Dr. Audrey R. Gotsch, professor and dean of the UMDNJ-School of Public Health (SPH), has been elected president of the Council on Education for Public Health. The Council was established in 1974 as an independent agency authorized by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit schools of public health and programs of public health throughout the country.
Dr. Gotsch is the founding dean of SPH and is director of the Public Education and Risk Communication Division of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, a joint program of the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers University.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded $1,011,076 to the UMDNJ-School of Public Health to support the work of the school's New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness (NJCPHP). This is the fourth consecutive year that the CDC has provided the funding.
In awarding the grant, the CDC recognized the effective partnerships the NJCPHP has with state health and state environmental agencies, including programs to improve the working relationships of public health agencies with physicians and hospitals. The CDC also noted the scope of the work done by NJCPHP, which includes preparing for public health threats as diverse as infectious diseases, natural disasters and radioactive materials.
Dr. Kiran Madura, professor of biochemistry at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and founder and chief scientific officer of CellXplore, Inc., received a $500,000 commitment from Foundation Venture Capital Group, LLC, to advance research that could help in the non-invasive diagnosis of breast cancer.
CellXplore has identified several biomarkers that use a biochemical analysis of blood samples to identify specific proteins found in those who have the disease. According to Dr. Madura, the hope is that the strategy will eventually be able to help diagnose breast and other cancers, and also to discriminate between different types and stages, which would be helpful in establishing targeted treatment plans for patients.
Dr. Eric Altschuler, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, and Dr. Karin James, assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University, have conducted a basic science study to analyze how the brain responds to pleasant and harsh sounding musical intervals.
Brain scans of 13 students from Indiana University were reviewed using a functional MRI and Pythagorean ratio rules, which is the basis for the aesthetics of tone combinations in Western classical music. Study findings indicate neural activation was much more engaged when students listened to harsh intervals when compared with pleasant sounds. Outcomes of the pilot study are included in an article published in the October 2007 issue of NeuroReport.
