Daniel Janies says his SupraMap program lets doctors around the globe view and input information that can be seen nearly instantly and reconstructed by other doctors.

It’s also simple enough to be used by non-medical professionals.

It uses the Google Earth software to gives users a three-dimensional view of the globe that shows the point of origin and host type of every type of a particular strain or infection, like the H1N1 strain.

Click here to hear a full discussion with Daniel Janies.

They say spring storms wash manure, fertilizers and sewage into waterways, providing the phosphorus that feeds the algae. This year, those storms have been less frequent.

University of Toledo algae researcher Thomas Bridgeman said stream-flow data suggest the algae bloom on Lake Erie this year will be smaller and thinner. He says there’s still likely a “sizable amount” of harmful algae on the bottom of the lake that could be easily stirred up and grow.

Massive algae blooms can be a deadly threat to fish and a turn-off for tourists.

Dr. Gary Landreth is chomping at the bit. The Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine scientist says new research from his lab shows big potential for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

“This is unprecedented. Period.”

Using mice, Landreth’s team has found that the drug bexarotene clears up much of the signature “plaques” that are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

This drug beefs up the body’s own ability to clean house. It sweeps away the amyloid protein, which clumps to form those plaques and is a prime suspect in brain cell death.

Bexarotene is very appealing because it’s already been tested for safety and side-effects in humans. We already use it, for cancer. And it works quickly; other drugs being tested take months to have any effect on the amyloid protein.

However, there’s still much to learn about the drug and the disease…even though improvements in cognition and memory remained steady in the mice for as much as three months, plaques did return after initially clearing from their brains. And of course it is a long road from mice to men, though Landreth says:

“We’re working at warp speed,” Landreth says.

Landreth anticipates they’ll start the first human safety trials within the next couple months.

OSU researchers say the number of surgeons needed to care for patients will increase in the next 20 years as more surgeons retire and other surgeons demand fewer hours on the job. Dr. Bhagwan Satiani is lead author of a study on the impending shortage of surgeons.

Satiani says some patients already experience a wait time of up to 3 weeks when they need surgery.

“I don’t think its vacations and things like that. I think it’s just people don’t want to work 100 hour weeks like we did. And I don’t blame them,” says Satiani.

The study looked at 7 surgical specialties including, obstetrics and orthopedics. By 2030, the shortage of surgeons will be as high as 39% for Thoracic surgery. Neurology will have the least deficit where the amount of surgeons needed will be short by 6%. Dr. Satiani says the number of residents cannot be increased because of stagnant federal funding that has capped medical and surgical residents at about 105,000 per year in the U.S.

But, demanding work schedules are a concern for some medical students.

27 year old Charron Johnson in her second year at OSU’s medical school already has already decided on a practice in Pediatrics and not surgery.

“I still probably wouldn’t choose it just because you still have the stress level of being in the O.R. and I like the more patient interaction, so surgery still probably wouldn’t be for me,” says Johnson.

2nd year OSU medical student 23 year old Kalen Riley has not made up his mind.

“I think I want to do what interests me the most, but I think that a life- work balance is really important for me, Riley says.

27-year-old Rachel Voss is a 4th year medical student at Ohio State. She says despite the tough demands, surgery is her passion.

“I love surgery, I love being in the O.R. It more or less picked me when I got into the O.R. I realized this is what I love to do, this is why I went to medical school, this is why I want to be a doctor. The demands to me were worth it, because it’s something that I love,” says Voss.

Voss is applying for a residency in surgery and then plans to specialize in either oncology or pediatric surgery. She admits though that she wants to have time for a family life later.

Dr. Satiani says one-way to keep future surgeons like Voss in the operating room would be to offer part time positions and flexible hours.

“Studies have shown basically the quality of care, everything else is no different with a part- time physician, then it is with a full-time,” says Satiani.

Freshwater mussels can be hard to find because they burrow into riverbeds and streambeds.  But if you walk the banks of Ohio’s waterways sometimes you’ll find the shells of mussels.  Anthony Sasson is a conservation manager for the Nature Conservancy in Ohio.

“Well there’s many species of mussels in Ohio, Sasson says. “The Scioto River system, the whole watershed has quite a few muscles and it’s actually pretty good habitat for mussels in Ohio; we have a lot of the right chemistry in the water for mussels to grow and survive.”

But some species of freshwater mussels have been decimated by loss of habitat and by pollution.  John Navarro works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife.

“It takes quite a long time for them to reach adult size,” Navarro says.  “So if you have an event where a chemical release or something happens in a stream and you wipe out the mussels, you’re going to see that effect for a long period of time.  So like the canary in the coal mine you can use mussels as an indicator of water quality.”

Unfortunately there are several species of freshwater mussels that are in danger of extinction.

“Fresh Water Mussels are the most imperiled animals in North America based upon US Fish and Wildlife’s reckoning.”

That’s Tom Watters, a professor at Ohio State University and a freshwater mussel expert.  He says that about two dozen species have already become extinct in North America.

“We’re losing species in the headwaters due to runoff from construction sites, agriculture, just a little bit of everything, habitat destruction, water quality problems.  But probably because of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act we may have turned a corner. There seem to be creeks and rivers that seem to be rebounding and recovering,” Watters says.

One organization that’s helping to repopulate streams and rivers in Ohio is the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.  The Zoo’s Fresh Water Muscle Conservation Lab sits on the west bank of the Scioto River just upstream from the O’Shaughnessy Dam. OSU Professor Tom Watters is science director at the facility.

“The zoo has always had a very strong interest in conservation not with just what we call the charismatic mega-fauna; the big, cuddly majestic type of animals but things down to hellbenders and mussels and snakes; things that most people would not consider to be high priority items but they’re just in as much need of conservation as anything else,” Watters says.

Watters says that mussels have been around a long time; when the Triassic’s dinosaurs were tramping around in ancient streams they were stepping on mussels that are essentially the same mussels we have today.

“We would like to help turn these animals around and try to get as many species back in the state that used to be here,” Watters says. “And we’d like to do a lot of basic research; there’s a lot that we don’t know about these animals.  They have a very fascinating life history.”

And they’re good environmentally.  Take a mussel and put in a pail of turbid water, and according to the professor, the water will be clear the next day because mussels filter contaminants.  The conservation facility is in part a nursery where a wide range of mussels are cared for.

“At any one time we’ll have about a thousand individuals of about 50 different species or types of mussels,” Watters says. “Some of them are quite small, some of them get as big as a dinner plate; they can weigh several pounds.  So they come in all different shapes and sizes, they’re really fascinating animals, some of them live to be 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, so they’re very long lived, merrily filtering water away.”

The mussel research facility was founded ten years ago by the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department and The Wilds.

A group of students is working in a large laboratory at Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research. The lab is essentially a large, high tech garage which houses among other things, the Buckeye Bullet the world’s fastest electric vehicle. But these students are working on something a bit different; they’re building a high performance electric motorcycle. Mechanical engineering graduate students Sage Wolfe and Angelica Liu are studying highly-detailed computer images of the bike-to-be

“We’ve been designing a mount to hold the motor on the frame,” says Wolfe. “So we’re trying to get the bolt pattern in order to have an accurate motor mount,” Liu says. “So we took pictures and we can actually import them into the software and then trace over where those bolts are actually located.” Wolfe and Liu are among dozens of students working on the BEMRT – the Buckeye Electric Motorcycle Race Team. The co-founder of the project is Sean Ewing, a graduate computer engineering major with a passion for high speed motorcycles. Once the “race vehicle,” as Ewing calls it, is finished, the team will hit the electric motorcycle racing circuit: known as the TTX GP. Ewing wants to win.

“This year our race vehicle will be racing against other electric motorcycles. That’s fine, that’s dandy,” says Ewing. “The way we’re really going to be proving this technology is going against gas bikes; and we will have several races against gas bikes. This is the new generation of American muscle and this is absolutely positively the forefront of it.”

With electric vehicle technology in its infancy, it’s hard to believe that a battery powered motorcycle could match the performance of a fuel injected sport bike. But Ewing has experience behind him. Last year he personally financed, built and raced his own electric motorcycle. “Here’s what the bike sounds like,” says Ewing, as he twists the motorcycle’s throttle.

“Electric motorcycles are definitely not for Harley riders. But I love the sound. I think it’s sexy and it’s got gobs of power,” Ewing says.

Ewing won’t provide many details about the new bike being built, not even its name.

“Right now that’s actually classified,” says Ewing. “It’s a play on words and our expected top speed for the vehicle so when we hit that top speed you’ll know.”

But he does say this:

“It’s very, very powerful; around 160 horsepower; 12 kilowatt hours of capacity. Quite simply a little monster. It’s going to be great,” Ewing says.

Marcello Canova is an engineering professor at Ohio State and the faculty advisor to the motorcycle race team. He says he sees the motorcycle’s development as the natural next step.

“The Buckeye Bullet today is rated as the world’s fastest electric vehicle. We have a lot of experience with four-wheelers, so I think the battery motorcycle team is definitely the natural evolution of this tradition that we have at Ohio State,” says Canova.

But why build a high speed motorcycle designed to compete on the race track? Canova says that valuable information is gained during the process.

“Testing electric motors and testing new battery technologies in a racing environment will help resolving several engineering issues that today are making large scale implementation of battery technology in electric vehicles difficult for the market,” Canova says.

Canova says the project is an excellent way for engineering students to apply what they study in the classroom. “They learn how to apply their engineering skill in solving practical problems. They learn the importance of solving engineering problems for the society, in this case for clean transportation, for sustainable mobility and also they deal with real world project management, building and prototyping products with budget constraints and with timing constraints,” Canova says.

The team is painfully aware of budget constraints. Ewing says they’re scraping by, allocating every penny toward the best technology. The team must also come up with funding for travel expenses to various racing competitions.

But it’s about more than winning, Ewing says, it’s about advancing electric transportation technology for future generations.

“If we can slam as much power into this little vehicle as possible – have the most powerful motor in this little tiny vehicle – I believe it’s going to be great for the young adults on the team to learn about this technology and hopefully they’ll take it to the mainstream and make an electric future,” Ewing says.

The team’s first competition is in California in late spring.

“It’s presumed that, with each grant that’s funded, that generally about three to four direct people will be hired to do these research projects,” says Dr. Marsh.

Dr. Marsh says the money will fund a diverse mix of projects – from encouraging research science to improving neo-natal health to cancer research.

Children’s is set to receive about $700,000. Children’s Research Institute President Dr. John Barnard says federal stimulus money will support computer infrastructure for Children’s pediatric tumor bank.

“So we can match the genetic information with the information about the tumor to learn about how better to treat patients, or how to characterize their tumor sample in a way that allows us to predict prognosis in a more accurate way,” says Dr. Barnard.

Dr. Barnard says the grant money will also create jobs at Children’s.

In all, eight Ohio biomedical research institutions won more than 14 million dollars in federal stimulus money.

Associate Professor Jill Rafael-Fortney’s research looks at the role of a protein in cases of heart failure. She says she is waiting in line with many other researchers to gain funding to continue her research.

Rafael-Fortney testified March 11th before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee which is chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Returning to the moon by 2020 is one of the agency’s goals.

At an event hosted Thursday at COSI [co-sigh] in Columbus, the agency’s deputy administrator says NASA has some very ambitious plans.

First there was the Mercury program, then Gemini, then finally the Apollo program which landed men on the moon. Those missions were followed by the reusable space shuttle. With the shuttle’s imminent retirement, NASA has a new mission in the works called Constellation. At COSI, the agency’s deputy administrator Shana Dale said the plan includes building living quarters on the moon. But astronauts would live away from the equator where they landed some 39 years ago.

“…possibly the polar regions that may have water ice,” Dale says. “Those are areas that allow much more sun for solar energy because they’re always exposed to the sun. Developing the habitat, developing the advanced rovers for humans, developing the capability to mine resources from the lunar soil – all the things that are going to be essential as we move further out into the solar system.”

The NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland will continue to play an important role in the endeavor, as NASA reaches beyond the moon to Mars.

“Ohio has NASA’s Glenn Research Center,” Dale says. “It’s a driver of technological innovation. It has a significant role not only in aeronautics research but also in the Constellation program; the program that’s going to take us to Mars and then beyond.”

Dale says the vehicle used for Constellation flights will look much like the Apollo rockets of the 1970′s. The Glenn Center will oversee developing parts of the capsule that will transport as many as 6 astronauts at a time.

“The physics of the capsule design, they had it right during the Apollo days,” she says.

Dale could not say how much Constellation will cost. She says NASA works within a fixed Congressional budget which increases only incrementally. With the shuttles’ retirement in 2010, money will be diverted to Constellation, as will funding from the international space station at the appropriate time.