Professional sports go green to woo fans, cut costs
Professional sports realized long ago that fans like to drink beer during games, but only recently did they discover that those same fans want recycle bins for the cups.
A U-M study shows that the voluntary trend in professional sports to adopt green practices can yield big payoffs, says Kathy Babiak, an associate professor at the School of Kinesiology and study co-author. Sylvia Trendafilova, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Department of Exercise, Sport and Leisure Studies, also is a study co-author.
Though they aren’t required to do so, professional sports teams and leagues have started going green in a strategic move to meet the growing environmental demands of fans, to forge partnerships with nontraditional sponsors, and to cut costs, Babiak says.
Not much research has been done on the greening of sports, she says. Most of this type research focuses on the traditional industries that harm the environment, such as manufacturing. Those industries are often forced into compliance by regulations or financial incentives.
In contrast, Babiak found that the greening of sports happens for strategic reasons and in response to fan demands.
“They are seeing this as an opportunity to enhance their reputation and image,” Babiak says.
Environmentally sound practices such as recycling and using renewable energy are a relatively new phenomenon in professional sports, Babiak says. Within the last two to three years there have been shifts in environmental practices at the league and the team levels, and the first environmental initiative in 2003 at the professional level with the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t gain traction until 2008.
The paper, “CSR and environmental responsibility: Motives and pressures to adopt green management practices,” appears in the journal Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.
— Laura Bailey, News Service
‘Catch-up’ growth signals revealed
U-M researchers have uncovered molecular signals that regulate catch-up growth — the growth spurt that occurs when normal conditions are restored after a fetus, young animal or child has been ill, under stress or deprived of enough food or oxygen to grow properly.
The results, published in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Development, could lead to better understanding of why babies who undergo catch-up growth are at higher risk in later life for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and other health problems.
“Catch-up growth is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom, from humans down to little fish and worms,” says Cunming Duan, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology. “But biologists have known very little about the molecular signals that coordinate this phenomenon.”
Duan and co-workers suspected that a group of hormones called insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) — known to be important in normal growth and development and also implicated in cancer and aging — might be involved. Like other peptide and protein hormones, IGFs work by binding to receptors on the cells they target. The binding then sets off a cascade of reactions that ultimately direct the cell to do something.
“Since we were dealing with a type of growth, it made sense to look at the main growth regulators,” Duan said.
In addition to Duan, the paper’s authors are postdoctoral fellow Hiroyasu Kamei, former postdoctoral fellow Yonghe Ding, former graduate student Shingo Kajimura, graduate student Michael Wells and former undergraduate student Peter Chiang.
— Nancy Ross-Flanigan, News Service
Older adults often excluded from clinical trials
Older individuals, a rapidly growing population in the United States, account for a disproportionate share of health care utilization and cost; yet more than half of clinical trials exclude individuals based on their age or age-related conditions, a U-M Health System study shows.
“These findings are concerning because it means that doctors cannot be confident that clinical trial results apply to their older patients,” says Dr. Donna Zulman, the study’s lead author and a Veterans Affairs scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program at U-M.
“Health care providers and patients need better evidence about treatment strategies that improve the health and quality of life of seniors,” she says.
As of 2009, Americans over the age of 65 represented 12.5 percent of the U.S. population — about one in every eight Americans — and by 2030, that number is expected to almost double.
This population accounts for 34 percent of personal health care expenditures, with the majority of spending attributed to individuals with chronic diseases. Yet in a review of clinical trials published in major medical journals, Zulman and her colleagues found that one in five trials excluded patients based on their age alone.
“It is rarely appropriate to exclude people from clinical trials based on their age alone,” says Dr. Jeremy Sussman, a study coauthor and a Veterans Affairs scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program.
The study authors suggest that clinical trial evidence guiding treatment of complex, older adults would be improved by eliminating upper age limits for study inclusion, reducing the use of eligibility criteria that disproportionately affect older patients, and by encouraging adherence to recommended analytical methods for evaluating treatment effects by age.
The study appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
— Shantell Kirkendoll, UMHS Public Relations
Premature infants’ lungs may improve with better nutrition
Improving lung function in premature babies with a severe lung disease may be linked to their feeding regimen, according to a new U-M study.
Researchers studied 18 infants with a history of moderate to severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and found that those with above-average weight gain between evaluations showed significantly improved lung volumes, revealing a possible association between lung growth and improved nutrition.
The results of this study appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Pediatric Pulmonology. The results now are available online.
BPD typically develops in premature infants who require prolonged ventilation or oxygen therapy after birth, leading to significant reductions in airflow and lung overinflation when compared to full-term infants. Infants with BPD also often develop asthma later in life.
Over a nearly one-year span, U-M researchers found little improvement in the study group’s average airflows and lung volumes. However, the nine premature babies with above-average weight gain over time saw greater improvement, though they were unable to catch up to full-term babies.
“Consistent with animal studies that show the harmful effects of malnutrition on lung development, we showed improvements in lung function, such as forced vital capacity and total lung capacity, in infants with above-average body growth,” says study lead author Dr. Amy Filbrun, assistant professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases.
Filbrun also is director of the U-M Apnea and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia Program.
Previous studies have shown that lung function in babies with BPD improves over time as the lung continues to grow, but researchers say this is the first to record longitudinal measurements using the raised volume rapid thoracoabdominal compression technique.
Additional U-M authors are Dr. Antonia Popova, Marisa Linn, Nancy McIntosh and Dr. Marc Hershenson.
— Heather Guenther, UMHS Public Relations
U-M researchers find indirect path to attack breast cancer stem cells
Scientists at the Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a potential new way of attacking breast cancer stem cells, the small number of cells in a tumor that fuel its growth and spread.
Researchers found that breast cancer stem cells are regulated by a type of cell derived from bone marrow, called mesenchymal stem cells. These cells are drawn from the bone marrow to the cancer and create a “niche” for the cancer stem cells, allowing them to replicate.
“The importance of this is that we may be able to attack breast cancer stem cells indirectly by blocking these signals from the niche,” says study author Dr. Max Wicha, Distinguished Professor of Oncology and director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Breast cancer stem cells were first identified by Wicha and colleagues in 2003. Cancer stem cells are believed to be resistant to current chemotherapies and radiation treatment, which researchers say may be the reason cancer so often returns after treatment.
Little is known about the cancer stem cell niche — a type of microenvironment that is highly associated with tumor growth and metastasis. The researchers looked at mesenchymal stem cells, which arise in bone marrow. They found that breast cancers in mice sent out signals, which attracted mesenchymal stem cells from the bone marrow into the tumor where these cells interacted and stimulated the growth of breast cancer stem cells.
Researchers then identified two signals from a cytokine network — a type of protein that affects how cells communicate — that were responsible for stem cell regulation. By blocking these cytokine signals, researchers hope that they can successfully target the cancer stem cell population providing a more effective treatment for breast cancer.
Results of the study appear in the Jan. 15 issue of Cancer Research.
Additional U-M authors are Suling Liu, Sing Ou, Shawn Clouthier, Shivani Patel, Hasan Korkaya, Amber Heath, Julie Dutcher, Celina Kleer, Younghun Jung, Gabriela Dontu and Russell Taichman.
— Nicole Fawcett, UMHS Public Relations
