Blogs

There is a Housestaff Meeting on Wednesday, March 25 at 12 noon.

Grand Rounds on Thursday, March 26 will be given by Dr. David Atkinson (Div. Cardiology).

Journal Club has been moved to Friday, March 27 at 12 noon. Dr. Betty Liu will dicsuss an article on milk immunotherapy for cow's milk allergy (Skripak et al. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2008;122:1154-60.)

And, as usual, Clinical Case Conference will be held at 8:30 on Friday in the first floor assembly room.

Introducing the 2009 First-Year Residency Class!

Daniel Ganjian - UC Irvine
Jenny Hoffman - UC San Diego
Anne Csere - Kansas City University
Alejandro Diaz - UC San Diego
Hazel Carranza - Loma Linda
Tammy Yuen - Case Western Reserve
Terwa Yong - SUNY Stony Brook
Suzanne Rizi - Ross University
Julie Kim - Loma Linda
Sana Ashraf - Marshall University

Welcome to Harbor!

Thanks to the Stimulus Package, the NIH is soliciting applications for competitive supplements ("revision applications") to existing NIH grants (R01 and R21, for example). The revision should expand the scope of the existing project, while meeting the goals of fiscal stimulus (so, hire some post-docs!).

**Note: For this revision opportunity, prior approval from the IC staff is not needed to submit an application with a budget greater than $500,000 direct costs in any year. (Applicants should ignore the e-submission validation warning regarding the NIH $500,000 per year limit on direct costs.)

In addition to the revision applications, there is also a solicitation for administrative supplements to existing grants.

Read more below:

Revision Applications

from Dr. John Torday:

**** NOMINATIONS FOR THE WEITZMAN MEMORIAL RESEARCH AWARD****

The Faculty Society of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is requesting nominations for the 2009 Weitzman Memorial Research Award. This award is made in memory of Richard E. Weitzman, M.D., a faculty member in the Department of Medicine whose death in 1980 interrupted a bright, promising and all too brief career.

Dr. Weitzman's research interests were concerned with
cardiovascular-endocrine physiology and the pathophysiology of
hypertension. The award, established with the support of the Weitzman Family, friends and the Faculty Society, is designed to honor meritorious clinical or basic research in the biomedical sciences.

THE AWARD BEARS A PERSONAL HONORARIUM OF $2000.00

Criteria for nomination:

1. Individuals must be full-time Faculty at Harbor-UCLA Medical
Center with an M.D. or Ph.D. degree.

2. Individuals must not yet be 40 years of age at the time of
nomination.

3. Research work to be considered in support of the award must

The Department of Pediatrics' Grand Rounds on Thursday (March 19) will be given by Dr. Dan M. Cooper, MD, and will be entitled, Nutty Leukocytes: How Exercise Can Be Dangerous for Children.

Dr. Cooper is a Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Pediatric Pulmonology Division at the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine. One of his research interests is the effect of exercise on the expression of inflammatory and growth mediators in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in children. Dr. Cooper is also the Director of UCI's General Clinical Research Center.

Friday's Case Conference will discuss two topics: a difficult case of lupus, and a 1-month old with an intraventricular hemorrhage.

Why? Because the grants are non-renewable, are for 2 years only, and will cause you to lose your new investigator status.

For applications that would go through NINDS (National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke), please see the following announcement from Story Landis:

As you know, $10.4 billion has been allocated to the NIH through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This is an unprecedented opportunity for us to participate in stimulating the economy by creating jobs and funding high quality research. To implement the ARRA, NIH has announced several funding opportunities (see http://grants.nih.gov/recovery) and will release more in the near future.

We know that many of you are interested in how NINDS will use the approximately $400 million in stimulus funding that we anticipate receiving. What follows is a brief summary of our current plans. Please continue to check our website (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/recovery/), where we will post more information as it becomes available.

Our current strategy includes:

Request for Applications: Recovery Act Limited Competition: NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research (RC1)

Application Due Date: April 27, 2009

As part of the Recovery Act, the NIH invites, through this limited competition, NIH Challenge Grant (RC1) applications from domestic (United States) institutions/organizations proposing novel research in areas that address specific knowledge gaps, scientific opportunities, new technologies, data generation, or research methods that would benefit from an influx of funds to quickly advance the area in significant ways. This program is designed to support research in scientific areas identified by the NIH Institutes and Centers.

For details see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-09-003.html. The list of high priority topics is below (attachment).

Daylight Savings Time will begin this weekend.

Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 2:00 a.m.

Set your clocks FORWARD 1 hour.

GRAND ROUNDS - Thursday, March 5, 2009 - Parlow Auditorium

Topic: "Controversies in Pediatric Cardiovascular Prevention"

Speaker: Ruey Chang, MD
Chief, Division of Cardiology
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

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CLINICAL CASE CONFERENCE - Friday, March 6, 2009 - Assembly Room

1. Two babies with dysmorphology
2. A 4 y/o Asian girl with a choledochal cyst

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The March 2009 Conference Schedule for Research-Related conferences is available for download.

Some highlights:

Today, at 9:45 A.M., Dr. Raul Artal, Professor and Chairman of Ob/Gyn at St. Louis University School of Medicine, will be discussing "Obesity and Pregnancy." Ob/Gyn grand rounds are held in the 1st floor auditorium.

Tomorrow at 8:30 A.M., Dr. Mitch Wong of the Deparment of Medicine at UCLA will discuss racial disparities in health (Parlow auditorium.

Monday, March 9, Nephrology Grand Rounds will be given by Dr. Elaine Reed of UCLA on the role of HLA and MICA antibodies in transplant rejection (Parlow Library, 1PM)

On Tuesday, March 17, Dr. Janis Abkowitz of the University of Washington School of Medicine's adult Hematology division will give the 10th annual Kouichi R. Tanaka lectureship intruigingly titled, "Cats, mice and heme."

Monday, March 23, Dr. Reza Abdi will visit from Brigham and Women's Hospital to deliver Nephrology Grand Rounds on gene polymorphism studies in transplantaion (Parlow, 1 PM).