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Date: Friday, October 25, 2002
10:00 am - 12 noon
Place: Pennington Biomedical Research
Center
Baton Rouge, LA
Summary of the LaSoMi Fall 2002 Meeting
Kelly
Blessinger
The LaSoMi Chapter met on Friday, October 25th at the
Pennington
Biomedical
Research
Center
in
Baton Rouge
,
Louisiana
. The group met at
10am
, and after light refreshments was given a brief overview of the center by
Ralph Underwood, Associate Executive Director of Administration and
Finance. Ralph discussed the history of the center, including information
regarding C.B. “Doc” Pennington, the local oilman and philanthropist
who donated 125 million to
Louisiana
State
University
in 1980 with a vision for a research center focusing on nutrition and
health. The
Pennington
Center
was completed in 1986, and opened in 1988.
Four key areas of research at the center include:
Functional Foods-
The study of the health benefits of food aside from their nutritional
content (i.e. almonds and garlic have been shown to lower cholesterol).
Obesity- Pennington
is one of the leading research facilities in the world on obesity.
They have studied obesity in relation to type II diabetes, genetic
influences on obesity, and preventive strategies.
Nutrition and Chronic
Diseases- Understanding the role that lifestyle, diet and heredity
play in chronic disease, and how risk could be lowered by better nutrition
and lifestyle based on individual genetic variances.
Health and Performance
Enhancement- Pennington collaborates with the U.S.
Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine to determine strategies
to promote optimal physical and mental performance for soldiers under a
variety of conditions.
Some
of the accomplishments of the center include:
-
Diets to reduce hypertension
-
Prevention of type II diabetes (by diet)
-
Space travel strategies (to help prevent
bone loss)
-
Improving military readiness
-
Treatments for cancer
-
Discovering taste receptors for dietary
fat (helps to develop better fat replacements)
In
2002-2003, The Pennington Center will operate on a 38 million dollar
budget, which will in turn have a 74 million dollar impact on the
Louisiana
economy. The
Pennington
Center
functions as a pubic/private partnership through grants and support from
the state of
Louisiana
. There is currently
construction underway to expand the center to include an 180,000 square
foot
Basic
Research
Laboratory
Building
and
a 80,000 square foot
Clinical
Sciences
Building
as part of the
Vision 2005 five-year strategic plan, which also includes the goal of
increasing the number of scientists and support staff from 425 to 750.
Lori Steib, Assistant Director for Information Services discussed
and then led a tour of the
Pennington
Information
Center
. Lori has been serving as the
Assistant Director since 1996, and the first professional librarian
started at the center in 1990. Another
librarian (Marilyn Hammond) also works full time at the center.
The center contains around 90 current journal subscriptions, three
newspapers, and approximately 250 reference titles organized by the
National Library of Medicine Classification.
The center is open to the public, but mainly serves the staff at
Pennington. Roughly 50-60 of
the journals are available to the staff online.
The center currently has access to PubMed and Web of Science, and
will be getting some EBSCOMed databases in the future.
The library currently provides around 5,500 Interlibrary Loan
requests a year. Many thanks
to Lori for hosting this meeting.
Pennington Biomedical Research Center Homepage
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