Biologist Berry Brosi on Obama's 'plan bee'

"The fate of bees will affect people very viscerally," says Berry Brosi, shown tending his hive on the roof of Emory's Math and Science Center.

By Carol Clark

President Obama recently launched perhaps the most ambitious national plan ever aimed at protecting insects. The National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honeybees and Other Pollinators calls for an “all hands on deck” approach to slow their alarming declines. “Pollinators are critical to our nation’s economy, food security and environmental health,” notes the plan, prepared by the White House Pollinator Health Task Force.

“It’s an important wake-up call,” says Berry Brosi, an Emory biologist and ecologist whose research encompasses both managed honeybees and wild bees. “It’s past time for us to realize the vital links between biodiversity, our environment and our own well-being. Ultimately, that’s what this national plan is about.”

Honeybee pollination alone is worth more than $15 billion to U.S. agriculture, “providing the backbone to ensuring our diets are plentiful with fruits, nuts and vegetables,” the plan states. “Pollinators, most often honeybees, are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take.”

“This isn’t about saving an exotic animal in a faraway place, like the panda,” Brosi says. “We’re talking about the possibility of not having nuts and fruits for our breakfast, shortages of tomatoes and melons, and rising milk prices due to a lack of alfalfa pollination.”

Bees are important to more than just food crops, he adds. Cotton plants, for example, need pollination to produce the fibers that are a cornerstone of the garment industry.

“The fate of bees will affect people very viscerally,” Brosi says.

Pollinators are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat.

Many pollinators, including bees, birds, butterflies, bats and other animals, are in serious decline in the United States and worldwide. Brosi is one of 75 authors working on a global assessment of pollinators for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“In some places in China, people are hand-pollinating apple trees because they don’t have enough of an insect workforce to do it,” Brosi says. “Examples like that should be sobering. Pollination is an extremely labor-intensive task that bees are specially evolved to do.”

Currently, about 2,000 commercial U.S. beekeepers manage their bee colonies as “livestock,” traveling across the country to service pollination contracts with farmers and honey producers. Each year, however, the number of bee colonies has gone down even as beekeepers struggle to rebuild them. Since the 1940s, when there were about 5.7 million colonies in the United States, the number of managed colonies has shrunk by nearly half, according to the USDA.

“Wild bee populations are also declining wherever we look, although we don’t have good long-term data,” Brosi says. “Several species of bumble bees, for example, are declining at alarming rates, and we’ve seen the extinction of at least one species in the United States during the last 20 years.”

The reasons for these losses appear to be myriad and complex, ranging from shrinking habitats to parasites, diseases and pesticide use.

Monarchs need milkweed to survive.

The phenomenon of the winter migration of the monarch butterfly, from across the United States to Mexico, is also imperiled. The three lowest overwintering populations of the Eastern monarch on record have occurred during the last 10 years. The all-time low was recorded last winter, when the monarchs occupied just 0.67 hectares, or 10 percent of the habitat in Mexico that they did two decades ago.

Emory evolutionary biologist Jaap de Roode, who runs one of the few labs in the world focused on monarch butterflies, says that most of this decline is due to disappearing habitat, especially the milkweed plants that monarchs feed on as caterpillars. “Preservation of remaining milkweed and restoration of habitat are key to maintaining the spectacular migration of this iconic insect,” de Roode says.

The White House pollinator strategy outlines specific aims and a timeline to achieve them, including:

Reduce honeybee colony losses during the winter to no more than 15 percent within a decade. 

Boost the overwintering population of the Eastern monarchs by 225 million butterflies occupying approximately six hectares (15 acres) of habitat in Mexico by 2020. 

Restore or enhance seven million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years. 

The strategy recommends an additional $20 million in funding for the USDA specifically for pollinator research and an additional $1.5 million for the Environmental Protection Agency’s pesticide research programs.

“It’s great that the strategy has specific goals and recommendations, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough, particularly in the area of pesticides,” Brosi says.

Ninety percent of flowering plants and many other animals, not just humans, depend on pollinators for their survival.

A class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, for example, are widely used in the United States but banned in Europe due to their effect on bees. While neonicotinoids may not kill bees outright, they can have devastating sub-lethal effects, Brosi says. Even minute doses of these pesticides have been found to hamper bees’ learning, memory and navigation skills.

The national pollinator plan calls for an expedited review of the use of neonicotinoids in the United States, to be completed by 2018. “That’s not soon enough,” Brosi says, adding that the plan’s recommendation for $1.5 million for the EPA’s pesticide programs is a drop in the bucket.

“We need to do serious assessments of the effects on pollinators for a wide range of pesticide types,” Brosi says. “We don’t know much about alternatives to neonicotinoids. Farmers could replace them with something even worse.”

Ninety percent of flowering plants and many other animals, not just humans, depend on pollinators for their survival. “There could be a lot of hidden declines occurring in association with declines in pollinators that we won’t pick up on for a long time,” Brosi says. “A lot of trees are long-lived, for example, so if their populations are not regenerating normally we may not notice it right away. That’s frightening, and one of the areas I’m most concerned about.”

One optimistic note is that bees and other insect pollinators tend to be highly resilient, Brosi adds. “They can thrive in places you wouldn’t expect, such as cities. It’s an interesting conundrum that pollinators do the worst in industrial agriculture areas where we need them the most. A bigger solution to this problem needs to be re-imagining the ways in which our agricultural system functions. When you limit the diversity of plant species and douse fields with pesticides, it can have a lot of unintended negative consequences.”

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BEINGS launches work on global consensus for ethical course of biotech

Novelist Margaret Atwood on stage at BEINGS with cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (center) and Thierry Magnin, who is a physicist, Catholic priest and professor of ethics.

By Carol Clark

Some of the world’s preeminent scientists and bioethicists gathered with leaders of philosophy, sociology, law, policy and religion in Atlanta May 18-20 for BEINGS 2015. The landmark summit launched work on a global consensus for the direction of biotechnology for the 21st century.

The setting for this futuristic event: The Tabernacle, an historic former church turned music venue, with red walls swirled with murals and wood floors that creak like the deck of a ship. Novelist Margaret Atwood, creator of fictional laboratory creatures such as the pigoon, gave a keynote.

“The lid is off the Pandora’s Box of genetic modification,” Atwood said. “This is a pivotal moment. Deliberate well. Keep the bar high. Take precautions.”

And with that, the tumultuous voyage began.

BEINGS, short for Biotech and the Ethical Imagination: A Global Summit, was organized by Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. “The idea is audacious,” Wolpe admitted of their plan to write global guidelines for the aspirations, ethics and policies of biotechnology within the next eight months.

Paul Root Wolpe on the potential and perils of biotechnology:


The BEINGS delegates are up to the task, he added. About 135 delegates from 25 countries joined the summit to take up the challenge of charting a course for how biotechnology can best contribute to human flourishing while navigating the potential perils and ethical pitfalls.

Tensions soon emerged as delegates from different perspectives took the microphone.

Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker threw down the deregulatory gauntlet. “Stay out of the way” of biotech innovation, he urged, as scientists seek to prevent, treat and cure diseases. He cited major improvements in life expectancy around the world largely due to biomedical breakthroughs.

Pinker downplayed fears of eugenics and “designer” babies, while others countered that we are living in a world of competition and should be extremely concerned about the potential power to “edit” the genes of the human germline.

Princeton’s Ruha Benjamin, author of “People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier,” called for the inclusion of those who identify as disabled in discussions about the goals and policies of biotechnology. “Anything less is presumptive and paternalistic,” she said.

It’s important to think about how to distribute benefits, added Benjamin, an assistant professor of African American Studies focused on issues of science and health. “There is no such thing as trickle-down biotech.”

Benjamin and three other delegates summarized their thoughts in an opinion piece for the Guardian: “As we pursue promising treatments, we should also be asking what we are trying to treat; whether it is best treated biomedically; who is included as funders, patients, donors and scientists; who is left out; who profits; and whether or not the treatment masks, depoliticizes, or exacerbates political and social inequality.”

By the afternoon of the first day of the summit, Wolpe said he knew the gathering was going to be a success. “I could tell by the tone of the conversation, and how people were lining up at the microphones to speak, that we had struck a chord,” he says. “We need to bridge a tension in philosophies, but both sides believe that curing human diseases and stopping suffering is an important goal. We have to get outside of the theoretical arguments and start talking about practical, specific issues.”

BEINGS divided discussions into the following major topic areas.

Aspirations and Goals: How should we think about differing goals of biotechnology, from making money, to curing disease, to understanding the basic nature of the organic world, to promoting human flourishing?

Alien Organisms and New (ID)entities: Cellular biotechnologies enable us to engineer novel organisms for industrial, environmental or therapeutic purposes. How might these organisms modify existing social systems and ecosystems, and how do we balance innovation with responsibility?

Bioterror/Bioerror: What are the potential dangers of synthetic biological materials and pathogens in terms of accidents or criminal intent?

Ownership: Should custom-designed genetic material or organisms be subject to patents and copyright?

Donorship: How can government and private sector entities collaborate to protect donors and create standards for bio- and stem-cell banks?

“All voices have a place,” Wolpe stressed. “We don’t have to agree on everything. Wherever we have honest, important disagreement in an area, we will note it in the final document.”

At the end of the summit, more than 80 delegates committed to actively working on writing the guidelines for the five major topic areas. Another 30 agreed to serve as reviewers and editors as drafts are ready. Their goal is to have a final document by next January, which they will submit for publication by a major journal.

“We do not represent just a single segment of society or government body or special interest,” Wolpe says. “We’re a group of global citizens who believe that for biotechnology to be used successfully it has to be used ethically. We as a group can create a document that is persuasive and has value.”

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A physicist's guide to foam and fortune

From foam to Frankenstein: Sidney Perkowitz enjoys a cappuccino (extra foam) at the Ink and Elm in Emory Village. So far this year he has published his first e-book, Universal Foam 2.0, and started work on a new book project, "Frankenstein 2018." (Photo by Carol Clark)

By Carol Clark

You never know what’s going to bubble up on the agenda of physicist Sidney Perkowitz, Emory Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus. Since the 76-year-old Perkowitz retired in 2011, he seems to pop up everywhere, from the Atlanta Science Festival to South Korean national television to a high-level policy meeting in Washington DC.

After 42 years of research and teaching at Emory, he has shifted his focus from the lab and classroom to the wider world. His mission: Communicating science in ways that get people interested and better informed.

“You’re doing something good for society if you can convey science well to a lay person,” Perkowitz says. “You can have an influence over everyone from a child to a congressman.”

Perkowitz began writing about physics for a general audience when he was about 50. “It forced me to be humble because I had a lot to learn,” he says. “Several editors really helped improve my writing. One gave me this great tip: “Remember, you don’t want to simplify the science. You want to simplify the writing.’”

Perkowitz has written six books about physics geared for a lay audience. His most successful, “Universal Foam,” was published in 2001 and remained in print through 2008, including five foreign editions. The book describes the myriad incarnations and inherent mysteries of foam, from densely packed bubbles floating atop a cappuccino to ocean white caps, soap bubbles, and exotic foamy materials used in aerospace and medicine.

Watch a clip from an English-language version of a South Korean documentary inspired by Perkowitz' book on foam, including interviews with Perkowitz:


Last fall, the book brought a Korean television film crew to Perkowitz’s door. “The filmmakers had contacted me out of the blue and said they wanted to make a documentary for children based on the book,” he says. “They sent over a cameraman, a sound guy, a director and a translator.”

So that’s how Perkowitz found himself in his kitchen, brewing a cappuccino as he was being interviewed about the wonders of foam. “We had a wonderful time,” he says of the experience. “The most amazing part was they paid me! It wasn’t a lot, but I was just doing it for fun. So that was a pretty great deal.”

The documentary, “Bubbles That Can Change the World,” was funded by the South Korean government and shown throughout the country as a way to inspire children’s interest in science.

After the publisher stopped putting out new editions of “Universal Foam,” Perkowitz obtained the rights so that he could update it himself as an e-book in January. He titled it “Universal Foam 2.0” “It’s amazingly easy,” Perkowitz says of the process of producing an e-book. He adds that he primarily did it to gain experience with e-books, and doesn’t expect it to sell many copies at this stage. “I just love learning something new and being engaged,” he explains. “And I want to feel that I’m doing something useful for science.”

During the past four years, Perkowitz has also written 20 magazine articles, given public talks, and serves on the science outreach committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which takes him to Washington DC occasionally.

A selection of some of the many editions of Mary Shelley's classic "Frankenstein." (Andy Marbett)

Perkowitz is now at work on this seventh book, which has the working title "Frankenstein 2018." He is both contributing a chapter and co-editing the book, an anthology due out March 11, 2018, the bicentennial of the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel.

“There is something in humanity that wants to find a way to create life and to live forever. But that same desire is also full of fear,” Perkowitz says of the enduring appeal of Frankenstein.

The subject is more relevant than ever. Emory’s Center for Ethics is hosting a major international gathering in Atlanta May 17 to 19, to discuss both aspirations and guidelines for the era of synthetic biology. Biotechnology and the Ethical Imagination: A Global Summit (BEINGS) will bring together delegates from the top 30 biotechnology producing countries of the world.

“The idea of genetic engineering and creating an entirely new being is the 21st-century version of Frankenstein,” Perkowitz says. “Earlier, creating life was envisioned as stitching together dead body parts and zapping them with electricity. Now it’s about getting a micro-scalpel and moving around genes. Some people are afraid of genetically modified food. Imagine how they’ll feel about genetically modified animals and people.”

Perkowitz’ co-editor for the book project is Eddy Von Mueller, an Emory lecturer in film and media studies. The two have already rounded up a dozen contributors for the project, from religion, the arts and sciences, and secured a contract from Pegasus Books.

“Frankenstein is taught often in college classrooms, so we think this anthology might be a good seller as a textbook,” Perkowitz says. “The publisher agreed.”

'BEINGS' set to generate global biotech guidelines

By Carol Clark

The recent news that China is trying to “edit” the genes of human embryos, in a way that would permanently alter their DNA, was met with alarm by many in the scientific community. Researchers from the United States were among those who called for a halt to such experiments until the safety and ethical implications are fully considered.

“We’re at the point where we can manipulate life in ways that have great promise to cure some of our most dreaded diseases, expand agriculture and clean up the environment,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory’s Center for Ethics. “But the ability to create new forms of life also holds the potential to cause disease or create organisms that could be environmentally toxic. So we need to be really careful when we’re trying to change some of these basic building blocks of life that we do so thoughtfully. We need to have boundaries around what should and shouldn’t be done.”

The Center for Ethics is hosting a major international summit in Atlanta May 17 to 19, to discuss both aspirations and guidelines for the era of synthetic biology. Biotechnology and the Ethical Imagination: A Global Summit (BEINGS), will bring together delegates from the top 30 biotechnology producing countries of the world.

Heading up the discussions will be a faculty of 25 distinguished scholars, including leaders in science, law, ethics, industry, philosophy, religion and the arts and humanities. Among the luminaries: Novelist Margaret Atwood, synthetic biologist George Church and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker.

The public is also encouraged to register and attend BEINGS. “The kinds of decisions that we need to make about biotechnology should not just be made by scientists,” Wolpe says. “I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to participate in this conversation.”

Regulations have not kept pace with rapid advances in biotechnology, he says. “We are currently dealing with a kind of regulatory chaos, not only among different countries but even within the United States. Different states, for example, have different standards for how to use stem-cell research.”

BEINGS 2015 will kick off with a key question: What are the major goals of biotechnology?

“We want to articulate the most important aspirational principles of biotechnology and how it can contribute to human flourishing,” Wolpe says. “Once we agree on where we want to go, then I think it becomes easier to talk about how we create boundaries to get there safely.”

In the months following the summit, the delegates will work on developing an international consensus document for biotechnology guidelines, the first of its kind. “Our hope is that it will serve as a kind of touchstone, and a model for ethical principles and policy standards worldwide,” Wolpe says.

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Climate@Emory: Change is in the air

Steve Sclar, left, recently demonstrated on the Emory campus how he gathers indoor air quality data. (Emory Photo/Video)

By Carol Clark

Steve Sclar traveled to Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China last summer to research the indoor air quality of nomads, who burn yak dung in their stoves for warmth and to cook their food. His measurements showed high levels of fine particulate matter in the smoked-filled tents and homes of some of the nomads. But Sclar also caught a glimpse of how global pollutants from industrialization may be impacting the isolated realm of the Tibetan plateau.

"The Tibetans are noticing changes in their climate and they're worried about the effects," says Sclar, an MPH student in Rollins School of Public Health's Department of Environmental Health. "Their grassland is getting poorer in the summer months and they see the snow pack getting smaller on the holiest mountain range in the region, known as Amnye Machen.

"I asked one nomad, 'What happens if Amnye Machen loses all of its snow?' He told me, 'Then it's the end of the world.'"

Climate change "is the biggest environmental health problem we face," Sclar says, "and yet it is so hard to pin down. There's no one country or entity to blame, and there is no one field of study that has the solution. We need to figure out how to reconcile all this."

Climate@Emory is an initiative made up of more than 50 faculty and staff from 20 departments across the university. Its goal is to harness Emory's strengths to help it play a leading role in the global response to perhaps the most complicated and pressing problem of our time. Since its launch last fall, the initiative has worked to support, connect and expand Emory's climate-related scholarship, teaching and community engagement.

"It's really not possible to understand climate change from the standpoint of any one discipline," says Eri Saikawa, who is Sclar's adviser and one of the founders of Climate@Emory. She is an assistant professor at Rollins and in the Department of Environmental Sciences. "We want to connect the dots to improve the quality and impact of Emory's research and provide a platform for intellectual engagement on climate change."

Read more in Emory Report.

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Neuroethics and the human brain projects

Image from cover of the NIH brochure "The BRAIN Initiative."

The European Commission has promised 1 billion euros for its Human Brain Project, which seeks to build a computer model of the human brain within the next decade. And U.S. federal agencies are expected to contribute several billion dollars to President Obama's BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies).

Meanwhile, the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which includes Emory’s President James Wagner as its vice chair, has outlined the need for ethical inquiry alongside this research. In a 2014 report entitled “Gray Matters: Integrative Approaches for Neuroscience, Ethics and Society,” the commission calls for a systematic ethics education throughout the careers of neuroscientists.

Articles in the current issue of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience (AJOBN) represent the scope of ongoing neuroethical inquiry, from criteria for human trials to study Parkinson’s disease to the use of prescription stimulants to enhance motivation.

“The study of neuroscience, unlike many other scientific disciplines, resonates with the notion of who we think we are,” write the authors of an editorial in the issue. “Therefore, the ethical questions often move beyond research and professional ethics into the complex terrain of evaluating societal implications. This will impact how we educate our burgeoning neuroscientists.”

The editorial was co-authored by Karen Rommelfanger, director of the Neuroethics Program at Emory’s Center for Ethics.

“Ultimately, the success or failure of the human brain projects will be measured only partly by the extent to which they accomplish the goal of mapping the human connectome,’ the editorial authors conclude. “If the goal of the projects is to understand the human brain, the goal of neuroethics is to help understand and explain what understanding the brain would really mean.”

The AJOBN is the official publication of the International Neuroethics Society and many of its editors are housed in Emory’s Center for Ethics.

Why debunked autism treatment fads persist

The emotional appeal of facilitated communication is "very powerful and understandable," says psychologist Scott Lilienfeld. "The problem is, it doesn't work."

By Carol Clark

The communication struggles of children with autism spectrum disorder can drive parents and educators to try anything to understand their thoughts, needs and wants. Unfortunately, specialists in psychology and communication disorders do not always communicate the latest science so well.

These factors make the autism community especially vulnerable to interventions and “therapies” that have been thoroughly discredited, says Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory University.

“Hope is a great thing, I’m a strong believer in it,” Lilienfeld says. “But the false hope buoyed by discredited therapies can be cruel, and it may prevent people from trying an intervention that actually could deliver benefits.”

Lilienfeld is lead author of a commentary, “The persistence of fad interventions in the face of negative scientific evidence: Facilitated communication for autism as a case example,” recently published by the journal Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention. Co-authors of the commentary are Julia Marshall (also from Emory) and psychologists James Todd (from Eastern Michigan University), and Howard Shane (director of the Autism Language Program at Boston Children’s Hospital).

The authors describe a litany of treatments for autism that have been attempted with little or no success over the years, including gluten- and casein-free diets, antifungal interventions, chelation therapy, magnetic shoe inserts, hyperbaric oxygen sessions, weighted vests, bleach enemas, sheep-stem-cell injections and many more.

As a case study, however, the article focuses on one intervention in particular: Facilitated Communication, or FC.

FC purports to allow previously nonverbal individuals with autism and related disorders to type by using a keyboard or letter pad. A facilitator offers support to the individual’s arms, allowing him or her to type words and complete sentences.

Soon after its introduction into the United States in the early 1990s, however, FC was convincingly debunked. Studies overwhelmingly demonstrated that facilitators were unconsciously guiding the hands of individuals with autism toward the desired letters, much as individuals using a Ouija board unknowingly guide the planchette to certain numbers and letters.

“The emotional appeal of FC is very powerful and understandable,” Lilienfeld says. “And no doubt the overwhelming majority of people who use FC are sincere and well-meaning. The problem is, it doesn’t work.”

In some cases, the authors note, FC has resurfaced with minor variations in the technique and a new name, such as “rapid prompting,” or “supported typing.”

By reviewing published surveys of practitioner use and canvassing the popular and academic literatures, Lilienfeld and his co-authors show that FC continues to be widely used and widely disseminated in much of the autism community despite its scientific refutation. They examine a number of potential reasons for the surprising persistence of FC and other autism fads. They note that the inherent difficulties in treating autism may give rise to an understandable desire for quick fixes of many kinds.

Lilienfeld and his colleagues underscore the pressing need for experts in the autism field to better educate the public about not only what works for the condition, but what does not.

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How 'Fifty Shades' is coloring views of fantasy

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Gray (Jamie Dornan) in the movie version of "Fifty Shades of Grey," which is only rated R but reportedly shows at least 20 full minutes of sex.

Emma Green writes in The Atlantic about the social implications of the blockbuster fantasy novel and movie "Fifty Shades of Grey." Below is an excerpt from the article:

"In some ways, it’s remarkable that a phenomenon like 'Fifty Shades' has even been possible. 'Oral sex, anal sex—those are all things that were at one time illegal,' said Paul Wolpe, the director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University. Sodomy, for example, was considered a felony in every state until 1962, and until the Supreme Court ruled against sodomy bans in its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, it was still illegal in 14 states.

"Today, 'there are lots of differences in the moral composition,' he said. 'There’s no unified moral view, so … the argument then becomes: My morality is different than yours—what right do you have to oppose me?'

Read the whole article in The Atlantic.

Tapping nature to clean wastewater

In the WaterHub's 2,200-square-foot greenhouse, campus wasterwater is filtered and circulated among plant roots, where microbes naturally consume organic material.

By Kimber Williams, Emory Report

A new Emory facility, called the WaterHub, uses adaptive ecological technology to naturally break down organic matter in wastewater. The WaterHub is projected to help Emory reclaim some 300,000 gallons of campus wastewater daily, cutting potable water consumption as much as 35 percent and saving the university millions in water utility costs over a 20-year period, according to Matthew Early, vice president for Campus Services.

"Emory is a leader in sustainability," Early says. "With this facility, we’re taking a major step forward in becoming one of the first in the nation with this technology for cleaning our own wastewater."

Even as the facility was being constructed last semester, it was being put into service — Emory students used it for research by monitoring the changing microbiology of wastewater samples as the new project was ramping up.

Read more about the WaterHub.

Biology students aim for fast, portable Ebola test

Rostam Zafari and Brian Goldstone have made a video appeal to support their idea.

By Kimber Williams, Emory Report

Two Emory freshmen have turned a classroom challenge into an exercise in real-life social entrepreneurship, advancing their idea to create a new method of testing for the Ebola virus into an online crowdfunding campaign that is already gaining steam.

The result? A student-powered proposal to develop REDS, Rapid Ebola Detection Strips, a portable, fast, less expensive, user-friendly approach to detecting the virus in the field.

It was on the first day of classes this semester, during an Introduction to Biology course, that Brian Goldstone and Rostam Zafari heard Senior Biology Lecturer Rachelle Spell mention a way to earn extra-credit: Learn how doctors currently test for the Ebola virus and come up with a faster, more affordable idea.

Read the full story.

Neuro-Interventions and the Law: Experts to explore ethics and efficacy

Atlanta's Neuro-Interventions and the Law Conference will grapple with thorny issues facing today's legal system. The case of British computer scientist Alan Turing, who submitted to chemical castration in 1952 to avoid imprisonment for homosexuality, exemplifies why a judicial system should take the long view before resorting to drugs or other medical means to alter a person's behavior and biology. Benedict Cumberbatch, above, portrays Turing in the upcoming movie "The Imitation Game."

By Carol Clark

Alan Turing was a hero. He was a mathematician who played a key role in the development of computer science and artificial intelligence and, during World War II, he led Britain’s German code-breaking team, cracking secret messages that gave the Allies an edge in critical battles against the Nazis.

Turing was also a homosexual. In 1952 he was prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with another man, a crime at that time in the United Kingdom. In order to avoid prison, Turing underwent chemical castration: Injections of a drug that took away his libido, while also causing him to have enlarged breasts. His death two years later from cyanide poisoning was ruled a suicide.

The Turing tragedy is just one of many examples of a legal neuro-intervention: The use of a drug or other medical means to change someone’s behavior – sometimes permanently. Despite a problematic past record, a range of such interventions are poised to expand within the legal system and could even become routine.

The conference Neruo-Interventions and the Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity will gather leading legal scholars, judges, ethicists, neuroscientists and psychologists at Georgia State University September 12-14 to grapple with some of the thorny legal issues being spurred by advances in neuroscience. Registration is free, but there is limited seating.

“Techniques to diagnose and manipulate human behavior and the brain are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” says Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist and director of the Emory Center for Ethics, who will give the introductory remarks for the conference. “We need to develop processes and regulations for how we’re going to use these techniques because they are not going away. In fact, many of them are already in use in criminal proceedings.”

The conference is the first major event of the Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium. The Emory Center for Ethics spearheaded the formation of the consortium, which brings together a range of resources from metro-Atlanta’s universities, biotechnology sector and non-profit organizations to explore the implications as neuroscience is set to transform every aspect of our lives, from medicine, to law and civil society.

At least nine U.S. states, including Georgia, have incorporated versions of chemical castration into their laws for those convicted of child sex crimes. While pedophilia is an extreme taboo, critics of chemical castration have called it “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Even if convicted sex offenders are given a voluntary option of a drug treatment in lieu of imprisonment, the ethics are problematic, Wolpe says. “From a government perspective, it would be infinitely cheaper to use drugs instead of incarceration to fix a criminal problem. That kind of incentive would add to the risk of abuse of the power to drug people.”

Another problematic area that Wolpe cites: The practice of drugging criminal defendants suffering from schizophrenia or other mental illnesses so that they achieve a “synthetic competency” to stand trial and, if convicted, perhaps even be executed.

Attorneys are increasingly calling for brain scans as evidence in criminal trials. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, for instance, is associated with impulsiveness, anger and aggression. Should people diagnosed with TBI receive special consideration if they commit a violent criminal offense?

About 12 percent of U.S. veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from at least mild TBI, according to the Department of Defense. Should vets accused of violent acts be treated differently than other defendants with similar brain injuries?

These questions and dozens of others will be brought up in the conference talks, papers and panel discussions.

It’s important to involve a range of expertise to sort through the complicated neuroethics involved in all of these issues, Wolpe says. “History shows that, over and over again, society has allowed moral suppositions to infiltrate scientific thinking. Years from now, we don’t want to be looking back and saying, ‘How could they have done that?’”

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Curbing pesticide threats to bees

Berry Brosi, a bee biologist in Emory's department of environmental sciences, wrote an opinion piece for the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the importance of making informed choices about the use of pesticides. Following is an excerpt from the article:

"Bee populations are declining and several culprits contribute: parasites and diseases, pesticides, lack of flowering plants to feed on and management practices. Scientists, conservationists, government agencies and beekeepers are working hard to figure out ways to reduce these challenging problems.

"One concrete action we can take is to reduce exposure to pesticides that can harm bees and other pollinators. Recently, Emory University announced that it will take an important step toward protecting bees by banning a class of pesticides known as 'neonicotinoids.'

"Though relatively new on the market, neonicotinoids are the most used class of insecticides on Earth. ... Scientific evidence has been mounting from a range of studies that neonicotinoids are particularly damaging to bees. ... Even at low concentrations neonicotinoids can impair bee immune systems, learning, foraging and navigation."

Read the whole article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

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Photo: iStockphoto.com

Planting the seeds for healthier communities

"Being a woman of color, born and raised in the South, I want to dedicate my life to improve health in whatever way I can," says Leandra Lacy, an MPH student and intern at an inner-city garden. "I believe knowledge is power, and I want to spread as much knowledge as I can."

By Elaine Justice, Emory Report

The Super Giant Community Garden, run by the Emory Urban Health Initiative, aims to provide Northwest Atlanta with a more nutritious selection of foods. The area is considered a food desert, marked by limited access to grocery stores, fresh foods and convenient transportation.

The community garden is located in the parking lot of the Super Giant Foods grocery store, which is also working to expand healthy offerings. Organizers hope to eventually create a "Healthy Hub" for the area that will include a community kitchen, health clinic, childcare facilities and a laundromat.

"We have several regulars who come in," says DeJa Love, who became involved in the project as an undergraduate intern in Emory's Ethics and Servant Leadership Program. "We connect with them about nutrition and healthy living," Love says. "Being a listening ear, that's what my job has turned into."

"I live less than a mile away from a Kroger and a Publix," says Leandra Lacy, an MPH student working alongside Love at the urban garden. "To be in an area of Northwest Atlanta that's a food desert — besides the Super Giant and the garden in the parking lot, there isn't another grocery store within a 10 mile radius — was hard for me to fathom. I'm just glad that I'm in this place where I can be present and really get to know the people there and help open up access to healthy food." 

More than 30 Emory student interns are working with Atlanta non-profits this year while completing a non-credit ethics course on what it means to be not just a leader, but a servant leader.

Read more in Emory Report.

Seeing the tropical forest amid disease

"Insights over the past three decades have clarified how the health and persistence of tropical forest systems depend on critical ecosystem services provided by wildlife," Emory disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie told Liz Kimbrough in a recent intreview for the conservation news site Mongabay. "We've lost pollinators—honeycreeper declines in Hawaii due to introduced malaria; seed dispersers—lowland gorilla declines due to Ebola; and indicator species—frog declines and extinctions due to chytrid fungus."

Gillespie at work in Uganda

Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory's Department of Environmental Sciences and the Rollins School of Public Health, was featured as one of the 12 top innovators in tropical conservation. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

Mongabay: What's the next big thing in forest conservation? What approaches or ideas are emerging or have recently emerged? What will be the catalyst for the next big breakthrough?

Thomas Gillespie: In the past decade, technological advances in non-invasive pathogen surveillance have allowed us to make great strides in understanding how infectious diseases may threaten endangered species (i.e., fecal assays to examine respiratory pathogens and blood-borne pathogens like malaria and immunodeficiency viruses). Similarly, an exciting innovation that's just taking off is letting mosquitos, leeches, and carrion flies do the work for us! All of these invertebrates seek out wildlife for a meal. By trapping them and analyzing their gut contents, we can determine which wildlife species they fed on, and in some cases, the pathogens that infected those individuals. This is especially interesting in regards to carrion flies, since they feed more or less indiscriminately on dead or dying animals. As a result, screening large numbers of carrion flies in a selected tropical forests could provide an inventory of faunal and pathogen diversity including data on the presence or absence of cryptic species. In addition, this method may alert wildlife managers to major mortality events (i.e., based on anomalies in the frequency and amount of DNA from a specific vertebrate species being recovered).

Read the whole interview at mongabay.com.

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Primate disease ecologist tracks germs in the wild
How germs jump species

When 'I' becomes 'we': Brain-to-brain interfaces

Emory scientists John Trimper (psychology), Paul Root Wolpe (Center for Ethics) and Karen Rommelfanger (neurology) wrote an opinion piece on the ethical implications of emerging brain-to-brain interfacing technologies for Frontiers in Neuroengineering. Below is an excerpt.

The idea of creating a direct connection between a human brain and a computer has a long history in science fiction. The development of brain computer interfaces (BCI), technologies permitting direct communication between a user's brain and an external device, began to become a reality in the 1970s, and have since captured the attention of scientists and the public alike. Initially conceptualized for military use—the initial work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—more recently BCIs have shown promise for therapeutic uses, providing hope for restorative and even enhanced human capacities.

Utilizing both invasive and non-invasive technologies, scientists are now capable of recording and translating activity from populations of neurons to operate external devices. In early 2013, the technology took a leap forward as researchers replaced the external computer connection with a second embodied brain, dubbing the approach “brain-to-brain” interfacing (BTBI). The direct transfer of information between two brains raises new and important ethical issues. We summarize the first two landmark studies in BTBI research, and then discuss ethical concerns relevant to BTBI as they are applied in clinical, research, and non-therapeutic domains.

Read the whole article in Frontiers in Neuroengineering.

Image: iStockphoto.com

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Creating an atmosphere for change

"It's really not possible to understand climate change from the standpoint of one discipline," says Eri Saikawa.

By Carol Clark

Most of the faculty in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences look forward to getting into the field, whether it’s to track wild primates through an African rainforest, chase after bumblebees in a Rocky Mountain meadow or just splash through metro-Atlanta streams to monitor mosquitoes and their larvae.

Eri Saikawa, however, loves nothing better than being indoors, battling computer-programming bugs as she wades into murky problems involving mathematics, atmospheric chemistry, and global environmental policy.

“I was never an outdoor person,” says Saikawa, assistant professor of environmental sciences. She smiles at the irony as she sits before her computer, wrapped in a comfy throw to ward off the fall chill seeping through the windows of her fifth-floor office. Using a numerical model, she is able to analyze the link between current emissions, air quality, and the climate to understand the impact of economic activities on the environment in different parts of the world.

Saikawa is an eclectic mix of interests, experience, and knowledge. Her research into public policy and the science of emissions linked to air pollution, ozone depletion, and global warming forms a patchwork quilt of expertise that covers many of the major environmental issues facing the world today.

Since she arrived at Emory last year, Saikawa and her colleagues have identified more than two dozen faculty and staff, from anthropology to sociology, from business to public health, whose work involves climate change. “We’re hoping to knit this network of faculty together into a team at Emory,” Saikawa says. She would eventually like to see this network expand to include researchers at Georgia Tech and other nearby institutions.

“It’s really not possible to understand climate change from the standpoint of one discipline,” she says. “Our energy system is changing. Our air is changing. Our supplies of water and energy are changing. The way we use land is changing. Ecosystems are changing. It’s not just climate change. It’s really global environmental change, and change in one system affects another, and so on. We need to find ways to show how it is all connected.”

Read the whole article in Emory Magazine.

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Emory-Tibet science project rolls out bridges to inner and outer worlds

Emory psychology professor Philippe Rochat, left, sparks a connection with the Dalai Lama during a panel discussion on ethics, as religion professor Wendy Farley looks on. Emory Photo/Video.

By Carol Clark

If you want to make a significant contribution for a better world, “take care of both the brain and the heart.” That was the overriding message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Emory’s Presidential Distinguished Professor, during his recent visit to campus.

The Robert A. Paul Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) is one way the Dalai Lama would like to incorporate that message into education. He presided over a luncheon celebrating the full implementation phase of the ETSI, an initiative started in 2007 to exchange knowledge between modern scientists and Tibetan monastics trained in ancient, contemplative methods of developing empathy, compassion and other beneficial mental states.

“The ETSI bridges two worlds that are too often separate: Science and the inner world of human values, beliefs and emotions,” said Robin Forman, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences. “His Holiness realizes that both hold great value.”

Emory faculty and Tibetan scholars collaborated to develop introductory Tibetan-English science textbooks in neuroscience, biology and physics, and to lead classes for Tibetan monastics. Nearly 100 monks and nuns have participated in the development phase of the ETSI. Last May, six Tibetan monks completed a three-year science instruction program at Emory, and they will now lead the teaching efforts back in India, the seat of the Tibetan diaspora, with the continued support of Emory science faculty. With funding from the Dalai Lama Trust and Emory College, 36 more monastic teachers will be trained at Emory over the next 10 years.

The first group of Tibetan monks to compete a three-year science-teaching program at Emory poses at commencement with Dean Robin Forman (standing, center), and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, director of the ETSI (in business suit). Emory Photo/Video.

“What a joyful experience it has been,” Forman said of the ETSI. He noted that the Tibetan monastics see a comprehensive science curriculum not as a threat to their Buddhist tradition, but as “a way of protecting, preserving, enhancing and even energizing their unique culture and civilization.”

The Dalai Lama called the large-scale implementation of the curriculum, set for 2014, as “the most critical phase.” The roll-out will include: The development of 19 high-level bilingual science textbooks; annual six-week intensives taught by international science faculty in three major monastic institutions in south India, with a total student body of more than 10,000; and year-round distance learning classes for monasteries and nunneries.

The ETSI grew out of the Emory Tibet Partnership, founded by Robert Paul, an Emory professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies, and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, a senior lecturer in Emory’s Department of Religion and director of the ETSI. Watch the video, below, to learn more about the ETSI formation:


So far, the ETSI has hosted five International Conferences on Science Translation into Tibetan and coined more than 2,500 new science terms for the language.

“Translation is one of the most important sources of knowledge for every evolving civilization,” said Tsondue Samphel, a member of the ETSI translation team. Samphel trained as a novice monk in Dharamsala, India, before returning to secular life and earning a physics degree from Emory in 2006.

Samphel described how translators played a role in bringing Buddhism from other countries to Tibet, and in helping the religion evolve into a form of Buddhism unique to the Himalayan kingdom.

“Now, more than 1,000 years later, another historic event is taking place,” Samphel said of the effort to promote the cross-fertilization of ancient Tibetan wisdom and modern scientific understanding. “This could advance the welfare of all humanity to a higher level."

Emory biologist Arri Eisen, center, says helping Tibetan monastics gain a scientific view of the world has made him a better teacher.

The cross-fertilization is already contributing to science discoveries at Emory. For instance, Cognitively Based Compassion Training, a secular meditation protocol based on Tibetan traditions, has demonstrated significant beneficial effects on immune and hormonal response to psychosocial stress among Emory undergraduate students. These promising research results led to an ongoing NIH-funded study on the health benefits of compassion training.

The ETSI “changed my life,” said Arri Eisen, a professor of biology, who is among the Emory faculty who has spent summers in India teaching the monastics. He said the experience of engaging in intense discussions with the monastics made him a better teacher.

Most of his Tibetan students do not have a goal of becoming a scientist. “They are learning science to help them understand Buddhism better, to make them better Buddhists, and to become more enriched citizens,” Eisen said.

“I’m representing just a small piece of the power of this thing,” he said. “This project has transformed me, it’s transformed many monks and nuns, and I think that’s just the beginning.”

Related:
Compassion meditation may boost neural basis of empathy
Monks + scientists = new body of thought
Tibetan monks learn about science and 'riding shotgun'
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In Madagascar, a health crisis of people and their ecosystem

A Malagasy farmer tends his field on a misty morning at the edge of the rainforest. Photo by Emory graduate student Morgan Mercer.

By Carol Clark

Madagascar, an island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, is a biodiversity hotspot. Most of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth, making the island a top destination for evolutionarily biologists, drawn to the exotic and endangered flora and fauna.

Visitors to a Madagascar rainforest are enthralled by creatures like the comically long-legged sifaka lemurs, jewel-colored chameleons, net-throwing spiders and giant comet moths streaming golden tails.

Meanwhile, much of the local populace is focused on staying fed, sheltered and alive. Houses, food crops and livestock bump up against remaining patches of wilderness. The country is one of the poorest in the world, with an annual per capita income of $400. About 160 children a day die in Madagascar from preventable diseases, according to UNICEF.

“Madagascar is famous for its wildlife, to the point that its people get overshadowed,” says Emily Headrick, a graduate student in Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. “When people’s children are dying of diarrheal diseases, their priorities are probably not going to include protecting biodiversity.”

"When you go into homes, you see the lack of possessions," says Headrick, above, performing a health assessment. Photo by Carol Clark.

Headrick is part of an infectious disease team, including Emory students from nursing, the Rollins School of Public Health, the Department of Environmental Studies and the Masters of Development Practice program, conducting research in Madagascar. The team, in the country for most of the summer, is gathering baseline data on the health of people, domesticated animals and wildlife in and around the Ranomafana National Park. This “one health” approach may be key to solving some of the complex problems facing the Malagasy people and their unique ecosystem.

“It’s been refreshing for me as a nurse to learn about the environment, and animal health and development policy from the other members of the team,” Headrick says. “No one person’s area of the work is more important than that of the others.”

Photo by Sarah Zohdy.

The project is part of a large-scale effort of conservation and global health being coordinated by Thomas Gillespie, an Emory professor of Environmental Studies and Environmental Health. Gillespie is also director of infectious disease research for the Centre Valbio, an international research consortium at the entrance of Ranomafana founded by Patricia Wright. The ultimate goal is to promote human and wildlife health, while also ensuring the sustainability of the ecosystem.

This summer, the students are focusing on six villages and the fields and forests bordering them. For weeks, they have camped out and hiked up and down the steep trails of the region, often slogging through rain and mud, forging on even while occasionally suffering from bouts of the intestinal diseases they are there to investigate.

“One minute you’ll be struggling up a steep path, brushing back vines with thorns that tear at your hands,” says Sarah Zohdy, a post-doctoral FIRST fellow in the Gillespie lab who is leading the team in the field. “But then you’ll round a corner and see a beautiful waterfall. Or you’ll look down at your boots and notice that the mud caking them is sparkling with flecks of gold.”

The field work began in 2011. The work this summer was largely funded by the Jim and Robin Herrnstein Foundation and Emory’s Global Health Institute and Masters of Development Practice program. The data the students are gathering will be used to implement a system of health care services through a new non-profit agency called PIVOT.

Following are brief bios of the 2013 team members, and their perspectives on the project.

The black-and-white ruffed lemur is known for its loud, raucous calls. Photo by charlesjharp via Wikipedia Commons.

Sarah Zohdy is a biologist who began doing research in Ranomafana six years ago, drawn by her fascination with lemurs.

About 65 million years ago, a small, primitive primate made its way to the island, perhaps on a raft of floating vegetation, and diverged into dozens of species of lemurs, which today are found only in Madagascar.

“When I first came here, I thought the whole island would look like a BBC nature special,” Zohdy recalls. Instead she was stunned during the 10-hour drive from the capital of Antananarivo to Ranomafana to see a largely treeless landscape of terraced rice paddies and the occasional smoke from slash-and-burn agriculture. More than 90 percent of the original forest of Madagascar is gone.

“I just wanted to study aging in mouse lemurs,” Zohdy says. “I didn’t go into this wanting to be a conservation biologist, but I realized that was necessary.” Photo by Carol Clark.

Since humans began settling in Madagascar, about 1,500 years ago, much of the wildlife has disappeared, including at least 17 species of lemurs. About 100 lemur species survive, but many are teetering of the brink of extinction due to loss of habitat.

The issue is critical for people as well as animals, Zohdy says. “When you have humans encroaching on wildlife habitat you have huge potential for zoonotic diseases, and the emergence of new diseases.” Pneumonic plague and virulent strains of flu are examples of deadly outbreaks that have occurred in Madagascar in recent years.

Part of the work of the infectious disease team involves gathering fecal samples of lemurs, people and their livestock. These samples, along with mosquitos and ticks the team is collecting, will be sent back to Atlanta for analysis of pathogens they may contain. “To really understand human health, animal health and environmental health, you have to study all three at once,” Zohdy says.

The strange, clown-like face of a chameleon. More than half the world's chameleons are unique to Madagascar. Photo by Sarah Zohdy.

Emily Headrick is a nurse who prefers being in the field to hospitals. She’s worked as a health educator for refugees in Atlanta and at a clinic in Uganda.

In Madagascar, she is conducting health assessments of families that are randomly selected from the villages in the study. Few people she has surveyed own shoes or toothbrushes. One family, for example, consists of 13 people living in a 10-by-12-foot mud-brick home with a thatched roof, a dirt floor and little else.

Headrick treats a wound. Photo by C. Rist.

In addition to asking questions about the health history of family members, Headrick’s role is to measure and record people’s height and weight and other vital signs and to test their blood for malaria. Most people have never been to a dentist and some report debilitating tooth pain.

“I worked really hard to prepare myself for the fact that we are here to do research, and not to provide health care,” Headrick says.

Determined to do what she can, however, she bought drugs to treat anyone who tests positive for malaria. She also put together a comprehensive first-aid kit, and spends much of her free time cleaning and bandaging wounds.

The simple act of touching someone and taking the time to listen to them talk about their pain is part of the role of a nurse, Headrick says. “It has a different kind of therapeutic value. And it helps build trust in people. This is a long-term project.”

Cassidy Rist is a veterinarian who is now enrolled in the masters in public health program at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. She also works part-time in the CDC’s One Health Office.

Too many public health programs leave pets and livestock out of the equation, Rist says. “We need more projects like this, where people from different specialties work together and talk to each other." Photo by Carol Clark.

Rist is interviewing people in village households about the animals they own, mainly poultry, pigs and zebu – a hardy, humped-back breed of cattle. In a typical village, ducks, chickens, zebu and pigs wander amid the mud houses, defecating near water sources and on the same paths where people walk barefooted. People often cage their free-roaming chickens and bring them inside the family home to sleep at night.

“Any pathogens these animals have can easily be shared by the whole village,” Rist says.

Some people tell her that their chickens died of malaria. She explains to them that chickens don’t get malaria. She then asks the symptoms of the birds, so that she can give them information about the likely culprit.

Dogs are also in the mix, often scruffy with ribs showing, and rarely vaccinated for rabies. Rist asked if she could treat the badly injured paw of one dog. The villagers told her that it was fady, or taboo, to restrain a dog so she was unable to help the animal.

Kristin Derfus takes a GPS reading after setting up a mosquito trap. Photo by Carol Clark.

Kristin Derfus is a graduate student in the Rollins School of Public Health, focused on Global Environmental Health. She has done DNA extraction and PCR analyses for diarrheal diseases in the Gillespie lab, and also trained in a CDC lab that researches malaria and mosquitoes.

“Studying diseases in a lab or a classroom is a lot different than seeing people affected by them in real life,” Derfus says. “No one should be dying from these diseases. They’re treatable.”

Derfus is collecting ticks and mosquitoes in each of the villages of the Madagascar study, which are being sent to the CDC for analysis. Cumbersome light traps, with lots of working parts, are used to capture the mosquitoes.

“A lot of things go wrong when you’re working in the field. I’ve learned to think creatively,” Derfus says. She was using plastic bags to keep the batteries of the light traps dry, but the bags leaked where the wires connecting them to the trap protruded. Zohdy grabbed a large banana leaf, slit it up the middle and fitted it over the batteries. “The leaves work perfectly, and you don’t even have to carry them around,” Derfus says.

Malagasy entomologist Tovo Mbolatiana Andrianjafy shows villagers how to identify the type of mosquitoes that can spread malaria. Photo by Carol Clark.

She places the traps under the eaves of a home, near a livestock enclosure, in an agricultural field and in the surrounding forest. Each morning, the captured bugs are counted and identified: Only the female Anopheles mosquito can transmit malaria to humans.

Identifying “hot spots,” where malaria-infected mosquitoes are the most abundant, can help in the development of targeted interventions, she explains.

Derfus says she is learning more about the insects by working in the field with Tovo Mbolatiana Andrianjafy, a Malagasy graduate student at the University of Antananarivo. “When I entered school, I wanted to be a medical doctor, but then I started learning about the role of bugs in disease, and I decided to become a medical entomologist,” he says. “Malaria is a big, big problem in Madagascar, even in Tana (the capital).”

Masters of Development Practice students Morgan Mercer, left, and Paul Kennedy in the field with local guide and technician Rakotonjatovo Justin. Photo by Cassidy Rist.

Morgan Mercer is an Emory graduate student in the Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) program. She has a degree in political science and experience working with international non-profits in Washington, D.C. on HIV-AIDS and community health programs.

In Madagascar, she is using GPS technology to survey and map the villages and their agricultural sites, along with Paul Kennedy, another Emory MDP student.

“We are mapping the layout, and including water sources, latrines, livestock enclosures, streams and roads,” Mercer explains. They will then map the GPS coordinates and data gathered by other team members on households, livestock, and surrounding forest, and any pathogens detected through analyses. The result will be a collection of data visualizations that can be viewed individually, or layered atop one another, using free Adobe Reader software, to show the spatial relationships between all the information.

Conservation, health and development specialists need to take the time to understand and work with people's complex views about their environment, Mercer says. "The Malagasy farmers work their land, feed themselves from it, feel tied to it, and ultimately should be the ones who have say over how it is managed."

A woman goes about her daily chores with her toddler strapped to her back. Photo by Carol Clark.

Mercer hopes to return to Madagascar to work on the implementation phase of a health system. “I want to help deliver a tangible benefit to these villages,” she says.

She recalls visiting one home and noticing that among the few personal effects of the family was a single, tiny photograph of just one of their six children. “I have albums full of photos from when I was a baby, documenting my progress as a human being,” Mercer says.

She snapped a picture of the five-year-old in the family, printed it out in town and returned to the village to give it to him. “I’ll never forget the delight in his eyes when he looked at the photo and recognized himself,” Mercer says.

A family gathered in front of their home. Photo by Carol Clark.

Paul Kennedy served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica and earned a degree in nursing before entering Emory’s MDP program. Kennedy read up on the history of Madagascar before arriving. He finds the Malagasy people exceptionally kind, and is fascinated by their culture.

“I get bored watching lemurs after about a minute-and-a-half,” he says. “I appreciate the beauty of the environment, and it’s definitely a key component to this project, but I’m more into the people.”

Like Mercer, he is eager to see the project move into the implementation phase. “It’s important that our data don’t just end up as statistics in a report,” he says.

While Kennedy is not working as a nurse in Madagascar, he wields duct tape like a roll of bandages. A lot of his down time from field work is spent on odd jobs like patching a team member’s leaky rain boot or repairing a village child’s homemade spinning top. Need an extra mosquito trap? He’ll improvise one from available materials. “I like tinkering with things and building things,” he says.

"I'm learning a lot about how to develop research methods in the field," says Caroline Schwaner. Photo by Carol Clark.

Caroline Schwaner is an Emory senior majoring in environmental studies. Her favorite professor is Eloise Carter, a biologist at Emory’s Oxford campus who is well-known for her class field trips to the streams and woods of Georgia. “Dr. Carter’s really inspiring,” Schwaner says, “because she loves what she’s doing even though she’s been doing it for a long time.”

Working in the Gillespie lab piqued Schwaner's interest in the infectious disease side of conservation biology. She also spent a semester gaining experience in PCR analysis at the CDC.

Rainforest frog. Photo by S. Zohdy.

In Madagascar, Schwaner is applying a low-tech method to assess the water quality of streams running through the villages. She uses a net to scoop out invertebrates – insects, worms and snails – both upstream and downstream from villages and agricultural sites.

“Certain bugs are usually found only in cleaner water, and others thrive more in pollution,” Schwaner explains. Caddis fly larvae, for example, are indicators of clean water while beetles tolerate dirtier conditions.

Schwaner is also using rapid detection tests in the field to screen the human fecal samples the team is collecting for adenoviruses and rotavirus, two common causes of diarrhea. Back in Atlanta, as part of her honors thesis, she will do PCR analyses of the fecal samples from humans, lemurs and livestock to test for a broader range of pathogens.

Madagascar is Schwaner’s first experience in the developing world, and she admits to culture shock. “One of the hardest things for me was getting used to using a latrine shared by a whole village,” she says.

The benefits far outweigh that inconvenience, she adds. “One day we saw four species of lemurs, just while we were walking to work.”

Ashlee Espensen with a village midwife. Photo by Carol Clark.

Ashlee Espensen is a senior from the University of Arizona, Tucson, majoring in biological anthropology. She volunteered to work with the infectious disease team, and covered all of her own expenses.

Although Espensen started off assisting with the lemur research in the forest, she also became interested in human health. “What sparked it was encountering a child in a village who looked two years old, but she was actually five,” Espensen says.

The child had been orphaned as a baby, and had been raised on cans of condensed milk.

“That got me thinking about who cares for a child after a mother dies,” Espensen says. She started a research project to interview midwives of the villages to learn more about maternal and child health.

“When you come here and meet the people and spend time in the forest, you understand why this work is so important,” she says.

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