Research

What puzzles Harry Gaines is that we typically plan our vacations with more care than we plan the rest of our lives, especially when it comes to health and fitness. Too often we neglect to make the investment in exercise that will pay rich dividends in well-being in our 70s, 80s, and beyond. Gaines, 74, a retired textbook-publishing executive who lives half the year in Newtown, Bucks County, and the other half in Florida, keeps a "bucket list" — goals and experiences he hopes to accomplish before he kicks the proverbial bucket.

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

Amid the many messages you will hear about screening for prostate cancer in the coming days, I hope these stand out: There is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. The panel I chair, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has just issued a recommendation against screening men of any age for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

Ryan Howard felt a tiny pinch Sept. 18 when a team physician's needle penetrated the numbed surface of a left heel that had been throbbing red-hot for weeks. Within seconds, the syringe's milky mixture of cortisone and painkiller rushed warmly into the tiny, inflamed bursa sac at the base of the slugger's Achilles tendon. Howard and the Phillies were rolling the dice. They hoped the cortisone would ease the pain and, after a brief rest, return him to form for the fast-approaching postseason.

This weekend a group of men will gather at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary to how learn to throw a spiral, make a three-point shot and hit a long ball — and to resist homosexual urges. Courage, a Catholic group that encourages people with same-sex attraction to remain celibate, is holding its 13th annual sports camp in which "men physically compete on the field while enriching their souls through a daily regimen of prayer, confessions, mass, and the Liturgy of the Hours," according to the group's website.

Trina Gipson-Jones, a registered nurse, has focused her career on helping minorities - not just locally, but also nationally and abroad. She conducts research for the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Health Disparities. On Feb. 3, she was honored for her work by the National Black Nurses Association and was the recipient of a research excellence award. Gipson-Jones has worked at the center, within the university's school of nursing, for two years. She holds a master's degree in nursing administration and a doctorate in nursing.

One of the most controversial alternatives to using animals in scientific research involves the bodies of brain-dead people, or "neomorts. " Proposals to use neomorts "could revolutionize research, toxicity testing and education and thereby greatly reduce our reliance on laboratory animals," said Martin Stephens, an associate director of the Humane Society of the United States. Each year, more than two million people die in the United States; 150,000 die from accidents, suicides and other causes that leave their bodies intact, Stephens said.

Dr. David B.P. Goodman, 60, of Wynnewood, a medical school professor, researcher, and director of the endocrinology laboratory at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, died of septic shock Monday at Lankenau Hospital. Dr. Goodman decided on a career in research when he was a student at Harvard University, where scientist James Watson, a discoverer of the structure of DNA, was a member of the faculty. A biology major, Dr. Goodman was inspired by Watson's groundbreaking achievement and resolved to focus his future medical career on research science, said his wife, Kathleen Greenacre Goodman.

Jung Kim, 15, and Hermina Paczynski, 16, hovered over their thick, black desk-top machine - a double-beam spectrophotometer - and checked their vials of bubbly yellow liquid. Kim dropped a vial into a small compartment of the machine that contained a light and a mirror, and the students watched as squiggly lines on the connected printer told them what they needed to know: how much light passes through the substance in the vial. For Kim and Paczynski, this is exciting work.

The eight-month-old Weston Institute, founded by the man who started the environmental management firm of Roy F. Weston Inc., is up and running with more than a half-million dollars in funding and a plan to encourage research in the environmental industry. The institute, based in West Chester, will develop a catalogue of potential research projects generated by professionals working for companies in the environmental and health-safety fields. "The professionals have a unique perspective on the environmentalresearch," said Weston Institutepresident William Gaither, the former president of Drexel University.

  An $80 million national research plan to attack Alzheimer's, a mind-robbing malady that may affect as many as 16 million Americans by 2050, will start this year with U.S.-sponsored studies on ways to prevent the disease in high-risk people and treat it with an insulin nasal spray. The National Institutes of Health will spend $7.9 million researching the spray and $16 million on the first study to focus on growth of the disease in high-risk patients, according to a statement today by Department of Health and Human Services.

Barbara Jackson Richberg, 75, a researcher and reporter for The Inquirer from 1979 to 1997, died of breast cancer on Monday, May 7, at the hospice of the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia in East Falls. Gene Foreman, who was a top editor of The Inquirer during Mrs. Richberg's career, said Wednesday that "Barbara was a valued member of the staff for 18 years, beginning as a clerk and earning promotions for her dedicated work. " Mrs. Richberg worked as a clerk and researcher from 1979 to 1993 for "Action Line," a readers' service that offered solutions to consumer problems reported by the public.

Gov. Corbett, in his understandable zeal to cut spending, continues to make poor choices that in the long run will cost the state more than he expects to save. The governor's proposed budget for next fiscal year would effectively end the successful CURE program, which funds medical research at institutions across the state, and send its $60 million allocation in tobacco-settlement money to the state's general fund to pay for long-term care. Hello, governor, finding cures for cancer, or methods to improve treatment of other diseases, could help reduce the need for long-term care.

The University of Pennsylvania has received a gift of $25 million to start a research center focused on the treatment and prevention of cancers linked to certain hereditary gene mutations, the Philadelphia institution said Tuesday. The donors behind the Basser Research Center are Jon and Mindy Gray, 1992 Penn graduates. Jon Gray, 42, is global head of real estate and a member of the board at New York investment and advisory firm Blackstone Group The center, to be housed at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center in University City, is named in honor of Mindy Gray's sister, Faith Basser, who died at 44 of ovarian cancer caused by a gene mutation.

For a quarter of a century, gene therapy has been stymied, largely because the patient's immune system attacks the treatment as a suspected rogue - or because it actually does turn rogue. Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have convincingly shown that they can overcome these formidable obstacles. Cells that were genetically modified to fight HIV have persisted for up to 11 years - and counting - without bad side effects in 41 patients. In two other patients, the modified cells were safe but not as durable, according to the Penn study, published last week in Science Translational Medicine.

Junior Seau's family is revisiting its decision to donate the former NFL linebacker's brain for research into football-related injuries. Chargers chaplain Shawn Mitchell said Sunday that the family, which is of Samoan descent, is consulting with a group of elders on a number of matters. He said it doesn't necessarily mean that the family won't donate Seau's brain for research. "They really want to do everything right," Mitchell said. The medical examiner's office said Friday it was awaiting a decision by the family on whether to turn over Seau's brain to unidentified outside researchers for study.

The family of former NFL star Junior Seau will donate his brain for research into repetitive head injuries, San Diego Chargers chaplain Shawn Mitchell said Friday. "Junior was philanthropic," Mitchell said. "And he got that from his mom and dad. Their hope is that it can serve athletes down the road. " Seau, 43, was found dead in his Oceanside, Calif., home Wednesday morning of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He did not leave a note. Some have speculated that brain injuries from football may have played a role in his death, but there's been no medical confirmation of such damage.

H Fred Clark, 75, of Center City, a social activist who was one of a trio of Philadelphia scientists whose work on the rotavirus vaccine is credited with saving children's lives worldwide since 2006, died of complications from heart and Parkinson's diseases Saturday, April 28, at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The target of the vaccine was rotavirus, "a cause of fever, vomiting and diarrhea and dehydration in young children," said Dr. Paul Offit, who along with Dr. Stanley Plotkin, formed the trio.

The New Musician and the Science of Learning By Gary Marcus Penguin Press. 288 pp. $25.95 Reviewed by David Falcone What makes music work? And why would anyone put in the time and effort to create it? Perhaps there is something incredibly satisfying in the way a musician can take so many sounds and help them find their way to the middle, a comfortable synthesis, producing a full and complete but simple melody. In exploring these questions, Gary Marcus' Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning has achieved a melody of its own. Plenty is going on in this book, and yet as the story and all its parts unfold, they find the center, beautifully synthesized.

Liselotte Mezger-Freed, 86, a research biologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1966 to 1977, died of Alzheimer's disease Saturday, March 17, at Crosslands, a retirement community near Kennett Square. A son, Michael, said in an interview that "in the 1960s and '70s, she developed methods for removing one-half of the DNA from frog-egg cells and keeping them alive in a dish. " "This enabled her to study how chemicals cause mutations in DNA, with broad relevance to human cancers caused by chemicals found in tobacco smoke and in the environment," he said.