of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering
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Celebrate, Promote, Inform in Service to CT
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Volume 38, 2 / April 2023
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A message to our readers... |
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The Academy’s 48th
Annual Meeting and Dinner is less than a month away. I’m excited to share that we will be celebrating:
- Thirty-Five New Members of the Academy. Our new members are from the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Connecticut College, General Dynamics Applied Physical Sciences, Linde, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Technologies Research Center, Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Co., Trinity College, UConn, including the schools of engineering and medicine, and Yale University, including the schools of engineering, medicine, and public health.
- Honorary Members Andrew Bramante from Greenwich Public Schools and Bernard J. Zahren with Clean Feet Investors I, LLC and Zahren Financial Co., LLC.
- Twenty-four middle and high school student Academy awardees from the Connecticut Invention Convention, the Connecticut Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, and the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair, including CSEF’s Urban School Challenge Program.
A highlight of the evening will be the keynote by Academy Member Albert Ko, Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) for the Yale School of Public Health.
The event will begin with a reception at 6:00 pm, followed by the meeting and dinner. If you are interested in attending, send an email to Terri at tclark@ctcase.org and she’ll send you an invitation. See more about the event under Academy News.
On behalf of the members, enjoy this edition and I hope to see you at the Annual Meeting.
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John Kadow, President CT Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE) Celebrate, Promote, Inform in Service to CT
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CASE PODCAST |
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Learning & Living STEMM in Connecticut
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In the first episode of the new CASE Podcast, “Resistance is Futile: Evolution of Tolerance when Immunity to Parasites Isn’t Worth the Cost,” CASE Member Daniel Bolnick, and Dan’s former postdoc, Jesse Weber, discuss research into the Three-Spined Stickleback, ecology, immune genetics, and evolution. CASE Member Tan Deleon serves as host. Listen here.
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SOCIAL MEDIA |
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CASE LinkedIn Page
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The Academy has an active LinkedIn page that we encourage the Bulletin’s readership to follow. The page will connect you to news on the Academy, its members, and science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine topics of interest to Connecticut. Follow CASE and stay up to date.
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To learn more about the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, please visit ctcase.org.
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Science and Engineering Notes from Around Connecticut
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Agriculture, Food, and Nutrition |
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The Connecticut Milk Promotion Board, administered by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, awarded grants totaling $660,000 to projects that align with the strategic vision to increase purchases and expand access to milk and dairy products to consumers, retailers, institutions, and other applicable outlets. Connecticut has more than 85 dairy farms that produced 430 million pounds of milk in 2022, with dairy being the second largest agricultural sales sector in the state. Read more.
Food stamps, handled by the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provide financial assistance to low-income families and individuals to buy nutritious food in approved stores. Yet 24 towns in Connecticut lack an approved store. Proposed Substitute House Bill 6854, if passed and signed into law, would create the Office of the Food Access Advocate. The advocate would support food insecurity programs and community-led efforts, provide an informational hotline, and manage food insecurity data, among other things. The proposed bill would also provide tax breaks for certain grocery stores opening in underserved areas to reduce ”food deserts” in Connecticut. Read more.
CASE Member Ron Adelman, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science and director of the Retina and Macular Service at Yale School of Medicine was featured in a WebMD article on dietary ways to protect and improve eyesight for those with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Recommendations include plenty of colorful fruit and vegetables – the darker, the better. These vegetables contain carotenoids, the chemicals that give plants their color, which are antioxidants that may guard against vision damage caused by AMD. Read more.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has joined forces with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in collecting evidence of the emerald ash borer, an invasive species that has been killing trees across the state. The research entomologists are also looking for a predator - the wasp known as Spathius galinae - released on purpose in 2019 and 2020 in a series of experiments across New England to see if the wasps can help save the region’s ash trees. Read more.
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Biomedical Research & Healthcare |
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Under the guidance of CASE Member David Hafler, chair and William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology and professor of immunobiology, a Yale team co-mapped proteins and transcriptome in human tissues. The study's senior author, CASE Member Rong Fan, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Pathology, is excited about the study’s implications in terms of better understanding disease and aging, “Now we can study hundreds of proteins and define different cell types. Then, we can see how these different cell types interact with tumor cells. This is a powerful technology, and it's prime time to dive into these challenging human health and disease research questions.” Read more.
UConn has established The Cato T. Laurencin Institute for Regenerative Engineering, the cross-campus institute established to support the core mission of fostering new ways of thinking and new approaches to finding answers in medicine, science, engineering, and technology. Regenerative engineering is a field founded by Laurencin, CASE Member, University Professor and the Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery. Read more.
CASE Member David G. Schatz, Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and chairperson of the Department of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine received The Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. The Prize is Germany’s most renowned medical award, honoring scientists who have made special contributions in areas of research represented by Paul Ehrlich’s achievements, namely in immunology, cancer research, hematology, microbiology, and chemotherapy. Read more.
Yale researchers have uncovered how it is that germ cells in fruit flies form ring canals. CASE Member Lynn Cooley, the C.N.H. Long Professor of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine, was the senior author of the study that also may yield insight into incomplete cell division that occurs in typical development across a variety of species and into diseases where incomplete cell division is implicated, such as colorectal cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and some immunodeficiency syndromes. This research also may help scientists understand the very beginnings of evolution. Read more.
A team of researchers at Yale School of Medicine, including CASE Member Tamas Hovarth, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Comparative Medicine, and professor of neuroscience and of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive science, has uncovered a promising new therapeutic for Anorexia Nervosa. The team hopes the findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are a step toward developing new and safe therapeutics. Read more.
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Communication & Information Systems |
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The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) is receiving a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop a unified, statewide public transit information system for mobile devices. The funding will support the Connecticut Integrated Transit Mobility Project (CT-ITMP), including the development of a system for mobile devices that will integrate public transit information across the state, while also allowing users to pay fares directly from their smartphones. It will incorporate real-time arrival information for the state’s entire public transportation system, resulting in a better customer experience while promoting equitable access to transportation. Read more.
The field of data science has evolved dramatically over the past decade, with a 40% year-over-year growth, and an anticipated demand for 40,500 data scientist positions through to 2031. To help meet the demand, the UConn Computer Science and Engineering department will launch a Data Science and Engineering degree in the fall of 2023. Read more.
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Under Connecticut’s Community Investment Fund, $99 million in state funding will support projects in 20 Connecticut municipalities in the coming year. The grant program, established in 2022, supports economic development in historically underserved communities across the state. Eligible projects include capital improvements, such as those focused on affordable housing, brownfield remediation, infrastructure, and public facilities, as well as small business support programs that provide revolving loans, gap financing, microloans, or start-up financing. Read more.
Governor Ned Lamont announced that FORGE, a nonprofit that connects startups creating physical products with the product development, manufacturing, and supply chain resources they need, will begin providing its services – free of charge – to local startups. Read more.
Connecticut Innovations, the state’s strategic venture capital arm and the leading source of financing and ongoing support for Connecticut’s innovative, growing companies, announced the launch of Future Fund, a $50M fund committed to investing in early-stage companies, with an emphasis on underrepresented founders. Read more.
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Energy Production, Use, and Conservation |
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Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have submitted a proposal for a Northeast Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (NE Hub) to the U.S. Department of Energy, competing for $3.6 billion in federal hydrogen hub funding as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The proposal includes more than one dozen projects to advance clean electrolytic hydrogen production, consumption, and infrastructure projects, for hard-to-decarbonize sectors, including the transportation industry. Read more.
Mott Corporation announced the opening of a new 65,000-square-foot facility near its Farmington headquarters. The total investment will be tens of millions of dollars in the coming years, quadrupling Mott’s production capacity for its custom-designed, green hydrogen engineering solutions. Read more.
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The CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is warning motorists to be on the watch for moose. The state’s moose population is small (~100) but can pose a serious threat to public safety if they wander onto roadways. Read more.
UConn received the Tree Campus USA Certification for the 10th year in a row from the Arbor Day Foundation. UConn was awarded this certification for maintaining a tree advisory committee, managing their campus trees and a tree care plan, observing arbor day, developing connectivity with the community beyond campus borders to foster healthy urban forests, and striving to engage their student populations utilizing service-learning opportunities centered on campus and community forestry efforts. This and other news from the Institute of the Environment, Office of Sustainability, can be found in the Sustainability Newsletter March 2023. Read more.
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Human Resources and Education |
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The University of Saint Joseph, in honor of the late CASE Member and professor of Chemistry Mary Ellen Murphy, created a scholarship for first-year students in the university’s pharmacy school. Sister Mary Ellen, who was elected to CASE in 2005, built a career as a scientist and scholar in the fields of space research and chemistry. She was one of the first women to analyze moon rocks brought back from the Apollo 11 space flight in 1969 and later served as a NASA consultant for the Viking Lander on Mars. She was a member of NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous team. Read more.
The Connecticut State Department of Education will launch the Connecticut High-Dosage Tutoring Program starting with the 2023-2024 school year after analysis shows declines in student proficiency of around 6 to 8 percentage points in English, language arts, and mathematics with students in grades six to eight. The new statewide program will provide intensive tutoring in mathematics to accelerate learning and address learning loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more.
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CASE Member Amy C. Justice, Yale School of Medicine, was a contributing author to the largest-ever genetic study of prostate cancer in men of African descent. The meta-analysis identified nine new genetic variants that increase the risk of prostate cancer in the understudied population, including a genetic risk score linked to aggressive forms of the disease. Read more.
A new analysis by Yale researchers, including CASE Member Marcella Nunez-Smith and colleagues from Columbia University, provide insights into why previous research has found that Black patients are less likely to receive early diagnoses than people of other racial and ethnic groups. The analysis found that Black patients were more likely than their white counterparts to experience testing delays or to not receive recommended tests at all. The research was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Read more.
To address the growing epidemic of obesity in America, the Yale School of Medicine has established the Yale Obesity Research Center, with a mission of improving the lives of individuals living with obesity through the development of therapies that target obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer. Read more.
Yale scientists have identified a volatile pheromone emitted by the tsetse fly, a blood-sucking insect that spreads diseases, such as the African Sleeping Sickness, in both humans and animals across much of sub-Saharan Africa. CASE Member John Carlson, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, was the senior author of the study. The findings offer new insights into how these flies communicate with one another and could yield new methods for controlling their populations and the harmful diseases they carry. Read more.
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Seventeen projects across UConn and UConn Health will receive a total of $729K in funding through the Clinical Research and Innovation Seed Program (CRISP), including the project “Personalized and interpretable automatic 3D mammogram imaging diagnostics” with CASE Member Jinbo Bi, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering as Co-Principal Investigator. Read more.
Central Connecticut State University nursing students have begun using virtual technology as part of their training. The program includes access to avatar patients that allow the students to take vitals and conduct exams. Watch here.
According to AdvanceCT, there are 5,500+ technology establishments in Connecticut, ranging from health IT to quantum computing. Learn more key facts about the state’s tech talent here.
The American Manufacturing Hall of Fame, launched nine years ago by the Housatonic Community College, added three Connecticut companies in 2023 after an extended hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. RBC Bearings joins Electric Boat and ASML in this year's inductee group, and manufacturers from prior years include Pratt & Whitney and Stanley Black & Decker. Read more.
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Sikorsky and GE Aerospace teamed up to develop a new hybrid-electric demonstrator – dubbed HEX – which could be flying as early as 2026. Showcased at the Heli-Expo show in Atlanta, the development will see the US propulsion specialist supply a CT7 turboshaft engine, 1MW generator, and associated power electronics for the project. CASE Member Igor Cherepinsky, director of Sikorsky innovations, says the hybrid-electric powertrain would in the future likely be applied to heavier helicopters and would enable optimization of the powertrain for different flight phases. Read more.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) is starting construction on a project that will reconfigure the Route 17 on-ramp that leads to Route 9 northbound in Middletown to increase safety for drivers and pedestrians and improve traffic mobility. The current configuration has resulted in 319 crashes and 27 injuries in three years. This project is part of a larger, comprehensive CTDOT program to improve driver and pedestrian safety in Middletown, including removing the traffic signals on Route 9. Read more.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) recently completed the first-ever comprehensive analysis of the New Haven Line to determine what can be done to speed up service. The study recommends an investment program of $8 to $10 billion to rebuild the railroad for faster service and reducing trip times by as much as 25 minutes for CTRail, Metro-North, and Amtrak to attract more people to switch from cars to trains and strengthen the regional economy. Read more.
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Items that appear in the In Brief section are compiled from previously published sources including newspaper accounts and press releases.
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From the National Academies |
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The following is excerpted from press releases and other news reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (nationalacademies.org).
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Roughly every four years, the U.S. Global Change Research Program produces a congressionally mandated assessment of global change science and the impacts, adaptation, and mitigation of climate change in the United States. The draft Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), released publicly in November 2022, covers a wide range of U.S. impacts, from human health and community well-being to the built environment, businesses and economies, and ecosystems and water resources. This report provides an independent, comprehensive review and makes recommendations to strengthen the accuracy, credibility, and accessibility of the draft NCA5 report. Read more.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the lives of children and their families, who have faced innumerable challenges such as illness and death; school closures; social isolation; financial hardship; food insecurity; deleterious mental health effects; and difficulties accessing health care. In almost every outcome related to social, emotional, behavioral, educational, mental, physical, and economic health and well-being. Families identifying as Black, Latino, and Native American, and those with low incomes, have disproportionately borne the brunt of the negative effects of the pandemic. This report looks at strategies and provides recommendations for addressing the challenges and obstacles that the pandemic introduced for children and families in marginalized communities. Read more.
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Genetic and genomic information has become far more accessible, and research using human genetic data has grown exponentially over the past decade. Genetics and genomics research is now being conducted by a wide range of investigators across disciplines, who often use population descriptors inconsistently and/or inappropriately to capture the complex patterns of continuous human genetic variation. The National Academies assembled an interdisciplinary committee of expert volunteers to conduct a study to review and assess existing methodologies, benefits, and challenges in using race, ethnicity, ancestry, and other population descriptors in genomics research. This report focuses on understanding the current use of population descriptors in genomics research, examining best practices for researchers, and identifying processes for adopting best practices within the biomedical and scientific communities. Read more.
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High-quality bus rapid transit (BRT) is not only about designing bus stops and stations that make access easier and more efficient but also about pedestrian and bicyclist accommodations along the bus routes. In some places, BRT systems are safer than other bus services, but this is not always the case. Specific design elements to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety are almost always decided on a case-by-case basis, and transit agencies and partners rely on an array of design guidance to consider when making decisions about BRT route design. This report documents practices in BRT/high-priority bus transit corridor planning, design, and construction, with a focus on pedestrian and bicycle safety. Read more.
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Whole health is physical, behavioral, spiritual, and socioeconomic well-being as defined by individuals, families, and communities. Whole health care is an interprofessional, team-based approach to promote well-being, prevent disease, and restore health, shifting the focus from a reactive disease-oriented medical care system to one that prioritizes prevention, health, and well-being. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a committee to provide guidance on how to fill gaps and create processes to accelerate the transformation to whole health care for veterans, both inside and outside the VA system, and this report presents findings and recommendations that provide a roadmap for improving health and well-being for veterans and the nation. Read more.
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Since its establishment in 1970, the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. EPA develops regulations, ensures compliance, and issues policies, in coordination with state, tribal, and local governments. To accomplish its mission, EPA should be equipped to produce and access the highest quality and most advanced science. The Office of Research and Development (ORD) provides the scientific bases for regulatory and public health policies that have broad impacts on the nation’s natural resources and quality of human life, and that yield economic benefits and incur compliance costs for the regulated community. Because challenges associated with environmental protection today are complex and affected by many interacting factors, the report points to the need for a substantially broader and better-integrated approach to environmental protection. Read more.
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The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a series of four virtual workshops that explored the best practices in assessing dietary intakes in older adults with special emphasis on those aged 75 years and older. The workshops were recorded, and the recordings are available covering issues including: the methods to improve assessment of oral intake from all sources; what is known and not known about total dietary intakes in older adults relevant to the Dietary Guidelines 2025; and the best practices and guidelines for total dietary assessment for surveillance and clinical care. in older adult groups and sub-groups residing in various settings. Read more.
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The Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering |
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The purpose of the Academy is to "provide guidance to the people and the government of the State of Connecticut... in the application of science and engineering to the economic and social welfare."
OFFICERS OF THE ACADEMY
John Kadow, President ViiV Healthcare (ret.)
Sten Vermund, Vice President Yale School of Public Health
Eric Donkor, Secretary UConn
Edmond Murphy, Treasurer Lumentum (ret.)
Christine Broadbridge, Past President Southern Connecticut State University
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Terri Clark
EDITORS Leon Pintsov, Executive Editor - Engineering Pitney Bowes, Inc.
Mike Genel, Executive Editor - Medicine Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics Yale University School of Medicine CASE President, 2008-2010
Amy R. Howell, Executive Editor - Science Department of Chemistry University of Connecticut
COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT Rebecca Mead, INQ Creative
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The Bulletin is published by the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, Inc, 222 Pitkin Street, Suite 101, East Hartford, Connecticut, 06108. 860.282.4229, tclark@ctcase.org. To subscribe, visit ctcase.org.
The Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering is a private, nonprofit public service organization established by Special Act No. 76-53 of the Connecticut General Assembly.
COPYING PERMITTED, WITH ATTRIBUTION
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