Headlines @ U.Va.

Littlepage To chair NCAA basketball committee
The NCAA is going to get some direction from a Wahoo. Craig Littlepage, athletics director, will serve as chair of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee during the 2005-2006 academic year, NCAA officials announced Oct. 19. Littlepage’s term will begin Sept. 1, 2005. He will succeed Bob Bowlsby, the University of Iowa’s director of athletics. This year Littlepage will serve as the chair of the committee’s television subcommittee. Littlepage has been U.Va.’s athletics director since 2001. He is a 1973 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he helped the Quakers win three straight Ivy League championships. (ESPN.com, Oct. 19)

Researchers want more fat
The good in fat was the focus at the International Fat Applied Technology Society conference held in early October in Pittsburgh. Fat-derived adult stem cells show promise in reconnecting severed nerves, strengthening damaged hearts, healing inflamed intestinal holes and cosmetically enhancing breasts. At the conference, U.Va. researchers presented evidence that damaged hearts in mice showed improved pumping strength a month after being injected with human-fat stem cells; autopsies showed the stem cells had become engrafted in their hearts. In another, related experiment, fat stem cells injected into the stroke-damaged brains of rodents migrated to the injured area, although no reparative effect was shown. (Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 17)

Lawmakers seem to support Charter
Key legislative leaders appeared supportive Oct. 12 as the presidents of U.Va., Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary urged passage of the charter legislation to give them greater control over their operations and finances. The leading Republican lawmakers did not endorse the chartered university proposal, but seemed interested in hearing more details. One delegate called it a “great idea worth exploring.” The presidents insisted they are not trying to create private institutions or escape accountability. But bureaucracy and unpredictable state funding limit their ability to compete with peer research institutions in the United States and around the world, they said. (Associated Press, Oct. 12)

Breast cancer may be linked to childbearing factors
A woman’s risk of breast cancer may be related to childbearing factors, especially those related to a first pregnancy, researchers think. Dr. Tim E. Byers of the U.Va. Health System worked with other doctors to produce the latest findings, which compared some 2,500 women who completed a first pregnancy and were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer at least a year later, and 10,000 cancer-free mothers of single children. Extremely premature delivery was associated with a two-fold increased risk of developing breast cancer, investigators report in the International Journal of Cancer. “Extreme prematurity has been characterized by high maternal estrogen levels, which could increase breast cell proliferation,” they suggest. (Reuters, Oct. 20)