eScienceCommons

The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'

2012-01-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

By Carol Clark

A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.

“Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred – whether it’s a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics – is a distinct cognitive process,” says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits.

Berns headed a team that included Emory economist Monica Capra; Michael Prietula, a professor of information systems and operations management at Emory's Goizueta Business School; a psychologist from the New School for Social Research and anthropologists from the Institute Jean Nicod in Paris, France. (Click here to see the full list of names.) The research was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

“We’ve come up with a method to start answering scientific questions about how people make decisions involving sacred values, and that has major implications if you want to better understand what influences human behavior across countries and cultures,” Berns says. “We are seeing how fundamental cultural values are represented in the brain.”

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record the brain responses of 32 U.S. adults during key phases of an experiment. In the first phase, participants were shown statements ranging from the mundane, such as “You are a tea drinker,” to hot-button issues such “You support gay marriage” and “You are Pro-Life.” Each of the 62 statements had a contradictory pair, such as “You are Pro-Choice,” and the participants had to choose one of each pair.

Click here to download the full list of questions, and the responses by the subjects.

At the end of the experiment, participants were given the option of auctioning their personal statements: Disavowing their previous choices for actual money. The participants could earn as much as $100 per statement by simply agreeing to sign a document stating the opposite of what they believed. They could choose to opt out of the auction for statements they valued highly.

“We used the auction as a measure of integrity for specific statements,” Berns explains. “If a person refused to take money to change a statement, then we considered that value to be personally sacred to them. But if they took money, then we considered that they had low integrity for that statement and that it wasn’t sacred.”

The brain imaging data showed a strong correlation between sacred values and activation of the neural systems associated with evaluating rights and wrongs (the left temporoparietal junction) and semantic rule retrieval (the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), but not with systems associated with reward.

“Most public policy is based on offering people incentives and disincentives,” Berns says. “Our findings indicate that it’s unreasonable to think that a policy based on costs-and-benefits analysis will influence people’s behavior when it comes to their sacred personal values, because they are processed in an entirely different brain system than incentives.”

Research participants who reported more active affiliations with organizations, such as churches, sports teams, musical groups and environmental clubs, had stronger brain activity in the same brain regions that correlated to sacred values. “Organized groups may instill values more strongly through the use of rules and social norms,” Berns says.

The experiment also found activation in the amygdala, a brain region associated with emotional reactions, but only in cases where participants refused to take cash to state the opposite of what they believe. “Those statements represent the most repugnant items to the individual,” Berns says, “and would be expected to provoke the most arousal, which is consistent with the idea that when sacred values are violated, that induces moral outrage.”

The study is part of a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, titled “The Biology of Cultural Conflict.” Berns edited the special issue, which brings together a dozen articles on the culture of neuroscience, including differences in the neural processing of people on the opposing sides of conflict, from U.S. Democrats and Republicans to Arabs and Israelis.

“As culture changes, it affects our brains, and as our brains change, that affects our culture. You can’t separate the two,” Berns says. “We now have the means to start understanding this relationship, and that’s putting the relatively new field of cultural neuroscience onto the global stage.”

Future conflicts over politics and religion will likely play out biologically, Berns says. Some cultures will choose to change their biology, and in the process, change their culture, he notes. He cites the battles over women’s reproductive rights and gay marriage as ongoing examples.

Images, top and bottom: iStockphoto.com.

Related:
Why religion is natural and science is not
Teen brain data predicts pop song success

Shedding light on a pre-electric sleep culture

2012-01-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

"The window of opportunity to understand sleep without electricity is closing, because the traditional cultures of sleep are vanishing," says anthropologist Carol Worthman. Photo of Southeast Asian sleeping buddha by iStockphoto.com.

By Carol Clark

About 20 percent of the world population lives without electricity. You may wonder how these people make it through their waking hours, but Carol Worthman wants to know how they sleep.

Worthman, an anthropologist at Emory University, is leading the first quantitative study of sleeping habits in a pre-electric environment. The sleep study is just one part of a larger, five-year project to begin soon in rural Vietnam, involving 14 villages that have not been electrified or exposed to television. Half of the villages will eventually be introduced to generator-powered televisions for the experiment, while the other half will not.

The National Institute of Health and the Vietnamese government are supporting the project, headed by Penn State, which aims to answer questions about how watching television affects human health and behavior.

Worthman, a leading expert on the ecology of sleep, is most excited about garnering the baseline data for pre-electric sleep. “The window of opportunity to understand sleep without electricity is closing, because the traditional cultures of sleep are vanishing,” she says. One of the development goals of WHO, she notes, is to see every populated part of the world electrified by 2020.

“We will be filling a gap in scientific knowledge by getting the first empirical data for how people sleep with no electricity, just the sun, when their whole world revolves around subsistence and nature,” Worthman says. “Many people have this idea that in the good old days we got more sleep, but did we? Are we romanticizing our history?”

One development goal of WHO is to see every part of the world electrified by 2020. Photo of Vietnamese woman relaxing with her baby by iStockphoto.com.

The 14 villages involved in the study are in a remote, mountainous location of Vietnam, near the Laotian border. Most of the people in the area belong to the Tai ethnic group and are subsistence farmers. Whole families generally sleep in one or two rooms, due to the small size of the homes.

Participants in the experiment will continuously wear a sleep actigraph, a wristwatch-like device that records movement. An actigraph is sensitive enough to detect whether its wearer is sleeping or just resting, has entered a deep sleep state, known as REM, and how often the wearer stirs or wakes up from a deep sleep.

“The data will suggest the architecture of their sleep,” Worthman says. “We will get a sense of how much sleep they are getting, whether it is interrupted frequently, and whether their sleep is mostly consolidated, or more scattered across 24 hours through naps.”

The experiment is expected to begin this Spring. After the baseline data are collected, seven of the villages will serve as controls for the experiment, while televisions powered by generators will be introduced to the other half. Every 20th household will get a communal TV set, with three channels of programming that run from 4 pm to 10 pm. At several points over the course of five years after the introduction of TV, the sleep patterns of the subjects will again be monitored to see if they have changed.

A satellite dish pokes up between two thatched huts in an isolated area of Vietnam. Anthropologists want to know how TV changes people's sleep patterns, and their outlook on life. Photo by iStockphoto.com.

“This experiment is not going to answer all the questions about human sleep, but it could provide us with some fresh ideas and questions,” Worthman says.

Are some of the sleep disorders common to modernized society tied to electricity and TV viewing? One theory holds that people who watch TV lose major chunks of time, forcing them to stay up later to complete other tasks like cleaning or doing homework. Some people watch TV to relax in the evening, but how does all that light beamed into their eyes just before bed affect their ability to get to sleep? Does the content of the programs affect sleep?

Adolescents typically experience a change in their biological clocks, causing them to want to stay up later and get up later. “TV and other forms of media can feed that propensity,” Worthman says, “but then they get slammed the next day because they have to get up for school.”

The overarching study will look at larger effects of TV viewing on health and well-being, beyond sleep. Worthman will also collect both baseline and follow-up data for this segment of the study, with a focus on adolescents.

Her team will look at how the activities, social lives and relationships of teenagers, along with their values, goals and attitudes, change after the introduction of TV.

“One thing we’re interested in is how learning about life outside of their village through TV may affect them,” Worthman says. “Will they will find TV programming inspirational or frustrating? What’s the role of a globalized world in fostering anxiety? If you are plugged into media, are you less, or more, depressed and anxious?”

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Some eye-opening thoughts on sleep

2012-01-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

In the U.S., it's perfectly normal to sleep with your dog or cat, but huge cultural battles are being fought over whether it's odd, or even detrimental, to sleep with your baby. In much of the developing world, people think just the opposite, says anthropologist Carol Worthman.

By Carol Clark

Emory anthropologist Carol Worthman first began thinking about the cultures of sleep while traveling across Kenya in 1979 as a postdoctoral fellow. She was headed to the coast in an old, classic train with wooden slats that rolled down over the windows. The cheap ticket section was so packed for the overnight journey that mothers and children shared bunks in the women’s section.

“Children were crying. It was really noisy and I couldn’t get comfortable. I didn’t sleep much at all,” Worthman says.

The locals, however, took it in stride. “In the morning, everyone around me got up looking bright and beaming,” Worthman says. “I thought, ‘They don’t sleep like Westerners do.’”

Nearly two decades later, Worthman was asked by a pediatrician to sum up what anthropologists know about sleep. She thought about it and had to respond, “Not much.” While most waking moments of human activity were well-documented, their sleeping ones were largely ignored by anthropologists.

“When people go to sleep is when we can finally write up our notes,” Worthman jokes.

But the realization that her field had overlooked one-third of human life spurred her to work on the first analytic framework for comparative studies of human sleep behavior in 1998.

She pored over the literature, and interviewed field researchers about their observations of the ecology of sleep from across continents, cultures and climates in the developing world. From foragers to farmers, islanders to mountain dwellers, patterns of sleep behavior began to emerge.

“I was startled,” Worthman says. “You learn just how weird our sleeping habits are in the United States.”

For instance, many Americans consider it odd, and perhaps detrimental, to sleep with a newborn baby. And yet it’s perfectly normal to sleep with a dog or cat.

“In much of the developing world, people think just the opposite,” Worthman says. “It’s pretty much universal that babies don’t sleep alone. They either lie right next to their mothers, or nearby on a mat, or in a cradle or a sling.”

Putting a baby in a separate room to sleep would be viewed as tantamount to child abuse in many cultures, Worthman says.

For much of human history, humans have slept in family groups, with one ear cocked for danger. They were comforted by the sounds of their livestock shuffling, their babies breathing and the crackle of a smoky fire to ward off bugs and larger predators. “Sleeping like a log” is not so desirable if you could roll into the fire, or miss the sound of an approaching predator.

Worthman’s work has shown that rural, and even some urban, communities of the developing world have markedly different sleeping patterns than the typical American. “You can actually quantitatively show that culture drives human sleep behavior,” she says.

Building on her decades of research, Worthman is about to launch the first quantitative study of a pre-electric sleep culture, a major experiment set to begin soon in rural Vietnam. Click here to read more about the study.

It’s only relatively recently that electricity, larger homes, box springs, non-allergenic mattresses and climate-controlled interiors have altered our sleep environments. This rapid shift leads Worthman to wonder if modern sleep practices have set us up for chronic problems such as insomnia, sleep apnea and parental anxiety over a newborn’s sleep patterns.
Photo by Klaus Roesch

For instance, in many cultures, people tend to take more naps and have less rigid expectations for sleeping straight through the night. Some evidence indicates that in pre-gaslight Europe, it was not uncommon for people to have an early evening sleep, then wake up later in the night for a while, before returning to a deeper sleep state.

Modern-day insomniacs may actually be the more normal ones, Worthman notes. “In our culture, we have this very fixed idea that you should lie down and go out like a light,” she says. “One of the problems with insomnia is that people become very anxious about it. If they relaxed, went with the flow, and perhaps took a nap during the day, maybe it would help.”

All images, iStockphoto.com, unless otherwise noted.

Related:
Shedding light on a pre-electric sleep culture
Grandma was right: Babies wake up taller
The science of sleep

Exploring the cognitive basis of religion and science

2012-01-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

Neuroscience promises "startling new insights about science, about religion, and about their comparison," says Robert McCauley. Photo by Kay Hinton.

The conflict between the scientific mindset and the religious mindset is an old one. What’s new are tools of cognitive science that allow us to probe why we choose to follow paths of religion and/or science, says Robert McCauley, a philosopher of science at Emory.

McCauley’s written a new book, “Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not,” in which he explains why the modern-day version of science is more in danger of extinction than religion.

Here’s an excerpt from a Boston Globe interview with McCauley:

BOSTON GLOBE: Why do you say religion is “natural” but not science?

MCCAULEY: Religion overwhelmingly depends upon what I’m calling natural cognition, thinking that is automatic, that is not conscious for the most part. Once our attention is drawn to it, we find it fairly difficult to articulate. For example, when we talk, our talking arises pretty spontaneously and yet it’s incredibly complex. We’re conforming to all sorts of rules about our natural language, which we’re usually incapable of articulating.

Science, probably more than any other human intellectual endeavor, supersedes natural cognition. It’s conscious, usually in the form of language. It’s usually slow, it’s deliberative. Science is extremely unnatural. That’s why scientists have to take courses in all these things--and then it’s still hard. The products of scientific reflection are inevitably radically counterintuitive. They challenge common sense.

Read the whole Boston Globe interview here.

And here’s a recent column by McCauley in Psychology Today.

Related:
The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'

Tobacco stats can take your breath away

2012-01-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

Globally, tobacco kills 5 million people each year, about 8.8 percent of all deaths.
Image: iStockphoto.com

On January 11, 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued an official warning that smoking cigarettes can kill you. The report “hit the nation like a bombshell,” Terry later recalled. “It was front page news and a lead story on every radio and television station in the United States and many abroad."

Nearly 50 years later, however, more than 45 million American adults still smoke, more than 8 million are living with a serious illness caused by smoking, and about 438,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a result of tobacco use, according to the CDC.

The anti-tobacco movement is just getting under way in much of the developing world. Globally, tobacco kills more than 5 million people each year, accounting for about 8.8 percent of all deaths, according to the Tobacco Atlas. If current trends continue, tobacco will kill 7 million people annually by 2020 and more than 8 million people by 2030, most of them in low- and middle-income countries. (The Tobacco Atlas is produced by the World Lung Foundation and the American Cancer Society.)

“Nicotine use is a complex addiction,” said Gregory Connolly, director of Harvard’s Center for Global Tobacco Control, during a recent health conference held at Emory. If you inject someone with nicotine, you can’t make them dependent on it the way you can with heroin or cocaine, he explains. Nicotine dependency is driven by a range of factors including ease of use, chemo-sensory cues, activation of the dopamine-reward pathway and learned behavior.

Treating individuals is helpful in the short-term, but policy measures that remove smoking from the social norm are better in the long-term, Connolly said.

“Kids do what adults do,” he said. “You really have to de-normalize the behavior and take away the social benefits.”

On January 1, Emory became a tobacco-free campus. Smoking and all other forms of tobacco use are now prohibited on all Emory University and Emory Healthcare properties. More than 580 U.S. colleges and more than 2,800 hospitals and health-care organizations have adopted similar policies.

At least on U.S. college campuses, smoking is become a harder habit to continue.

Related:
Striking up conversations about smoking

Does science need a universal symbol?

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, sparked a debate with his proposal in New Scientist to develop a unifying symbol for science: A sort of bumper sticker for passionate nerds, and those who support their mission. Wolpe writes:

"A single, unified symbol would have many uses. It could be displayed to represent a position: opposition to the politicizing of science in government, support for increased research spending, or concern about global warming and species loss. It could be displayed by an astronomer or geologist or sociologist or teacher as a symbol of their allegiance to science. It could be used on car bumpers and web pages, and in public venues. ...

"Perhaps it could even accommodate a cross or star of David or some other symbol to state: 'I am a Christian (or Jew or Muslim) and support science as an enterprise.'"

You can read the full New Scientist article here.

Do you agree with Wolpe? You can send your ideas for a symbol to sciencesymbol@emory.edu, or join the discussion via a special science symbol Facebook page Wolpe set up.

Graphic: iStockphoto.com.

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Blurring the lines between life forms
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Trees and reality TV drive discovery in 2011

2011-12-21T06:41:00.000-08:00

In 2011, flashes of inspiration made fundamental science at Emory seem almost easy. A hike in the woods sparked a breakthrough in number theory, while an episode of “American Idol” led to an insight about the human brain.

Actually, it takes a certain brilliance to find big ideas hiding amid trees and reality TV. To paraphrase Louis Pasteur, whether you are an athlete or a couch potato, chance favors a prepared mind.

Here’s a roundup of the hottest topics on eScienceCommons for 2011.

New theories reveal the nature of numbers: For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. The eureka moment finally occurred when mathematicians were hiking through the fall foliage in north Georgia and noticed patterns in the trees and the switchback trail. Partition numbers are fractal, repeating in an infinite pattern, they suddenly realized.

Teen brains can predict pop song success: A neuroeconomist was watching “American Idol” with his two young daughters when a contestant started singing “Apologize” by One Republic. The song sounded familiar, and the scientist realized that he had used it in a study. That led to a re-analysis of brain-response data of teens listening to obscure songs. The results show that teen brain activity may help predict the popularity of music.

Dawn of agriculture took toll on health: Anthropologists confirmed that when populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of the location or the types of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and the health of the people declined. In modern times, the stature trend has reversed: The average human height is increasing, as food becomes increasingly commercialized and abundant. But is our health improving, in an era of obesity?

Anxious kids confuse ‘mad’ and ‘sad’: Psychologists found that children suffering from extreme social anxiety are trapped in a nightmare of misinterpreted facial expressions: They confuse angry faces with sad ones. Non-verbal communication is a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of child development. The good news is that non-verbal communication skills can be improved at any age.

Chimps, bonobos yield clues to social brain: It’s been a puzzle why our two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have widely different social traits, despite belonging to the same genus. Now, a comparative analysis of their brains shows neuroanatomical differences that may be responsible for these behaviors, from the aggression more typical of chimpanzees to the social tolerance of bonobos.

Chemists reveal the force within you: A new method for visualizing mechanical forces on the surface of a cell provides the first detailed view of those forces, as they occur in real-time. Mapping such forces may help to diagnose and treat diseases related to cellular mechanics. Cancer cells, for instance, move differently from normal cells, and it is unclear whether that difference is a cause or an effect of the disease.

Hominid skull hints at later brain evolution: An analysis of a skull from the most complete early hominid fossils ever found suggests that the large and complex human brain may have evolved more rapidly than previously realized, and at a later time than some other human characteristics. While some features of Australopithecus sediba were more human-like, most notably the precision-grip hand, the brain was more ape-like.

Biochemical cell signals quantified for first time: Just as cell phones and computers transmit data through electronic networks, the cells of your body send and receive chemical messages through molecular pathways. The term “cell signaling” was coined more than 30 years ago to describe this process. Now, for the first time, physicists have quantified the data capacity of a biochemical signaling pathway and found a surprise – it’s way lower than even an old-fashioned, dial-up modem.

Mummies tell history of a modern plague: Mummies from along the Nile are revealing how age-old irrigation techniques may have boosted the plague of schistosomiasis, a water-borne parasitic disease that infects an estimated 200 million people today. An analysis of the mummies provides details about the prevalence of the disease across populations in ancient times, and how human alteration of the environment may have contributed to its spread.

Polar dinosaur tracks open new trail to past: Paleontologists discovered a group of more than 20 polar dinosaur tracks on the coast of Victoria, Australia, offering a rare glimpse into animal behavior during the last period of pronounced global warming, about 105 million years ago. The discovery is the largest and best collection of polar dinosaur tracks ever found in the Southern Hemisphere.

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Beer, bugs and brains: Hot topics in 2010
2010: A science odyssey

Skeletons point to Columbus voyage for syphilis origins

2011-12-16T07:42:00.000-08:00

"The evidence keeps accumulating that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus' crew and rapidly evolved," says anthropologist George Armelagos.

By Carol Clark

Skeletons don’t lie. But sometimes they may mislead, as in the case of bones that reputedly showed evidence of syphilis in Europe and other parts of the Old World before Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492.

None of this skeletal evidence, including 54 published reports, holds up when subjected to standardized analyses for both diagnosis and dating, according to an appraisal in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. In fact, the skeletal data bolsters the case that syphilis did not exist in Europe before Columbus set sail.

“This is the first time that all 54 of these cases have been evaluated systematically,” says George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University and co-author of the appraisal. “The evidence keeps accumulating that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus’ crew and rapidly evolved into the venereal disease that remains with us today.”

The appraisal was led by two of Armelagos’ former graduate students at Emory: Molly Zuckerman, who is now an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and Kristin Harper, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. Additional authors include Emory anthropologist John Kingston and Megan Harper from the University of Missouri.

“Syphilis has been around for 500 years,” Zuckerman says. “People started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven’t stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today.”

The history of syphilis, and society's reactions to the disease, have eerie parallels to the more modern story of HIV/AIDS.

"Syphilis was a by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen," says anthropologist Molly Zuckerman. "It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame." (Image: iStockphoto.com)

The treponemal family of bacteria causes syphilis and related diseases that share some symptoms but spread differently. Syphilis is sexually transmitted. Yaws and bejel, which occurred in early New World populations, are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or oral contact.

The first recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495. One hypothesis is that a subspecies of Treponema from the warm, moist climate of the tropical New World mutated into the venereal subspecies to survive in the cooler and relatively more hygienic European environment.

The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized, sexual disease has added to the controversy over its origins, Zuckerman says.

“In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen,” she says. “It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame.”

A biopsy of Treponema pallidum spirochetes in tissue. In 2008, anthropologist Kristin Harper completed a comprehensive comparative genetic analysis of syphilis's family of bacteria. The results further supported the Columbus theory for its origins. (Image courtesy of CDC.)

Armelagos, a pioneer of the field of bioarcheology, was one of the doubters decades ago, when he first heard the Columbus theory for syphilis. “I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic,” he recalls.

While teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he and graduate student Brenda Baker decided to investigate the matter and got a shock: All of the available evidence at the time actually supported the Columbus theory. “It was a paradigm shift,” Armelagos says. The pair published their results in 1988.

In 2008, Harper and Armelagos published the most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis ever conducted on syphilis’s family of bacteria. The results again supported the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.

A series of 18th-century prints called "A Harlot's Progress" begins with innocent country girl Molly, left, arriving in London, where she is immediately procured by a madame. The lesions on the madame's face are the tell-tale signs of syphilis, which Molly tragically dies of in the last print of the series. Read more about this morality tale here.

But reports of pre-Columbian skeletons showing the lesions of chronic syphilis have kept cropping up in the Old World. For this latest appraisal of the skeletal evidence, the researchers gathered all of the published reports.

They found that most of the skeletal material did not meet at least one of the standardized, diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, including pitting on the skull known as caries sicca and pitting and swelling of the long bones.

The few published cases that did meet the criteria tended to come from coastal regions where seafood was a big part of the diet. The so-called “marine reservoir effect,” caused by eating seafood which contains “old carbon” from upwelling, deep ocean waters, can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Analyzing the collagen levels of the skeletal material enabled the researchers to estimate the seafood consumption and factor that result into the radiocarbon dating.

“Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe,” Harper says.

“The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question,” Zuckerman says. “The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn’t close the book and say we’re done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light.”

Related:
Putting teeth into the Barker hypothesis
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health
Ancient beer brewers tapped antibiotic secrets

Creativity: Science education's missing link

2011-12-14T09:16:00.001-08:00

iStockphoto.com

By Carol Clark

Memorizing facts and formulas may be the foundation of a good science education, but creativity also needs to be taught and encouraged in undergraduate classes, says Robert DeHaan, professor emeritus in Emory's School of Medicine.

An editorial by DeHaan, entitled “Teaching Creative Science Thinking,” will appear in the journal Science on December 16. DeHaan’s career as a researcher of cell biology, a professor of medicine and a science advisor for educational studies spans five decades.

“It’s unfortunate that we often teach science as if science only deals with neat problems with a single answer, and a single path to get to that answer,” DeHaan says. “But when you walk into a lab, you don’t know what problems you’re going to face, or how you’re going to arrive at solutions.”

iStockphoto.com

Creativity is the most complex and abstract of the higher-order cognitive skills, according to the classification system known as Bloom’s taxonomy of learning skills. Other higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and abstraction are also key to solving ill-structured, or “messy,” problems in science, DeHaan says.

And yet, he adds, a recent national sample of 77 undergraduate life science courses, taught by 50 different instructors, found that fewer than 1 percent of the items on tests and quizzes required students to use any of these higher-levels skills.

DeHaan advocates moving beyond just lecturing in science classes and getting students engaged in active learning modes that foster peer-to-peer reasoning and creative thinking for complex problem solving.

“Students need to be reminded that there may be other ways to view a problem than the way it is presented,” DeHaan says. “And they need to learn to generate many ideas about possible solutions before beginning to evaluate which of them may be best.”

Quick, how many uses can you think of for a plastic bottle? It's a simple way to test your creativity. Click here to see one of the most creative answers ever to this question, currently hanging on the Emory Quad.

Creative science thinking should not only be taught, it should be tested, he adds. A simple method, based on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, is to ask students to list all of the possible uses for an object such as a plastic bottle.

When DeHaan gives this problem to students, their lists range from four or five ideas to dozens. “Most of the ideas will be similar, but when you get a response that is limited to 5 percent or less in a group of 100 students, that’s an original idea,” he says.

More research is needed, DeHaan says, to find effective strategies to prepare the next generation of scientists for the complex, interdisciplinary problems that they will need to tackle.

“If more students learn to think like creative scientists, it will be worth the effort,” he concludes.

Related:
How a hike in the woods led to a math 'aha'
Cultivating brains for science
Math's in your cards, so deal with it
An idea that shifts with wind, water and light

An idea that shifts with wind, water and light

2011-12-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

Art meets science on the Emory Quad, in the form of "Piedmont Divide."

By Carol Clark

As you approach the Emory Quadrangle on a sunny afternoon, you see what looks like a giant crystal chandelier floating amid the canopy of the oak trees. As you walk beneath it, the swaying “chandelier” appears as ephemeral as a cloud, or a seeding dandelion.

One thing that Emory’s new sculpture, called “Piedmont Divide,” does not resemble is the thousands of recycled plastic bottles that comprise it.

“I didn’t expect the sort of precious quality of the material, just how much the sunlight and wind would do this,” says the sculpture’s creator, environmental artist John Grade (pronounced “grotty”).

“It was remarkable to see the plastic bottles change from trash into these things that look so organic,” says Julia Kjelgaard, chair of the visual arts department.

The visual arts department invited Grade (pronounced “grotty”), a Seattle-based artist who draws from science and nature, to create a piece for Emory. After a whirlwind two-day visit, and many meetings with faculty, Grade decided to do a piece that would reflect the campus environment, as well as Emory’s research into West Nile virus and global water sustainability.

Grade returned to his Seattle studio to ponder what material he should use to tie all of those themes together. “It was an ‘aha’ moment,” Grade says of the idea of recycling plastic drinking bottles. “I realized that there was this relationship with Coca-Cola supporting the university, and I thought about how to use that product and transform it in some way for this environment.”

In November, Grade returned to Emory with two assistants: Seattle sculptor Dilyara Maganya and civil engineer Travis Stanley. Over 13 days, the three enlisted volunteers from across campus to melt down thousands of discarded drinking bottles and help assemble “Piedmont Divide.”

John Grade at work on the Emory Quad.

“I’ve had this desire to make something with many people,” he says of the group effort. “So I don’t have full control, and you actually have a social contract, a group of people crafting something together and figuring it out along the way. Your end result may not be perfectly made, but you have all these interesting decisions from different people along the way that completely change it.”

Each plastic bottle was cut into a spiral and melted into a long, curving stalk that curled into a dainty little cup at the end. The cups are designed to hold a few drops of rainwater. Click here to see a video of how the sculpture was made.

A tornado siren went off as Grade was standing on a 20-foot platform on the Quad, putting the final touches on the piece. He watched as a gentle rain began filling the thousands of little cups, and the ephemeral character of the sculpture shifted slightly as it took on the weight of the water. The tiny pools of water suspended by the sculpture are an allusion to incubators for mosquitoes.

On a far side of campus from the Quad’s floating chandelier, the second half of “Piedmont Divide” is set in the lake of Lullwater woods. There, the plastic stalks rise from the water like crystal reeds.

Grade says he wants “Piedmont Divide” to help people make connections, between different environments and between different water systems, and how both nature and man use them.

One of Grade’s greatest strengths as an environmental artist may be that he is not afraid of failure. He actually enjoys fielding the curve balls that nature throws at him.

He describes a sculpture he made in Arizona, elevated amid trees and made of edible bits that birds could eat. “The idea came to me because I feel like there’s a lot of ego involved inputting an object out into a landscape, when a lot of times the landscape is very interesting in and of itself,” Grade says. “So I liked the fact that these birds would pick apart this form that I made, and then just shit it all across the mesa.”

After the piece was installed, however, rodents crawled onto the sculpture’s guy wires and annoyed the birds to the point that they wouldn’t eat. “I thought, ‘Do I roll with what the environment comes back to me with, or try to change this,’” Grade recalls. In the end, a birder suggested that he spread a liquid form of jalapeno over the piece, which would thwart mammals but not birds.

As the “Piedmont Divide” shimmers on the Emory campus through spring, it will be interesting to see how the vision keeps shifting in the wind, water, light and creative spirit of a great university.

Hal Jacobs contributed to this story through his video reports.

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Add environmental artist to your resume
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Chemist recalls history of AIDS drugs

2011-12-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

Every December 1 is World AIDS Day, a chance to unite in the fight against HIV, and to reflect on how the epidemic has changed medicine and society.

In 1987, AZT became the first drug for treating HIV infections. “There were issues in the supply of AZT at the time,” recalls Emory chemist Dennis Liotta. “And there were also issues around rapid development of resistance to the drug.”

Liotta’s lab decided to tackle the problem of coming up with a better treatment.

“We came in with a completely uninformed, but fresh, look at the problem,” Liotta recalls. “We had some very efficient ways of preparing compounds. We came up with a novel idea, and it actually worked the first time we tried it.”

The new approach resulted in two important anti-virals for HIV treatment. “First, they had limited side effects as compared to other drugs being used to treat HIV,” Liotta says. “That’s important, because people have to take these drugs every day of their life. The second feature is that they have good resistance profiles. When given in combination, they can dramatically suppress viral replication.”

The breakthroughs were a major game-changer for HIV, allowing infected people to live relatively normal lives by sticking to a treatment regimen.

About 94 percent of people who are being treated for HIV in the United States take one of the anti-viral drugs developed by Liotta’s team.

“Part of our success was due to coming at the problem from a different perspective than others,” Liotta says. “Another part was due to our skills in organic synthesis. And a third part was being in the right place at the right time. As Louis Pasteur said, ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’”

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Throwing linked to intelligence in chimps

2011-12-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

iStockPhoto.com

From CBS News:

"Any zoo-goers so unlucky as to be on the receiving end of a poop-tossing chimpanzee may be excused for taking a dim view of that particular form of monkey mayhem. But don't let the gross-out aspect of the situation cloud your judgment about the perpetrator: New research suggests that a primate's ability to throw an object is actually a solid indicator of intelligence.

"Bill Hopkins of Emory University and his collaborators make that argument in a new paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Among other things, they find major overlap between brain areas which distinguish right- and left-handed throwing chimpanzees and the regions of the cortex involved in language processing by humans. The researchers concluded that the chimps which were better throwers also possessed more developed left brain hemispheres, the area where we process speech."

Read the full article at CBN News.

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How far is Mars? It depends when you ask

2011-11-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

To mark the recent liftoff of the space rover Curiosity, the 39th mission to Mars, Matthew Bell pulled together 39 interesting facts about the Red Planet for “The Independent” newspaper.

Here’s his fact number 13:

“Mars's distance from Earth changes by the second because the two planets are on different elliptical orbits. The distance between them ranges from 36 million miles to more than 250 million miles.”

Which leads to Bell’s fact number 14:

“You can see exactly how far Mars is from Earth in real time thanks to the physics department of Emory University in Atlanta, which has it displayed second-by-second on its website.”

Here’s a link to the Mars real-time distance calculator. It was created by Emory astronomer Horace Dale, to counter the crazy rumors that swirl around about Mars every August. You can read about the Mars rumor here.

The Curiosity is scheduled to land on Mars in August of 2012. The rover contains a seven-foot-long robotic arm, which will allow it to drill into Martian rocks to take samples, and explore the geographic history of Mars. Check out the video (at the top of this post) featuring animations of how the 1-ton rover will touch down when it arrives at Mars, and how the robot will look as it goes about its mission.

The first manned mission to Mars is likely to be a one-way trip. An artist rendition, above, of what the first Martian outpost could look like. (Image by NASA.)

For Bell’s final fact, he notes that the U.S. plans the first manned mission to Mars for 2030: “President Barack Obama gave his support last year, saying he expected to see it happen in his lifetime. But, because of the expense of sending astronauts there and back, it's been proposed that whoever goes to Mars should stay there indefinitely.”

That means that the first people to call the Red Planet home, the first Martians, could be walking the Earth right now.

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From Atlanta to Accra: The growing sewage problem

2011-11-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Christine Moe shows the above video, produced by WaterAid, to first-year medical students at Emory. "I want students to think more about sanitation, and to understand why they should care about the enormous problems surrounding it," she says.

By Carol Clark

Christine Moe began researching human waste disposal during the 1980s, as a VISTA volunteer. She was sent to rural West Virginia to assist in coal mining towns that lacked sewage treatment plants.

“The valleys were incredibly steep and narrow, and septic tanks need to have flat land for the drain field,” Moe recalls. “So the septic tank pipes just emptied straight into the creeks. You could see toilet paper in the brush lining the water.”

Moe now works on sanitation projects around the world as a professor at the Rollins School of Public Health and the director of Emory’s Center for Global Safe Water.

November 19 is World Toilet Day, which aims to build awareness that 40 percent of the people on the planet use unsafe toilets or defecate in the open. It’s a fact of growing concern, to both human health and diginity, and to the environment: The developing world is rapidly urbanizing, and raw sewage is building up in high-population centers.

“When I walk through the slums of Accra, Ghana, I get really outraged at the conditions that I see people living in,” Moe says. “That passion motivates me to want to find solutions.”

World Toilet Day may finally gain momentum in the United States, since actor Matt Damon became a celebrity spokesperson for the cause, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began awarding major grants addressing sanitation.

The Center for Global Safe Water recently received $2.5 million from the Gates Foundation to study ways that people are exposed to human waste in cities of the developing world. The first phase of the research is focusing on Accra, which is typical of many rapidly growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa in its lack of sewage treatment plants. Tanker trucks suck up excreta from latrines and dump it into the coastal ocean.

“You have people literally surrounded by shit,” Moe says.

Public latrines in Accra are squat plates with a trench underneath, shared by hundreds of people. The latrines lack sinks, running water and soap.

People who can’t make it to a latrine may resort to squatting over a plastic bag, then tying up the excreta and tossing it into the household trash, or simply flinging it out a window. This method is known as the “flying toilet.”

Open drains line the unpaved streets where children play. “You’ll see children kicking a ball, and if the ball lands in the drain, one of the kids will climb in, get the ball out and they’ll just keep playing with it,” Moe says, pointing to a photo of a little boy rummaging amid raw sewage in a drain (see above).

Urban agriculture pops up in the slums wherever people can find a spot to grow a few vegetables. For irrigation, they dip containers into the drains and pour the water over the plants.

“There are so many ways that people can be exposed to fecal material, it’s hard to know how to prioritize an intervention,” Moe says. “In our study, we’re trying to get information that will help policy makers develop the most effective solutions.”

The sub-human conditions that Accra slum residents must endure are hard to imagine without seeing them, Moe says. She wants people in Atlanta to not only grasp the terrible toll of poor sanitation in the developing world, but to also understand the growing problem of sewage in the United States.

One-third of the water in a typical U.S. household is used to flush toilets. “We are using drinking water to remove excreta from our homes,” Moe says. “In a city like Atlanta, faced with water shortages every couple of years, I don’t think our system is sustainable.”

The Gates Foundation has launched a campaign called “Reinventing the Toilet.” The idea is to spur innovative toilet designs that do not require massive amounts of water and infrastructure.

China, for instance, is promoting the use of anaerobic digester systems to process waste in rural areas. Household toilets feed into the odorless digesters, which convert the waste into biogas used as an energy source.

“We really need to start getting more creative when it comes to toilets,” Moe says.

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Obama urged to act now on environment

2011-11-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

A dump truck in the tar sands region of Canada. Credit: iStockphoto.com.

Following is an excerpt from an opinion piece published in the New York Times, written by Emory psychologist Drew Westen, author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."

For some time the Obama administration had appeared to be signaling its likely approval of a plan to lay a high-pressure oil pipeline from Canadian tar sands right on top of the main water supply to much of the Midwest. Last week, however, after thousands of protesters — ranging from ranchers and farmers to ordinary Americans concerned about the catastrophic harm that could be done if that pipeline were to leak — surrounded the White House, the administration announced that it was delaying a decision until 2013. ...

The decision to put off a political decision has turned out to be a defining characteristic of this administration. Typically the magic number is 2013, although 2014 and 2020 are popular second-choices. Just two months ago, under heavy lobbying from polluters, the president took both supporters and members of his own administration aback with a decision to override a plan produced by his own Environmental Protection Agency to tighten the lax Bush standards on clean air to prevent toxic smog. The president who had campaigned on restoring the role of science in decision-making overrode the judgment of a unanimous panel of scientists, suggesting that he wanted to “study” the issue further — perhaps until 2013.

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

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East meets West, at the cellular level

2011-11-15T13:23:00.000-08:00

Prayer flags fly over a field in Dharamsala, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas. iStockPhoto.com.

Following is an excerpt from an article written by Emory biologist Arri Eisen, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

To teach my biology class today, I took three planes for a total of 9,000 miles nearly halfway around the world. My students have left their sandals at the door. As I walk in, they sit, maroon-robed and expectant, cross-legged on the floor. My body clock registers 11:30 p.m. the day before. I write on the board: "Are bacteria sentient beings?"

This is my fourth year coming to Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile, in the foothills of the Himalayas, as part of an unusual collaboration—the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative—between the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives and Emory University. About seven years ago, the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetans, invited Emory to develop and teach a contemporary science curriculum for the more than 20,000 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns in exile. …

Over the years, I've come a long way from thinking that teaching science to Tibetan monks and nuns is just a cool thing to do. The monastics, on the whole, are astoundingly open-minded and approach problems with a thoughtful rationality that is, ironically, often missing from my Western colleagues' approach to science and the world. An ancient Zen koan goes something like: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. That is, destroy preconceptions, question everything—especially if you think you've figured it all out. Most of the monastics in my classroom embody that attitude.

They are busy integrating East and West at the cellular level, re-examining everything they thought they knew. For them, the question of whether bacteria are sentient has serious karmic implications. If these single-celled organisms are, indeed, sentient beings, then any other sentient being could be reincarnated as a bacterium. They face this question with calm, engaged clarity, ready to rethink and integrate whatever they may discover.

Read the whole article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Add environmental artist to your resume

2011-11-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

By Carol Clark

Take an empty plastic bottle out of the trash. Slash the label and the top off with a knife, then use scissors to cut the base into a spiraling ribbon. Now clamp the plastic ribbon down and blast it with 1,000 degrees F. from a heat gun.

Voila! The plastic bottle becomes a long, slender stalk curving into a dainty little cup at one end, like a pitcher plant. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t done it myself.

Environmental artist John Grade glanced at my handiwork and noted that the cup at the end of the stalk is “to hold the mosquito larvae.”

Something unusual is under way on the Emory campus. And I mean unusual even by academia standards.

Grade (pronounced “grotty”) is a visiting artist at Emory, heading up a monumental public art project called “Piedmont Divide.” During the next 10 days, 20,000 plastic water bottles are being transformed into two massive sculptures. One of the sculptures will hang from the trees on the Quadrangle; the other will be suspended over the lake at Lullwater Preserve.

The results are bound to be interesting. Grade is internationally known for his immense installations. His piece “Seeps of Winter” was influenced by his curiosity about the remains of humans found in Irish bogs, and a beached humpback whale he came across one day walking on the Washington coast. His sculpture “The Elephant Bed” centered on Ice Age algae that forms the geographical bedrock of Brighton, England.

John Grade's sketch for "Piedmont Divide" on the campus Quadrangle.

For “Piedmont Divide” Grade is drawing his inspiration from Emory’s work on West Nile virus and global water sustainability.

"Piedmont Divide" needs volunteers daily through Saturday, Nov. 19, to help with the construction. If you love art and/or science, you don’t want to miss this chance to become an environmental sculptor, even if it’s just for a few hours. Click here for volunteer details.

Taking pieces of trash and changing them into pieces for a major artwork can alter your perspective. I will never look at a plastic bottle the same way.

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Scientists weigh in on baby fat

2011-11-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

Is a chubby baby the picture of health or a blueprint for obesity? Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com.

From the Associated Press:

Researchers say there's a new way to tell if infants are likely to become obese later on: Check to see if they've passed two key milestones on doctors' growth charts by age 2.

Babies who grew that quickly face double the risk of being obese at age 5, compared with peers who grew more slowly, a study found. Rapid growers were also more likely to be obese at age 10, and infants whose chart numbers climbed that much during their first 6 months faced the greatest risks.

Contrary to the idea that chubby babies are the picture of health, the study bolsters evidence that "bigger is not better" in infants, said Dr. Elsie Taveras, the study's lead author and an obesity researcher at Harvard Medical School.

But skeptics say not so fast. Babies often grow in spurts and flagging the speediest growers could lead to putting infants on diets -- a bad idea that could backfire in the long run, said Dr. Michelle Lampl, director of Emory University's Center for the Study of Human Health.

"It reads like a very handy rule and sounds like it would be very useful -- and that's my concern," Lampl said. The guide would be easy to use to justify feeding infants less and to unfairly label them as fat. It could also prompt feeding patterns that could lead to obesity later, she said.

Lampl noted that many infants studied crossed at least two key points on growth charts; yet only 12 percent were obese at age 5 and slightly more at age 10. Nationally, about 10 percent of preschool-aged children are obese, versus about 19 percent of those aged 6 to 11.

Lampl and Edward Frongillo, an infant growth specialist at the University of South Carolina, voiced concern in an editorial accompanying the study in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, released online Monday.

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Science meets art in the park: Come and play

2011-11-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

Soon clouds won’t be the only thing hovering over the lake in Emory’s Lullwater Preserve. Photo by Jon Martinson.

Environmental artist John Grade arrived on the Emory campus this week to begin orchestrating “Piedmont Divide.” A large-scale art installation in two parts, “Piedmont Divide” will reflect the university’s research into West Nile virus and global water sustainability.

“This is a creative project where everyone can play,” said Julia Kjelgaard, chair of the Visual Arts Department, during a welcome reception for Grade, a visiting artist at Emory.

Grade is soliciting volunteers to help in the building of the two large outdoor sculptures: One to be located amid the trees on the campus Quadrangle, and the other above the lake at the Lullwater park. The work will continue through Saturday, November 19. Click here for details of how to join in the effort.

“The plans are more or less free-form, like a jazz performance,” Grade said, adding that everyone who works on the project may influence the end result. “I hope that the work will mature and develop beyond what my vision is.”

A studio at the Emory Visual Arts Gallery is filling up with giant bags of clear plastic water bottles, the raw material for the sculptures. If you have some clear plastic bottles to recycle, drop them off at the gallery, which is still short of the 20,000 needed.

Rather than distinct masses, the two sculptures will be “cloud-like forms,” Grade said. “The clouds will start taking shape from center, where they will be most dense, and then spiral outward. The pieces will expand in an organic way. It’s a bit more risky to work this way, but I’m confident that the results will be interesting.”

The installation on the Quad will be suspended in the tree canopy in a spider-web-like network of lines. A pulley system will allow the sculpture to be lowered and raised.

The Lullwater piece will be suspended over the lake. A scaffold just below the water line will support the structure. Grade envisions dancers performing beneath the sculpture. “They will look like they're walking on water,” he says.

In addition to lending a hand in building the sculptures, the public is invited to a Creativity Conversation with Grade and Kjelgaard, on Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 5 p.m. in the Carlos Museum Reception Hall.

On Thursday, Nov. 17 at 6:30 p.m., Grade will discuss the intersection of art, science and sustainability with Uriel Kitron, chair of environmental studies, and Christine Moe, director of the Center for Safe Water at Emory. Pizza will be served during the free public event, at the Visual Arts Gallery.

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How much time do you have left?

2011-11-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried in a race against time.

Imagine your arm is “tattooed” with a watch that shows how much time you have left to live. You can see the seconds ticking down.

That’s the premise of the new science-fiction thriller “In Time,” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. It’s 2161 and genetic engineering stops people from aging after 25 years. One major downside of eveyone staying in their prime, of course, is over-population. So people die within a year of turning 25 unless they are strong enough to work for more minutes, or wealthy enough to literally buy more time. The poor live in a separate “time zone,” segregated from the zone of the rich, who can exist for millennia if they are sufficiently well off.

Even in the real world of today, statistics favor the wealthy for longevity.

"Here in the U.S., we have large and enduring economic inequalities in health," says Hannah Cooper, assistant professor at the Rollins School of Public Health. “People in the lower socio-economic strata tend to be two to three times more likely to die early than people who are in the highest economic strata."

Some of the factors that may play a role in how much time you have left include: whether you have health insurance, the crime rate and pollution levels near your home, your access to fresh fruits and vegetables, your mental state, and whether you are exposed to toxins or other hazards in your workplace.

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Where's the beef? Mideast looks to East Africa

2011-11-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

A herd of thirsty cattle arrives at a watering trough in Isiolo, Kenya. Much of the livestock from the Horn of Africa is destined for the Middle East. (iStockphoto.com)

By Carol Clark

Muslims are gathering in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for hajj, an annual five-day pilgrimage, set to begin on Saturday. The largest pilgrimage in the world, the hajj draws millions of Muslims, and they will be feasting on ritually sacrificed meat.

Much of that livestock, more than two million animals, will come from the Horn of Africa.

“It’s big business, but it’s unclear how much small-scale livestock producers in East Africa really benefit from the growing demand for their products in the Middle East,” says Emory anthropologist Peter Little.

That’s one of the questions Little plans to tackle during the next phase of his research into how East Africa pastoralists make a living amid the vagaries of a harsh environment and climate change.

Little, who has been studying the region’s pastoralists for three decades, recently received an additional $700,000 from the Livestock-Climate Change Collaborative Support Program, to continue working on a joint project in the region. The LCC program, centered at Colorado State University, was established in 2010 through an agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Emory is partnering with Pwani University College in Kenya and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia for the current phase of the project. In addition to Little’s deep experience in the region, Emory brings a strong public health component to the research, and the expertise of disease ecologist Uriel Kitron, chair of environmental studies.

“One thing we will be looking at is how the warming of East Africa is creating different kinds of disease vectors, affecting both livestock and humans,” Little says.

The project ultimately aims to increase incomes and food security in the extremely vulnerable Horn of Africa. The region is currently confronting yet another drought disaster, and violent conflict between Kenya and Somalia.

“It’s a challenge working in the Horn of Africa on many levels,” Little says. “But the research questions are exciting, and so is the potential to have an impact. It’s a worthy goal.”

Small-scale livestock keepers have managed climate variability and many other challenges by moving to new sources of water and pastures. Fences and settlements are increasingly restricting their moves, however, while new technologies, such as cell phones and trucking of water and feed, have expanded access to information and resources. Little is known about the current market risks facing mobile pastoralists, although the livestock trade continues to be an integral part of the economies of the region.

Students from Emory and the African universities will also be involved in the project, which includes training local counterparts to continue the work of pastoralist development in the region after the project ends in 2015.

Related:
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Express your love of chemistry

2011-11-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever dreamed of dancing on the periodic table? Now you have your chance. The Emory chemistry club, ChEmory, is sponsoring "Transform Chemistry into Art," a contest in celebration of the International Year of Chemistry.

Members of the Emory community from across campus are invited to use drawing, photography, sculpture, film, song and dance to express their passion for chemistry. Entries are due by Wednesday, Nov. 16 to sarah.a.peterson@emory.edu or Atwood 308. The works will be on display, and the winners announced, on November 19. Prizes will be awarded.

For inspiration, watch the video below of FoSheng Hsu from Cornell, doing an interpretative dance of the the world of x-ray crystallography and a 3-dimensional protein structure. Hsu won the chemistry division for the 2011 "Dance Your Ph.D" contest, an international event sponsored by the journal Science. A record number of 55 dances were submitted to the contest this year, and you can check them out here.

The Holy Grail to X-ray crystal structure of human protein phosphatase from FoSheng Hsu on Vimeo.

Chemists reveal the force within you

2011-10-31T09:01:00.000-07:00

By Carol Clark

A new method for visualizing mechanical forces on the surface of a cell, reported in Nature Methods, provides the first detailed view of those forces, as they occur in real-time.

“Now we’re able to measure something that’s never been measured before: The force that one molecule applies to another molecule across the entire surface of a living cell, and as this cell moves and goes about its normal processes,” says Khalid Salaita, assistant professor of biomolecular chemistry at Emory University. “And we can visualize these forces in a time-lapsed movie.”

Salaita developed the florescent-sensor technique with chemistry graduate students Daniel Stabley and Carol Jurchenko, and undergraduate senior Stephen Marshall.

“Cells are constantly tugging and pushing on their surroundings, and they can even communicate with one another using mechanics,” Salaita says. “One way that cells use forces is evident from the characteristic architecture of tissue, like a lung or a heart. If we want to really understand cells and how they work, we have to understand cell mechanics at a molecular level. The first step is to measure the tension applied to specific receptors on the cell surface.”

The researchers demonstrated their technique on the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), one of the most studied cellular signaling pathways. They mapped the mechanical strain exerted by EGFR during the early stages of endocytosis, when the protein receptor of a cell takes in a ligand, or binding molecule. The results showed that the cell does not passively absorb the ligand, but physically pulls it inside during the process. Their experiments provide the first direct evidence that force is exerted during endocytosis.

"Once a force is applied to the polymer, it stretches out,” Salaita explains. “And as it extends, the distance from the quencher increases and the fluorescent signal turns on and grows brighter." Graphic by Daniel Stabley.

Mapping such forces may help to diagnose and treat diseases related to cellular mechanics. Cancer cells, for instance, move differently from normal cells, and it is unclear whether that difference is a cause or an effect of the disease.

“It’s known that if EGFR is over-active, that can lead to cancer,” Salaita says. “And one of the ways that EGFR is activated is by binding its ligand and taking it in. So if we can understand how tugging on EGFR force changes the pathway, and whether it plays a role in cancer, it might be possible to design drugs that target this pulling process.”

Several methods have been developed in recent years to try to study the mechanics of cellular forces, but they have major limitations.

One genetic engineering approach requires splitting open and modifying proteins of a cell. This invasive technique may change the behavior of the cell, skewing the results.

The new technique for visualizing cellular forces uses a standard fluorescence microscope.

The technique developed at Emory is non-invasive, does not modify the cell, and can be done with a standard fluorescence microscope. A flexible polymer is chemically modified at both ends. One end gets a fluorescence-based turn-on sensor that will bind to a receptor on the cell surface. The other end is chemically anchored to a microscope slide and a molecule that quenches fluorescence.

“Once a force is applied to the polymer, it stretches out,” Salaita explains. “And as it extends, the distance from the quencher increases and the fluorescent signal turns on and grows brighter. We can determine the force being exerted by measuring the amount of fluorescent light emitted.”

The forces of any individual protein or molecule on the cell surface can be measured using the technique, at far higher spatial and temporal resolutions than was previously possible.

Many mysteries beyond the biology and chemistry of cells may be explained through measuring cellular forces. How does a cancer cell crawl when a tumor spreads? What are the forces involved in cell division and immune response? What are the mechanics that allow groups of cardiac cells to beat in unison?

“Our method can be applied to nearly any receptor, opening the door to rapidly studying chemical and mechanical interactions across the thousands of membrane-bound receptors on the surface of virtually any cell type,” Salaita says. “We hope that measuring cellular forces could then become part of the standard repertoire of biochemical techniques that scientists use to study living systems.”

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The spirit of Emory came from a lab

2011-10-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

From Emory Magazine:

Does any other university have a biology lab skeleton as its mascot? We think it unlikely. As mascots go, Emory’s is on the eccentric side. Dooley made his first appearance in 1899 in the “Phoenix,” Emory’s literary journal at the time, with an essay titled “Reflections of the Skeleton.” Writing as a specimen from the Science Room, Dooley was a mournful character, complaining about the high spirits of the “college boys” who disturbed his rest.

He showed up again a decade later and remained a kind of campus commentator, but his physical presence was not observed until 1941, when the Board of Trustees first allowed dancing on campus. That seems to have cheered him up.

Now known as James W. Dooley (he takes his first name and middle initial from the current university president), Dooley is represented on campus by a student – whose identity is kept secret – dressed as a skeleton in a black cape, a black top hat, and white gloves.

He has become a Lord of Misrule, the instigator of the festive Dooley’s Week – traditionally ushered in by the skeleton himself – who has arrived by helicopter, motorcycle and vintage car, accompanied by his entourage of student bodyguards.

Dooley is part of the rich history that Emory is celebrating during its 175th anniversary year, including many major science milestones. During the past 10 years alone, Emory researchers have made 1,418 invention disclosures and applied for 968 patents. The university has seen 32 products reach the market and launched 55 start-up companies. Read more in Emory Magazine.

Are we turning Steve Jobs into a saint?

2011-10-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

Is that a MacBook Air Steve Jobs is presenting to the masses, or a bible for the cult of mass celebrity? (Photo credits, above and below: iStockphoto.com.)

Gary Laderman, chair of religion at Emory, writes on CNN's Belief Blog:

Steve Jobs has been the object of numerous memorials, and tributes - more than a million - are being posted on Apple’s “Remembering Steve” webpage, with condolences as well as testimonials about how Jobs and his products have touched and indeed transformed the lives of countless individuals.

Make no mistake about it, the veneration we are seeing in the aftermath of Jobs’ death is religious through and through - not “kinda” religious, or “pseudo” religious,” or “mistakenly” religious, but a genuine expression for many of heartfelt sacred sentiments of loss and glorification.

It is not tied to any institution like a church or to any discrete tradition like Buddhism; it is, instead, tied to a religious culture that will only grow in significance and influence in the years ahead: the cult of celebrity.

As more and more people move away from conventional religions and identify as “nones” (those who choose to claim “no religion” in polls and surveys), celebrity worship and other cultural forms of sacred commitment and meaning will assume an even greater market share of the spiritual marketplace.

In life Jobs may have been something of an enigma who maintained his privacy and generally stayed out of the public limelight. In death, Jobs now is an immortal celebrity whose life story, incredible wealth, familiar visage, and igadgets will serve as touchstones for many searching for meaningful gods and modes of transcendence.

It has been said that death is the great equalizer - rich and poor, successes and failures, the powerful and the disempowered cannot escape the one inevitable fact of human existence.

Jobs and other celebrities cannot escape this reality, but unlike you and me, they live on in the memories of fans and followers and become guiding lights in the mundane darkness of our ordinary lives.

Read more on the CNN Belief Blog.

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Steve Jobs inspires prize-winning short film

Dalai Lama leads talks on ecology and ethics

2011-10-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

“The slow meltdown of Earth’s capacity to sustain much of life, as we know it, poses an urgent challenge for both spiritual traditions and science.”

That’s the introductory statement to the conference on Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence, held Oct. 17-21 in Dharamsala, India. The Dalai Lama, Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory, led the meeting, hosted by the Mind and Life Institute.

Emory religion scholar John Dunne moderated a session called “A Role for Theology," which is summed up on the conference web site:

“If our world view is one based on contemporary science as well as the deepest wisdom of many religions, a world view that claims we are radically interrelated and interdependent with all other forms of life, then we will, or should, respond to our present crisis with similarly radical changes in our thinking and behavior. But do we? This is the critical question for all fields of concern with climate change, including the religions – and it is a very difficult one. What causes people to change at a deep enough level so their behavior changes as well? The shock of climate change may be the catalyst to awaken us from the lie of the current world view of individual fulfillment through consumerism, to the reality of fulfillment by sharing with needy fellow creatures and the Earth itself, through religious understandings of limitation, detachment and self-emptying.”

The video of the session is above. Here's a link to videos of all the sessions of the conference.

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Happy Mole Day!

2011-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

If you have to ask, chances are you are not celebrating Mole Day, an unofficial holiday for chemists, on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. The time and date are based on Avogadro's number, which defines the number of particles in one mole of substance. Emory chemists celebrate in a big way. Their tradition involves a pinata, this year hand-crafted into an actual garden-variety mole by Charlene Chan and Yoshie Narui, and some initiation rites for new faculty members (see Chris Scarborough in action in the video below). Cheers to Avogadro, and to scientists everywhere today.

Norovirus stays infective for months in water

2011-10-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Transmission electron micrograph of Norovirus particles in feces. (Graham Colm, Wikipedia Commons.)

From Science Daily:

Researchers from Emory University have discovered that norovirus in groundwater can remain infectious for at least 61 days. The research is published in the October Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Human norovirus is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis.The disease it causes tends to be one of the more unpleasant of those that leave healthy people unscathed in the long run, with diarrhea and vomiting that typically last for 48 hours. Norovirus sickens one in 15 Americans annually, causing 70,000 hospitalizations, and more than 500 deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The results answer a question of great importance to public health, which had driven researcher Christine Moe and her colleagues to conduct this research: If well water becomes contaminated with noroviruses--perhaps from leaking sewer lines or a septic tank -- how long do these noroviruses survive in water, and when would it be safe to drink from that well?

Read the full article in Science Daily.

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Chemists modify rules for reaction rates

2011-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

By Carol Clark

Theoretical chemists at Emory University have solved an important mystery about the rates of chemical reactions and the so-called Polanyi rules.

The findings, published in the journal Science, reveal why a reaction involving methane does not conform to the known rules, a problem that has baffled physical chemists in recent years.

“We showed that a pre-reactive, long-range force can align the reaction of a chorine atom with methane, or natural gas, in a way that actually inhibits the reaction,” says Joel Bowman, a professor of theoretical chemistry at Emory and the Cherry L. Emerson Center for Computational Chemistry. “We believe that the theoretical work that we did has extended and modified the Polanyi rules.”

Bowman published the results with Gabor Czako, a post-doctoral fellow in theoretical chemistry who performed most of the complex computational and mathematical analyses that uncovered the results.

Long-range, their findings could play a role in the development of cleaner, more efficient fuels.

The reactive properties of methane are of particular interest, since it is an important fuel. Photo by Carol Clark.

Understanding the dynamics of chemical reactions is key to driving reactions efficiently, whether in a laboratory experiment or in an industrial application. In 1986, John Polanyi shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry, in part by providing general rules for how different forms of energy affect the rates of reactions.

“The Polanyi rules tell you the best way to deposit energy in a simple molecule to make a chemical reaction occur,” Bowman says. “It’s a bit like knowing in advance how to invest $1,000 to maximize the return on investment.”

Polanyi developed the framework based on studies of simple reactions of chlorine and fluorine atoms with hydrogen gas. As technology has advanced in recent years, some chemists began testing the Polanyi rules for more complicated reactions, and the rules appeared to break down. Most notably, sophisticated molecular beam experiments by Kopin Liu at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences in Taiwan showed that the reaction of halogen atoms with methane did not conform to the rules.

“Suddenly, the rules appeared to have changed, and no one could explain why,” Bowman says. “We decided to roll up our sleeves and attack the problem theoretically.”

Bowman and Czako drew from the computational power of the Emerson Center, specialized software and analytical techniques. They first created theoretical-computational simulations of the experiments done by Liu and others, and then described the results mathematically.

“Our calculations showed essentially an exact agreement with the experimental results,” Bowman says. “When theory and experiment agree you’re happy, but you still want to know why.”

Determining why the reactions did not conform to the Polanyi rules was another complicated task, involving quantum mechanics and forces that govern the reaction down to the atomic level.

“As theoreticians, we’re able to zoom in and look at the results of our calculations in a way that’s virtually impossible in an experiment,” Bowman says.

They identified a subtle interplay between the Polanyi rules and a pre-reactive long-range force of methane with chlorine. If you follow the Polanyi rules, this long-range force, or steric control, will misalign the reactants, preventing them from docking correctly and inhibiting a reaction. But if you apportion the energy in the opposite way to the rules, the misalignment is wiped out and the reaction occurs.

“This long-range force was playing a bigger role than was previously realized,” Bowman says. “It can actually trump the Polanyi rules, at least in the reactions that Liu and we looked at. The Polanyi rules are certainly not all wrong, they just appear to be too simple to apply to more complex reactions.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The reactive properties of natural gas are of particular interest since it is an important fuel. Bowman and Czako are now applying their techniques to study the combustion of methane and oxygen, which produces carbon dioxide. “It’s important to understand the dynamics of this reaction, because it might lead to more efficient ways to produce fuel, and a reduction in the levels of pollution emitted,” Bowman says.

Related:
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'Piedmont Divide' to bridge art and science

2011-10-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

In a previous work called "Collector," above, John Grade created tusk-like forms that were used as oyster beds in Washington's Willapa Bay.

Environmental artist John Grade comes to Atlanta as an Emory artist-in-residence Nov. 6-19 to design and build large-scale sculptural installations. His project, "Piedmont Divide" will visually and conceptually link the campus Quadrangle and Lullwater Preserve. Using materials derived from indigenous plants and trees, Grade will relate the form and construction method of the two installations to Emory’s research on West Nile virus and worldwide water sustainability.

The Emory Visual Arts Gallery will function as a working studio, available to the public as "Piedmont Divide" unfolds. Area residents are invited to participate as volunteers on the project. Grade’s residency also includes a follow-up visit in the spring to oversee the disassembly of the sculpture, as part of a larger creative arts performance. For more info, visit: visualarts.emory.edu.

The ultimate goal of the "Piedmont Divide" collaboration is to raise environmental awareness in Emory and Atlanta.

Grade’s sculptures are shaped by natural landscapes, often changing form throughout their lifespans. One example is his 2007 wooden sculpture, "Collector," which was submerged in Washington’s Willapa Bay, where it acted as an oyster bed. After the oysters were eaten by Grade and friends, the tusk-like forms were transported on the grill of Grade’s pick-up truck to a slot canyon in Little Death Hollow, Utah. There, covered with insects from the ride, it was washed clean by flooding.

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Sewage raises West Nile virus risk

Captive chimps up for endangered status

2011-10-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

A wild adult male chimpanzee, above, at Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where Thomas Gillespie's lab is working with the Jane Goodall Institute to understand the pathogens responsible for declining chimp populations. Mahale, a site near Gombe, is one of the confirmed places where human visitors have accidentally infected chimps with fatal respiratory pathogens. Photo by Matthew Heintz.

Currently, it is legal in the United States to keep a chimpanzee as a pet, and to dress the animal up and use it in movies, or for other entertainment purposes. A group of petitioners is seeking to ban those practices, including the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Jane Goodall Institute, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance and the Wildlife Conservation Society. They have asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to extend endangered status protection to captive chimpanzees in this country.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is now reviewing the matter, and is accepting comments from experts and the general public through October 31.

Thomas Gillespie, a primate disease ecologist at Emory, is among the expert petitioners.

Gillespie, left, speaking at a recent symposium on ape health in Kyoto, Japan.

Following is a letter to the Parks and Wildlife Service from Gillespie:

I am writing in regard to the request for information concerning the status of chimpanzees, and to voice my professional opinion that all chimpanzees, captive and wild, should be correctly classified as an endangered species within the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of the United States.

I am an associate professor of global health and biodiversity conservation with faculty appointments in the Department of Environmental Studies, the Rollins School of Public Health and the program in Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution at Emory University.

Currently, wild chimpanzees are listed as endangered under the ESA, yet captive chimpanzees in the United States are only considered “threatened” and are thereby deprived of the protections afforded to endangered species. Chimpanzees are the only species that suffers such “split-listing,” since all other endangered animal species are afforded endangered status whether wild or captive-born. One unfortunate outcome of this policy loophole is that private citizens can buy and sell chimpanzees as pets or use them for entertainment purposes, activities with demonstrated negative effects on ape welfare and public perception of conservation status.

Wild chimpanzee populations are declining, and a global effort is needed to save the species from extinction. It is important to note that wild chimpanzees are more endangered today than they were in 1990 (when wild populations were listed as endangered, and all threats to chimpanzee survival needed to be addressed.) Thus, the United Stats must do everything in its power to promote chimpanzee conservation, including regulating the use of captive chimpanzees. We send a confusing message to citizens and governments of ape range-states when the United States pushes for increased protection abroad while not protecting chimpanzees domestically.

In addition to my concerns raised above, I would like to elaborate on a threat to wild chimpanzees that relates directly to captive chimpanzees not receiving the protections afforded to all other endangered species. There is now overwhelming evidence that even mildly pathogenic human respiratory pathogens are capable of causing high rates of mortality in wild chimpanzee populations. If precautions are not enforced, tourists and researchers can be responsible for introducing such pathogens to wild chimpanzee populations as we have witnessed repeatedly in recent years.

Although guidelines have been implemented at chimpanzee tourism sites to reduce the risk of transmission of such pathogens, enforcement is variable. Tourists arrive at chimpanzee tourism sites after a lifetime of experiencing countless images of chimpanzees in advertising, films and television programs portraying human-chimpanzee contact and proximity. Many tourists are disappointed when they learn that they will not be allowed to touch or hold a wild chimpanzee. Tourists often push their guides to allow them to get closer to chimpanzees or fail to move away from chimps when they approach as mandated. Guides are put in a difficult situation of wanting to enforce guidelines to protect the apes, but not wanting to risk losing a substantial tip if tourists are disappointed by their experience. This is not a hypothetical situation, this is something that I have witnessed countless times over the past 14 years while conducting research at a diversity of sites in Sub-Saharan African that host chimpanzee tourism.

Sincerely,
Thomas Gillespie

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A wild view of 'Planet of the Apes'
Gorillas cope with people in their midst

A few things you may not know about water

2011-10-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

"Water Study" will lead participants through a "scientific experiment" in campus creeks.

By Carol Clark

Chances are you haven’t thought much about water lately. Unless you are a rancher in drought-stricken Texas, and you just relocated your cattle out of state because nothing is left for them to eat. Or if you are a young girl in rural Kenya, facing a miles-long walk to fetch water for the family, and a return trip bearing the heavy load.

We tend to take water for granted in lush Atlanta. But it’s moving front and center at Emory this year, through a series of events that will draw from science, art, the environment and the imaginations of all those who want to dive into the experience.

You can fall in behind dancers in haz-mat suits, as they lead people through a “scientific experiment” along the creek in Baker Woodlands. The interactive performance, called “Water Study,” takes place every evening from Oct. 15 to 19. And you can join a line of people accumulating across campus at noon on Oct. 18, to pour water from vessel to vessel until the last drop vanishes.

More water-related surprises are on the way in November, and in the spring. To prime the pump, so to speak, here are a few random facts about water.

Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, and all of that water came from space after the planet cooled down. One theory is that the water came from meteorites. The Herschel telescope, however, recently zeroed in on the properties of a comet, and learned it has water with the same deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio as Earth’s oceans.

Texas is experiencing its most severe one-year drought ever. Drier than normal conditions are expected to continue at least for months, and possibly until 2020, according to a state climatologist. The National Weather Service reports that livestock and agriculture losses have topped $5.2 billion. During the past 11 months, more than 6,000 square miles have burned across the state, an area larger than the state of Connecticut.

Comet McNaught shoots over the Pacific Ocean off Chili. Comets are like icy time capsules that may hold clues to our solar system’s evolution, including the source of Earth’s water. Credit: European Southern Observatory.

Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase during the last century, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. By 2025, the FAO projects that two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions of water scarcity.

Globally, diarrhea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 percent of these deaths are due to a lack of sanitation facilities and safe water for drinking and hygiene, according to the United Nations. More than one in six people worldwide don’t have access to safe water.

Environmentalist and author Janisse Ray, on the banks of the Altamaha River. Photo by Carol Clark.

Georgia’s Altamaha River flows 135 miles across the bottom third of the state. Its banks are mostly wetland wilderness, and it is one of the few almost entirely undammed rivers in the United States. Environmentalist Janisse Ray describes the river in her new book Drifting into Darien: “The Altamaha’s size and nature have led it to be called Georgia’s Little Amazon, the most powerful river east of the Mississippi. Despite this distinction, most people remain unaware of it, which prompted Reg Murphy in his National Geographic article to call it 'the river almost nobody knows.'"

Now is a great time of year to paddle the Altamaha.

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Lesson No. 1: Learn to relax

2011-10-10T10:23:00.001-07:00

Laura Diamond writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

About 75 college students sat on yoga mats, taking deep breaths as they contoured their bodies in different positions.

Last week’s yoga class taught Emory University freshmen how to make their bodies stronger and more flexible. Students also learned how yoga could reduce their stress — a crucial lesson as they embarked on their first college midterms all while adjusting to living on their own.

This balance of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being is a cornerstone of Emory University’s new Health 100 course, a requirement for all freshmen.

Several colleges across the country have added programs and requirements in recent years to address students’ physical health and combat the obesity epidemic. But Emory officials have taken a more holistic approach and created a course based on the research they’ve conducted on predictive health, which stresses maintaining good health and preventing disease as opposed to just curing illnesses people already have.

The course abandoned the “do this, don’t do that” mentality found in most health lectures, said Michelle Lampl, director of the Emory Center for the Study of Human Health. “We are not here to admonish or preach to the students,” she said. “We are teaching them a healthier approach to life. They didn’t come here to fill their heads while destroying their bodies.”

Rather than professors lecturing to students, upperclassmen teach the class through small-group discussions. They help the freshmen come up with health goals and give advice on different aspects of college life.

Read the whole article in the AJC.

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A geologist paints Darwin

2011-10-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

By Carol Clark

Emory geologist Woody Hickcox feels a special kinship with Charles Darwin, and it’s not just because of a slight physical resemblance. “Nothing in geology or the natural world makes any sense without his theory of evolution,” Hickcox says. “He’s sort of the kindly grandfather of us all.”

Hickcox, a senior lecturer in the department of environmental studies, has taught at Emory for 27 years. He’s also a talented artist. His murals and paintings of nature, especially birds, can be seen throughout the Math and Science Building.

When Hickcox was invited to create a piece in celebration of the Fernbank Museum’s special Darwin exhibit, he chose to do a larger-than-life, impressionistic portrait of the English naturalist, who established that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor.

“I feel very close to him as a scientist, and painting him brings me closer to him as a person. The melding of the two is greater than the sum of the parts,” Hickcox says. “You can see in his face that he went through a lot, that there were a lot of trials and tribulations in his life, aside from the science that we are all struggling to understand.”

Hickcox says that while painting the portrait, he thought about Darwin as “a normal person,” instead of the myth. “He’s not the devil. He’s not really different from any one else. He’s just a really smart guy who, in a sense, got really lucky to go on the ship he went on. And he was one of those people who were able to bring a tremendous amount of material together.”

The portrait of Darwin is part of the show “Selections,” works of art inspired by evolution, that will be on view at the Fernbank throughout the Darwin exhibit. The eight Georgia artists in the show include other scientists from the department of environmental studies: Anthony Martin and Berry Brosi, and former faculty member Lore Rattan, who left Emory last year to pursue her art full-time.

You can meet all of the artists, and ask them questions about their work, at the official opening party for “Selections,” on Friday, October 14, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at Fernbank.

Related:
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Teaching evolution enters new era

'Contagion' and emerging disease threats

2011-10-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

iStockphoto.com

Here's an excerpt from an article by Lynne Peeples on the Huffington Post:

Our proximity to migrating animals, rodents and livestock, combined with environmental upheaval, has created conditions that make animal-borne epidemics more likely –- a theme the new film "Contagion" embraces with enough zeal to throw Gwyneth Paltrow into a fit of lethal convulsions.

Animals carry a number of viruses, usually without consequence to themselves, but those same viruses can prove deadly to another species. Humans have simply yet to cross paths with most of these pathogens.

"In the future, we're going to come across viruses that have been around for millions of years in obscure animals," says Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based organization of scientists dedicated to conserving biodiversity.

While science can typically track down creatures that are hosts to threatening viruses, such human factors as population growth, income inequality, environmental degradation, climate change and even global travel may all play a much more decisive role in unleashing outbreaks of deadly and hard-to-control diseases.

"Microbes are out there and they are paying attention," says James Hughes, a professor of medicine and public health at Emory University, who spent about three decades with the CDC. "They are pretty good probes for weaknesses in the public health system."

Just look around, analysts warn. As deforestation and development shrinks the margins between civilization and the untrammeled regions globally, diseases will have more opportunities for transmission to humans.

Intensifying agricultural production can also facilitate epidemics, which is why the United States made Daszak's watchlist for countries that are likely to be home to emerging infectious diseases. Combined with the overuse of antibiotics, tightly penned livestock such as chickens and cows can also play a role in jumpstarting outbreaks (as happened recently with both salmonella and E. coli threats).

Read the whole article at the Huff Post.

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Virtual reality helps Marine fight PTSD

2011-09-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

“It was killing me,” Joshua Musser told CNN about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Musser, a Marine Corps veteran who fought in the battle of Fallujah in Iraq, realized that he needed help. He turned to Emory clinical psychologist Maryrose Gerardi, who uses virtual reality to treat PTSD.

The treatment required Musser to relive the sights and sounds of war through computer simulation, as Gerardi talked him through the experience.

“They put you back in Iraq where you kind of have one foot here and one foot there,” Musser told CNN. “The only thing outside of Iraq that you hear is her voice. I would shake really bad and I would sweat, but she would be in my ear and pull me back.”

“People often try not to think about what happened to them, and what we’ve found is that’s the worst thing that you can do when you experience a trauma,” Girardi said. “If you don’t process it and deal with it, that’s what can eventually cause PTSD and a chronic problem.”

'Galaxy' makes genomics more user-friendly

2011-09-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

iStockphoto/AlanPhilips

Kevin Davies writes in Bio-IT World about an open-source platform for computational analysis:

Enter the term “galaxy” in a Web search engine, Penn State’s Anton Nekrutenko muses, and the top hits are likely to be an astrophysical entity or “a very bad soccer team.” But making fast strides up the web charts is the Galaxy open-source tool, which is coming into its own as more and more researchers seek ways to easily handle and manipulate next-gen sequencing (NGS) and other large datasets.

“Galaxy allows you to do analyses you cannot do anywhere else, without the need to install or download anything,” says Nekrutenko. “We can make genomics better, easier and more efficient. You can analyze multiple sequence alignments, compare genomic annotations, profile metagenomic samples and much, much more.” Galaxy was originally developed by Nekrutenko, who is based in the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics at Penn State, and his former Penn State colleague James Taylor, who is now an assistant professor in biology and math and computer science at Emory University. Both are quick to cite the many contributions to Galaxy’s evolution from the genomics community.

Taylor was finishing his Ph.D. when the pair started to develop Galaxy, and they have devoted much of their time to that effort ever since. Nekrutenko is the more biologically inclined of the pair. “I can script a bit,” he says, “but Galaxy could only be developed with proper software engineering practices, which was only possible after James got involved.”

Galaxy is primarily a platform for making computational tools accessible. Nekrutenko and Taylor observed “a huge disconnect” between computer science development tools and algorithms on the one hand, and the researchers wanting to use them on the other. Galaxy is designed to fill that gap. …

Most of the Galaxy tools are in the genomics and gene evolution space, but researchers are also adapting the platform to proteomics and other areas. “When this started, NGS didn’t exist,” says Nekrutenko. “Initially, we were addressing problems with whole genome sequence, comparative genomics, etc. In reality, very few people can use this information. We’re still the only resource to meaningfully manipulate genome alignments on a large scale.”

The basic model is a Web-based platform. “We believe that’s really important for collaboration and communication,” says Taylor. “Having no barrier to using Galaxy other than a Web browser is very important.”

Read the whole article at Bio-ITWorld.com.

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Bug-splatter study is data driven
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Jewish law in the era of bio-engineering

2011-09-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

iStockphoto.com/DanBrandenburg

Mary Loftus writes in the Huffington Post:

Cats with bits of luminescent jellyfish DNA. Sheep-goat hybrids, "geep," with furry legs and floppy ears. Human stem cells inserted into the brains of newborn mice. Embryonic screening that allows parents to choose to implant an embryo without the breast cancer gene. Human-human chimeras that allow gay couples to have children that belong, biologically, to both of them.

To paraphrase Dickens, these are not things that will happen in time, these are things that are happening.

Speaking from a Jewish law perspective about the ethics of reproductive technologies, Rabbi Michael Broyde, a law professor at Emory University and a member of the Beth Din of America, the largest Jewish law court in the country, is just getting warmed up in his delivery of the Decalogue Lecture for Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion Sept. 13.

He's enjoying the reaction this bioethically edgy information, complete with slides of an adorable glowing kitten and a geep, is getting from his audience.

Broyde has covered artificial insemination: "No adultery is associated with AI. The dominant Jewish law view doesn't look at misplaced paternity, absent sexual conduct, as a moral or religious wrong... It's even discussed in the Talmud."

And cloning: "When people think of cloning, they think of Star Wars, or The Boys from Brazil. They are opposed to cloning because they think it will allow creation of armies or will be used in some way that's dehumanizing. But cloning could be a form of assisted reproduction for profoundly infertile people."

Broyde moves on to reproductive xenotransplants -- the placing of a fertilized embryo of one species into the uterus of another species.

"Like human-animal chimeras, when cells of a human are mixed with cells of another mammal, basic ideas of human identity come into play," Broyde says.

"Of course, one definition of humanity is, that which comes from a human mother is human," he adds. "Yet, if you put a human fetus in a gorilla and it gives birth to a human being who, six years later, is playing chess or reading or engaging in other human activity, there's no doubt at all that Jewish thought would label that a human being even if the mother is not."

Broyde says these frightful, fascinating visions are no reason to halt the advance of assisted reproduction, no matter how rapidly the biotech may be slip-sliding into areas that make us uncomfortable.

Read the whole article in the Huff Post.

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Blurring the lines between life forms
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Mary Anning and the art of fossil hunting

2011-09-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Robey Tapp loves history and science and has served as a docent at Emory’s Carlos Museum for the past six years. She is also an independent artist who works in fiber. When she was invited to create a piece for the Fernbank Museum’s special Darwin exhibit, opening on Saturday, Sept. 24, Tapp started reading up on the England of Darwin’s time. That’s how she stumbled across Mary Anning.

Anning was a contemporary of Darwin’s, a self-taught paleontologist, who made key findings that supported Darwin’s theory of evolution. She grew up poor on the southern England coast and did not receive full scientific credit for her work during her lifetime, due to her gender and working-class status.

A painting of Mary Anning, left, hangs in the Natural History Museum of London.

“Every day she walked along the water in Lyme Regis where she lived,” Tapp says. “She saw things in the rocks and she dug them out.”

In 1811, when Anning was just 12 years old, she and her brother Joseph discovered the fossil of an entirely new animal, later named Ichthyosaurus. Throughout her life, Anning continued to make discoveries, working tirelessly along the rugged coastline.

“What inspires me about her is that she believed in herself and her findings despite the fact that it went against the religion of the time,” Tapp says. “She was really upsetting the apple cart. And she didn’t stop because she was a woman, and people told her that women couldn’t be scientists.”

Anning died poor but “her work lives on,” Tapp says. In 2010 the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the 10 British women who have most influenced the history of science.

Tapp’s fiber art inspired by Anning is part of the “Selections” show at Fernbank. Local artists, including scientists from Emory’s department of environmental studies, have created pieces influenced by evolution. The art will remain on display during the museum’s special exhibit commemorating the life and mind of Darwin, which continues through January 1.

Related:
Teaching evolution enters new era
Polar dinosaur tracks open new trail to past
Dinosaur burrows yield clues to climate change

In the Congo, a secret world of bonobos

2011-09-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Anthropologist Amy Cobden's fieldwork is challenging stereotypical ideas about chimpanzees, left, and bonobos, right. Photos copyrighted by Frans de Waal.

Journalist Kate Roach writes in New Scientist about the research of an Emory graduate student of anthropology:

A dark, chiseled face looks at us from way up in the branches of a vast rainforest tree. Deep-set, inky eyes peer suspiciously through the foliage, throwing an occasional glance towards movement in a tree beyond. This is Ruby, a mature female bonobo. She lingers, almost as if to separate us from the rest of her party, who are moving on in search of more fruit. Then she leaps away.

Such encounters are typical of the pleasure and frustration of studying bonobos in their natural habitat. Found only in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these were the last great apes to be discovered and are the least studied. Their range, beneath a huge arc made by the Congo river, is fragmented across a region of lowland rainforest that approximates 350,000 square kilometres, about the size of Germany. It is a hauntingly beautiful landscape, encompassing both swamp and dry forest, all of it inaccessible, with travel mostly restricted to following forest trails by foot or trail bike, or navigating the rivers in unsteady flat-bottomed pirogues.

But physical remoteness is not the only reason why bonobos are so elusive. A succession of wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1996 and 2003 has severely disrupted research. In 1998, scientists were forced to leave the area where I am staying with primatologist Amy Cobden from Emory University in Atlanta. … Cobden knows it will be many months, possibly years, before the apes once again become sufficiently used to humans to behave naturally. With so much still to learn about these animals, she is hopeful that her patience will be rewarded.

Click here to read the whole article. You will have to log in to access it, but it’s free to do so.

Related:
Chimps, bonobos yield clues to social brain
A wild view of apes of the planet
Mountain gorillas cope with people in their midst

The monarch defense: In chess and in life

2011-09-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

Emory evolutionary biologist Jaap de Roode has had some strange assignments in his academic career. In his early days as a researcher, for example, his job was to measure the penis size of Malaysian dung beetles.

So it was no big deal when a photographer for Popular Science magazine asked de Roode to pose at a chessboard, pretending to watch two opponents: A butterfly and a bio-hazard bottle that was standing in for a parasite. The photo shoot was to illustrate the Popular Science “Brilliant 10,” top scientists under 40 from across the nation recognized by the editors of the magazine.

De Roode was declared “Brilliant” for his discovery of how monarch butterflies treat themselves and their offspring for parasites, using medicinal plants.

“I liked the concept of the chess game,” says de Roode. “That really is how scientists view the co-evolutionary process of a host and its parasites. One makes a move, and the other responds with a defense or attack.”

Many scientists have argued that animal medication requires great cognitive ability, memory and learning behaviors, and that self-medication may be restricted to a handful of animals, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Research by the de Roode lab, however, clearly shows that very simple and small-brained animals can use “natural” medicine.

De Roode’s findings, which were published in Ecology Letters, suggest that animal medication is probably much more widespread than originally thought, opening the door for many new discoveries of medication in nature.

Currently, de Roode is studying different populations of monarchs, to determine whether they use medication only therapeutically, when they are already infected with parasites, or as a preventative, when they live in areas with a higher risk of infection.

He explains the hypothesis with a human analogy: “If we travel to Africa, we may take anti-malaria drugs prophylactically, but while we’re at home in the United States we don’t use them. You don’t want to take drugs when you don’t need them.”

Monarchs overwintering in Mexico cluster in a tree for warmth. Photo by Jaap de Roode.

In previous work, de Roode provided a new perspective on another long-standing question in evolutionary ecology: How do parasites strike the balance between living off of their hosts and killing them?

A prevalent theory – still proclaimed by most medical doctors – was that over time, parasites become less virulent and evolve a capacity to be nearly harmless to their hosts.

De Roode’s work revealed a different underlying strategy, showing that instead of becoming kinder, parasites may actually be selected to be virulent and deadly. By doing so, they produce more offspring, which increases the chances of the parasite jumping to new hosts.

Related:
The monarch butterfly's medicine kit

Artist brings original 'warm pond' to life

2011-09-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

For her latest work, including "Warm Pond," above, Atlanta artist Terri Dilling is drawing her inspiration from Earth's primordial soup, where chemical reactions may have created life on the planet some 3.5 billion years ago. Her exhibit "Assembly" opens at the Portal Gallery with a reception on Friday, September 23 at 7 p.m. and continues through October 30.

The prints and paintings were informed by conversations with scientists from the Center for Chemical Evolution during the past seven months. "Although their research is complex, I think scientists are asking very basic questions about what the world is made of and how it works," Dilling says. "As an artist, I'm asking similar questions."

The NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution involves scientists from Emory, Georgia Tech and other institutions, stretching from California to Italy. The visiting artist program is an educational initiative of the CCE to raise awareness about research in chemical evolution, the process of how simple atoms and molecules might form bigger and more complex structures.

"Chemistry has been an interesting influence, causing me to look at my art in a new way," Dilling says.

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An artistic spin on renewable energy
Prepare to flash your intelligence
Teaching evolution enters new era

Biochemical cell signals quantified for first time

2011-09-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

Can you hear me now? When you feel symptoms of a nasty bug, you phone the doctor. Cells in your body are also receiving “calls,” through a biochemical signaling pathway that turns out to have surprisingly low data capacity. Image: iStockphoto.com.

By Carol Clark

Just as cell phones and computers transmit data through electronic networks, the cells of your body send and receive chemical messages through molecular pathways. The term “cell signaling” was coined more than 30 years ago to describe this process.

Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the data capacity of a biochemical signaling pathway and found a surprise – it’s way lower than even an old-fashioned, dial-up modem.

“This key biochemical pathway is involved in complex functions but can transmit less than one bit – the smallest unit of information in computing,” says Ilya Nemenman, an associate professor of physics and biology at Emory University. “It’s a simple result, but it changes our view of how cells access chemical data.”

The journal Science is publishing the discovery by Nemenman and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, including Andre Levchenko, Raymond Cheong, Alex Rhee and Chiaochun Joanne Wang.

During the 1980s, cell biologists began identifying key signaling pathways such as nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB), known to control the expression of genes in response to everything from invading pathogens to cancer. But the amount of information carried by chemical messengers along these pathways has remained a mystery.

“Without quantifying the signal, using math and computer analysis to attach a number to how much information is getting transmitted, you have a drastically incomplete picture of what’s going on,” says Nemenman, a theoretical biophysicist.

He and Levchenko, a biomedical engineer, began discussing the problem back in 2007 after they met at a conference.

Click on NF-kB graphic, below, to enlarge it:

NF-kB is a protein complex that is a key element of a biochemical signaling pathway involved in cellular responses to a range of stimuli. Graphic: Wikipedia Commons.

Levchenko provided the experimental framework to measure the transmissions occurring on the pathway in many thousands of cells at one time. Nemenman formulated the theoretical framework to analyze and quantify the results of the experiments. Graduate student Raymond Cheong developed and conducted the experiments and performed much of the analysis.

“It was a shock to learn that the amount of information getting sent through this pathway is less than one bit, or binary digit,” Nemenman says. “That’s only enough information to make one binary decision, a simple yes or no.”

And yet NF-kB is regulating all kinds of complex decisions made by cells, in response to stimuli ranging from stress, free radicals, bacterial and viral pathogens and more. “Our result showed that it would be impossible for cells to make these decisions based just on that pathway because they are not getting enough information,” Nemenman says. “It would be like trying to send a movie that requires one megabit per second through an old-style modem that only transmits 28 kilobits per second.”

They analyzed the signals of several other biochemical pathways besides NF-kB and got a similar result, suggesting that a data capacity of less than one bit could be common. So if cells are not getting all the information through signaling pathways, where is it coming from?

“We’re proposing that cells somehow talk with each other outside of these known pathways,” Nemenman says. “A single cell doesn’t have enough information to consider all the variables and decide whether to repair some tissue. But when groups of cells talk to each other, and each one adds just a bit of knowledge, they can make a collective decision about what actions to take.”

He compares it to a bunch of people at a cocktail party, with cell phones that have weak signals pressed to their ears. Each person is receiving simple messages via their phones that provide a tiny piece to a puzzle that needs to be solved. When the people chatter together and share their individual messages, they are able to collectively arrive at a reliable solution to the puzzle.

A similar phenomenon, called population coding, had been identified for the electrical activity of neural networks, but Nemenman and his colleagues are now applying the idea to bio-chemical pathways.

They hope to build on this research by zeroing in on the role of cell signaling in specific diseases.

In particular, Nemenman wants to analyze and compare the signaling capacities of a cancerous cell versus a normal cell.

“Cancerous cells divide when they shouldn’t, which means they are making bad decisions,” he says. “I would like to quantify that decision-making process and determine if cancer cells have reduced information transduction capacities, or if they have the same capacities as healthy cells and are simply making wrong decisions.”

Nemenman uses a malfunctioning computer as an example. “If you push the ‘a’ key on your computer and a ‘d’ always shows up, that means the computer is misprogrammed but the information from your keystroke gets through just fine,” he says. “But if you keep pressing the letter ‘a’ and different, random letters show up, that indicates a problem with the way the information is being transmitted.”

Related:
Biology may not be so complex after all

CDC disease detectives to chat live online

2011-09-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

Epidemics have been with us since people began living in cities. “An almost inevitable accompaniment to the fevers, and the coughs and other symptoms of these epidemics has been fear,” says Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Emory Global Health Institute and a former director of the CDC.

The hit movie “Contagion” begs the question, how will the CDC control the next outbreak and the public panic? You can ask CDC experts, including members of the elite Epidemic Intelligence Service, during two live Twitter chats, on Friday, Sept. 16 and Monday, Sept. 19 from 2 to 3 p.m.

You can follow #CDCcontagion live on Twitter, and you can also submit questions in advance to @CDCgov.

Related:
Contagion: The cough heard around the world
CDC turns into movie set for 'Contagion'

Rare mummy gets new lease on the afterlife

2011-09-12T07:07:00.001-07:00

Conservators put the finishing touches on what was a major makeover for the 4,000-year-old mummy, one of only half-a-dozen in the world dating back to Egypt's Old Kingdom.

By Margie Fishman, Emory Report

The mummy from 2300 B.C. was in a sorry state when he arrived at Emory in 1921. Headless, his neck bones had tumbled into his abdominal cavity. Gaping holes and sagging linens marred vague remnants of shoulders, hips and knees. One conservator likened his physique to a crushed bag of potato chips.

Today, the oldest Egyptian mummy in North America has a new lease on the afterlife and is featured in a Michael C. Carlos Museum exhibit, thanks to a patient group of Emory conservation experts, anthropologists and doctors.

"Life and Death in the Pyramid Age: The Emory Old Kingdom Mummy" places the mummy in the context of ancient Egypt's burial rites and rituals, along with exploring the social and political changes at the end of the Pyramid Age. Approximately 120 objects from the Carlos Museum's collection and borrowed from other museums and private collectors will be on display through Dec. 11.

They include a life-size replica of an Old Kingdom tomb, "magic" vessels and wands used to recite spells on the dead, and a rare statue of Pharaoh Pepi, who ruled during the mummy's lifetime.

"This mummy is a very important piece. We've finally been able to conserve it and put it on display," says Peter Lacovara, the Carlos Museum's senior curator of ancient Egyptian, Nubian and near Eastern art.

Listen to leading Egyptologists discuss the history of the mummy and the site where it originated:

It was a long road to get the mummy ready for prime time.

Acquired by Emory theology professor William A. Shelton in 1920, the mummy was the first inventoried object in what was then the Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology.

Dismissed as a massive reconstruction effort, the mummy was squirreled away in two crates in storage (one for his body and one for his head, that had fallen off).

At Lacovara's nudging, the mummy identified as "1921.1" was retrieved about a year ago and carefully transported to Emory University Hospital for X-ray and CT radiographic imaging.

Modern technology revealed much about the early mummification process, which used a combination of salts, oils and resin. It also permitted the conservation team to peer inside the mummy to assess the body's condition without actually unwrapping him. Exposing the body would have been disrespectful as well as damaging, notes Carlos conservator Renee Stein.

"The overarching goal of the project was to restore some structural integrity to the body and dignity to human remains," she says.

The mummy predates the period when the brain was removed during the embalming process, and the head contained a walnut-sized piece of material that appears to be the dessicated brain.

With the help of radiology professor William Torres, who has examined several Carlos mummies, the conservation team learned that the mummy's bones were well-mineralized, it hadn't suffered any major head trauma and it hadn't been prone to ear infections. Although his pelvis was obscured, the group determined that the mummy was most likely a male, given the size and shape of his skull.

All in all, "this was a pretty healthy individual," says Emory anthropologist George Armelagos, who was involved in the examination effort.

In light of the physical evidence and that the mummy had been buried at a holy site, conservators safely assumed that the mummy had access to a good diet and other social advantages. The cause of death, however, remained a mystery.

The Carlos Museum called on Mimi Leveque, a freelance conservator from Boston. Leveque has lent her expertise to several of the dozen mummies in the Carlos collection, the youngest of which is 2,000 years old.

One of the most glaring issues with the Old Kingdom mummy was his displaced head. The mummy originally was laid on his right side (a common burial position at the time), his head supported by a headrest. Over time, the headrest had been lost, along with the bulk of his coffin, leaving the head unsupported.

In the slideshow below, see images of the mummy before the makeover, and listen to Egyptologists discuss mummy science:

As a solution, Leveque relied on low-tech methods, carving out a piece of archival-quality foam and wedging it in the hollow between the mummy's collar bones and shoulder blades. She then threaded a padded dowel in the foam and through the hole at the base of the skull.

The mummy's jaw was cast from a mold from a similarly-sized, more modern jaw from Armelagos' lab. Two undergraduate interns used an epoxy putty to form missing bones for the hands and feet. They placed the bones inside padded papier-mache forms, wrapped in modern linen that was dyed to match the ancient wrappings.

Once intact, the mummy appeared lifelike, as if he had just lain down to sleep.

Eventually the mummy, one of only a half-dozen from that period who have survived, will be a permanent fixture at the Carlos. Due to his fragility, he will not tour.

Ancient Egyptians believed that by visiting tombs and actively remembering the dead through images, mummies were kept alive in the afterlife, explains Lacovara.

"In recreating the tomb and restoring the Old Kingdom mummy, we are fulfilling his wish," he says.

Related:
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Contagion: The cough heard round the world

2011-09-09T06:50:00.000-07:00

It all started with what seemed like a simple cold. The new movie “Contagion” vividly portrays how society could unravel in the face of a deadly pandemic.

Many health officials say a major pandemic in real life is more a matter of when, not if. We’ve been lucky in recent years, says Emory physician Phyllis Kozarsky, an infectious disease expert who specializes in travel medicine.

The H5N1 virus, more commonly known as bird flu, is one recent scare. The virus kills about 60 percent of infected people. “It’s a very serious disease, and we hope it doesn’t obtain the ability to be easily transmitted,” Kozarsky says.

Related: Wired blogger Maryn McKenna separates fact from fiction in "Contagion."

H5N1 is just one of many diseases on the radar of health officials concerned with pandemics. A critical aspect of controlling an outbreak will be getting out accurate information, making social media both a potential asset and nightmare.

Bursting media's bubble: Jude Law portrays a social media maverick in San Francisco who is obsessed with both freedom of information and conspiracy theories. Warner Brothers photo.

In “Contagion,” Jude Law plays crazed blogger Alan Krumwiede. The paranoid character is driven by conspiracy theories, and yet he uncovers some facts that journalists from traditional media miss, scooping them all. He later leverages his wide Internet following to hawk a "cure" for the disease and tell people not to take a government-made vaccine.

Elliot Gould plays a scientist who also goes a bit rogue, in his rush to isolate the virus. He brushes off Krumwiede with the line: “Blogging is not writing, it’s graffiti with punctuation.”

Law told Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steven Rea that he researched the blogosphere to prepare for his role:

"I don't want to list anyone in particular," he says, asked to cite a couple of influential bloggers. "I'd rather people see it and draw on their own imagination, but yeah, I certainly looked at an awful lot of blogs, and bloggers who have been interviewed and who have made a bit of a name for themselves, who have become personalities. ... I drew on a few and tried to create someone that seemed to fit that particular persona.

"And yet, what was most exciting was that [director Steven Soderbergh] didn't want to judge him, he didn't want him to necessarily be a bad guy. ... Maybe this guy was correct all along, who knows?"

Some of the scenes from “Contagion” were shot around the Emory campus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Click here to watch some of the videos of the crew and cast in action.

Hominid skull hints at later brain evolution

2011-09-08T06:02:00.000-07:00

An endocast of the A. sediba skull was created using synchrotron radiation, giving scientists a high-resolution, 3-D view of life 2 million years ago. Photo courtesy of Kristian Carlson/University of the Witwatersrand.

By Carol Clark

An analysis of a skull from the most complete early hominid fossils ever found suggests that the large and complex human brain may have evolved more rapidly than previously realized, and at a later time than some other human characteristics.

While some features of Australopithecus sediba were more human-like, most notably the precision-grip hand, the brain was more ape-like, says Emory University anthropologist Dietrich Stout. “It’s basically a primitive brain that looks a lot like other austrolopiths, although you can see what could be the first glimmerings of a reorganization to a more human pattern.”

Stout is a member of the team that analyzed a virtual endocast of the skull, which dates back nearly 2 million years, to the pivotal period when the human family emerged. The resulting paper will be among those on A. sediba appearing in a special issue of Science on September 9.

If A. sediba is a human ancestor, as some have proposed, then its fossils could help resolve long-standing debates about human brain evolution, Stout says.

“The brain defines humanity, leading early anthropologists to expect that the brain changed first, and then the rest of the body followed,” Stout says. “More recently, it has been assumed that the brain and other human traits evolved together.”

The A. sediba find suggests a more “mosaic” pattern of evolution, he says. “The more modern hand paired with a primitive brain is a cautionary tale for what inferences can be drawn about a whole body from fossil fragments.”

A 60 Minutes video of Lee Berger, showing how the endocast was made:

The new species was discovered in a region of South Africa known as the Cradle of Humanity, by paleontologist Lee Berger of University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. After announcing the find in 2010, Berger and colleagues began making the case that A. sediba may be the bridge between more primitive austropiths and the human genus, Homo. The debate over whether A. sediba is a human ancestor will likely continue, even as more material is excavated from a limestone cave called Malapa, one of the richest hominid fossil sites ever found.

“The site is especially exciting because the A. sediba skeletons are nearly complete,” Stout says. “We can relate the face to the hand and the body and the brain of a single individual. A. sediba is represented by the most complete hominid skeletons we have, until we get up to the Neanderthals.”

Stout studies the relationship between stone tools and brain evolution, and is an expert in functional adaptation of neuroanatomy. He was invited to assist in the analysis of the cranium of a young A. sediba male, estimated to be 12 to 13 years old at the time of death, with brain growth essentially complete. The research was led by Kristian Carlson of Wits and also included other researchers from Wits; Indiana University; the Georgian National Museum of Tibilisi, Georgia; the University of Zurich; Texas A&M University; and the European Synchroton Radiation Facility.

The brain of A. sediba can be seen in incredible detail, including blood vessels, in this transparent image of the virtual endocast. Photo courtesy of Kristian Carlson/University of Wits.

The virtual endocast gives a three-dimensional view of the surface features of the cranium, which was missing only part of the right side and the back. The high-resolution images reveal bumps and ridges and even impressions from blood vessels.

“You can actually see the morphology of the brain inside a skull,” Stout says. “Bone is a lot more alive and plastic than many people realize. It’s constantly being remodeled and shaped and the growing brain does a lot to shape the skull around it.”

The researchers estimate that the brain was 420 cubic centimeters, around the size of a grapefruit. “That’s tiny and about what you’d expect for a chimpanzee,” Stout says.

The face, however, of A. sediba was far less protruded than that of a chimpanzee. “We don’t fully understand how the human face got smaller and tucked under the brain case, although that may have a lot to do with diet and chewing,” Stout says. “That further complicates matters. The relationship of human brain evolution to cognitive changes and other biological and behavioral changes is something we have to keep looking at.”

Click here to see an artist's representation of the face of A. sediba.

The researchers took a band of measurements on the underside of the A. sediba frontal lobes and did a comparative analysis with humans, chimpanzees and other hominids.

While the A. sediba brain clearly was not a human configuration, a surface bump shows possible foreshadowing of Broca’s area, a region of the human brain associated with speech and language, Stout says. “It’s a big leap, however, to go from a surface bump to really understanding what the cells were doing beneath it,” he adds.

The researchers plan to expand the analysis, gathering data from more scans of chimpanzee skulls and more hominid fossil specimens from East and South Africa. “We want to put as many dots on a comparative graph as we can, to help show us where A. sediba fits in,” Stout says.

Use of simple stone tools by hominids began about 2.5 million years ago. Was A. sediba a toolmaker? Its hands appear associated with that activity, Stout says, but the evidence is still incomplete. “For now, A. sediba raises more questions than it answers.”

Related:
Brain trumps hand in Stone Age tool study
Brain expert explores realm of human dawn

West Nile virus up in Atlanta mosquitoes

2011-09-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

The West Nile virus rate in mosquitoes is way up in metro Atlanta this summer compared to last year, and health officials are warning residents to take precautions.

Photo: iStockphoto.com/dabjola.
“The hot temperatures and relatively dry conditions probably contributed to the spike in infected mosquitoes,” says Rebecca Levine, a graduate student in Emory’s department of environmental studies. “This may be due to the fact that the heat allows the mosquitoes to develop faster and the lack of rain prevents developing larvae from being flushed out of the system, so they are more likely to
survive to adulthood.”

During Dekalb County’s entire 2010 May-to-October mosquito surveillance, 26 samples of mosquitoes tested positive for WNV, according to the Dekalb Board of Health. This year, with a month-and-a-half remaining for surveillance, the county already reports nearly 80 positive test results. “That’s a remarkable increase,” Levine says.

The peak season for WNV begins in August and continues until the weather gets cooler. Last week, Dekalb County reported the first human case of WNV this year, in a 79-year-old resident of Tucker.

Protect your peeps: Environmental studies students are doing the painstaking work of mist-netting birds and testing them for WNV, to track how the virus moves through an urban environment. Photos by Ryan Huang, above, and Rebecca Levine, below.

To reduce your risk, Levine advises wearing long sleeves and pants and using insect repellant if you are outdoors from dusk through dawn, when the species of mosquitoes that carry WNV are active. For more information about WNV and how to prevent it, call the Dekalb Board of Health, 404-508-7900, or visit its Web site.

The current soaking of metro Atlanta by the remnants of Hurricane Lee may dampen down the mosquito activity a bit, “but they’ll be back, for sure,” Levine says.

Emory’s department of environmental studies is studying the transmission risk of WNV in metro Atlanta. Mosquitoes are the vectors for WNV and birds are the amplifying hosts.

For her dissertation, Levine is monitoring how WNV moves among mosquitoes and birds in an urban environment. At nine different parks and forested areas in metro Atlanta, Emory researchers are capturing birds in mist nets, then tagging them and taking blood samples before releasing them.

“Our preliminary results are showing that the sites where humans are most active have significantly higher transmission rates in birds than in undisturbed urban forests and more secluded portions of parks,” Levine says.

Related:
Mosquito monitoring saves lives and money
Sewage raises West Nile virus risk

Opposable 'thumbs up' for ape animation

2011-09-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Anne Eisenberg writes in the New York Times about movie animation:

The chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans that star in the hit film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” are all computer animations. But they look a lot like the real thing, even to a primatologist.

“It’s astonishing how far the technology has come,” said Frans de Waal, a professor of primate behavior at Emory University in Atlanta and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory.

“We have the illusion we are looking at chimpanzees,” Dr. De Waal said of the computer-generated figures. “They are remarkably convincing.”

Producing computer-animated chimps that people will accept as realistic is a signal accomplishment, said Chris Bregler, an associate professor of computer science at New York University.

“It’s easier to fool us when you animate a dragon or another mythical or fairy tale creature,” Dr. Bregler said of characters created in earlier movies using the technology, called performance capture. “But humans or their closest relatives, chimps — that’s more difficult to do. Our human eyes are finely tuned to detecting problems with those depictions, and the illusion breaks down.”

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

Related:
A wild view of 'Planet of the Apes'
Computers breathe life into 'Toy Story'

Fantastic light, from science fiction to fact

2011-09-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

By Carol Clark

Next time you switch on a light, consider the enormity of this everyday phenomenon. Light allows us to travel back in time to explore the origins of the universe. Even after thousands of years of study, we still don’t fully understand light, yet we are harnessing its powers in ways that transform our daily lives and turn science-fiction fantasies into real possibilities.

“The technology of light keeps getting more and more amazing,” says Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz.

Perkowitz’ new book is called “Slow Light: Invisibility, Teleportation and other Mysteries of Light.”
NASA is using laser technology to map longitude and latitude positions on the moon. Credit: Tom Zagwordzki/Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Only three percent of your brain is needed to figure out what you’re hearing, while 30 percent is needed to figure out the meaning of what you’re seeing. So if you want one number to explain how important and complex light is, that’s it,” Perkowitz says.

He describes Isaac Newton’s use of a prism, to demonstrate that white light contains a spectrum of colors, as the single most important experiment in the history of light. By the end of the 19th century, it was clear that light is an electromagnetic wave defined by its wavelength.

Physics started getting more complicated when Albert Einstein showed that light comes in discrete packets or particles of energy, which were later named photons. That discovery helped give birth to quantum mechanics.
Beam me up! It seemed magical the way the crew from Star Trek was "teleported," but light photons also appear to travel via teleportation. Credit: Paramount Pictures.

“Like Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, Einstein’s creation was remarkable but troublesome to its creator and others,” Perkowitz says. The photon was at odds with the wave theory of light, and Einstein himself was baffled by it.

Light can travel the way Star Trek’s Captain Kirk did when he’d say, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

“You can take a particle of light and mysteriously transport it from point A to point B, apparently without it traveling through the space in between,” Perkowitz says. “I find that the weirdest single thing that we know about light.”

Related: The top 10 Star Trek technologies, now available in the real world, by Space.com.

Light's dual nature, as wave and particle, is one of the biggest mysteries in science. Infrared portrait of the Seven Sisters star cluster by NASA, JPL-Caltech, J. Stauffer.

Even though we don’t fully understand the quantum nature of light, we’re able to use it for remarkable technology, like lasers and optical fiber networks that channel photons around the world. When you communicate by Internet or phone, your message is carried by light, Perkowitz says. “If you stop and think about it, that’s truly amazing.”

Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak seemed like a child’s fantasy when the fictional character debuted in 1997. An actual cloak began taking shape about a decade later, however, when engineers at Duke University deflected microwave beams so they flowed around a small object, making it appear as if nothing was there. Since then, the race to perfect invisibility technology has heated up.

(Here's a related study, recently published by Science: Weird quantum effect can make materials transparent.)

Light lies at the heart of one of the biggest mysteries of science. If we could merge the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics into a so-called “theory of everything,” all kinds of things could break loose, Perkowitz says. “For instance, the fact that the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit might turn out to no longer be true. And if that were the case, then the universe opens up because you might be able to go to the furthest reaches in a reasonable time.”

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Decatur Book Festival adds science track
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Decatur Book Festival adds science track

2011-08-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

Meet Bookzilla, below, your host for the AJC Decatur Book Festival Sept. 2-4. The literary sci-fi monster is the perfect mascot for what has grown into the largest independent book festival in the country. This year, the festival aligned with Atlanta Science Tavern to offer its first science track.

AJC Decatur Book Fest graphic
“An enormous number of great science books are coming out,” says Marc Merlin, a lead organizer of Atlanta Science Tavern and an Emory alum who majored in physics. “The book festival was looking for new ways to extend its program and didn’t have a particular expertise in selecting science authors, so this is a wonderful overlapping of interests.”

Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz kicks off the science track on Saturday, Sept. 3 at 12:30 p.m. He’ll discuss his new book “Slow Light: Invisibility, Teleportation and Other Mysteries of Light.” Perkowitz will be followed by medical historian Holly Tucker from Vanderbilt University, author of “Blood Work: A Tale of Murder and Medicine in the Scientific Revolution.”

The science track continues on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. with a panel discussion “From Page to Pub to Podcast: Science Writers Address New Venues and New Media.” Panelists include Holly Tucker; Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin, whose book “Life Traces of the Georgia Coast” will be published this fall; and Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug and a blogger at Wired.com.

“They’ll share their experiences of being science educators in a world in which public communication about science now routinely takes place in bars and cafes and on Facebook and Twitter,” says Merlin, who will moderate the discussion.

Atlanta Science Tavern is a great example of the "social science" trend. The Meet-Up group, which gathers regularly at Manuel’s Tavern to hear scientists discuss their research, has grown to more than 1,300 members. “A lot of people are interested in finding out more about science, while also meeting like-minded people who share their wonder and excitement about the natural world,” Merlin says.

On Sunday at 5 p.m., Emory neuroscientist Karen Rommelfanger, who has a special interest in bioethics, will introduce the final speaker in the science track, neuroscientist David Eagleman. He’ll be discussing “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.” In the book, Eagleman argues that “all brains are not created equal. “ He imagines a future where neuroscience improves the ability to zero in on neural inequality, to the point where criminals could be sentenced based on a spectrum of neural “modifiability.”

Other Decatur Book Festival genres of interest to science lovers:

Nature, including Georgia author Janisse Ray.

Science fiction, including best-selling authors Beth Revis and Lee Gimenez.

Graphic novels, with Kyle Puttkammer, author of Galaxy Man.

Health and wellness, including a talk by Norman Rosenthal on transcendental meditation.

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Polar dinosaur tracks open new trail to past
'Unstoppable' physics
Buffalo wings, beer and brains

Rock of ages: Music helps keep brain young

2011-08-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

Credit: iStockphoto/LindaYolanda

Senior citizens who took music lessons as children for at least 10 years score higher on tests of memory and decision-making ability than non-musicians. In the video below, NBC Chicago reports on the findings by Emory neuropsychologist Brenda Hanna-Pladdy and the University of Kansas.

“It’s conceivable,” Hanna-Pladdy says, “that music activity creates cognitive reserves that may delay the presentation of dementia symptoms.”

Much research has been done to determine the cognitive benefits of musical activity by children. Hanna-Pladdy’s study, published by Neuropsychology in April, was the first to look at whether those benefits extend across a lifetime.

The earlier children undertake music training, the better, in terms of predicting their cognitive function in advanced age.

Another recent study, at Northwestern, shows that older adult musicians who began lessons as children have better hearing.

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Teen brain data predicts pop song success
Notes on the musical brain

An artistic spin on renewable energy

2011-08-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

If you have the energy on Friday evening, gather up your molecules and head to downtown Atlanta to catch an acrobatic display of Emory’s research into sustainable fuel. The free performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 26 in Atlanta Underground, and will help launch a city of Atlanta urban art event, Elevate: Art Above Underground, that continues through October 30.

Conceptual artists from the Seattle group Lelavision will use music, dance and kinetic sculptures to interpret research of the Emory Bio-inspired Renewable Energy Center (EBREC). Emory scientists will be on hand to answer questions about molecular evolution, and the search for sustainable fuels and the origins of life.

In a previous collaboration with Emory chemist David Lynn, Lelavision interpreted supramolecular assembly. The result, called “Evolution in a Nutshell,” can be seen in the video below.

You can also catch Lelavision in action on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 1 and 2, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The Lelavision art installation for EBREC, including a looping video, will remain on display throughout the Elevate festival.

“I hope that the art intrigues people, so that they want to learn more about the cool science research going on in their community,” says Meisa Salaita, education coordinator for the Center for Chemical Evolution. The center, based at Emory and Georgia Tech, combines high-level research with an educational outreach program.

The Lelavision performance is part of the ongoing convergence of science and art fostered by the center, with the aim of engaging the public in research.

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Mountain gorillas: People in their midst

2011-08-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

Fewer than 800 mountain gorillas survive, and about 480 of them are in the Virunga mountains of Central Africa. Photo by Winnie Eckardt.

By Carol Clark

Winnie Eckardt’s work commute begins with a half-hour car ride from town to forest, then continues on foot. It’s often a long trek through the mountainous jungle, and the weather is sometimes rainy and cold. She may have to trudge as long as six hours before she locates one of the groups of mountain gorillas in the Virunga volcanic mountains of Rwanda.

“Usually, I don’t mind walking up and down,” Eckardt says. “On days when the conditions are especially rough, being with the gorillas improves your mood. Spending time with them chills you out.”

Mountain gorillas are known for their tolerance and peaceful demeanor. “You can learn a lot about yourself by watching them,” Eckardt says. “They make you think about how you yourself behave and why. For me, it’s a huge privilege to work with the last remaining mountain gorillas.”

As a post-doctoral fellow in Emory’s department of environmental studies, Eckardt’s job is to observe the behavior of the endangered animals and collect their fecal samples to test for parasites and stress hormones. The first comprehensive mountain gorilla health-monitoring project is a collaboration between Emory, Zoo Atlanta, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
Emory post-doc Winnie Eckardt during a recent visit to campus, to meet with the team in the primate disease ecology lab. Photo by Carol Clark.

“This is the first time all of these organizations are working together for the benefit of the gorillas,” says Emory primate disease ecologist Tom Gillespie. “It’s a natural way to build on efforts that we’ve been working on separately for a long time.”

Fewer than 800 mountain gorillas are estimated to survive in the world. About 480 of them live in the Virunga mountains of Central Africa, where northwest Rwanda joins with southwest Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Poachers and loss of habitat are among the threats to the mountain gorillas. As humans use more land for farming, the animals are driven to higher altitudes, where the weather is colder and food is scarcer. The gorillas sometimes take food from eucalyptus trees and bamboo patches cultivated outside the park, risking an exchange of pathogens that is dangerous to both humans and the animals.

The national parks where the animals roam strictly limit the number of tourists that are allowed to see the gorillas. The aim is to balance the need for tourism income with protecting the health of the gorillas.

Photo by Innocent Rwego.

“What we know about pathogens in wild primates is still very limited,” says Gillespie. His lab will assess parasite loads from the fecal samples. A lab at the Lincoln Park Zoo will do the stress hormone analyses.

“The aim is to get a broad-brush understanding of whether the overall health of the animals is changing,” Gillespie says.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is headquartered at Zoo Atlanta, and also runs the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park. The center was started by the late Dian Fossey in 1967, and has built up a 40-year database of gorilla life, behavior and habitat.

The health-monitoring project melds Karisoke’s ongoing behavioral research with biological analysis.

Does exposure to tourists increase the stress levels of mountain gorilla groups? Do the parasitic loads of gorillas change in relation to stress? How do weather changes affect their immune responses?

“We’re trying to identify key stress sources for the gorillas, and the potential impact of these stressors on their health for the long-term,” Gillespie says. “We want to provide useful data to help influence policy.”

Watch the BBC Worldwide video, below, to get an idea of what it's like to hike in search of mountain gorillas:

Eckardt was a natural choice to work on the field component of the project, based at Karisoke. A native of Germany, Eckardt stayed at Karisoke from 2004 to 2008 as a research assistant and dissertation student. Her study focused on the relationship between mountain gorilla mothers and their offspring.

She recalls when a 28-month-old female became separated from her mother and the rest of the group, perhaps because the group was startled by poachers and had to flee.

The young gorilla spent almost three days alone in the forest, in cold temperatures, before she found her way back to the group. “She was traumatized and she couldn’t walk very well,” Eckardt says. The mother refused to respond to the returning infant and the infant died that night.

“The physical challenge is not the hardest part of the job,” Eckardt says, explaining that, as a scientist, she must stay detached as she observes such behavior and let nature take its course.

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The iPhone is his instrument

2011-08-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

What do you do with a major in math and computer science and a minor in music? Tim Soo, who graduated from Emory in 2010, used those degrees to create invisible musical instruments. He developed software that allows him to turn an iPhone and Wii remote into phantom orchestras, and play music in radical new ways.

It all started while Soo was at Emory and whipped up an invisible violin, using an I-Cube Touch Glove, a Wii-mote and a Max/MSP patch, because he had forgotten his actual violin and urgently needed to record a piece that he had composed for a music class.

Since then, Soo has advanced and polished the concept. His innovation brought him support from the Awesome Foundation and won him the top prize at this year’s Music Hack Day NYC and the MTV O Music Award.

Soo's web site, Invisible Instruments, invites visitors to tap his software for public and educational use, and to develop their own instruments.

The Invisible Instruments project is mainly a hobby, says Soo, and is currently on the back burner as he pursues a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. “My primary interests lie in patient-side medical technologies,” he writes on his blog.

One of his ongoing projects is a heartbeat app. The program ties a person’s heartbeat to the beats of a song to gradually lower the heart rate and reduce stress and mental pain.

A built-in brower searches for the top YouTube hits based on a playlist of songs entered by the user. “Should the heart rate become faster during a song, the subsequent song will have a slower tempo until the heart rate reaches an acceptable range,” Soo explains on his blog. “If the heart rate drops too low, Rick Astley sings ‘Never gonna give you up.’”

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A Somali girl pursues her passion for math

2011-08-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

By Patrick Adams, Emory Magazine

Maaria Osman is small and slight, with hazel eyes and a round face framed by a tight-fitting hijab, the traditional head cover worn by women throughout the Muslim world and by all female teachers and students at Abaarso Tech. The school in a remote area of Somaliland is an experiment in education started by Jonathan Starr, who graduated from Emory in 1999 with a degree in economics.

Shy and reserved, Osman speaks softly in halting English. She is not yet fluent in the language.

Yet at 12, Osman is one of the best math students in the school. Last year, she had the highest score of the math section of the national exit exam, the test administered to all eighth-grade students around the country in the last days of what is, for the vast majority of Somali students, their final year of formal education.

Photo of Osman, left, by Patrick Adams.

That Osman even took the exam was unusual. According to a recent survey by UNICEF, only slightly more than a quarter of Somali girls of primary school age are enrolled in school. That figure is attributable in large part to the collapse of Somalia’s central government in 1991 and the decades of conflict that ensued. But the biggest obstacle to Somali girls’ enrollment, says UNICEF, is the tendency of mothers to keep their daughters home to share the burden of domestic labor.

For all of their daughter’s ability in the classroom, her uncommon facility for multiplying fractions, for instance, Osman’s parents had just such a plan in mind. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of Abaarso Tech or the fact that Osman could attend the school for free. It was that her curricular achievements were immaterial to the family’s immediate needs.

But Starr persisted. Enlisting the help of some of his best female students and their mothers, he mounted a recruiting strategy worthy of a Big Ten football program. And at last, the effort paid off.

In the eight months since her arrival, Osman has exceeded expectations. Not only has she outperformed many of her peers, including a handful of diaspora students from the U.S. and the U.K., she’s exhibited a work ethic bordering on obsession.

“She does math problems in her spare time,” says math teacher Mike Freund. “Literally every night, she’ll finish her homework and come to me to ask for more. She’s incredible.”

Read the full article in Emory Magazine about the unique economic model for Abaarso Tech, which has brought a biochemistry lab, dedicated teachers and a scholarship for study in America to a parched patch of earth, in a region best known for its piracy and poverty.

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How to parent a college freshman

2011-08-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

Watch the classic video, above, of the talk Emory psychologist Marshall Duke gives to parents during freshman orientation.

“Nowadays, ‘going off to college’ isn’t just about a teenager leaving home. It’s also about parents learning to let go,” writes Jenna Johnson in the Washington Post.

“College administrators have found that today’s millennial students – along with their late-Baby Boomer and early-Generation X parents – often need more hand-holding than generations before.”

Johnson conducted an online chat on the topic today with Marshall Duke, an Emory psychology professor who, for 25 years, has delivered an annual lecture to parents of freshman about what to expect when they leave their child at college for the first time.

Regarding a question about move-in day at the dorm, Duke advised parents not to sweat the small stuff and to focus on communication.

“Saying goodbye is the most important thing of all in my mind,” he responded. “Do not take this lightly. This child starts college only once. The moment is a powerful one. It allows for the communication of very high sentiments. Do you want to waste it on things like, ‘Make your bed every day?’”

You can read the whole discussion here.

Related:
Parenting a college student: What to expect

Can meditation calm your kids?

2011-08-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

Credit: iStockphoto.com/skynesher

“It calms my mind,” says a regular meditator named Sam. That statement wouldn’t be too surprising, except that Sam is in elementary school.

He was one of the children ages 5 to 8 at Atlanta’s Paideia School featured in a recent report on meditation by Dan Harris of ABC News. The students are part of an Emory study into the effects of compassion meditation, a secular form of meditation aimed at helping people reduce stress and think kindly of others.

As Harris points out, studies show that compassionate people tend to be happier, healthier and more successful at work.

And Sam finds a practical use for it while in an Atlanta traffic jam with his mother at the wheel. “My brother’s screaming, my mom’s cussing, and I’m meditating,” he says.

Watch the ABC News report.

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Banana split: Chimps show they share

2011-08-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

Credit: iStockphoto.com

Helen Fields writes in Science Now about the latest discovery from Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center:

Despite our wars and crime, humans tend to be nice. We bake for our neighbors, give directions to strangers, and donate money to far-off disaster victims. But does the same go for our closest cousin, the chimpanzee? A new study suggests that it does.

People who study chimpanzees in the field have known for a long time that the apes console their comrades when they're upset and support each other in a fight. And when one chimp has a good hunting day and kills a nice, juicy monkey, it shares the meat with the other members of its group.

But scientists have found that chimps don't share in lab experiments, creating a bit of a primatology mystery. … Comparative psychologist Victoria Horner of Emory University in Atlanta thought she knew the reason why experiments didn't find sharing: the experimental setups other scientists used to test the chimps were just too confusing—"tables with pulley systems and whatnot."

With her colleagues at Emory, including renowned primatologist Frans de Waal, Horner devised a new way to test chimps' generosity. "We did the same basic idea but from a more chimpy perspective," she says.

Read the full article in Science Now.

In the experiment, chimpanzees were trained to exchange tokens for food. One color token would buy a packet of food for the chooser, while another color would buy a packet for the chooser and her partner in the experiment. The chimpanzees were more likely to pick the generous color. Illustration by Devyn Carter.

A wild view of apes

Polar dinosaur tracks open new trail to past

2011-08-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

By Carol Clark

Paleontologists have discovered a group of more than 20 polar dinosaur tracks on the coast of Victoria, Australia, offering a rare glimpse into animal behavior during the last period of pronounced global warming, about 105 million years ago.

The discovery, reported in the journal Alcheringa, is the largest and best collection of polar dinosaur tracks ever found in the Southern Hemisphere.

“These tracks provide us with a direct indicator of how these dinosaurs were interacting with the polar ecosystems, during an important time in geological history,” says Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin, who led the research. Martin is an expert in trace fossils, which include tracks, trails, burrows, cocoons and nests.

The three-toed tracks are preserved on two sandstone blocks from the Early Cretaceous Period. They appear to belong to three different sizes of small theropods – a group of bipedal, mostly carnivorous dinosaurs whose descendants include modern birds.
Photos of the tracks, above and below, by Anthony Martin.

The research team also included Thomas Rich, from the Museum Victoria; Michael Hall and Patricia Vickers-Rich, both from the School of Geosciences at Monash University in Victoria; and Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an ecologist and expert in spatial analysis from Emory’s Department of Environmental Studies.

The tracks were found on the rocky shoreline of remote Milanesia Beach, in Otways National Park. This area, west of Melbourne, is known for energetic surf and rugged coastal cliffs, consisting of layers of sediment accumulated over millions of years. Riddled with fractures and pounded by waves and wind, the cliffs occasionally shed large chunks of rock, such as those containing the dinosaur tracks.

One sandstone block has about 15 tracks, including three consecutive footprints made by the smallest of the theropods, estimated to be the size of a chicken. Martin spotted this first known dinosaur trackway of Victoria last June 14, around noon. He was on the lookout, since he had earlier noticed ripple marks and trace fossils of what looked like insect burrows in piles of fallen rock.

“The ripples and burrows indicate a floodplain, which is the most likely area to find polar dinosaur tracks,” Martin explains.

The second block containing tracks was spotted about three hours later by Greg Denney, a local volunteer who accompanied Martin and Rich on that day’s expedition. That block had similar characteristics to the first one, and included eight tracks. The tracks show what appear to be theropods ranging in size from a chicken to a large crane.

“We believe that the two blocks were from the same rock layer, and the same surface, that the dinosaurs were walking on,” Martin says.

The small, medium and large tracks may have been made by three different species, Martin says. “They could also belong to two genders and a juvenile of one species – a little dinosaur family – but that’s purely speculative,” he adds.

The Victoria Coast marks the seam where Australia was once joined to Antarctica. During that era, about 115-105 million years ago, the dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness. The Earth’s average temperature was 68 degrees Fahrenheit – just 10 degrees warmer than today – and the spring thaws would cause torrential flooding in the river valleys.

The dinosaur tracks were probably made during the summer, Martin says. “The ground would have been frozen in the winter, and in order for the waters to subside so that animals could walk across the floodplain, it would have to be later in the season,” he explains.

Lower Cretaceous strata of Victoria have yielded the best-documented assemblage of polar dinosaur bones in the world. Few dinosaur tracks, however, have been found.

In the February 2006, Martin found the first known carnivorous dinosaur track in Victoria, at a coastal site known as Dinosaur Dreaming.

In May 2006, during a hike to another remote site near Milanesia Beach, he discovered the first trace fossil of a dinosaur burrow in Australia. That find came on the heels of Martin’s co-discovery of the first known dinosaur burrow and burrowing dinosaur, in Montana. The two discoveries suggest that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period.

For more details of the discovery, check out Martin's blog, The Great Cretaceous Walk.

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What happened to Obama's passion?

2011-08-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” writes about the importance of story-telling in this New York Times opinion piece:

It was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.

Photo, left: iStockphoto.com

The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. … Americans needed their president to tell them a story about what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end.

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

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A wild view of apes of the planet

2011-08-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

“It’s a very humbling experience to come face to face with an adult, male lowland gorilla,” says Emory primate disease ecologist Tom Gillespie. “They have a characteristic bluff.”

The male charges toward the perceived threat, says Gillespie, who has been charged often during in his research in Africa. “They put a leaf between their teeth, they beat their chest, and they move back and forth at very close proximity, just in front of you. You can smell their breath at times when they’re doing this. It takes all of your strength away. So it’s a very humbling experience.”

But despite their enormous physical power, gorillas don’t resort to violence unless it’s absolutely necessary to protect themselves or their families. “No one has been killed by a gorilla in any case where they didn’t provoke the gorilla,” Gillespie says. “There’s a misconception of what a gorilla is. Gorillas are extremely peaceful animals. They’re 100-percent vegetarian and they live in a family group that basically keeps to itself.”

What we know from studies of apes in the wild runs counter to the characteristics of the animals portrayed in the new movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” he says.

Even the more war-like behavior observed in chimpanzees in the wild might be less aggressive without human involvement, Gillespie says. “A lot of those things happened because we intervened. We went in there and fed a bunch of bananas to the animals. They changed their ranges, they got accustomed to getting bananas and then when we walked away and stopped giving them bananas, all the sudden they needed food and they started fighting over where they’re going to get the food.”

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Famine in Somalia driven by conflict

2011-08-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

A worn-out tank sits abandoned in Somalia, where the central government has lacked control over much of the country since 1991. Credit: iStockphoto.com/ranplett.

“In the Horn of Africa, droughts are natural but famines are man made,” says Emory anthropologist Peter Little, who studies the politics, economy and ecology of the region. “The famine in Somalia is an unfortunate intersection of failed rain, politics and conflict.”

Drought occurs every five or six years in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, which has lacked the control of a central government over much of the country since a civil war in 1991, the effects of the current drought have been greatly compounded by fighting, Little says.

The U.N. has declared famine in two regions of south Somalia where the Islamist group Al-Shabaab has been fighting to maintain control. “A phenomenal number of people have been displaced,” Little says. “People have been forced out of farming and livestock areas and have clustered around towns where there is a little bit of security.”

Fighting disrupts markets and trading, and complicates delivery of food aid. In an attempt to escape the situation in recent months, more than 350,000 Somalis have poured into northeastern Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, which was designed to hold fewer than 100,000 people.

“Somalia is like a roller coaster, and right now it’s near the bottom of the hill,” Little says.

After years of being a failed state, things were beginning to look up for Somalia around 2003, when the World Bank put together an economic memorandum for the country. “People were actually becoming modestly optimistic about solutions,” Little says. “I was asked if I might be interested in joining a 2006 mission to Mogadishu, to look at long-term development, but things blew up again and it was cancelled.”

Since 2007, the situation has been steadily deteriorating, he says. “The food security situation has been awful for the past three years, particularly for the most vulnerable: Children, the elderly and women.”

Although the famine declaration in July brought Somalia back into the media spotlight, “the story has been bubbling for a long time,” Little says.

Related:
A Somali girl takes a rare chance to pursue her passion for math
What we can learn from African pastoralists

Dinosaurs are booming in the Outback

2011-08-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

Emory science majors pose with a life-sized statue of Muttaburrasaurus langdoni while crusing the Cretaceous of Queensland. Can you spot Paleontologist Barbie in this picture? You may have to click on the photo to enlarge it. Photo by Anthony Martin.

A dozen years ago, Australian rancher David Elliott came across a large bone while rounding up his sheep in the Queensland Outback. It turned out to be the femur of an 18-meter long sauropod – a piece of the largest dinosaur ever found in Australia.

The collecting bug bit Elliot, as more dinosaur fossils were dug up on his property. He and his wife, Judy, founded the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Center (AAOD) in Winton. The isolated Outback town, where poet Banjo Patterson wrote the classic tune “Waltzing Matilda,” is now a hub for dino tourism.

“Australia has often been regarded as ‘dinosaur poor,’” says Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin. “As a continent, there just hadn’t been a lot of material to study.”

Since Elliot’s initial discovery, the AAOD has amassed hundreds of bones, and more keep coming. “So far, they’ve named three new species of dinosaurs, and they suspect they have more,” Martin says. “There is a growing realization that a new age of dinosaurs is happening in Australia.”

Martin and geologist Steve Henderson of Emory’s Oxford College recently returned from leading nine students on a summer study abroad program in Australia. A highlight was a whirlwind paleo-tour of Queensland, including a stop at the AAOD.

“We wanted to give the students a taste of what life is like in the modern-day Outback, and 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period,” Martin says. “I hope they got an appreciation for the incredible natural history of Queensland, and the evolution of landscapes and life in that area of the world.”

Unlike the American West, which has a 100-year history of unearthing and studying dinosaur fossils, Queensland is at the beginning of uncovering a rich trove of the prehistoric past.

“You get to see the science as it's happening and feel the immediacy of discoveries,” Martin says.

Trish Sloan, the group’s guide at the AAOD, showed the students how to prepare a dinosaur bone, and gave them a glimpse of the center’s most recent finds. “I can’t talk about it, because it hasn’t gone through peer review yet,” Martin says. “But Trish was excited about new finds that may change people’s minds about the dinosaurs in the area.”

Read more about Down Under dinosaurs on Martin's blog The Great Cretaceous Walk.

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Insider's guide to Georgia barrier islands

Do drones make killing too easy?

2011-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Dozens of countries are now producing unmanned aircraft known as drones, ranging from flying “spies” the size of insects to large planes equipped with missiles and bombs.

A soldier sitting at a computer in Nevada can be running lethal drones on the other side of the world.

“That to me is deeply problematic, when you make killing so easy, and when you remove the person so far from the site of the killing,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. “The sense of having killed people becomes so abstract.”

Drone technology could develop to the point that enemy soldiers conduct entire battles against one another via computer, while sitting in fortified bunkers.

“This sort of strategy ends up protecting soldiers more, but exposing civilians more,” Wolpe says. “It will change the nature of warfare and raise a new kind of ethical calculus in the way in which warfare is conducted.”

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How to talk to real people

2011-07-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Not everyone speaks 'geek.' A graduate course aims to give students less technical ways to explain their science research. Credit: iStockphoto.com.

The New York Times "Education Life" writes about a new course at Emory:

Recognizing that scientists can be really, really hard to understand, Emory last semester introduced “Communicating Science” to teach grad students to write for and talk to laypeople. Students create presentations, blog and compose “elevator speeches” addressing various scenarios.

Pat Marsteller, a biologist, developed the course and co-teaches it with two chemists, which she says is good because most of the 23 students last term were chemists, who apparently speak a dialect. She says she had her work cut out for her: “The first day somebody said, ‘Why should I want to talk to anybody who doesn’t understand carbon?’”

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

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Nazi eugenics versus the American Dream

2011-07-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

It’s the year of genetically modified super heroes at the movies. The latest, “Captain America: The First Avenger,” is set in World War II, the era when the comic book character was introduced to readers.

“Captain America is the archetypal Marvel Comic,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics and a comic book fan. “You have the scrawny kid who wants desperately to do good. You have technology coming to his rescue. And then you have him modified to become this incredible fighting machine.”

The irony is that the Marvel story created an anti-Nazi figure by using genetics to perfect the human form, which is exactly what the Nazis were trying to do.

“Of course, the difference is that America does it in a way that doesn’t involve genocide or denigrating any other group,” Wolpe says. “They take a specimen that in Nazi ideology would be dispensable and say, all of us have within us the ability to be great, this guy just needs a little help.”

The ideology in the United States at the time was to help people who come here with disadvantages to live the American Dream, Wolpe says. “Captain America becomes a symbol of he way in which the United States thought about itself. I think because eugenic ideas were so much of what World War II was about, that different model of how genetic science can be used became a very powerful symbol of the difference between the German and American views of technology.”

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What we can learn from African pastoralists

2011-07-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

The most severe drought in decades is taking a terrible toll on even the rugged cattle breeds of southern Ethiopia. Despite the harsh environment, the pastoralist way of life endures. Photo by Peter Little.

By Carol Clark

Emory anthropologist Peter Little was in southern Ethiopia last February, during the height of a major drought that continues to scorch the Horn of Africa. He is researching how climate change is affecting livestock herders in the region. During the past year, drought has killed about 20 percent of the cattle, or about 225,000 animals, within Ethiopia’s Borana pastoralist community.

At a watering hole, Little watched herders bring their animals in from northeastern Kenya and Somalia, where the effects of the drought are compounded by armed conflict. “I was amazed by the skill and discipline of these herders,” Little says. “They got thousands of thirsty animals to line up like schoolchildren. Some of the camels hadn’t had water for seven days.”

First the herders themselves approached the water’s edge with buckets and canteens. Then the goats were sent in an orderly procession to drink, followed by the cattle, and finally the camels.

Double click on the photo, below, to get the panoramic view:
Calm amid the crisis: Despite drought, herders and their animals from Somalia and Kenya converge on an Ethiopian watering hole in a systematic order. Photo by Peter Little.

“We could learn a lot from African pastoralists about how to collectively manage resources,” Little says. He contrasts their cooperative use of extremely limited water supplies to the inter-state battles fought over Atlanta’s Lake Lanier reservoir, and the ever-shrinking Colorado River.

Related: Check out this satellite animation of the ongoing drought on Wired.com.

Pastoralists occupy about half of Africa, herding goats, camels, sheep and cattle through the semi-arid rangeland and savannah edging the continent’s deserts and tropical forests. Often garbed in striking traditional dress, pastoralists can be a boon to tourism, but a bane to governments that want to control the movements of people.

“If God wanted us to farm,” a Borana elder told one researcher, “He would have put four legs on a farm so we could move it.”

Pastoralists are the ultimate survivors, making a livelihood in harsh environments for millennia. At first glance they may seem like people subsisting on the margins of society, but the reality is much more complex. Pastoralists are on the vanguard of many of the biggest issues facing Africa: from the effects of climate change to disputes over land to wildlife conservation.

“There are a lot of misunderstandings about pastoralists, even among other Africans,” Little says.

In Ethiopia, pastoralists have developed an elaborate system of deep wells and covered cisterns – some of them 500 years old (see photo, at left).

Zoologists are intrigued by African pastoralist animal breeds, hardy enough to get by on less water and survive extreme heat. Cognitive psychologists are interested in the thought processes enabling pastoralists to continuously make life and death decisions on the fly. Ecologists can learn how grasslands are created and maintained over time by studying the practices of pastoralists.

Little is fascinated by the social networks and relationships that help give pastoralists their resiliency. His latest book, co-authored with John McPeak and Cheryl Doss is called "Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in Pastoralist Communities."

During the early 1980s, Little was one of the first anthropologists to do in-depth studies of the political aspects of environmental and food problems, a field now known as political ecology. In 2003, he published “Somalia: Economy without a State,” which refuted the conventional wisdom that Somalia’s economy, which is heavily dependent on pastoralism, deteriorated into chaos after the state’s collapse in 1991.

Certain sectors of Somali society, including pastoral communities, remained vibrant and dynamic, Little says. “The people showed incredible innovation. They learned to develop a unique set of informal finance, trade and banking institutions in order to survive and make a living.”
Afar herders of Ethiopia with their goats and camels. iStockphoto.com.

Top five myths about African pastoralists

Myth #1: The pastoralist lifestyle and land use are bad for the environment.

Pastoral traditions often play an intrinsic role in wildlife conservation, Emory anthropologist Peter Little says. “For instance, the Maasai, who raise cattle near national parks in Kenya and Tanzania, maintain grasslands and prevent the encroachment of invasive bush species in the parks, which are bordered by dense forests. Pastoral grazing systems tend to fit well with migratory herd species and other forms of biodiversity. In contrast, wildlife doesn’t do as well with fenced farming and more settled human populations.”

Myth #2: Pastoralists have little connection to the global economy.

Pastoralists play a vital role in many African economies, and hold the potential to drive more growth, Little says. Overland trucking routes and boats transport their livestock to supermarkets throughout northern Africa and the Middle East.

Pastoralism accounts for about 25 percent of gross national product (GNP) in Ethiopia and closer to 30 percent in Sudan. About 80 percent of foreign earnings for Somalia come from livestock. Somalia is one of the world’s top exporters of live animals, annually supplying as many as three million animals to the Gulf Arab states in the run-up to the annual haj.

Myth #3: Pastoralists are traditionalists who resist change, wander constantly, and are ruled by the sacred bond they have to their animals.

“Just because you don’t dress like everyone else doesn’t mean you’re opposed to modern technology,” Little says. “Many pastoralists use cell phones now to get information on rainfall, grazing or market prices.”

Or maybe they are just phoning home, since not every member of a pastoral system is necessarily mobile, Little adds. Some family members may have settled in towns where they attend school, own shops or sell livestock products, such as milk.

A Maasai herder, left, in traditional dress, carrying his cell phone. iStockphoto.com.

The movements of mobile pastoralists are dictated not by whim, he adds, but complex systems of land-use rights and changes in the seasons and weather.

And while animals may serve as powerful symbols in the religion and rituals of pastoralists, livestock are primarily a source of food and income. “They also value their animals as commodities,” Little says.

Myth #4: Large swaths of land in Africa are unclaimed and worthless.

Virtually no land in Africa is unclaimed or unused, Little says. What looks like barren wilderness to a casual observer is more likely a community’s source of forest products, like wood and meat, or part of a seasonal grazing area.

“Moving animals to follow rainfall patterns and pastures often makes good use of lands that can’t be cropped without expensive irrigation,” Little says.

Increasingly, however, foreign investors are willing to pay for that irrigation, he adds. Spurred by rising food prices, water shortages in their own countries, and interest in bio-fuels, investors from Europe, the Middle East and India have been buying and leasing hundreds of thousands of hectares in Africa in recent years to create large-scale, commercial farms, Little says. “Much of this land is being carved out of customary pastoralist grazing lands,” he notes.

Myth #5: Pastoralism is a disappearing way of life.

“Pastoralists have been an important fixture for millennia,” Little says, noting that they include many of the revered figures in the Bible and Koran. Consider the origins of the word “pastor.”

“Pastoralists may adapt and change, but as long as people eat meat, there will be some version of them around.”

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When government made things worse

2011-07-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

By Elaine Justice

Government wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, cutting spending and raising taxes has a familiar ring to Emory economic historian Leonard Carlson, who says that throughout the nation’s history, colliding economic philosophies have produced mixed or even negative results.

During the Great Depression, he says, “a couple of really stupid policy decisions come to mind.” Herbert Hoover, who ran for president during a period of prosperity, promised tariff protection if elected. Then, despite the devastation of the 1929 crash, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed in 1930.

“Every economist advised against the idea,” says Carlson, adding that leading economists even petitioned the government to no avail. International trade plunged even further as a result.

In 1937, in the midst of the Depression, Congress, increasingly antagonistic to then President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives, pushed to cut government spending and raise taxes, causing unemployment to spike again briefly. Looking back, says Leonard, “it’s another example of a move that nobody thought was a good idea at the time, but government went ahead and did it.”

He cites other 1930s Depression examples, such as the Fed’s tightening of monetary policy and the reserve ratio at a time when banks were still reeling from the aftershocks of bank runs after the crash. Banks, nervous about their cash reserves, stopped making loans, further slowing the economy.

“Right now,” says Carlson, “almost every economist is saying don’t default on the national debt, and we still could do it.”