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This research guide is designed to help teachers and students organize their thoughts as they begin to plan and carry out a research assignment where they review and use the resources of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum (Hyde Park, New York) or other resources for specific projects. The guide is divided into five sections: (1) the nature of research; (2) clarifying your task; (3) actually getting started; (4) developing critical thinking skills; and (5) using primary sources. Contains a written document analysis worksheet. (BT)

Placing exhibits in public places provides a unique opportunity to reach a broad non-museum-going audience. It offers marketing and publicity opportunities as well as the potential to develop relationships with agencies and individuals who are stakeholders in the public site. The purpose of this guidebook is to describe the steps in creating an outdoor public exhibition. It contains general principles for planning, designing, and implementation to supplement the usual exhibit development process. It is arranged in sections which follow the chronology of exhibition development. Each section includes practical information, personal experiences, and tools used in developing "Science City," an innovative sidewalk science exhibition designed to reveal the science and technology of the urban infrastructure. Sections include Site Selection, Approvals and Permits, Forming a Team, Design and Prototyping, Fabrication, Installation, Operations and Maintenance, Evaluation, Related Public Programming, Promotion and Marketing, In-Kind Support and Science City Project Costs, and Timeline. The guide ends with a summary and conclusion. (JRH)

Sunken Meadow State Park provides a year round three-fold ecosystem (marine beach, salt marsh, and wooded upland) of 1,266 acres for Suffolk County (NY) teachers and students to use as a site for outdoor education activities. While teachers can rely on the support of the Outdoor Learning Laboratories' staff for aid in emergencies, for clarifying unforeseeable contingencies, and for providing materials and equipment, teachers are expected to be self-sufficient leaders when bringing students to the Park. Therefore, teachers are required to complete a 30-hour summer inservice instruction program prior to bringing their students to the Park for a day-long class trip during the year. Successful completion of inservice training and implementation of a day-use program qualifies a teacher for participation in week-long residential camp experiences. In addition to detailing the teacher training program, this guide provides teachers with: background information on the formation of the Park and its present day flora and fauna; maps and directions for reaching the Park; safety, first aid, and emergency procedures; conservation practices; and descriptions of available instructional and audio-visual materials, including procedures for their care and storage. (NEC)

Nissequogue River State Park is one of the last large tracts of undeveloped land on Long Island (NY) and is a refuge for organisms displaced by the rapid and extensive growth of suburbia. A reconstructed 120 year old barn and stable house the Outdoor Learning Laboratory which consists of interpretive displays (bird and mammal identification, animal tracks, and the natural history of trees), fresh water aquaria, terrariums, fireplace, contour map, staff offices, curriculum files, and teacher resource center. This site guide describes the history and setting of the Park and Laboratory with accompanying maps and drawings; lists more than 200 species of flora found in the Park during 1977, providing botanical names and growing conditions; and provides Park use instructions including travel directions, hours of operation, safety procedures, first aid reminders, equipment requisitioning procedures, conservation practices, and inservice teacher training requirements for day-use and residential programs. (NEC)

The clean and plentiful waters of the Connetquot basin's ponds, streams and marshlands have nurtured an extraordinarily rich ecosystem which has always been prized by both Native Americans and subsequent immigrants to this country. Since 1973, 3,476 acres have been preserved as Connetquot River State Park. To aid elementary and secondary teachers in utilizing facilities and services of the Park and the Outdoor Learning Laboratory, this guide lists some of the flora and fauna seen in the Park during 1978 (over 170 species of wildflowers, more than 200 species of birds, 24 species of reptiles and 16 species of fish); describes the natural history of the area; provides a travel map and directions for reaching the Park, emergency and staff telephone numbers, and safety instructions; outlines conservation practices and conduct guidelines for teachers, students and parents; and details the teacher participation inservice training requirements and opportunities. (NEC)

For the special educator the Suffolk County (NY) Outdoor Learning Laboratories offer many spontaneous "teachable moments" that occur in the out-of-doors in which to guide students' attention and enthusiasm through the process of discovery and problem solving. The program welcomes students with varying degrees of physical, intellectual and/or emotional handicapping conditions. Specialized inservice training, sample curriculum packets, planning sessions, staff assistance, and a resource library prepare each teacher to develop his/her own outdoor learning program based upon the needs of individual students. This guide provides special education teachers with essential information about how to use the facilities and services. Included are descriptions, maps and use procedures of the facilities at Sunken Meadow State Park, Connetquot River State Park, and Nissequogue River State Park; details of the day-use teacher participation plan; safety and first aid reminders; conservation practices; goals, objectives, and implementation procedures for the residential teacher participation plan; instructions about how to receive academic credit for inservice training; and a listing of supplementary programs available for teacher participation. (NEC)

Designed as a guide in inservice preparation and as a reference in planning and conducting outdoor lessons, this statement of philosophy will help teachers who participate in the Outdoor Learning Laboratories program understand the aims and methods of outdoor education. To educate children is, of course, the ultimate purpose of outdoor education. It is hoped that professional understandings of the educational processes involved will help children learn school subjects through outdoor experiences and especially help them become deeply aware of the importance and beauty of the natural environment. Outdoor teaching differs from classroom teaching by creating an experiential relationship between the student and the material to be studied and by creating informal, personalized patterns within the learning situation. Outdoor education as most commonly practiced supplements those disciplines which pertain to environmental studies but should encompass aspects of the social sciences and humanities as well. Lesson plans should be designed to involve the child's body and each of his senses. While experiential learning may involve activation of the rational faculties and memory, as does classroom learning, to be truly experiential it must also activate other inner powers such as imagination, emotion, insight, and judgment. (NEC)

This document presents a proposal for a two-tiered community service and youth employment program. The first chapter presents youth employment data, describes the need for a work-education and community investment strategy, and discusses the proposal's underlying philosophical and economic ideas. Chapter II reviews four categories of successful work and service programs that provide examples for developing policy: (1) work experience and cooperative education; (2) remedial education and training; (3) pre-employment assistance; and (4) private sector placement activities. Chapter III presents a model of the two tiers of the proposed project, each of which would serve different goals: (1) the Community Service Corps would involve young adults who want to spend a year in transitional community service that tests their skills and encourages them to explore new interests; and (2) the Stay-in-School Program would offer training, support services and work opportunities to economically disadvantaged youths who are still in high school or have dropped out. Chapter IV briefly outlines the general principles upon which this model's delivery system options were based. The document ends with a short discussion of principles for a national community service and youth employment policy, and with a list of organizational and individual endorsements. (KH)

Since 1971 a fully equipped learning laboratory building and the open fields, woodlands, salt water marshes, and beaches of Sunken Meadow State Park have been available for year round day use by students and educators in New York's Suffolk and Nassau counties. Funded by the New York Office of Parks and Recreation and local Boards of Cooperative Educational Service, the Outdoor Education Program has been designed as a multidisciplinary approach to utilizing the outdoor environment to supplement, strengthen, and give new dimensions to the existing school curriculum. Participants have found that these environments are not only appropriate for study of the natural sciences, but that art, music, mathematics, Long Island history, and the language arts can be learned more effectively in such surroundings. The handbook contains: teacher procedures for participation in the program; hours of operation; a map and directions for reaching the laboratory; transportation and parking procedures; radio stations to monitor for possible laboratory closing during inclement weather; appropriate dress; fire regulations; safety, first aid, and emergency procedures; instructions for using the mobile radio network while in the field; security measures; conservation practices; a map of the park; and a student registration and health blank. In the original, 28 blank pages are provided for students to maintain a log of their learning experience. (NEC)

The absorption of electromagnetic energy within human tissue depends upon anatomical posture and body type, e.g., body-mass index. Creating a large number of anatomical models with various body postures is problematic however, given medical scanner costs and acquisition requirements, e.g., the subject must be lying down for CT and MRI acquisitions. We propose to deliver software, documentation, and examples relating to our research aimed at modifying the anatomical pose and body morphology (e.g., body-mass indexes) of volumetric, voxelized, anatomical models. In particular, we propose to adapt real-time surgical simulation methods to serve as the underlying methods in changing the pose and the fat/muscle composition of voxel models. This approach has the key benefit of being able to generate morphed voxelized anatomical models in less than 10 minutes. Intuitive software applications that incorporate these algorithms are already being prototyped and will be extended, evaluated, and delivered in Phase I. This project builds upon significant prior work at Kitware and makes use of several open-source, image-processing toolkits. The product will be offered as open-source software and used to attract additional consulting clients to Kitware., The original document contains color images.

Report developed under SBIR contract for topic #A10-110. The overarching goal of this project is the creation of the leading computational chemistry workbench, making the premier computational chemistry codes and databases easily accessible to chemistry practitioners. This has been accomplished by creating an open, extensible application framework that puts computational tools, data, and domain-specific knowledge at the fingertips of chemists. A data-centric approach to chemistry, storing data in a searchable database, empowers users to efficiently collaborate, innovate, and push the frontiers of research forward. As the power of our computational resources grows, computational chemists face a growing discrepancy between our ability to run calculations/simulations and our ability to meaningfully store, search, retrieve and analyze data. As the sophistication of the computational codes grow and access to powerful computational resources becomes more commonplace, there is an increasingly steep learning curve to effectively using new computational tools and analyzing their output. Our objective is to make the lives of computational chemists easier by making these tools accessible to a wider range of chemists., Topic title: Development of a Desktop Application to Integrate Tools and Databases for Environmentally-Important Chemical Aspects of Military Compounds. The original document contains color images.

This document represents the Final Report of the SBIR Phase I effort under W81XWH-13-C-0042. During the Phase I effort we successfully demonstrated the capability to extract semantic information from File Man based Electronic Health Record implementations and to use the extracted information in informative visualizations and analyses. Additional efforts on the Phase I introduced our concepts to our potential collaborative community, investigated and categorized the semantic health care ecosystem, and planned for the Phase II implementation of a prototype communications capability., The original document contains color images.

Report developed under SBIR contract for topic #A10-110. The overarching goal of this project is the creation of the leading computational chemistry workbench, making the premier computational chemistry codes and databases easily accessible to chemistry practitioners. This will be accomplished by creating an open, extensible application framework that puts computational tools, data, and domain-specific knowledge at the fingertips of chemists. A data-centric approach to chemistry, storing all data in a searchable database, will empower users to efficiently collaborate, innovate, and push the frontiers of research. This report documents the project at its mid-point, documenting an open and extensible approach to computational chemistry. Desktop integration with high performance computing resources, seamless execution of external computational chemistry packages from within a molecular editor. Next generation, scalable rendering techniques enable researchers to build and visualize very large simulations with data structures poised to enable client-server desktop functionality in the second half of the project. Integration of these features with powerful analysis tools and an informatics approach leveraging best-of-breed NoSQL databases, in order to store, search and retrieve relevant results when they are needed.

With the ever growing computational power available on the largest parallel machines, the ability to generate CFD simulation data is outpacing the ability to analyze and visualize it. This is due to the large disparity between the computational facilities (up to hundreds of thousands of cores) and the typical personal computer or visualization cluster. This project's goal was to begin the analysis and visualization of these large data sets on the parallel computers they are being run on. This reduces the file size and further computation required to fully analyze the results. In this report we detail the steps that were taken in order to enable ParaView and VTK to perform this coprocessing of simulation data and visualization and analysis information. The main highlights are GUI tools to easily specify what is to be outputted during the simulation run and a coprocessing library that gets connected to the simulation code that does the actual processing of the desired results. In addition, we demonstrate good parallel performance for the coprocessing library on an IBM, The original document contains color images.

Power devices made on Silicon Carbide (SiC) are expected to offer significant advantages over silicon due to the unique material properties. With the continuing improvement in both material quality (defect density and carrier lifetime) and SiC device fabrication process, SiC power devices are increasingly fabricated with higher blocking rating and larger die size. This paper describes the benefits of using SiC Gate Turn-Off thyristors (GTO) in power electronics, especially for pulse power applications, reviews the development history and the current state of the art, and outlines the future perspective for developing large area GTOs with high blocking voltage of 10 kV. Experimental results for the state-of-the-art 9 kV, 1 cm2 SiC GTOs are presented. Static and dynamic characteristics are described. A forward drop of 3.7 V at 100 A (100 A/cm2) is measured at 25 deg C. A slight positive temperature coefficient of the forward drop is present at 300 A/cm2 indicating the possibility of paralleling multiple devices for higher current capability. The device exhibits extremely low leakage currents at high temperatures. The turn-on delay is found to be a strong function of the gate current, cathode-anode current and voltage. A peak current of 12.8 kA conducted with a pulse width of 17.4 gs indicating the superiority of the SiC GTOs for pulse power applications., See also ADM002371. 2013 IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Digest of Technical Papers 1976-2013, and Abstracts of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science. IEEE International Pulsed Power Conference (19th). Held in San Francisco, CA on 16-21 June 2013., The original document contains color images.

A mammary derived growth inhibitor related gene (MRG) was previously identified and characterized. The present study is to test the hypothesis that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy and lactation of breast epithelial cells and a candidate mediator of the tumor suppressing effect of n-3 fatty acid DHA on mammary tumors. MRG induces differentiation of mammary epithelial cells in vitro and its expression is associated with mammary differentiation. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. While there was no lobulo-alveolar structure in control virgin mice, expression of MRG transgene in the mammary gland in the transgenic mouse resulted in the formation of alveolar-like structure. Consistent with the morphological change, expression of MRG also increased milk protein beta-casein expression in the gland. Treatment of human breast cancer cells with w-3 PUFA DHA resulted in a differential growth inhibition proportional to their MRG expression. MRG transfected cells or MRG protein treated cells were much more sensitive to DHA-induced growth inhibition compared with MRG negative or control non-treated cells. Our results suggest that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy on breast epithelial cells and may play a major role in w-3 PUFA-mediated tumor suppression.

A mammary derived growth inhibitor related gene and a fatty acid binding protein MRG was previously identified and characterized. The present study is to test the hypothesis that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy and lactation on breast epithelial cells and up-regulation of MRG expression in young mulliparous females can mimic pregnancy- and lactation-induced mammary gland differentiation and prevent breast cancer incidence. Overexpression of MRC in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. While there was no lobulo-alveolar structure in control virgin mice, expression of MRG transgene in the mammary gland of MRG transgenic mice resulted in the formation of alveolar-like structure. Consistent with the morphological change, expression of MRG also increased milk protein b-casein expression in the gland. Our results suggest that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy on breast epithelial cells.

Using differential cDNA sequencing approach, we first identified a breast cancer specific gene, BCSG1, which was expressed abundantly in metastatic breast cancer cDNA library but scarcely in normal breast cDNA library. Interestingly, BCSG1 revealed no homology to any other known growth factors or oncogenes; rather, BCSG1 revealed extensive sequence homology to neurotic proteins of a synuclein and Beta synuclein, and thus was also named as gamma Synuclein (SNCG). Synucleins are emerging as a central player in the fundamental neural processes and in the formation of pathologically insoluble deposits characteristic of Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's (PD) diseases. However, synucleins particular SNCG have also been implicated in non-neural diseases particularly in the hormone-responsive cancers of breast and ovary. SNCG expression is highly associated with breast cancer and ovarian cancer progression. In addition, overexpression of SNCG in breast cancer cells significantly stimulated cell growth in vitro and tumor metastasis in vivo. However, the molecular targets of SNCG aberrant expression for breast cancer have not been identified. For the first time, we report a chaperone-like activity of SNCG in stimulating the transcriptional activity of estrogen receptor-a (ER-alpha) in MCF-7 cells. Consistent with the stimulation of ER-alpha, SNCG stimulated the ligand-dependent cell proliferation. Demonstration of the stimulation of ER-alpha signaling as one of the cellular functions of SNCG will have a great impact on the biology of steroid receptors and the pathological role of SNCG on hormone-responsive tumors including breast, ovary, and prostate.

A mammary derived growth inhibitor related gene and a fatty acid binding protein MRG was previously identified and characterized. The present study is to test the hypothesis that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy and lactation on breast epithelial cells and up-regulation of MRG expression in young nulliparous females can mimic pregnancy- and lactation-induced mammary gland differentiation and prevent breast cancer incidence. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. While there was no lobulo-alveolar structure in control virgin mice expression of MRG transgene in the mammary gland of MRG transgenic mice resulted in the formation of alveolarAike structure. Consistent with the morphological change, expression of MRG also increased milk protein beta-casein expression in the gland. Our results suggest that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy on breast epithelial cells.

Numerical enhancements to the established bearing dynamics computer code, Advanced Dynamics of Rolling Elements (ADORE), have been accomplished for improved computation of bearing heat generation and geometrical variation in bearing element dimensions. Thermal interaction modules have been added to analyze the computed heat generation considering conduction through the element and convection to the circulating fluid or lubricant. Averaging procedures have been implemented to determine the bulk temperatures of the various bearing elements. Well-established methods have been used to compute the associated changes in bearing geometry, which then affect mechanical interaction in the bearing., The original document contains color images.

A mammary derived growth inhibitor related gene (MRG) was previously identified and characterized. MRG induces differentiation of mammary epithelial cells in vitro and its expression is associated with mammary differentiation. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. Treatment of human breast cancer cells with omega-3 PUFA DHA resulted in a differential growth inhibition proportional to their MRG expression. MRG transfected cells or MRG protein treated cells were much more sensitive to DHA-induced growth inhibition compared with MRG negative or control non-treated cells.

Germilne mutations of BRCAl confer an increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. Recent studies suggest that the tumor suppressor activity of BRCAl is due, in part, to physical/functional interactions with other tumor suppressors, including p53 and the retinoblastoma (RB) protein. Two RB binding sites on BRCAl were identified, one in the C-terminal BRCT domain and one in the N-terminus, between aa 304 and 394 (Yarden and Brody, PNAS USA 96: 4983-4988, 1999; Aprelikova et al. PNAS USA 96: 11866-11871, 1999). The N-terminal region of BRCAl contains a consensus RB binding motif (sup35 8 LXCXE), but the role of this site in mediating RB binding and BRCAl/RB functional activity is unknown. Our studies indicate that the BRCAl interacts with RB, through a binding site between aa 302 and 440, but the binding is not dependent on the LXCXE motif. Nor does the interaction require an intact A/B binding pocket of RB. Transient or stable expression of a wild-type BRCAl gene (wtBRCAl) ,,caused down-regulation of expression of RB, p107 and pl3O, associated with a chemosensitivity to DNA-damaging agents. In contrast, expression of an LXCXE-defective BRCAl mutant (LXCXE -> RXRXH) did not cause down-regulation of the RB proteins and the induction of chemoresistance. Our findings suggest that some biologic functions of BRCAl (eg., chemosensitization) are due, in part, to down-regulation of RB family proteins mediated by an LXCXE site embedded within the N-terminal RB binding site.

There continues to be uncertainty as to whether premalignant lesions that ultimately develop into metastatic breast cancer can be identified histologically. Many of the genetic changes during malignant progression manifest them as alterations in the cellular complement of novel transcribed mRNAs. We have previously reported the isolation of a new breast cancer specific gene BCSGl by differential cDNA sequencing. BCSGl, which was high abundance in a breast cancer cDNA library but scarcely in a normal breast cDNA library, was identified as a putative breast cancer marker. Interestingly, BCSGl revealed no homology to any other known growth factors or oncogenes; rather BCSGl has a great sequence homology with Alzheimer disease (AD)-related neural protein synuclein (SNC) that are mainly expressed in brain, and thus was also named as synuclein gamma (SNCG). The SNCs have primarily been studied as neural proteins, as they are highly expressed in neurons and appear to be involved in the etiology of neurodegenerasive diseases. We demonstrated that 1) SNCG expression is a stage-specific in human breast: undetectable in normal or benign breast lesions, low level and partial expression in low grade ductal carcinoma in situ but extremely high level in advanced infiltrating breast cancer; 2) overexpression of SNCG in human breast cancer cells leads to a significant increase in motility and invasiveness in vitro and a profound augmentation of metastasis; and 3) expression of SNCG in breast cancer cells is significantly down- regrlated by growth inhibitory cytokine oncostatin M (OM). The knowledge gained from these studies will allow us to target specific pathway contributory to the breast cancer progression. In addition, if overexpression provides a therapeutic target, then BCSGl may be useful in clinical management and treatment of breast cancer.

We have previously identified and characterized a novel tumor growth inhibitor and a fatty acid binding protein in human mammary gland and named it as Mammary derived growth inhibitor Related Gene MRG. MRG has tumor-suppressing activities; it inhibits breast cancer cell growth in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Here, the MRG expression on mammary gland and the effects of MRG on mammary gland differentiation were investigated. MRG protein expression was associated with human mammary gland differentiation with the highest expression observed in the differentiated alveolar mammary epithelial cells from the lactating gland. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. In vivo studies using MMTV/MRG transgenic model also indicated an increased lobulo- alveoli in the gland from the MRG transgenic mice. Our results suggest that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy on breast epithelial cells., Original contains color plates: All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

We have previously identified and characterized a novel tumor growth inhibitor and a fatty acid binding protein in human mammary gland and named it as Mammary derived growth inhibitor Related Gene MRG. MRG has tumor-suppressing activities; it inhibits breast cancer cell growth in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Here, the effects of MRG on mammary gland differentiation and its interaction with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 PUFA) on growth inhibition were investigated. MRG protein expression was associated with human mammary gland differentiation with the highest expression observed in the differentiated alveolar mammary epithelial cells from the lactating gland. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. Treatment of human breast cancer cells with %3 PUFA DHA resulted in a differential growth inhibition proportional to their MRG expression., Original contains color plates: All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.

We have previously identified and characterized a novel tumor growth inhibitor and a fatty acid binding protein in human mammary gland and named it as Mammary derived growth inhibitor Related Gene MRG. MRG has tumor-suppressing activities; it inhibits breast cancer cell growth in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Here, the effects of MRG on mammary gland differentiation and its interaction with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 PUFA) on growth inhibition were investigated. MRG protein expression was associated with human mammary gland differentiation with the highest expression observed in the differentiated alveolar mammary epithelial cells from the lactating gland. Overexpression of MRG in human breast cancer cells induced differentiation with changes in cellular morphology and a significant increase in the production of lipid droplets. Treatment of mouse mammary gland in organ culture with MRG protein resulted in a differentiated morphology and stimulation of beta-casein expression. Treatment of human breast cancer cells with omega-3 PUFA DRA resulted in a differential growth inhibition proportional to their MRG expression. MRG transfected cells or MRG protein treated cells were much more sensitive to DHA-induced growth inhibition compared with MRG negative or control non-treated cells. Our results suggest that MRG is a candidate mediator of the differentiating effect of pregnancy on breast epithelial cells and may play a major role in omega-3 PUFA-mediated tumor suppression.

We recently identified and cloned a novel breast cancer-specific gene BCSG1 by direct differential cDNA sequencing. BCSG1 has a great sequence homology with Alzheimer disease (AD)-related neural protein synuclein, and thus was also named as synuclein gamma (SNCG). We demonstrated that: (1) SNCG expression was a stage-specific in human breast: undetectable in normal or benign breast lesions, low level and partial expression in low grade ductal carcinoma in situ but extremely high level in advanced infiltrating breast cancer; (2) SNCG expression in human breast cancer cells is dramatically suppressed by tumor growth inhibitor oncostatin M (OM), a cytokine predominantly produced by activated T cells and macrophages; and (3) overexpression of SNCG in breast cancer cells led to a significant increase in cell motility and invasiveness in vitro and a profound augmentation of metastasis in vivo. Our data suggest that the member of neural protein synucleins might have important functions outside the central nervous system and play a role in breast cancer progression.