By James Gulley
Monday, February 23, 2015
If you've been asking yourself what good your taxpayer dollars have been doing, let me tell you a story. I work at one of the most amazing places in the world. Every day I come in to work energized to see patients, to strategize how to bring new findings into the clinic and talk to brilliant scientists and physicians.
By Michele Lyons
Friday, February 20, 2015
"I felt that seeing this dissolution of everything that makes us who and what we are in patients really told me a lot about what makes us human. At the same time I felt very frustrated that there was so little that we could do to help our patients with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia."
– Karen Berman, M.D.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Thursday, February 19, 2015
The solution to obesity seems simple on the surface—fewer calories in, more calories out—but for those who have tried to lose weight, it's usually not an easy task, partly because weight is the product of many interrelated factors: environment, family history and genetics, behavior, metabolism, and others. Investigators at the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) are studying all of those aspects and more to further understand the disease and better inform public health initiatives.
By Sara Lioi
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
You mix everything together that’s necessary for the reaction, and half the time it works, half the time it doesn’t. One day you get great PCR results, you’re on cloud nine, everything worked, and then you go repeat it to verify the result (because n never equals 1 in science), and it doesn’t work. You begin to feel like maybe you just got lucky with the first experiment.
By Michele Lyons
Friday, February 13, 2015
“And he said, ‘I can assure you that if you go through and become a good dentist, people will travel all over the world to find you. Chemists travel all over the world to find a job.”
That was the advice for Dr. Francis Arnold, who did become a dentist and helped establish the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, from his mentor, Dr. Thomas Hill, Professor of Clinical Oral Pathology and Therapeutics at Western Reserve University. The excerpt, and those that follow, come from Dr. Arnold's 1964 NIH oral history series. During the interviews, he discusses how his experiments and interests led him to become one of the four Public Health Service scientists who pioneered the study of fluorides and their effect on teeth.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Sharing resources and expertise ranks as a top priority for biomedical researchers around the world. And the reason is pretty straightforward: scientific research is expensive. Really expensive.
By Yannis Grammatikakis
Monday, February 9, 2015
Negative data piling up on your desk likely hides a good amount of useful information. Why waste all the hard work by forgetting about it?
By Michele Lyons
Friday, February 6, 2015
"The point is this. When we go before the appropriations committees of Congress, we must describe achievements of the previous year. ... But there were many problems, many demands from 1975 to 1985, and the NIAID was stretched very, very thin. ... Too many scientists thought infections were no longer important and that view was translated into a decision in NIAID's budget."
– Excerpt from a 1988 NIH Oral History discussion with Dr. Richard Krause, former NIAID Director, on why getting funding for infectious disease research in the 1970-80s was difficult.
By IRP Staff Blogger
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
On Monday, January 26, about 150 people tackled the Arrowhead 135 ultramarathon, a race through 135 miles of frigid landscape near International Falls, Minnesota. They biked, ran, and skied for almost 70 hours in -30°F air to reach their goal.
By Lucy Bauer
Monday, February 2, 2015
When we think of research that makes a difference, we often picture individuals whose particular discoveries marked watershed moments in scientific history. One such person who made a substantial impact on biomedical science and human health was biologist Wilhelm “Willy” Burgdorfer, Ph.D., who passed away on November 17, 2014, after 89 years of life.
