When scientists go to the movies, they need their space

Keir Dullea played astronaut David Bowman in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

“We can’t count on science fiction to always get the science right,” Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz told Popular Mechanics. “But we can count on it to generate excitement and interest in viewers.” 

Ocasionally, however, Hollywood does get it right. Popular Mechanics polled dozens of scientists and engineers on their favorite sci-fi movies, based on both scientific plausibility and cinematic merit.

Their top pick: “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the 1968 film of space exploration by director Stanley Kubrick. Even seasoned astronauts gave Kubrick the thumbs up for his depictions of space flight.

Click here to read the other 10 top sci-fi movies named by the scientists and engineers.

The magazine also polled the scientists about the worst sci-fi movies. Among the top five is 2003’s “The Core” which, Perkowitz says, “gets more science wrong than almost any other film I know.”

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A novel look at how stories may change the brain

“We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically," says neuroscientist Gregory Berns.

By Carol Clark

Many people can recall reading at least one cherished story that they say changed their life. Now researchers at Emory University have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger, at least for a few days, after reading a novel.

Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, were published by the journal Brain Connectivity.

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it.”

His co-authors included Kristina Blaine and Brandon Pye from the Center for Neuropolicy, and Michael Prietula, professor of information systems and operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School.

Neurobiological research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun to identify brain networks associated with reading stories. Most previous studies have focused on the cognitive processes involved in short stories, while subjects are actually reading them as they are in the fMRI scanner.

The Emory study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative. Twenty-one Emory undergraduates participated in the experiment, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days.

The researchers chose the novel "Pompeii" for the experiment, due to its strong narrative and page-turning plot.

All of the study subjects read the same novel, “Pompeii,” a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris that is based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy. “The story follows a protagonist, who is outside the city of Pompeii and notices steam and strange things happening around the volcano,” Berns says. “He tries to get back to Pompeii in time to save the woman he loves. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bubble and nobody in the city recognizes the signs.”

The researchers chose the book due to its page-turning plot. “It depicts true events in a fictional and dramatic way,” Berns says. “It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative line.”

For the first five days, the participants came in each morning for a base-line fMRI scan of their brains in a resting state. Then they were given nine sections of the novel, about 30 pages each, over a nine-day period. They were asked to read the assigned section in the evening, and come in the following morning. After taking a quiz to ensure they had finished the assigned reading, the participants underwent an fMRI scan of their brain in a non-reading, resting state. After completing all nine sections of the novel, the participants returned for five more mornings to undergo additional scans in a resting state.

The results showed heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, on the mornings following the reading assignments. “Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity,” Berns says. “We call that a ‘shadow activity,’ almost like a muscle memory.”

Read any mind-altering books lately? Writer Joyce Carol Oates once cited "Alice in Wonderland" as a big influence on her imaginative life.

Heightened connectivity was also seen in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory motor region of the brain. Neurons of this region have been associated with making representations of sensation for the body, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition. Just thinking about running, for instance, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” Berns says. “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

The neural changes were not just immediate reactions, Berns says, since they persisted the morning after the readings, and for the five days after the participants completed the novel.

“It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last,” Berns says. “But the fact that we’re detecting them over a few days for a randomly assigned novel suggests that your favorite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain.”

Credits: Top image by iStockphoto.com. Middle and bottom photos by Carol Clark.

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From novels to neuroscience, a meeting of minds

“Images, Metaphors and the Brain” is the name of one of the many graduate seminars inspired and supported by the Emory Center for Mind, Brain and Culture (CMBC). The seminar was co-taught by Laura Otis, a professor of English who has studied neuroscience, and Krish Sathian, a neurologist who loves literature and the humanities.

The course culminated in a day-long symposium, Metaphors and the Mind, that paired top writers, including Salman Rushdie, with leading neuroscientists, “to talk about the possibilities of language and creativity together,” Otis says.

The CMBC, she adds, is sparking “all kinds of friendships and teaching exchanges between departments that would otherwise be far apart.”

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Atlanta Science Festival offers chance for interactive outreach

"Group Intelligence," which uses the science of molecular behavior to create a flash mob experience, is one of the many activities planned for the Atlanta Science Festival.

By Carol Clark

“We’re building momentum,” says Jordan Rose, who is heading up community outreach for the first Atlanta Science Festival, set for March 22 to 29. “We have a lot to celebrate in Atlanta and Georgia when it comes to science and innovation. It’s important for the public to be aware of all the activities and career opportunities here related to science, technology, engineering and math.”

Two information sessions about the festival are coming up on the Emory campus, for faculty, staff and students who want to get involved as an exhibitor or as a science ambassador. The first session will be held on Thursday, November 14 at 5 pm in Atwood, room 316. The second session is set for Friday, November 15 at 1 pm in the Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, room 600.

The idea for the Atlanta Science Festival was sparked at Emory, says Rose, one of the co-founders of the event and associate director of Emory’s Center for Science Education. Joining Emory as founding partners are Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

More than 57 partners will be putting on events at more than 30 locations during the eight-day festival, including lectures, films, performances, exhibits, trivia contests, demonstrations, workshops, guided walks and more. Events at Emory will include public talks, tours of labs and LEED-certified buildings, and a special Theater Emory performance.

The festival will conclude on March 29 with the Exploration Expo in Centennial Olympic Park. “It will be a big, family-friendly science carnival,” Rose says.

About 100 exhibits, activities, demonstrations and performances are expected for the Expo, and the organizers are accepting proposals for booths through December 13. “We’d really like to see a strong Emory presence,” Jordan says. “We’re hoping for lots of hands-on activities, geared toward kids of different ages, that directly connect to Emory research.”

He notes that Emory exhibitors can apply for special funding being offered through the Center for Science Education and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to cover most of their costs for participating.

Science students and faculty are also being recruited to visit K-12 classrooms during the festival. “The idea is for scientists to talk to kids about their passion for their careers and some of the unsolved questions and problems of the future,” Rose says. “We want to inspire the next generation of students to address some of those problems.”

Financial sponsors of the festival include the founding partners, as well as Mercer University, Mercer Health Sciences Center, the Center for Chemical Evolution, Georgia Bio, the Atlanta Science Tavern, Captain Planet Foundation and Women in Technology.

The Atlanta Science Festival joins a trend for cities across the country holding similar events, including the World Science Festival in New York. “The Atlanta festival is unique in its real focus on local resources and expertise,” Rose says. “We will also have a strong emphasis on the links between science and the arts,” he adds.

The psychology of screams

By Carol Clark

Pay no mind to those bone-chilling sounds of terror and anguish coming from the lab of Emory psychologist Harold Gouzoules. He’s harvesting screams.

He gets the sounds from Hollywood movies, TV shows and YouTube videos. His collection includes classic performances by “scream queens” like Jaime Lee Curtis and Fay Wray, along with the screams of non-actors reacting to actual events. “It seems everything these days is recorded and shared,” Gouzoules says.

As one of the few scientists researching human screams, he’s amassed an impressive library of high-intensity, visceral sounds. In one of his clips, a woman shrieks in fear as aftershocks from the meteor that exploded over Russia shake a building. Another of his YouTube finds is a little girl’s prolonged, ear-splitting squeal of delight as she opens a Christmas present.

“The ability to belt out a scream is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, and is no doubt critical to our survival,” he says.

Actress Drew Barrymore in Wes Craven's original "Scream."

Gouzoules first began researching monkey screams, decades ago. He learned that, during fights, rhesus monkeys make particular screams depending on the situation. The different screams communicate to the screamer’s nearby relatives and allies whether it’s a serious fight, requiring their assistance, or just a minor squabble.

More recently, Gouzoules began studying human screams. Study participants come to his “scream lab” and listen to various audio files on a computer, without any visual cues for context. The preliminary results show that participants tend to agree on what sounds should be classified as a scream, as opposed to a moan or a yell. In addition, most participants tend to be good at telling whether different screams come from the same person.

“We’ve also found that people can distinguish different types of screams: A happy scream, a frightened scream, a scream given in pain,” Gouzoules says. “Some people are better at this than others. What we found is that these differences correlate with measures of empathy.”

Gouzoules has no trouble recruiting study participants. “People find screams inherently interesting,” he says. “Most of us live fairly ordinary lives and screaming is not that common. I don’t think that was true evolutionarily – there were lots of things that prompted us to scream.”

Despite our fascination with screams, science knows relatively little about them. Gouzoules is honing in on tone, pitch and frequency to try and uncover the hidden patterns and complexities carried in the most intense sounds of human terror, joy and pain.

Herty Medalist adds life to chemistry outreach

As David Lynn researches how life first evolved, he is finding ways to explain the complex science to the public. Photo by Ann Borden.

By Carol Clark

Georgia chemist Charles Herty applied his research to transform the economy of the South, and his charisma to become a crusader for the profession. Herty traveled the nation, from 1915 until he died in 1938, delivering spell-binding talks and sparking conversations about the importance of chemistry among politicians, academics, businessmen and women’s clubs.

His legacy lives on through the Charles H. Herty Medal, awarded this year to David Lynn, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology at Emory. The gold medallion, inscribed with “pro scientia et patria” (for science and country), is given annually by the Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to recognize outstanding work and service of a chemist or chemical engineer from the 11 states of the Southeast.

“The award celebrates the ability of scientists to give back to a community in many different ways. That’s what makes it so special to me,” Lynn says.

“David was selected for his role in advancing the understanding of chemical evolution, and for his service in public outreach for the chemical sciences. He’s a true leader in both areas,” says Rigoberto Hernandez, a chemist at Georgia Tech and current chair of the Herty Award Committee.

The medal, one of the oldest awards of the ACS, and the highest honor given by the Georgia Section, was presented to Lynn at the 79th Annual Herty Award Celebration in Atlanta.



As the honoree, Lynn's talk for the event was entitled “Towards Intelligent Materials,” describing how, during the past decade, our understanding of evolutionary processes and the tree of life has changed more than at any time since Charles Darwin.

“The rate at which technological advances and insights are emerging,” Lynn says, “now demands that we reconsider several of the most fundamental and longstanding questions of our time: What is life, where might it exist, and what forms might it take?”

The Lynn lab is uncovering processes of molecular self-assembly that could boost our ability to engineer living systems. Lynn has served as chair of chemistry at Emory since 2006, and helped establish the Center for Chemical Evolution, a collaboration between Emory, Georgia Tech and other institutions, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. The center is testing theories for how chemical reactions may have led to life emerging on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago. Harnessing these forces of evolution could help in everything from drug design to genome engineering.

“I’m a scientist first, and I’m most excited about the discoveries we’re making,” Lynn says. “But it’s equally important to find ways to capture the imagination of the public and explain the meaning of our new knowledge.”



Lynn considers Charles Herty an inspiring role model, both as a chemist and a science ambassador.

Born in Milledgeville in 1867, Herty was a research chemist at the University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina. In 1903 he developed a simple cup-and-gutter system to collect resin from pines without killing the trees. The invention is credited with saving both the southern pine forests and the turpentine and rosin chemical industry. Herty later developed methods to make paper from young, fast-growing pine trees, laying the foundation for a forest products industry in the Southeast.

During World War I, Herty served as ACS president and helped organize chemists to work on critical defense problems like German poison gas attacks. After the war, he lobbied for the expansion of the U.S. chemical industry, and played a key role in its development into an economic powerhouse.

“He used his expertise in chemistry to identify ways that he could contribute to the Southeast, and to the country, at a time when it was really needed,” Lynn says.

Lynn was born in North Carolina, but he spent the bulk of his career at the University of Chicago. He returned to his home region when he joined Emory in 2000.

“We’re entering a challenging time in science communication, because advances are happening so fast,” Lynn says. “Meanwhile, much of the nation, particularly the Southeast, is still struggling to understand scientific theories like evolution.”

Lynn used a $1 million award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create a program for graduate students to teach freshmen about their research, so that they learn to explain their science while doing it.

He frequently taps the visual arts, music and theater to get across key concepts. “Group Intelligence,” in collaboration with Out of Hand Theater for instance, involves children and adults from all walks of life in a flash mob that simulates the interactions of molecules.

“I want to spark conversations about scientific theories like evolution in unexpected places, such as a concert hall, a shopping mall, an art gallery or a park,” Lynn says. “The idea is to use art to create dialogue about the beauty and science of the world that we inhabit.”

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Science a major draw at Decatur Book Festival

Many people would say that we are on the brink of using brain imaging to diagnose mental illness.  “I’m skeptical of that,” counters Emory psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, co-author of “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.”

Lilienfeld will be talking about the book as part of the Science Track of the AJC Decatur Book Festival on Saturday, August 31 at 3 pm.

“Neuro-imaging is an invaluable tool,” Lilienfeld says, “but like any tool, it can be overhyped. And I think overhyping can diminish a field’s credibility.”

He recalls when he was in graduate school during the 1980s, and the field of psychology was abuzz with the promise of the nuclear medical imaging technique known as positron emission tomography, or PET.

“A lot of people – smart people, actually – were saying that PET was going to replace the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness),” Lilienfeld says. “That, of course, never came to pass.”

The Science Track, sponsored by the Atlanta Science Tavern, has grown into one of the biggest draws for the festival, August 30 to September 1.  Some of 10 Science Track titles this year include “The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter than we Think,” co-authored by Brian Hare (an Emory alum); “My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs,” by Brian Switek; and “The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates,” by Emory primatologist Frans de Waal.

Some intriguing science titles are also part of the book festival’s Atlanta Writers Showcase, including “Life Traces of the Georgia Coast,” by Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin, who will be speaking on Sunday, Sept. 1, at 3:00 pm.

Virtual Rome built from 17th-century map and computer gaming tool

In 1676, Giovanni Battista Falda published a detailed, bird's-eye map of Rome. Now, this celebrated map, along with Falda's architectural etchings and other historical materials have been transformed into a virtual, walkable experience of 17th-century Rome, using the computer gaming platform NVis360.

"I like to think of the way Falda drew Rome as almost anatomical," says Emory art historian Sarah McPhee, who headed up the project. "He wanted to show you the buildings in such crisp detail that they were essentially being taken apart on the anatomy table."

The NVis360 software, McPhee adds, "allows us eventually to take the layers apart and show the entire construction of a building. And that has huge potential for teaching and for understanding."

Watch the video, above, to learn more. You can use the gaming technology yourself to travel back to 17th-century Rome as part of the Michael C. Carlos Museum's special exhibition, "Antichita, Teatro, Magnifcenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome," from August 24 through November 17.

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Can you identify these animal teeth and tusks?

Emory's Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library (MARBL) contains a lot more than just old papers and books. For example, some unidentified animal tusks and teeth from the Congo (above). You can explore some of the unusual artifacts in the library through its blog, The Extraordinary World of MARBL.

Here's a post by Alyssa Stalsberg Canelli, a MARBL research services assistant and PhD candidate in English, about the Congo artifacts:

If you are researching the papers of Methodist minister and missionary Thomas Ellis Reeve, Sr. and his wife, Etha Mills Reeve, you might be a little surprised by the contents of Box 22. The Reeves were assigned to the Methodist Episcopal Congo Mission (South) at Wembo-Nyama, Tunda and Minga (1921-1929). Thomas Reeve wrote a book, In Wembo-Nyama's Land, detailing his experiences in the Congo—a book which was quite critical of the colonial Belgian government. When the Reeves returned to the United States, they also brought back artifacts which included a set of tusks, snake skins and animal teeth. Pictured here are the tusks and three of the largest teeth, all unidentified.  At MARBL, we are librarians, archivists and historians, not biologists—so if you have any ideas or tips about the identification of these items, please let us know!

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He took the psychedelic pop path to math

Robert Schneider in a promotional photo for The Apples in Stereo. "I love music, but I'm also really obsessed with math," he says. "That's my focus now." (Photo by Adam Cantor.)

By Carol Clark

By the numbers, Robert Schneider is not your average PhD student of math. He is 42 years old and just finished his first year of graduate school, working under Emory number theorist Ken Ono. Schneider didn’t even enroll in college math classes until 2004, when he was in his mid-30s.

“I’m rough around the edges. I’m an untamed mathematician,” he says, “but I’m working on that.”

Schneider’s bright blue eyeglasses, pink hoodie jacket and buoyant personality give further clues that he is not your typical academic.

In fact, Schneider is a well-known figure in the underground music scene as the co-founder of the Elephant Six Recording Company and the indie band The Apples in Stereo. He’s a composer, sound engineer, producer, singer, songwriter and musician. He played at the Democratic National Convention where Barack Obama was first nominated for president and has made guest appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the Colbert Report. In addition to having a cult following, Schneider’s music has enjoyed broader commercial success, and can be heard on the sound tracks of dozens of commercials.



“The cheesiest thing was when the contestants on ‘American Idol’ sang my song ‘Energy,’” Schneider says. “That’s probably the thing that impressed my mom the most.”

It’s an understatement to call Schneider’s career “eclectic.”

A Powerpuff Girls character has been named after him (Robin Schneider, the one with an apple on her t-shirt) and The Apples in Stereo's music has been featured on the Cartoon Network series.

Actor Elijah Wood (best known for playing Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy) is among the fans of Schneider’s music. Wood founded a record label, Simian Records, and one of the label's albums is New Magnetic Wonder by The Apples in Stereo, released in 2007. Schneider and Wood are also friends, and have collaborated on a series of YouTube videos, including a few that feature Schneider as a musical mad scientist (see above).

Schneider has now put his music career on the back burner in order to get a PhD at Emory. Schneider the successful pop musician sits at a tiny cubicle, surrounded by other graduate students in their cubicles, and dreams of becoming a mathematician. He’s decorated his workspace with pictures of his idols, including Benjamin Franklin, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and pioneering Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler.

“I love music,” he says, “but I’m also really obsessed with math. That’s my focus now. I have a desk! It seems so romantic to me. As you walk down the hallways of the department, you can hear people talking loudly, almost arguing, about math. It’s all around me, ringing in the hallways!”

In the fall, Schneider looks forward to teaching freshman calculus. “I want to turn the students on to the magic and the history of the subject,” he says. “I plan to add some dramatic flourishes to accomplish that goal.”

Shortly after arriving at Emory, Schneider, above left, found himself riding an elephant in India with his math mentor Ken Ono. They were both speakers at conferences surrounding the 125th anniversary of mathematician Ramanujan's birth.

Schneider was born in South Africa. He moved to the small town of Ruston, Louisiana, when he was seven years old and his father took a job teaching architecture at Louisiana Tech.

“Ruston was like Mayberry,” Schneider recalls. “It’s a super square town, about 30 years behind the times.”

Schneider amused himself by writing songs, playing the guitar and tinkering with gadgetry. Although living in rhythm and blues country, he was into the Beach Boys, Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground.

Schneider found a few other musical kindred spirits and started helping them record their sounds, using a four-track tape machine and a synthesizer. His friendship with Jeff Mangum, who would gain fame with the indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, goes back to the second grade. Schneider’s other Ruston childhood friends included Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart, who formed the band Olivia Tremor Control.



Schneider attended Centenary College in Shreveport for a couple of years, focusing his studies on music composition, philosophy and poetry. He moved to Denver to continue his studies at the University of Colorado, but decided to take his junior year off to devote himself full-time to music.

Public transportation brought Schneider together with musician Jim McIntyre.

“We were always waiting at the same bus stop and I’m chatty,” Schneider says. McIntyre, however, wasn’t so chatty and when Schneider asked him what music he liked, McIntyre said the Beach Boys, thinking that would stop the conversation cold.

“It was super unhip to like the Beach Boys in the early 1990s,” Schneider explains, “but they were like my gurus. I had a religion and mythology based around them.”

Schneider and McIntyre, together with Hilarie Sidney and Chris Parfitt, launched The Apples, named after the Pink Floyd song “Apples and Oranges.”

“It wasn’t a commercial venture,” says Schneider, the lead singer and songwriter for the group. “We were just having fun and trying to blow people’s minds.”



He describes their early music as “raw and loud, distorted guitars,” that later became “more psychedelic and otherworldly.”

Schneider also loved producing music, so he co-founded the Elephant Six collective, along with his core group of childhood music friends from Ruston. The collective launched many notable psychedelic and experimental groups of the 1990s.

As a producer, Schneider may be best known for the Neutral Milk Hotel’s critically acclaimed record “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” for which he also played bass and keyboards and wrote many of the horn parts.

“My main goal was to not get mixed up in the music industry and become slick,” Schneider says. “I wanted to create songs that are musical and catchy but at the same time would be interesting to underground musicians, my own scene.”

An obsession with vintage recording equipment led Schneider to buy an early 1970s Ampex MM-1200. “It’s a legendary tape machine, the size of a washing machine and heavy as a piano,” he says. “It uses two-inch tape, shiny and thick, beautiful to look at. And the sound quality was fantastic.”

The downside to the Ampex, however, was its instability. “It blew out diodes all the time,” Schneider recalls. “I’d hear it go ‘pop,’ and it would shut down and have to be fixed again.” A repairman told Schneider that it was a fatal flaw of the machine, and he would have to learn to maintain it himself.



“Fixing this tape machine became a big part of my life,” he says. “The guts of it were often sprawled out on my floor. It had an instruction manual the size of a dictionary, filled with fold-out schematic drawings.”

Schneider started reading books about electronics, which is how he came across Ohm’s law. “It says,” he explains, “that the voltage, the current flow and the resistance are intimately connected in an electrical circuit.” The law is named after the German physicist Georg Ohm, who provided a mathematical equation to describe his discovery.

“I had this revelation,” Schneider says, “that all things in the universe that flow through electricity are tied to this equation. It was like the ceiling opened up and all this golden sunlight was pouring onto me. I realized that all the stuff that was important to me – synthesizers, microphones, the experience of listening to music, playing in a band, my relationships with my friends and band mates – all of these things somehow had this equation in the background. Even your brain itself is an electrical system of sorts. It blew my mind!”

The math bug had bitten Schneider. “My world view just changed,” he says. “I realized that math had all of this depth, beauty and poetry.”

He started teaching himself number theory, and reading up on famous mathematicians in history, like Euler and Ramanujan.

He eventually moved to Kentucky, where he met his wife, Marci Schneider, who runs the independent label Garden Gate Records.

Schneider continued his music career, while also finding a math mentor in David Leep, a professor at the University of Kentucky. “He was amused by me because I was self-taught and so enthusiastic,” Schneider says. “He let me come by every couple of weeks and share ideas with him.”

Schneider subsequently enrolled part-time at the University of Kentucky. He received a BS in mathematics in 2012 with departmental honors, on top of touring with his band and making records. “When I turned 40, I realized that, statistically, I had reached half of my life span,” he says. “I never really imagined my whole life would be about just one thing. I’m so into music, but I need to step away from being a full-time musician if I want to make real progress as a mathematician.”

He has managed, however, to incorporate some music into his math. One of his side projects was the invention of what he describes as “a Non-Pythagorean musical scale based on logarithms.” Watch an explanation of it in the video below:

He has also composed a score based on prime numbers for a play by number theorist Andrew Granville. (This month, he’s going to Banff, Canada as an artist-in-residence at the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery where he will record the score with classical musicians for a documentary about the play.)

Schneider was mulling offers from several graduate schools to pursue his PhD in analytic number theory when he met Emory’s Ken Ono during a visit to Atlanta. The two immediately hit it off. Schneider enrolled in Emory, relocating to Atlanta with Marci and his son, Max, 12.

“Ken is so charged up about math, he’s electrified,” Schneider says. “It’s amazing to study under him. He’s teaching established knowledge in number theory, and almost in the same breath explaining his results from that day that aren’t known to anyone else yet.”

As he forges a new life path into math, Schneider hopes it will be as unusual and creative as his musical career. He describes Ono as an explorer who inspires him to follow him into new territory.

“Ken sees the wilderness of math and he wants to conquer it,” Schneider says. “Once he finds a beautiful, green pool in the mountains, he wants to swim in it and move on to find the next pool. I’m more like a naturalist. I want to camp out by the new pool to gaze into it and admire its beauty.”

Related:
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Superman: Just another uptight guy in tights

Where would Clark Kent go to change into tights in the era of cell phones? Henry Cavill ponders many heavy, existential questions in "Man of Steel."

With today's release of the summer action flick "Man of Steel," Emory Looks at Hollywood focuses on the classic hero's journey of Clark Kent and Superman.

Sure, a lot of adolescents think that they're bullet proof and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But Clark Kent really possesses those special powers. Growing up with his "normal" parents, he embodies a super-sized version of adolescent angst, says Jared DeFife, an Emory assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Clark Kent's unique strength and talents are also the things that distance him from other people. Like most kids, he just wants to fit in. That adolescent identity struggle "is something we can all relate to," DeFife says. Watch the video below for his complete analysis.
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A medical exhibit that won't put you to sleep

"Medical Treasures at Emory" is an exhibit of historical artifacts that serve as reminders of the days when doctors had a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy, performed surgery without antiseptic and used primitive forms of anesthesia for operations and dental work.

The above video gives a peek at some of the objects on display through October at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library. Notable artifacts include one of the earliest stethoscopes from the 19th century, and a kit of Civil War surgeon's instruments, primarily used for amputation.

Among the historical books on display are volumes about Civil War field surgery practices, an 1881 book that incorporates early medical photography to show the ravages of syphilis, a copy of "Notes on Nursing: What It is, and What It Is Not" (1865) by Florence Nightingale, and an 1849 obstetrics book by Charles D. Meigs, an obstetrician who opposed anesthesia and the introduction of sanitary practices during childbirth on the theory that "doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman's hands are clean."

Also on display is a rare copy of  "One the Workings of the Human Body," or "de Humani corporis fabrica," a 1543 book containing the first accurate representations of human anatomy.

Read more about the exhibit.

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Star Trek and the ethics of space exploration

Who owns the moon? Is it fair to send people on a one-way trip to Mars? Can doctors safeguard medical experiments in other environments? These are just a few of the ethical questions confronting the human race as we continue to explore space.

The Emory Looks at Hollywood series examines these questions in context of the new Paramount Pictures movie "Star Trek Into Darkness," the latest in the long-running Star Trek story. Watch the video above as Paul Root Wolpe, Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory and the first Senior Bioethicist for NASA, discusses the ethics of space exploration.

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Poet Rita Dove on the chemistry of art and science

Asking a poet to give a commencement keynote seems like “both a no-brainer and a curious dare,” Rita Dove told Emory’s class of 2013.

A Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Dove spoke of “the interconnectedness of all knowledge.” She warned that institutions of higher learning that diminish liberal arts programs in favor of business, law, medicine and scientific research are making a big mistake:

“How did we end up in this tug of war anyway? When was it decided that the sciences and the arts were adversaries? I myself come from a family of left-brainers. Two siblings are in computer sciences, another has a chemistry degree, and my father broke the race barrier in the rubber industry in the early 50s as the first African-American research chemist at Goodyear Tire and Rubber. 

“Our house was littered with scientific paraphernalia. And if I got stuck in math homework, and asked my dad for help, he’d whip out his slide rule. I bet many of you don’t even know what a slide rule is, but trust me, it was daunting. And he would demonstrate three different ways to solve for X. Even though I was in fifth grade, I wouldn’t study trigonometry for many years, and didn’t even know how to spell 'cosine.' I might not have fully realized it at the time, but my father was trying to show me there can be several different ways to assess and interpret a situation, and multiple approaches to a solution. Math could have different points of view, just like characters in a Shakespeare play.” 

Years later, Dove recalled, she was sitting on an overcrowded train pushing through snowbound New England. After some small talk, her seatmate asked her what she did for a living. She hesitated, then told him she was a poet. He was silent.

 “And what do you do?” she retorted.

“The same hesitation until he replied, ‘I’m a microbiologist.' And then he blurted out, 'I don’t usually tell people that. They just freeze up and say something like, gee, that’s heavy, as if I was going to ask them to recite the periodic table.’ 

“And I said, ‘That’s pretty much the way people react when I tell them I’m a poet.’ 

 “So we had a good laugh. And then I suggested, 'Okay, let’s give it a shot. Explain to me what your research is like, and then I’ll tell you what I’m working on now.' 

“So we exchanged stories. And his was a perfectly poetic description of taking a walk along a strand of DNA, to look for anything that was out of place among the scenery. Those were his very words.” 

We would all languish without our imaginations, and the language to bring it to life, Dove said.

“The mind is informed by the spirit of play and every discipline is peppered with vivid terminology. Fractal geometry has dragon curves and physics has Swiss cheese cosmology. There are lady slippers in botany. Football has wing backs, buttonholes and coffin corners. There are doglegs on golf courses and butterfly valves in automobiles. And when there are no words for what we need, we make new ones up… 

“Here at Emory, you’ve been trained in your individual fields, but you’ve also been exposed to a range of disciplines and encouraged to explore new ideas. 

“Whether you end up as a politician or a painter, a novelist or a nurse or a neurologist, this you all have in common. You have learned how to pursue thoughts and ideas and, hopefully, you’ve grown to love that pursuit.” 

Dove concluded by reading her poem “Dawn Revisited,” which included the line:

“The whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page.” 

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A psychoanalysis of 'The Great Gatsby'

Before there was “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” there was the ostentatious fictional protagonist in “The Great Gatsy,” says Jared DeFife, a clinical psychologist and Emory assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral studies.

So who exactly was Jay Gatsby? The "self-made man" archetype created by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is set to get renewed attention when portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in a movie releasing this weekend.

To understand the underlying character of Gatsby, DeFife says it’s important to think about two primary emotions: Shame and grief.

Gatsby’s lavish displays of wealth are what psychologists call “a reaction formation” built around his shame of coming from a rather shiftless, lower-class family, DeFife says.

Shame involves worrying about how others see you, which is probably why eyes become a powerful symbol in the novel, DeFife adds. “The characters are relatively without guilt about their actions, but they are very afraid of being seen, and the negative things about them being seen.”

Gatsby also shows a complicated grief reaction to his loss of Daisy, who broke up with him when he went off to war. “What happens in distorted grief reactions is time sort of stops,” DeFife says. “Gatsby is really trying to reclaim that lost era. In fact, there’s a scene where he meets Daisy for the first time after so many years where he almost knocks a clock over on the mantle.”

Gatsby’s mindset remains back in the time when he was 17, and holds an idealized image of Daisy. “He’s stuck not being able to be able to go back to the past and recreate that life, and not being able to move forward, either, and that’s where his great tragedy comes in,” DeFife says.

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'Iron Man' and the future of nanotechnology

How do you take a golden suit of armor to the next level? Tony Stark turns to nanotechnology in “Iron Man 3.” He undergoes injections of a super-soldier serum called Extremis that enhances strength and can regenerate limbs and cure wounds, so that he has super powers even when he’s not wearing his Iron Man suit.

While Extremis is an invention of comic books and Hollywood, scientists are actually working to develop similar “super serums” in the real world.

“Some of the features in the movie 'Iron Man' may be far-fetched, but other features will probably become a reality,” says Shuming Nie, chair of biomedical engineering at Emory and Georgia Tech and the director of the Emory-Georgia Tech Cancer Nanotechnology Center.

He cites a project supported by the U.S. Air Force involving nanoparticles that can amplify optical-detection sensitivity by 10 to the 14th fold.

Another promising area is targeted nanoparticles therapeutics, including a project under way at Emory, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, to develop nanoparticle contrast agents.

“These are agents that you can inject into the human body two or three hours before surgery,” Nie explains. “A surgeon can then visualize where the tumors are, because they’re glowing. The surgeon can identify where the boundaries are, where to cut, and whether there is any residue tumor left.”

Major efforts are ongoing to develop nanotechnology applications for use in medicine, biology, energy and environmental science.

“The most amazing applications are probably going to be in the medical field,” Nie says. "To design anything that works inside the human body is enormously challenging, because the human body is immensely complex. However, our imaginations are also unlimited. So if we work together, I think certainly in the next generation we'll have some of these nanoparticles with specialized functions able to do very unusual things in the human body."

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Human mobility data may help curb urban epidemics

By Carol Clark

Residents of cities like New York and London tend to move about in fairly predictable routines, following the same routes between their jobs and schools each day. When it comes to a city in the developing world, however, human movement is much more varied, a finding with important implications for controlling an infectious disease pandemic.

The Public Library of Science (PL0S One) published the first major analysis of daily human mobility in a resource-poor city, led by scientists at Emory University’s Department of Environmental Studies.

The researchers used GPS technology to quantify the movement and contact dynamics of nearly 600 residents of Iquitos, Peru. They applied the data to create a computer simulation for predicting the transmission rate of a flu virus.

“We found that the irregular movement of people in Iquitos increases the probability of flu transmission by 20 percent, compared to cities in developed nations,” says lead author Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an Emory disease ecologist.

The study authors are making their data estimates and simulation methods publicly available, so that other researchers can conduct further experiments and build on their work.

“It is estimated that more than 90 percent of the mortality from a potential influenza pandemic would occur in developing countries, where vaccine and antiviral stockpiles are minimal,” the study authors write. “The lack of detailed models to estimate infectious disease transmission dynamics in such settings limits the ability to enforce containment measures or plan emergency preparedness strategies.”

Rather than commuting to a single workplace, poorer residents of Iquitos often work several jobs, such as driving a three-wheeled mototaxi, or selling produce at multiple markets. Photo via Wikipedia Commons.

Most previous data on human mobility, drawn from cities in North America and Europe, shows that urbanites visit an average of two to four locations daily.

In Iquitos, human movement is much more fluid.

Full-time jobs are scarce for the population of 400,000 living along the left bank of the Amazon River, on the edge of the Peruvian rainforest. “Most people are self-employed or have several jobs to try and make ends meet,” Vazquez-Prokopec says. Common occupations of poorer residents include driving makeshift taxis or selling produce at one of the multiple open markets in the city.

Some previous studies in other parts of the world have looked at cell phone data to track and model human movements. The data is limited, however, due to issues of antenna density, restricted information from cell-phone carriers and the fact that some people do not have cell phones.

For the Iquitos study the researchers outfitted 582 residents with an i-GotU GPS device, which is ordinarily used as a photo-tagging tool for hikers. The i-GotU was selected for the study because it is small (about the size of a thumb drive), waterproof, relatively affordable, has a large memory and long battery life, and is password protected.

Each study participant wore one of the devices like a necklace as they went about their daily routines during a two-week period. The devices were programmed to capture location data every 2.5 minutes, from 5 am until midnight.

About 70 percent of the world's 3.3 billion city dwellers live in resource-poor environments. Aerial view of Iquitos by Viault / Wikipedia Commons.

The study yielded more than 2 million raw GPS positions, with an error margin of just four meters, tagged with date and time. The researchers used a data-reduction algorithm to calculate the average number of locations visited each day for the study participants as a whole, and by age groups, ranging from 7 years old to 60.

The results show that the participants visited an average of six locations per day overall. People in the peak working age group of 36 to 45 visited an average of nine locations daily.

“The more random your movements are, the more chances you have to pass a pathogen like the flu,” Vazquez-Prokopec says, explaining the 20 percent higher transmission risk, compared to a developed city.

While the Iquitos study represents just one city in the developing world, the researchers hope that the fine-scale, spatial-temporal data they have gathered will help fill the knowledge gap on human mobility in similar cities.

About 70 percent of the world’s 3.3 billion city dwellers live in resource-poor urban environments. “Uncovering the basic mechanisms governing complex human behaviors in these environments is paramount for developing better infrastructure, fostering economic development and responding to infectious disease threats,” Vazquez-Prokopec says.

The Emory research team also included Uriel Kitron, chair of the department of Environmental Studies, and post-doctoral fellow Donal Bisanzio. The study is part of a larger, ongoing disease ecology project centered in Iquitos that also includes scientists from the University of California, Davis, the U.S. Navy, the University of Iowa, Tulane University, San Diego State and researchers in Peru.

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'Jurassic Park' tracks and poop, now in 3-D!

Universal Pictures

By Carol Clark

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is the one with the cups of water in the 1993 science fiction classic “Jurassic Park.” The kids are trapped in an enclosed Jeep. It’s raining and dark. Then a series of faint, low “booms” grows slowly louder as the water in a pair of plastic cups on the dashboard trembles, signaling the approach of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

While most people fixate on the horror of the giant teeth and powerful jaws of an approaching T-rex, Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin is tickled by the thought of all the lovely, deep tracks the dinosaur is leaving in the mud with each booming thud of its triple-toed feet.

Martin is an ichnologist, specializing in the study of life traces like tracks, tooth marks and scat. He was among the first to rush out and see the recently released 3-D version of “Jurassic Park.”

The 3-D version is a chance for a whole new generation to enjoy the cheesy thrills of Steven Spielberg’s masterful tribute to dinosaurs. And just to make sure viewers get a bit of real science along with their popcorn, Martin has written a post called “The Ichnology of Jurassic Park” for his "Life Traces" blog. It’s a must-read before you make tracks for the theater.

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He created the ideal learning climate

By Kimber Williams, Emory Report

It's Thursday up on the fifth floor of Emory's Math and Sciences building, and the familiar scent wafting through the hallways can only mean one thing. Waffles, and lots of them — homemade, golden brown and hot off the griddle.

The man behind the waffle iron is Woody Hickcox — geologist and climatologist, self-taught watercolorist/muralist, and resident chef.

Hickcox next to some of his art.

Hickcox is known both for creating the colorful artwork that blooms throughout the walls of the Department of Environmental Studies, and for his weekly waffle feasts that draw students, staff and faculty.

Hickcox explains how the Waffle Thursday tradition started:

"I was talking to a class about climate change, how water from the Gulf Stream flows to the North Atlantic and sinks. So we were talking about how when you have fluids of different densities, they will sink and rise. As an example, I talked about mixing waffle batter and whipped egg whites – if you put the waffle batter on top of the egg whites, it will basically turn over.

"Well, a lot of students have never seen waffles made from scratch. So I brought in the apparatus to make them. Afterward, one of the students, who's now a physician, said, 'Why don't you do waffles every week.' So we started making waffles every Thursday. We'll make up a big batch of waffle batter, and since I go to Vermont, we have a ready supply of real maple syrup.

"One or two people will often step in to help cook the waffles. You'll usually find a dozen people standing here, talking and eating, and a long line. That's what it's really all about, bringing people together. It creates community."

A senior lecturer in environmental studies, Hickcox is set to retire in May after nearly 29 years of teaching at Emory.

Read the whole interview with Hickcox in Emory Report. 

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Photos by Emory Photo/Video.

The 'dirty ecology' of 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'

Hushpuppy (Quvenshane Wallis) and Wink (Dwight Henry) adrift in a half-real, half-mythic world. (Twentieth Century Fox, 2012).

In Southern Spaces, an online interdisciplinary journal produced at Emory, Patricia Yeager of the University of Michigan writes about the "dirty ecology" portrayed in "Beasts of the Southern Wild." The 2012 "epic film about toxic inequality" mixes imagery of nature, man and trash, like a throwaway Styrofoam container filled with gator meat.

Below is an excerpt from Yeager's article, interpreting the underlying themes of the movie:

"This throwaway Styrofoam brings us to Beasts' other mythic register—its quest for a way to represent our species' relation to global warming. Styrofoam is made from oil, and images of acetylene torches, gas stoves, and gas engines remind us that although the film's characters are battered by the forces of global warming and their carbon footprint is small, creating a carbon-free democracy is not their concern.

"The citizens of the Bathtub practice a dirty ecology, making do with what they can salvage from other waste-making classes. When a Katrina-like storm savages their community, the damage is endless. A giant pig-beast knocks over power lines: these are animals who 'eat their own mommas and daddies.' In the Bathtub the carbon apocalypse is already upon us. Early in the movie, Hushpuppy's teacher raises her skirt; she shows a thigh tattooed with prehistoric aurochs—'fierce' creatures who signify that 'any day the fabric of the universe is going to unravel.' ...

"The Bathtub's houses are made from castaway metal and lumber, its people jettisoned by the currents of capitalism. It's too close to the water: cut off by a levy from the thing-creating world. The oil refinery looks at once mechanical and auratic; its white spires hover in the same place in the pictorial frame as the calving glaciers that start to rain down on the audience, and free child-eating aurochs—the mythic equivalents of carbon's rough beasts, their hour come round at last.

"These once-extinct, returning aurochs mark the movie's geologic concern, its interest in eras. Around 1750, humans switched from renewable energy to the large-scale use of fossil fuel—a shift in scale marking the beginning of a new era. Ten thousand years ago the Pleistocene or Ice Age gave way to the warmer Holocene, and civilization began in earnest. But our contemporary era, the Anthropocene, has speeded up our species' access to matter until we now create our own weather events, our own set of fractures. Humans are reborn as geologic agents, as the main cause of change for earth itself."

Read the whole article in "Southern Spaces." 

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