The Optical Society of America is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the journal Optics Letters. For this anniversary, they published the list of the most cited papers from the journal. Chris' 2001 paper on laser micromachining using low-energy, high repetition rate trains of femtosecond laser pulses is the 34th most cited paper of all time in the journal, with 628 citations as of January of this year. https://www.osapublishing.org/ol40/most-cited-OL-papers.cfm

In partial onset epilepsy, seizures arise focally in the brain and often propagate. Patients frequently become refractory to medical management, leaving neurosurgery, which can cause neurologic deficits, as a primary treatment. In the cortex, focal seizures spread through horizontal connections in layers II/III, suggesting that severing these connections could block seizures while preserving function.

In this webinar hosted by the Therapeutic Laser Applications Technical Group, Dr. Chris Schaffer will discuss how, in a mouse model of focal epilepsy, sub-surface laser-produced cuts encircling the seizure focus attenuate propagation without behavioral impairment. Dr. Schaffer will present how they induced focal neocortical epilepsy in mice, created laser cuts surrounding the seizure focus, and electrophysiologically recorded at multiple locations for 3-8 months. With laser cuts, only 5% of seizures propagated to the distant electrodes, compared to 85% in control animals. These cuts produced a modest decrease in cortical blood flow that recovered and left a ~20-µm wide scar with minimal collateral damage. When placed over the motor cortex, the cuts did not cause notable deficits in a skilled reaching task. Femtosecond laser cuts hold promise as a novel neurosurgical approach for intractable focal cortical epilepsy.


Check the talk here!

 

 

Nozomi talked about "exploring natural behaviors of cells in the wild with in vivo multiphoton microscopy". The congress was in the Diplomat Beach Resort, Hollywood, Florida United States

 

 

Following a heart attack, patients often experience long term consequences, due to the limited capacity of the heart to repair following injury. Some cells in the heart have been implicated in the repair of blood vessels and heart muscle cells after injury. This project aims to use in vivo multiphoton microscopy of the heart to understand how these cells interact with their environment following injury. Title of project is " The Influence of Hypoxia on Cardiovascular Precursor Cells Following Injury using In Vivo Multiphoton Microscopy"

Congratulations to Amanda Bares, a 6th year PhD student in the lab, for winning an Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition prize at the Optical Society of America, Frontiers in Optics conference last week in Rochester, NY. Her paper, “Hyperspectral Imaging in Live Mouse Cortex Using a 48-Channel Multiphoton Microscope,” was chosen as a finalist during the paper review process. Finalists were judged on their conference presentation “based on their work’s technical advances and value to the technical community of interest, and their skill of public presentation.

To celebrate the month of March as National Women's History Month, the Scientista Foundation at Cornell University wanted to highlight some of our favorite women in STEM. Many times the achievements of women are overshadowed by those of their male counterparts or credited to the work of their male colleagues. We wanted to take the time to celebrate, a scientist a day, their achievements and their lasting contributions to not only the scientific world, but also the world we live in today. Today's post is our first faculty interview video featuring Scientista's current faculty advisor, Dr. Nozomi Nishimura.

Link to the Facebook Post

Cornell's new Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) program, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was profiled in Science Careers. One track in Cornell's BEST program focuses on science policy and is led by Chris Schaffer.

A blog post on the AAAS Member Central website describes the goals of Chris Schaffer's new science policy course, BME 4440 Science Policy Bootcamp: From Concept to Conclusion. This course is being offered for the first time this Fall, with an enrollment of about 20 undergraduate and graduate student scientists.

There are too few scientists who understand how they might contribute to public policy. In an effort to address this problem, Prof. Chris Schaffer and Dr. Catharine Clark were recently awarded a faculty fellowship from the Cornell Center of Engaged Learning and Research. This award will be used to support a new and innovative course entitled “Science Policy Bootcamp, slated for implementation in the Biomedical Engineering Department in Fall 2013. In addition to academic and administrative support from the Center of Engaged Learning and Research, Faculty Fellows will receive a stipend of $2500.

Chris will spend his sabbatical next year in Washington, DC working as a Congressional Science Policy Fellow. This program is organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the fellowship Chris received is jointly funded by the Optical Society of America and SPIE. Chris will be placed in the office of a representative or senator and will provide advice, from the perspective of a professional scientist, on science policy issues, education, health care, climate change, energy, and other pressing policy problems. An article in the Cornell Chronicle and a press release from the OSA each discuss Schaffer’s upcoming fellowship.