Michael Murray - US grants

Nuclear physicists love to look inside protons and neutrons by smashing
particles into them. One goal of this is to understand the force that
holds them together and gives them most of their weight. Through a
quirk of quantum mechanics, relativity and the uncertainty principle
what we see (or rather what a particle sees) inside a proton depends
upon how fast we approach it. At low speeds the particle typically sees
a lot of empty space a few quarks (which carry the proton's electric
charge and most of its momentum) and some gluons (which carry the color
force that holds quarks together). These gluons don't carry much
momentum and so by the uncertainty principle they have a large size. If
a particle hits one of the quarks or gluons then lots of particles will
be made.

For collisions at higher speeds more gluons appear out of the empty
space so that the proton gets crowded. This makes it harder for a
particle such as an electron to get through the space between the
gluons. At extremely high speeds the gluons are so crowded that they
fuse together to form a glass like state, the Colored Glass Condensate.
Evidence for such a state was first seen in electron-proton collisions
in Germany. On Long Island there is a machine called RHIC that collides
gold atoms together. The nucleus of a gold atom contains many protons
and neutrons close together. In a nucleus it is easier for the gluons to
form a glass since gluons from different protons and neutrons can
overlap.

Michael Murray is a member of the BRAHMS colloboration which has seen
evidence for this effect at RHIC. NSF funding will enable Michael to
study these effects at a higher energy collidor that is currently being
built near Geneva. This work may help us understand the color force in a
new way.

Michael is also interested in homeland security. He will be developing a
course on "dirty bombs" for first responders. Such a bomb could be as
primitive as a stick of dynamite surrounded by radioactive materials or
a sophisticated device that produces radioactive aerosols that hang in
the air for days. In either case proper training of police and
firefighters will help them to alleviate the damager and panic caused by
such an attack.

--
Bradley D. Keister
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22230
+1 703 292-7377 (office)
+1 703 292-9078 (fax)

The In Vitro Antiviral Screening Program provides in vitro screening systems to evaluate experimental antiviral substances.

This contract provides for the development and standardization of small animal models for infectious diseases, and may include efficacy testing of candidate products.

HIV-1 replication can be effectively suppressed in HIV infected patients using highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). However, despite effective suppressive therapy, HIV has been known to exist in a state of latency, with the best characterized latent reservoir being the resting memory CD4+ T cells. These resting cells produce HIV when their resting state is reversed following cellular activation. To achieve a cure for HIV disease, the latent reservoir of HIV needs to be identified and eliminated. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies at clearing the latent reservoir, a reproducible assay capable of quantifying latent HIV is crucial. The best characterized assay today is the QVOA (Quantitative Viral Outgrowth Assay), also known as IUPM assay (Infectious Units Per Million) performed on highly purified resting CD4+ T cells under conditions that reverse latency and induce replication of HIV. However, QVOA measurements require large volumes of blood, are expensive, tedious, and labor intensive and therefore not the assay of choice for many laboratories conducting HIV eradication research. NIAID has a requirement to provide the QVOA as a service to the HIV research community. This service will allow standardized QVOA measurements so that unbiased comparisons between different eradication strategies can be achieved. Widespread use of the assay will raise the standards for latent HIV detection and reduce the need for surrogate, less accurate assays, presently used by some laboratories.

This contract provides in vitro testing of potential anti-viral agents, maintenance of viral stocks and cell lines needed to grow the viruses, and development of related assays.

This contract provides in vitro testing of potential anti-viral agents, maintenance of viral stocks and cell lines needed to grow the viruses, and development of related assays.

Support for attendance and participation in the Collaborative Antiviral Testing Group Annual Meeting.