In the News - News
The dean who for two decades helped propel the UAB School of Medicine into one of national prominence has died. Pittman was known for his ability to recruit and retain nationally and internationally known doctors and scientists and for his innovations that left a lasting stamp on the institution, according to a statement released today by the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
A very unusual blood transplant appears to have cured an American man living in Berlin of infection with the AIDS virus. The man, who is in his 40s, had a blood stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia. His donor had a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to HIV. “It’s an interesting proof-of-concept that with pretty extraordinary measures a patient could be cured of HIV,” but it is far too risky to become standard therapy even if matched donors could be found, said Dr. Michael Saag of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Ann Marie Reynolds, now 32, was on a kidney transplant list for a third time and had less than a 1 percent chance of finding a match when she learned of UAB Hospital’s Paired Donation Program. Doctors at UAB used the organ exchange program to match Reynolds with a compatible donor in a three-way organ exchange that also paired two other hard-to-match kidney patients with compatible donors. The UAB program uses a computer system to match living donors with potential recipients.
The Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, a visually stunning building designed by architect Randall Stout, is set to open its doors to UAB art students and the public. Named for principal donors Judy and Hal Abroms and Ruth and Marvin Engel, the institute seeks to bridge UAB’s resources with those of the Birmingham Museum of Art, and [exhibit] “Material Evidence” is the first example.
While popular culture proclaims the holiday season as a time of happiness, grief-stricken people can have an especially hard time balancing the merry with the mourning, says clinical psychologist Joshua Klapow, an associate professor of public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“People tend to have an all-or-nothing approach — ‘I’m either super-duper healthy or I’m just not going to worry about it,’” Kitchin said. A new study shows it’s worth it to find that middle ground.
In its story about Jefferson County’s emergence from bankruptcy, Forbes magazine awarded the lion’s share of credit for the area's economic rebound to UAB’s research enterprise, high-tech business development, investment in the community and local partnerships.
If you have a phone running Google Inc.’s Android operating system, it’s a good idea to run antivirus software. “The number of Android devices is huge,” said Ragib Hasan, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Alabama-Birmingham who studies smartphone malware. “It makes sense for cybercriminals to focus on that platform.”
UAB’s own Henry Panion III, Ph.D., is featured on the cover of this month’s B-Metro magazine. A University Professor of Music, Panion was selected for the magazine’s “The A List: Birminghamians who made the year great” feature.