The Preuss School principal, Doris Alvarez, will receive the Alice Paul Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus during its “”Simply the Best”” awards dinner Oct. 11 at the Doubletree Hotel in Mission Valley.
The award, named for Alice Paul, an activist in the suffrage movement and author of the Equal Rights Amendment, honors educators for “”visionary dedication to education.””
Alvarez became principal at The Preuss School in December 1998. She earlier served as principal of Hoover High School.
She was the only faculty member at The Preuss School upon her hiring; she oversaw the hiring of faculty, the selection of students and the development of the curriculum.
The Preuss School is the only public charter school in California to be established on a college campus. It houses 497 students in sixth through 10th grades.
UCSD bioengineers fabricate joint cartilage
UCSD bioengineers have created artificial cartilage tissue that mimics the multilayered structure and cellular functions of natural articular cartilage.
The tissue is created entirely from biological matter.
Robert Sah, a professor of bioengineering at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, led the study, which was conducted by graduate students Travis Klein and Kelvin Li, and staff researcher Barb Schumacher. Klein described the results at the annual Biomedical Engineering Society meeting Oct. 6.
The researchers believe that the engineered tissue will mature as human cartilage does. The engineered tissue is like the immature tissue in a fetus, which the researchers believe will help in transplants because the cartilage will mature, integrate and conform to fit the patient’s surrounding joint tissue and cartilage.
The research is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Rush Arthritis and Orthopedics Institute and the Grainger Foundation.
CDL and UC Berkeley Electronic Press merge
On Oct. 4, the California Digital Library and the Berkeley Electronic Press announced their partnership to innovate in scholarly communication.
The CDL plans to make use of bepress’ electronic publishing tools through the partnership to enable rapid and low-cost creation, management and online publication of electronic journals, discussion papers and other forms of scholarship to aid UC researchers.
The partnership is important to the development of the eScholarship program, which supports new electronic publications and services for tobacco control research, environmental science, international and area studies, and dermatology research.
The new partnership will support scholar-led innovations in online dissemination of research.
CDL and bepress already had similar motivations for improving scholarly communication, including use of technology to quickly, efficiently and cheaply distribute resources.
Oral drug to treat primary pulmonary hypertension
Pulmonary specialists at the UCSD School of Medicine have developed the oral drug bosentan, which is the first of its kind shown to reverse the deadly consequences of primary pulmonary hypertension.
PPH is a progressive narrowing of small blood vessels in the lungs, which leads to failure of the right ventricle of the heart. If left untreated, it usually results in death, according to Dr. Richard Channick, UCSD associate clinical professor of medicine. PPH makes victims unable to complete minor activities. The survival rate for patients diagnosed before the development of bosentan is about three years, with their treatment being constant intravenous medication.
Bosentan blocks the naturally occurring protein endothelin, which occurs in higher concentrations in people with PPH and harms the pulmonary arteries. The result is lower artery pressure.
The drug is expected to greatly improve the quality of life for PPH patients.
