IU named in list of top places to work\nMonday's issue of The Scientist magazine names IU as one of the nation's "Best Places to Work in Academia," according to its survey of 1,456 researchers. IU made No. 10 on the list, while the California Institute of Technology and Purdue University came in at first and second places, respectively.\nAn accompanying article listed health benefits, tenure policies and fair, competitive salaries as items that are considered the most important to scientists employed at universities.
The top 10 list includes: \n1) California Institute of Technology \n2) Purdue University \n3) Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Wash.) \n4) University of Nebraska-Lincoln \n5) Cornell University \n6) University of Delaware \n7) University of Michigan \n8) Fox Chase Cancer Center (Pa.) \n9) Wadworth Center (N.Y.) \n10) IU
Fabric heart helps weak hearts pump\nNEW ORLEANS -- A simple fabric device that looks like fishnet hose but acts like support stockings helped weak hearts pump more efficiently and even shrink back to a more normal size, researchers reported at an American Heart Association conference.\nThe device is targeted at people with heart failure, which happens when a weak or damaged heart can't pump as forcefully as it should. The heart enlarges, fluid backs up into the lungs, and people get more and more short of breath and tired, often making many trips to the hospital until their hearts eventually give out.\nAbout 5 million Americans have this condition and more than a million have the type that might be helped by the new stocking-like device.\nThe mesh stocking is still experimental, but its maker, Acorn Cardiovascular Inc. of St. Paul, Minn., already has approval to sell it in Europe and will seek the same from the federal Food and Drug Administration early next year.
Novel use of vaccine too late this year\nNew research suggests that giving flu vaccine in a novel way can stretch doses and protect more people, but it didn't work as well in those over 60 and is too experimental to be used to ease this year's shortage, experts say.\nScientists tested giving smaller doses of vaccine into the skin instead of full doses given as traditional shots into a muscle. Young people had comparable immune system responses, but older people, who are most at risk of dying from flu, did not.\nThe results were published online Wednesday and will appear in the New England Journal of Medicine's Nov. 25 edition.\n"If we're going to be in a chronic situation where there's going to be a shortage every year, then this needs to be pursued," said Dr. Robert Belshe of St. Louis University of ways to stretch the vaccine supply.
Ansari X Prize won, future plans made\nST. LOUIS -- The designers of the first privately manned rocket to burst into space were handed a $10 million check Saturday, a prize designed to encourage technology that will open the heavens to tourists.\nSpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan accepted the Ansari X Prize money, along with a 150-pound trophy, as a chase plane flew over the ceremony in a field adjacent to the St. Louis Science Center.\nThe rocket plane, financed with more than $20 million from Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, qualified for the prize by blasting into space twice over the course of five days last month.\nThe X Prize, offered to the first team to get into space twice in a 14-day span, will now evolve into a competition called the X Prize Cup, an annual event "where the average person can come and watch the next generations of space vehicles fly," according to the organization's Web site.\n"We've always known that our prize is just a start," said Gregg Maryniak, the X Prize's executive director.
