coast Oyster Industry Council.

Wright will present findings from her work at the Oct. 17-23 biennial meeting of the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference, followed by a workshop to demonstrate the methodology. Her findings will also be published in the next issue of the American Organization of Analytical Chemists.

The ISSC is a shellfish regulatory cooperation that will determine if the test is reliable enough to be used industrywide. If approved, the test could be an especially big boon for oyster harvesters in the Gulf of Mexico, the source of a third of all U.S. oysters.

Warmer water temperatures and factors such as pollution make Vibrio species a major concern for Gulf-harvested shellfish. Forty percent or more of Gulf oysters carry these pathogens in the “non-r” months, according to the FDA.

Scientists observed that cancer stem cells taken from the gastrointestinal system in patients with a chronic digestive disease called ulcerative colitis will transform into cancerous tumors in mice.

The finding, now online and to be featured on the cover of the Thursday (Oct. 15) issue of Cancer Research, may help explain why patients with colitis have up to a 30-fold risk of developing colon cancer compared with people without the disease.

New understanding of the link between colitis and cancer could lead to diagnostic tests that would evaluate tissue taken from patients with colitis for signs of cancer stem cell development, thereby identifying patients who may be at greater risk for cancer.

“Ultimately it would be great if we could prevent colitis or treat colitis so it never gets to the cancerous stage,” said UF colorectal surgeon Dr. Emina Huang, who is a member of the Program in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at UF’s McKnight Brain Institute and the UF College of Medicine.

Although colonoscopy is very effective in screening and preventing colon cancer for most people, for patients with colitis no diagnostic tests work well because the inflamed tissue makes identification of precancerous changes difficult.

According to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, approximately 700,000 people have colitis in the United States. The National Cancer Institute estimates that cancer of the colon and rectum will claim the lives of about 50,000 people this year.

UF scientists gathered colitic tissue from humans and chemically screened it for colon cancer stem cells, also called tumor initiating cells. These cells were then isolated and monitored in mice to see if tumors would grow.

Huang said these findings shed light on that fact that it may not be just the cancer “seed” cell, but the “soil” — in this case inflamed colon tissue — that plays a role in the development of cancer.

“Is it the seed, is it the soil or is it their interaction?” she said. “We think probably both, but now we have a new way to look at it and a new method of attack.”

Dr. B. Mark Evers, a professor and vice chair of surgery at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, said the study emphasizes the emerging role of the surrounding inflammatory tumor microenvironment on tumor growth and subsequent metastasis.

“Dr. Huang and her group have identified a potentially important mechanism to explain why long-standing inflammation of the colon predisposes patients to the development of cancer,” said Evers, who is director of the Lucille P. Markey Cancer Center in Lexington, Ky.

To further understand the role of the “seed” and “soil” interaction, UF researchers paired colon cancer stem cells with normal, colitic and cancerous human cells taken from the scaffolding layer of the large intestine. The cells were implanted into mice to analyze growth rates. The combination of tumor cells and normal scaffolding tissue cells grew at the slowest rate. Tumor cells paired with cancerous tissue grew at an intermediate rate, and tumor cells paired with the colitic tissue grew at the fastest rate.

Huang said they found heightened levels of two immune system hormones called interleukin-6 and interleukin-8 in the cells from the colitic and cancerous tissues, which had the faster growth rates.

When UF researchers decreased the expression of these hormones within the cells, the tumor growth drastically decreased. When the hormones returned, the tumors began to grow again.

“We don’t understand the transition at the molecular level so we are trying to figure out what we can target to interfere, intervene or inhibit that transformation of the benign colitic cells,” she said. “The thought is if we can create a therapy to decrease function of these hormones, we may be able to prevent or inhibit cancer growth.”

Clinical trials looking at the role of one of these hormones in humans are under way in England, Huang said.

People who don’t achieve workout milestones such as losing fat, gaining strength or boosting cardiovascular fitness feel just as good about their bodies as their more athletic counterparts, said Heather Hausenblas, a UF exercise psychologist. Her study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.

“You would think that if you become more fit that you would experience greater improvements in terms of body image, but that’s not what we found,” she said. “It may be that the requirements to receive the psychological benefits of exercise, including those relating to body image, differ substantially from the physical benefits.”

The study by Hausenblas and graduate student Anna Campbell is the first to systematically analyze the wide-ranging effects of exercise on body image by examining all intervention studies on the subject until June 2008. From the 57 publications, the researchers found conclusively that exercise buffed up the way people see their bodies regardless of the actual benefits, but the results varied.

Negative body image has grown to almost epidemic proportions in the past 20 years, with as many as 60 percent of adults in national studies saying they don’t like the way their bodies look, Hausenblas said.

Americans spend billions of dollars a year for products designed to change their body size and shape, including diet pills and various cosmetic procedures, she said.

“Body dissatisfaction is a huge problem in our society and is related to all sorts of negative behavior including yo-yo dieting, smoking, taking steroids and undergoing cosmetic surgery,” she said. “It affects men and women and all ages, starting with kids who are as young as five years old saying they don’t like how their bodies look.”

The psychological advantages of exercise have been less explored, including the reduction of depression or confidence in body image, compared with the well-researched and understood physical benefits, she said.

The study found no difference in body image improvement between people who met the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines by exercising at least 30 minutes a day five days a week and those who did not, Hausenblas said. The guidelines are considered the minimum amount of exercise needed to receive the health related benefits of physical activity, she said.

“We would have thought that people exercising this amount would have felt better about their bodies than those who did not work out as much,” she said.

In other results, the study showed slightly larger benefits from exercise in terms of improving body image for women than men, Hausenblas said.

“We believed the gap would be much bigger, but what could be coming into play is the rise of body image issues among men,” she said. “We’re seeing more media portrayals of the ideal physique for men rather than the overriding emphasis on women we did in the past.”

Age presented another difference, with older people most likely to report enhanced body images from exercise, Hausenblas said. The gap may be explained by the older generation having more concerns about their body image than young people, who tend to exercise more, she said.

While the frequency of exercise mattered for boosting body perceptions, there were no differences for the duration, intensity, length or type of exercise, the study found.

“People who say they have high body dissatisfaction tend to exercise the least, so we wanted to take it a step further and see whether exercise causes people’s body image to improve,” she said.

Kathleen Martin Ginis, a kinesiology professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and exercise expert, praised the research. “This is an important study because it shows that doing virtually any type of exercise, on a regular basis, can help people feel better about their bodies,” she said. “With such a large segment of the population dissatisfied with their physiques, it’s encouraging to know that even short, frequent bouts of lower intensity exercise can improve body image.”

When completed, funding for the project is expected to total more than $60 million from the NIA, including the $29.5 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The total will amount to the largest federal award to UF, as well as fund the largest study to prevent mobility disability in seniors.

Many studies have shown that regular exercise improves physical performance. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity each week, as well as muscle-strengthening activities.

Still, little is known about whether exercise can actually help prevent major mobility disability, defined as the inability to walk a quarter of a mile, or four blocks.

For older adults, staving off disability could help them maintain their physical independence and enhance the quality of their later years.

“We all know that physical activity is good for our health, but the definitive evidence whether it can prevent disability in older people — whether you can prevent them from being unable to walk — is lacking,” said principal investigator Dr. Marco Pahor, director of the UF Institute on Aging.

The new study, called the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders, or LIFE study, seeks to fill that gap in scientific knowledge. This phase 3 randomized controlled trial of 1,600 sedentary adults ages 70 to 89 who are at risk of mobility disability will be conducted at eight institutions around the country.

It expands on the results of a pilot study that found the rate of onset of mobility disability was lower among a group of older adults who engaged in a structured exercise program for a year, compared with a group of seniors who took part in a health education program for a year.

“This grant reflects NIH’s recognition of the excellence of Dr. Pahor’s work in this area over the past 10 years,” said Dr. David S. Guzick, UF’s senior vice president for health affairs and president of the UF&Shands Health System. “It represents the kind of translational research that UF will increasingly be in a position to conduct.”

UF is the coordinating center and a field site for the LIFE study, with other field sites at Northwestern University, Pennington Biomedical Research Center — a campus of the Louisiana State University system, Stanford University, Tufts University, the University of Pittsburgh, Wake Forest University Health Sciences and Yale University.

Recruitment will begin in early 2010. Eligible participants will be randomly assigned either to take part in a program of moderate-intensity physical activity or a health education program on successful aging. Individuals will be followed for up to three-and-a-half years.

It will be the largest randomized controlled trial ever conducted on physical activity in older adults, and the size of the study will allow scientists to examine the effect of physical activity on a large number of outcomes in ways that have not been possible before.

Primarily, the study seeks to gauge whether there are long-term effects of physical activity interventions on major mobility disability. Investigators will also examine the effects of physical activity on a number of factors, including cognitive function, serious fall injuries, disability in basic activities of daily living, cardiovascular events and hospitalization and nursing home admission. They will also examine quality-of-life measures such as depression symptoms, sleep quality, stress and satisfaction with life.

In addition, the project will allow an assessment of the cost effectiveness of walking programs for the elderly, and whether the money spent on such programs can help reduce medical expenses for injuries and illness that might otherwise result from lack of adequate physical activity.

As life expectancy increases in the United States, the care of older adults has become a major issue for clinical practice as well as public health policy. Average life expectancy today is 77.7 years — almost seven years more than in 1970, according to CDC data.

As adults age, many lose vitality and the inclination or ability to engage in physical activities as simple as walking. Older adults ages 60 to 85 spend almost 60 percent of their time — more than eight of their waking hours — in sedentary behaviors, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The length of time spent in sedentary behaviors has been associated with increased risk of weight gain and various diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. And people who lose their mobility have higher rates of sickness, hospitalization and death than others who do not have disabilities.

“Limitations in walking ability compromise independence, and contribute to the need for assistive care,” said Dr. Evan C. Hadley, director of NIA’s Division of Geriatrics and Clinical Gerontology, whose program is overseeing the trial. “Older people with impaired walking are less likely to remain in the community, have higher rates of certain diseases and death, and experience a poorer quality of life. A successful intervention might help prevent these bad outcomes.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A regular tai chi exercise program can help people better control their diabetes and lower glucose levels, according to a University of Florida study.

In a study of adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, those who participated in a supervised tai chi exercise program two days a week with three days of home practice for six months significantly lowered their fasting blood glucose levels, improved their management of the disease, and enhanced their overall quality of life, including mental health, vitality and energy.

“Tai chi really has similar effects as other aerobic exercises on diabetic control. The difference is tai chi is a low-impact exercise, which means that it’s less stressful on the bones, joints and muscles than more strenuous exercise,” said Beverly Roberts, the Annabel Davis Jenks endowed professor at the UF College of Nursing.

Roberts, with Rhayun Song, of Chungnam National University, studied tai chi’s effect on older Korean residents. The research was featured in the June issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

About 23.6 million children and adults in the United States, or 7.8 percent of the population, have diabetes. It occurs when the body does not produce or properly use insulin, a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life.

Risk factors include obesity, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits, high blood pressure and cholesterol, a history of gestational diabetes and increased age, many of which can be reduced through exercise.

“People assume that for exercise to be beneficial you have to be huffing and puffing, sweating and red-faced afterward,” Roberts said. “This may turn people off, particularly older adults. However, we have found that activities like tai chi can be just as beneficial in improving health.”

Tai chi is an ancient Chinese martial art that combines deep breathing and relaxation with slow, gentle circular movements. This low impact exercise uses shifts in body position and stepping in coordination with arm movements.

Sixty-two participants, mostly Korean women, took part in the study. Half the group participated in at least 80 percent of two supervised sessions one hour per week, with three days of home practice for six months, and the other half served as a control group. Those who completed the sessions had significantly improved glucose control and reported higher levels of vitality and energy.

“Those who participated in the tai chi sessions actually had lower blood glucose at three and six months,” Roberts said. “Those individuals also had lower hemoglobin A1c, which means they had better diabetic control.”

In addition to improved blood glucose levels, participants also reported significantly improved mental health. This was very encouraging especially since people with less depression are typically more active and independent, Roberts said.

Tai chi has also been used for people with arthritis and disabilities to increase balance, muscle strength and mobility and to reduce the risk of falls. It is worth investigating its effects in other conditions, especially in older people, Roberts said.

“Tai chi provides a great alternative for people who may want the benefits of exercise on diabetic control but may be physically unable to complete strenuous activities due to age, condition or injury,” Roberts said. “Future studies could examine if tai chi could similarly benefit conditions such as osteoporosis or heart disease.”

Since tai chi is an exercise that involves so many parts of the body and also helps to relax the mind, it is more likely participants will adhere to the exercise, said Paul Lam, a lecturer with the University of South Wales School of Public Health and Community Medicine and a practicing family physician in Sydney, Australia.

“This study shows that tai chi can have a significant effect on the management and treatment of diabetes — a significant and growing health challenge for all Western countries,” Lam said.

Writing in the September issue of AIDS, a research team led by scientists at the University of Florida explained why two subtypes of HIV-1 — the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS — held steady at relatively low levels for more than 50 years in west central Africa before erupting as an epidemic in east Africa in the 1970s.

Essentially, the explanation for the HIV explosion — obscured until now — involves the relative ease with which people can travel from city to city in east Africa as opposed to the difficulties faced by people living in the population centers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the point where HIV emerged from west central Africa in its spread to the east.

Later, as the epidemic raged in the east, cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo — a vast country almost as big as all of Western Europe — remained disconnected and isolated, explaining why the virus affected only about 5 percent of the country’s population, a level that has not changed much since the 1950s.

“We live in a world that is more interconnected every day, and we have all seen how pathogens such as HIV or the swine flu virus can arise in a remote area of the planet and quickly become a global threat,” said Marco Salemi, an assistant professor of pathology, immunology, and laboratory medicine at the UF College of Medicine and senior author of the study. “Understanding the factors that can lead to a full-scale pandemic is essential to protect our species from emerging dangers.”

Investigators used databases, including GenBank from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, as well as actual DNA samples, including samples recently collected in Uganda — the vicinity where HIV entered east Africa — to follow the virus’ molecular footprints since its emergence in the 1920s.

“HIV mutates rapidly,” said Rebecca Gray, a postdoctoral associate in the department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine. “This is a successful strategy for the virus, because it evolves quickly and develops drug resistance. But we can use these changes in the genome to follow it over time and develop a history of its progress.”

Researchers wanted to know why, the virus smoldered during the 1950s and 1960s, before spreading like wildfire through east Africa in the 1970s.

A fateful piece of the puzzle came in the form of geographic information system data, which uses satellite imagery and painstakingly takes into account the availability and navigability of roads between population centers, transportation modes, elevation, climate, terrain and other factors that influence travel.

“We were able to use geographic data to interpret the genetic data,” said Andrew J. Tatem, an assistant professor of geography in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. “Genetic data showed once HIV moved out of the Democratic Republic of Congo, it expanded fast and moved rapidly across Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, all while staying at low levels in the DRC. What was happening was the virus was circulating at stable levels in the urban centers of the DRC, but these centers were isolated. Once it hit east Africa, connectivity between population centers combined with better quality transportation networks, and higher rates of human movement caused HIV to spread exponentially.”

HIV was prevalent in about 15 percent of the population in Kenya in 1997, although it has since dropped to about 7 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. As of 2007, an estimated 22 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. About 1.1 million Americans have HIV or AIDS, and an estimated 5.1 million people in India are HIV-positive. In Eastern Europe, HIV infections more than doubled from 420,000 in 1998 to 1 million in 2001.

“If we can predict the specific routes of an epidemic, we can find the geographic regions more at risk and target these areas with medical intervention and strategies for prevention,” Salemi said. “In terms of health-care applications, coupling genetic analysis with geographic information systems can give us a powerful tool to understand the spread of pathogens and contain emerging epidemics.”

Working with Maureen M. Goodenow, the Stephany W. Holloway university chair for AIDS research at the UF College of Medicine, UF researchers collaborated with an array of scientists hailing from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Rakai Health Sciences Program and Makerere University of Uganda, and the Johns Hopkins University. They refer to the combination of techniques that led to the discovery as “landscape phylodynamics.”

“It is the first study that has given us a clear picture of epidemic history of HIV in east Africa, including the geographic routes and the time scale that it occurred,” said Oliver Pybus, a researcher in the department of zoology at Oxford University who did not participate in the study. “Genetic analysis of the HIV genome provides the family tree of the virus, combined with spatial analysis of high-resolution data of land use, topology and other factors. There is a huge potential in doing that kind of analysis, but it requires a rare combination of specialists in different fields to come together.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It’s bad enough that the Southeast is bedeviled by a tick that doesn’t mind taking up residence inside homes.

But now researchers say they believe the brown dog tick has developed resistance to the treatments most commonly used to fight it.

University of Florida researchers Phil Kaufman and Faith Oi will work with USDA tick expert Robert Miller to test the ticks’ resistance to permethrin, a chemical found in many pesticides and repellents, and fipronil, found in Frontline. Both are sold in pet stores.

A $171,000 grant from the USDA’s Southern Region Integrated Pest Management Center will support the researchers’ three-year study. When it ends, they hope to know the tick’s level of resistance to both chemicals and to have an array of materials aimed at teaching the public how best to guard against infestations and what to do if they face one.

The brown dog tick has been invading homes across the Southeast for years, Kaufman said, but its resistance to chemical foes seems to have been building the last five to eight years. This study will be the first to document the ticks’ resistance in the U.S.

“The challenge now is in people not being able to control or knock out the ticks with some of the pesticides,” he said. “And for controlling this particular tick, pesticides are almost essential.”

Having one’s home infested with the brown dog tick is nothing short of miserable. While they’re not generally known for spreading disease to humans, they are often described as “predatory,” lying in wait for whatever organism will provide their next blood meal, whether it be dog – or human.

The ticks are small — about the size of a match head — before they get a blood meal and grow noticeably bigger. Before that, they’re tough to see, leaving homeowners to often miss the first signs of an infestation, especially when even tinier larvae and nymphs are present.

The first indication often comes when residents see ticks crawling up the walls or curtains.

“I always tell people it’s a minimum of a six-month ordeal and oftentimes, up to a year to clear an infestation,” Kaufman said. “One female tick can lay 5,000 eggs. And if you miss one tick, and she lays those eggs — you’re starting over.”

Part of the problem likely lies in pet owners’ good intentions, the researchers say. Pet owners don’t like the idea of pets with fleas or ticks, so they buy pesticides that come in handy one-month doses, and then treat for ticks and fleas whether they’re present or not.

That type of preventative spraying and dosing is typically reserved for pests that can kill us or our pets, Kaufman said, such as heartworm.

Under the tenets of Integrated Pest Management, researchers work to keep pesticides viable as long as possible by encouraging people not to overuse them, and to employ other techniques instead.

That means carefully monitoring one’s dog for any sign of ticks, shampooing the dog and physically removing ticks before they gain a foothold, vacuuming frequently and ensuring that hedges and underbrush where ticks can hide are kept cut back.

While the brown dog tick isn’t a major disease threat to humans, it falls into the same “creepy crawly” category as bedbugs or fleas, said Faith Oi, an assistant extension scientist with UF’s entomology and nematology department.

“They’re bloodsucking insects,” she said. “It’s a difficult problem once the populations get high because they’re very good at getting into cracks and crevices. If you know where to treat, that’s one thing, but if you don’t even know where they are, it gets more difficult, and then you have to keep going back and back and it’s a very long process to get a handle on.”

Researchers analyzed water taken from 187 lakes in 38 counties during a one-year period, and found that almost three-quarters of the samples had no detectable levels of the chemical microcystin. Only 7 percent of the samples exceeded the World Health Organization guidelines for drinking water, which is one microgram of microcystin per liter.

The results should reassure swimmers, boaters and anglers, said Dan Canfield, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and an author of the study, published in the current issue of Lake and Reservoir Management.

“On a population basis for the state, it’s not a big issue,” Canfield said. “But if it’s a concern to you as an individual you can get a test kit for about $20 and use it to make a decision.”

The test kits, available online, are not as accurate as laboratory tests, but provide immediate results, he said. People with impaired immune systems or hypersensitivity to microcystin may want to exercise caution about lake use.

The chemical is produced by some blue-green algae species; it can damage the liver and has been implicated in human and animal illnesses.

In the study, the highest microcystin levels were found in lakes with the most abundant algae growth. A few samples from Lake Jessup in Seminole County and Lake Hunter in Polk County exceeded the WHO guidelines for recreational waters, 20 micrograms of microcystin per liter.

Microcystin levels can vary from one day to another, and from one part of a lake to another, said Dana Bigham, a UF graduate student and an author of the study. For these reasons, each lake was sampled six times during 2006, at two-month intervals, and water was taken from multiple locations.

Because the chemical is associated with algae blooms, lake users should avoid contact with large mats of floating algae, Bigham said.

The primary danger would come from swallowing water containing microcystin, she said. Research indicates that the effects of microcystin vary between individuals, depending on their sensitivity and the amount ingested. Exposure to the toxin can cause symptoms ranging from upset stomach to severe liver damage.

Microcystin was identified in the early 1980s, Bigham said. Scientists have determined that numerous blue-green algae species can produce it, though its cause is unknown.

The chemical has received media attention, particularly in the Midwest, where it’s associated with summer algae blooms. In Florida, the chemical can be produced virtually year-round, she said. The study indicated the highest microcystin levels occurred in September through December.

Writing online Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists cast a rosy light on the potential for gene therapy to treat adult vision disorders involving cone cells — the most important cells for vision in people.

“We’ve added red sensitivity to cone cells in animals that are born with a condition that is exactly like human color blindness,” said William W. Hauswirth, a professor of ophthalmic molecular genetics at the UF College of Medicine and a member of the UF Genetics Institute and the Powell Gene Therapy Center. “Although color blindness is only moderately life-altering, we’ve shown we can cure a cone disease in a primate, and that it can be done very safely. That’s extremely encouraging for the development of therapies for human cone diseases that really are blinding.”

The finding is also likely to intrigue millions of people around the world who are colorblind, including about 3.5 million people in the United States, more than 13 million in India and more than 16 million in China. The problem mostly affects men, leaving about 8 percent of Caucasian men in the United States incapable of discerning red and green hues that are important for everyday things like recognizing traffic lights.

“People who are colorblind feel that they are missing out,” said Jay Neitz, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington. “If we could find a way to do this with complete safety in human eyes, as we did with monkeys, I think there would be a lot of people who would want it. Beyond that, we hope this technology will be useful in correcting lots of different vision disorders.”

The discovery comes about 10 years after Neitz and his wife Maureen Neitz, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington and senior author of the study, began training two squirrel monkeys named Dalton and Sam.

In addition to teaching the animals, the Neitz research group worked with the makers of a standard vision-testing technique called the Cambridge Colour Test to perfect a way the monkeys could “tell” them which colors they were seeing.

The tests are similar to ones given to elementary children the world over, in which students are asked to identify a specific pattern of colored dots among a field of dots that vary in size, color and intensity. The researchers devised a computer touch screen the monkeys could use to trace the color patterns. When the animals chose correctly, they received a reward of grape juice.

Likewise, decades were spent by Hauswirth and colleagues at the University of Florida to develop the gene-transfer technique that uses a harmless adeno-associated virus to deliver corrective genes to produce a desired protein.

In this case, researchers wanted to produce a substance called long-wavelength opsin in the retinas of the monkeys. This particular form of opsin is a colorless protein that works in the retina to make pigments that are sensitive to red and green.

“We used human DNAs, so we won’t have to switch to human genes as we move toward clinical treatments,” said Hauswirth, who is also involved in a clinical trial with human patients to test gene therapy for the treatment of Leber congenital amaurosis, a form of blindness that strikes children.

About five weeks after the treatment, the monkeys began to acquire color vision, almost as if it occurred overnight.

“Nothing happened for the first 20 weeks,” Neitz said. “But we knew right away when it began to work. It was if they woke up and saw these new colors. The treated animals unquestionably responded to colors that had been invisible to them.”

It took more than a year and a half to test the monkeys’ ability to discern 16 hues, with some of the hues varying as much as 11-fold in intensity.

Dalton is named for John Dalton, an English chemist who realized he was colorblind and published the first paper about the condition in 1798.

“We’ve had Dalton and Sam for 10 years. They are like our children,” Neitz said. “This species are friendly, docile monkeys that we just love. We think it is useful to continue to follow them — it’s been two years now that they’ve been seeing in color, and continuing to check their vision and allowing them to play with the computer is part of their enrichment.”

With the discovery, the researchers are the first to address a vision disorder in primates in which all photoreceptors are intact and healthy, providing a hint of gene therapy’s full potential to restore vision.

About 1 in 30,000 Americans have a hereditary form of blindness called achromatopsia, which causes nearly complete color blindness and extremely poor central vision. “Those patients would be targets for almost exactly the same treatment,” Hauswirth said.

Even in common types of blindness such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, vision could potentially be rescued by targeting cone cells, he said.

“The major thrust of the study is you can ameliorate if not cure color blindness with gene therapy,” said Gerald H. Jacobs, a research professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research. “There are still questions about safety, but in these monkeys at least, there were no untoward effects. Those who are motivated to ameliorate their color defect might take some hope from the findings.

“This is also another example of how utterly plastic the visual system is to change,” Jacobs said. “The nervous system can extract information from alterations to photopigments and make use of it almost instantaneously.”

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Eye Institute, the Harry J. Heeb Foundations, The Posner Foundation and Research to Prevent Blindness.