The secret Maoist Chinese operation that conquered malaria — and won a Nobel

1964 poster: "Prevent Malaria and Take Care of People's Health." Painted by Wu Hao.

By Jia-Chen Fu, Assistant Professor of Chinese at Emory
For The Conversation

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Project 523 – a covert operation launched by the Chinese government and headed by a young Chinese medical researcher by the name of Tu Youyou – discovered what has been the most powerful and effective antimalarial drug therapy to date.

Known in Chinese as qinghaosu and derived from the sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua L.), artemisinin was only one of several hundred substances Tu and her team of researchers culled from Chinese drugs and folk remedies and systematically tested in their search for a treatment to chloroquine-resistant malaria.

How Tu and her team discovered artemisinin tells us much about the continual Chinese effort to negotiate between traditional/modern and indigenous/foreign.

Indeed, contrary to popular assumptions that Maoist China was summarily against science and scientists, the Communist party-state needed the scientific elite for certain political and practical purposes.

Medicine, particularly when it also involved foreign relations, was one such area. In this case, it was the war in Vietnam and the scourge of malaria that led to the organization of Project 523.

North Vietnamese soldiers had to deal with disease as well as the enemy. (Photo via manhhai, CC.)

As fighting escalated between American and Vietnamese forces throughout the 1960s, malaria became the number one affliction compromising Vietnamese soldier health. The increasing number of chloroquine-resistant malaria cases in the civilian population further heightened North Vietnamese concern.

In 1964, the North Vietnamese government approached Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung and asked for Chinese assistance in combating malaria. Mao responded, “Solving your problem is the same as solving our own.”

From the beginning, Project 523, which was classified as a top-secret state mission, was under the direction of military authorities. Although civilian agencies were invited to collaborate in May 1967, military supervision highlighted the urgent nature of the research and protected it from adverse political winds.

The original three-year plan produced by the People’s Liberation Army Research Institute aimed to: "integrate far and near, integrate Chinese and Western medicines, take Chinese drugs as its priority, emphasize innovation, unify plans, divide labor to work together."

Project 523 had three goals: the identification of new drug treatments for fighting chloroquine-resistant malaria, the development of long-term preventative measures against chloroquine-resistant malaria, and the development of mosquito repellents. To achieve these ends, research on Chinese drugs and acupuncture was integral.

Read more in The Conversation.

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In U.S. politics, does narcissism trump all?

Donald Trump at a recent campaign rally. Photo by Michael Vadon.

Emory psychologist Scott Lilienfeld and his graduate student Ashley Watts recently co-authored an opinion piece for the New York Times entitled "The Narcissist in Chief." Below is an excerpt:

"The political rise of Donald J. Trump has drawn attention to one personality trait in particular: narcissism. Although narcissism does not lend itself to a precise definition, most psychologists agree that it comprises self-centeredness, boastfulness, feelings of entitlement and a need for admiration. We have never met Mr. Trump, let alone examined him, so it would be inappropriate of us to offer a formal assessment of his level of narcissism. And in all fairness, today’s constant media attention makes a sizable ego a virtual job requirement for public office. Still, the Trump phenomenon raises the question of what kinds of leaders narcissists make. Fortunately, a recent body of research has suggested some answers.

"In a 2013 article in Psychological Science, we and our colleagues approached this question by studying the 42 United States presidents up to and including George W. Bush. ...

"We found that narcissism, specifically 'grandiose narcissism' — an amalgam of flamboyance, immodesty and dominance — was associated with greater overall presidential success. (This relation was small to moderate in magnitude.) The two highest scorers on grandiose narcissism were Lyndon B. Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt, the two lowest James Monroe and Millard Fillmore."

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

If you'd like to hear more on the topic, Ashley Watts will be giving a talk titled "Should We Worry about a Narcissist in the Oval Office?" on Thursday, September 17, as part of this month's Nerd Nite Atlanta. The line-up of three speakers starts at 8 pm at Manuel's Tavern.

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Psychopathic boldness tied to U.S. presidential success

Why women rule, and other hot science topics at the Decatur Book Festival

Illustration: Don Morris

Women can forget about equality with men, warns Emory anthropologist Mel Konner.

It’s even better than that. Why should women embrace mere equality when their movement is toward superiority? It is maleness that has Konner worried in his latest book, “Women After All: Sex, Evolution and the End of Male Supremacy,” which looks at the history and future of gender and power dynamics.

Konner will be one of the featured authors in the ever-popular Science track of the Decatur Book Festival this weekend. He’ll take the stage at 3 pm on Saturday, September 5, at the Marriot Conference Center.

The last line of Konner’s book jacket reads: “Provocative and richly informed, ‘Women After All’ is bound to be controversial across the sexes.”

As Konner acknowledges on his personal web site, the first murmurings came about after a short adaptation of the book ran in the Wall Street Journal. Hundreds of angry men responded within a couple of days. His wife, home alone during that period, double-locked the door. Konner’s editor at the Wall Street Journal apologized for failing to instruct him not to read the comments.

For his part, Konner is hiding in plain sight, saying “Clearly, I’ve touched a nerve, and I’m happy about that.”

Konner talks about a future that his grandson will inhabit, a “new world” that “will be better for him because women help run it.”

You can read more about Konner’s book in the latest issue of Emory Magazine.

Another provocative issue at the intersection of science and society is explored in “Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationships with Immunization,” by Emory historian Elena Conis. She will discuss her book at 4:15 pm on Saturday at the Marriott Conference Center.

Math shines with the stars in 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'

By Carol Clark

Call it a math bromance. Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy’s collaboration with the obscure, self-taught Indian Srinivasa Ramanujan – during the height of British colonialism – changed math and science forever. The story is finally going mainstream through a major motion picture, “The Man Who Knew Infinity," starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons.

“It’s the story of a man who overcame incredible obstacles to become one of the most important mathematicians of his day,” says Emory mathematician Ken Ono, who served as a consultant for the film. “It’s a great human story. It’s true. And I’m glad that the world is finally going to get to enjoy it.”

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) will feature a sneak peak of “The Man Who Knew Infinity” on August 6, as part of its centennial celebration, MathFest 2015, in Washington D.C. Ono, a leading expert on Ramanujan’s theories, will lead a panel discussion at the screening event, which begins at 5 pm at the Marriott Wardman Park. Panelists will include Princeton mathematician Manjul Bhargava; Robert Kanigel, who wrote the 1991 book that the movie is based on; and Matt Brown, the screenwriter and director of the movie.

The movie’s world premier is set for September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In 1913, Ramanujan wrote a letter to Hardy, including creative formulas that clearly showed his brilliance. Hardy invited Ramanujan to come to Cambridge to study and collaborate, a daring move during a time of deep prejudice.

“Together, they produced phenomenal results,” Ono says. “They changed mathematics and they changed the course of science.”

Ken Ono on the set with Jeremy Irons, who plays Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy. (Photo by Sam Pressman.)

A relatively unknown director, Matt Brown spent eight years trying to get the movie project off the ground. He eventually found backing from the producer Ed Pressman of Pressman Films.

“This is not your typical Hollywood film,” Brown says of the final product. “A lot of movies that deal with scientific subjects just mention the science and go straight to the human story. We wanted to honor the math in this film, so that mathematicians could appreciate it as well as other audience members. One way we tried to do that was to show the passion the characters have for the subject.”

When Brown called Ono out of the blue last August and asked him to help with the math on the film, Ono did not hesitate. He was soon on a plane from Atlanta to London to begin putting in 16-hour days on the set at Pinewood Studios with the cast and crew.

“I’ve never met anybody with more energy and enthusiasm for his work than Ken,” Brown says. “It was invaluable to me as a director to have him go over the script and make sure that the math was accurate. He was incredibly kind and patient. It gave me confidence.”

Ono also worked closely with the art department, to get details of the math visuals right, and coached the stars, Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons. “Ken helped the actors understand philosophically what was behind the mathematics,” Brown says. “He gave them a little window into it. That’s important because when an actor grasps the meaning of the lines, he can add nuance and subtext to a performance.”

Ultimately, the film is about the relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan, Brown says. “Hardy fought really hard to get Ramanujan honored and bring him into the elite of Trinity College at Cambridge. Hardy basically staked his career on him.”

It was especially risky since Ramanujan did not work like a traditional academic. He did not see the need of providing proofs for his fantastic formulas, and believed that they came to him as visions from a goddess.

“Ramanujan saw the world, and math, in a spiritual way,” Brown says. “It’s incredible that he wound up at Cambridge with Hardy, an atheist, as his mentor.”

Unfortunately, while Hardy proved a great academic mentor for Ramanujan, it took longer for their friendship to evolve. “This movie tells a story about the cost that comes when people wait out of fear to connect more deeply in their relationships,” Brown says.

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Should babies be screened for autism risk?

Karen Rommelfanger, neuroethics program director at the Emory Center for Ethics, co-wrote an opinion piece for The Conversation with Jennifer Sarrett, lecturer at Emory's Center for the Study of Human Health. Below is an excerpt:

For children with autism, early intervention is critical. Therapies and education – especially in the first two years of life – can facilitate a child’s social development, reduce familial stress and ultimately improve quality of life.

But while we can reliably diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at 24 months, most children are diagnosed much later. This is largely due to a lack of resources, poor adherence to screening guidelines and the fact that primary care physicians are often uncomfortable talking about autism risk to parents.

But what if we could use a simple, routine test to screen every baby for autism? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Larger-scale clinical trials for an eye-tracking device that could be used to predict autism are slated to begin this year. This presents a new and unique set of ethical concerns.

Technologies that predict the possibility of a neurological disorder have the weight of affecting conceptions of not just "what" these children have but "who" these children will become. As a neuroethicist and autism researcher, we believe it is time to have a conversation about these technologies, and what it will mean for parents and children or for people with autism.

Many researchers have found that autistic children prefer to look at different things than typically developing children. This is called gaze preference. In fact, gaze preference changes can be detected prior to the onset of autism. Researchers have been using eye-tracking devices to record where babies gaze when viewing videos of social scenes. And they have been using this device not to diagnose autism, but to predict autism.

A 2013 study using an eye-tracking device found that differences in gaze preference can be detected in infants as young as two months. When viewing videos, the infants who look at mouths more than eyes and objects more than people are more likely to later be diagnosed with autism. These infants experienced a decline in attention to other people’s eyes.

The researchers from this study are working to replicate these findings in larger studies and are heading up the development of the eye-tracking device slated for clinical trials this year, and should the trials be successful, researchers will seek FDA approval for the device.

Read the whole article in The Conversation.

How flu viruses use transportation networks in the U.S.

Emory biologists analyzed transportation data and flu cases from across the United States. The graphic of the U.S. interstate commuter network shows the number of people traveling daily between states for work. Credit: Brooke Bozick.

By Carol Clark

To predict how a seasonal influenza epidemic will spread across the United States, one should focus more on the mobility of people than on their geographic proximity, a new study suggests.

PLOS Pathogens published the analysis of transportation data and flu cases conducted by Emory University biologists. Their results mark the first time genetic patterns for the spread of flu have been detected at the scale of the continental United States.

“We found that the spread of a flu epidemic is somewhat predictable by looking at transportation data, especially ground commuter networks and H1N1,” says Brooke Bozick, who led the study as a graduate student in Emory’s Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution program. “Finding these kinds of patterns is the first step in being able to develop targeted surveillance and control strategies.”

The co-author of the study is Leslie Real, Emory professor of biology and Bozick’s PhD adviser.

One of the fundamental ideas in ecology is isolation by distance: The further apart things are geographically, the more distant they tend to be genetically.

This idea applies to disease ecology in the cases of animals that do not travel far from where they are born. Rabies spread by raccoons, for instance, tends to generate a wave-like pattern of transmission across a geographic space.

People, however, are much more mobile, often traveling by rail, road and air. The human mobility effect of an epidemic stands out starkly on the global scale. For instance, during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), airline travel clearly connected cases in people from Asia and Canada.

Map shows an example of how commuting communities can differ from state boundaries. Credit: Brooke Bozick.

The researchers wanted to see if they could detect a correlation to mobility and the genetic structure of seasonal flu cases on a national scale for the United States.

The study tapped Genbank, an online, public repository of genetic flu data, to analyze U.S. cases from 2003 to 2013 for two different subtypes of seasonal flu: H3N2 and H1N1. Transportation data for that decade was drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, to map out networks of air travel and ground commutes, and the number of people moving along them during the flu season.

The researchers compared genetic distance of the flu subtypes with their geographic distance and the measures of distance defined by airline and commuter transportation networks.

They found some correlations in both subtypes for all the distance metrics used. The correlations were seen a greater proportion of the time, however, when looking at commuter movements and the H1N1 subtype.

“H1N1 tends to be a milder subtype of flu that spreads slower, so that may make it easier to pick up the pattern across shorter-distance commutes,” Bozick says. “We think that a similar pattern for H3N2 may exist. The pattern may just be harder to detect, since H3N2 tends to be more virulent and spread faster, from coast-to-coast.”

The study shows that there are underlying spatial patterns in the genetic data, and that they are dependent on how the “distance” between locations is being measured, she adds.

“Humans can move long distances very rapidly so the idea that geographic proximity is key to determining disease spread doesn’t always hold,” Bozick says. “The patterns we found are likely influenced by states with many commuters, and the identification of these states, as well as network pathways that contribute substantially to influenza spread, is an important next step for epidemiological research.”

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Human mobility data may help curb epidemics

Stone tools from Jordan point to dawn of division of labor

Two stone tool points made using a prismatic blade technique (left and center), and a bone point or needle (right). The finds "give us a new window onto a transitional time, on the cusp of modern human cultural behaviors," says anthropologist Aaron Stutz.

By Carol Clark

Thousands of stone tools from the early Upper Paleolithic, unearthed from a cave in Jordan, reveal clues about how humans may have started organizing into more complex social groups by planning tasks and specializing in different technical skills.

The Journal of Human Evolution published a study of the artifacts from Mughr el-Hamamah, or Cave of the Doves, led by Emory University anthropologists Liv Nilsson Stutz and Aaron Jonas Stutz.

“We have achieved remarkably accurate estimates of 40,000 to 45,000 years ago for the earliest Upper Paleolithic stone tools in the Near East,” says Aaron Stutz, an associate professor at Emory's Oxford College. “Our findings confirm that the Upper Paleolithic began in the region no later than 42,000 years ago, and likely at least 44,600 years ago.”

The rich array of artifacts shows a mix of techniques for making points, blades, scrapers and cutting flakes. “These toolmakers appear to have achieved a division of labor that may have been part of an emerging pattern of more organized social structures,” Stutz says.

The theory that greater social division of labor was important at this prehistoric juncture was first put forward by anthropologists Steven Kuhn and Mary Stiner.

“Our work really seems to support that idea,” Stutz says. “The finds from Mughr el-Hamamah give us a new window onto a transitional time, on the cusp of modern human cultural behaviors, bridging the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.”

Liv Nilsson Stutz and Aaron Stutz in the field, on the terrace of Mughr el-Hamamah.

This pivotal time also marked the ebbing of Neanderthals as a last wave of anatomically modern humans spread out from Africa and into the Near East. This region, also known as the Levant, comprises the eastern Mediterranean at the crossroads of western Asia and northeast Africa. As the final surge of modern humans passed through the Levant, they would likely have encountered human populations that arrived earlier, and they may also have interbred with Neanderthals.

“Our find sits right in the Levantine corridor, midway between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, where each generation expanding into Eurasia would have foraged for food and made campsites,” Stutz says. “We don’t know if these toolmakers were mainly Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans, but recent evidence from other studies now raises the possibility that they were a mix of different populations. What we see at the Mughr el-Hamamah site is that individuals were starting to live, work and form families in larger, more culturally structured social networks.”

Mughr el-Hamamah is located in a limestone outcrop 240 feet above sea level. It overlooks the Jordan Valley, opposite the Nablus Mountains in the West Bank. The Stutzes, a husband-and-wife team, led excavations of the cave in 2010, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The relatively undisturbed Upper Paleolithic layer included fireplaces stacked atop one another that yielded chunks of well-preserved charcoal from hearths associated with the tools. Co-authors Jeff Pigati of the U.S. Geological Survey and Jim Wilson of Aeon Laboratories derived radiocarbon dates for the charcoal specimens, using advanced techniques that minimized the chances of contamination.

Listen to Liv Nilsson Stutz, senior lecturer in Emory anthropology, describe the artifacts, in the slideshow below:


The cave is about 30-feet deep with an entrance about 20-feet wide. “We can speculate that several families shared the space and worked alongside one another,” Aaron Stutz says. “We found burned animal bones, so they were likely roasting meat, and perhaps boiling plants in hides suspended over their fires as they sat nearby making tools. From the mouth of the cave, they would have had a commanding view of what was likely wetlands and open-vegetation terrain. They could see approaching visitors and deer and gazelle wandering in the distance. If their kids were playing outside, they might also be watching for leopards or other predators.”

Toolmaking was a major activity of the group, as evidenced by their prolific output. Co-author John Shea, an anthropologist from Stony Brook University and an expert flint knapper himself, is continuing to analyze the thousands of implements they left behind.

Many discoveries of Near Eastern tool assemblages dating prior to the early Upper Paleolithic show that humans focused on just one technology. The tools tend to look similar and likely served many uses – the Stone Age version of a Swiss Army Knife. “It takes a good bit of cleverness to be able to devise a tool that helps you cover lots of different situations,” Stutz says. “And it makes sense in a context where you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to need your piece of flint for that day.”

The group of toolmakers at Mughr el-Hamamah, however, used different technologies to get different tools. “They were investing in the kinds of activities that require maintaining relationships and group planning,” Stutz says. “They were gearing up for a clearly defined division of labor, including firewood gathering, plant gathering, hunting and food foraging.”

They produced large quantities of blades for knives, and for hafting onto spears, using a prismatic blade technique that yields long, narrow points that are nearly identical. “This standardization minimizes waste of the rock while maximizing the end product,” Stutz says. “It’s the conceptual forerunner to assembly-line production.”

Through this method, the toolmakers could have efficiently produced the armature for multiple hunters going out on a lengthy foray, increasing the chances for finding and striking a target, he says.

“It would have been socially advantageous for individuals to give blades that they made to others, to entice them to stay together as a group,” he adds. “That kind of reciprocity builds relationships. And the stronger the connectivity of your social networks, the greater chance of increasing the number of calories and the quality of nutrients for the group.”

One of the tools made with the Levallois technique, used by Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans alike in earlier periods.

Artifacts from the cave also included scraping tools, made on thick blades for hafting onto a handle and likely used for working wood and animal hides. Other tools continued to be crafted with what is known as the Levallois technique, which was more often used to make the multi-use flakes and triangular points so common in earlier periods.

Even more surprising, Shea’s analysis identified hundreds of basic flakes made from the oldest, easiest Stone Age technology of striking a rock that the toolmaker balances on a stone anvil. These tiny, sharp flakes may have served almost like disposable cutlery – handy implements that could be grabbed for a variety of purposes and tossed aside when no longer needed, Stutz says.

It is not yet known if the few fragments of human bones found at Mughr el-Hamamah have left enough intact fragments of DNA for any genetic analysis. But the diverse tool technologies, in use throughout the occupation period of the cave, support the theory of hunter-gatherer populations starting to band together in larger, more interconnected social networks.

As humans began to dominate the landscape, the researchers theorize, they reached a population density threshold for living in larger groups and gained access to a range of technologies. That process may have helped tip the balance for the rise of modern human culture and the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

“Our findings positively show that the cultural changes associated with Neanderthal extinction in the Near East and wider western Eurasia really are more complex than many leading researchers have assumed,” Stutz says. “Instead of looking for a smoking-gun technology or climatic fluctuation or volcanic eruption, it’s clear we need to look at interconnected behavioral, population and ecological processes. That approach might reveal more clearly the similarities, as well as differences, between our mainly African, and slightly Neanderthal, biological inheritance.”

Additional co-authors of the study are: Jason Rech of the University of Miami; Miriam Belmaker of the University of Tulsa; Rosa Maria Alert and Dan Cabanes of the University of Barcelona; Trina Arpin, an independent researcher in Boston; Jaime Clark of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Gideon Hartman of the University of Connecticut; Fuad Hourani of the University of Jordan and Chantel White of the University of Notre Dame.

Credits: Tool photos by Aaron Stutz; field photo by Julie Margolis.

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Complex cognition shaped the Stone Age hand axe
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Walt Disney's little-known 'Skeleton Dance'

A still from "The Skeleton Dance." Watch the full short in the YouTube video below.

Sean Braswell of OZY writes in USA Today about a disturbing encounter that the young Walt Disney had with an owl, and how it may have marked his later life and work. Following is an excerpt from the article:

"There is a persistent, and unsubstantiated, rumor that Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen body resides in a vault, waiting to be restored to life when summer returns to Arendelle and modern science triumps over death. It's easy to see how the rumor may have been started since, from the beginning of Disney's career, as chronicled by professor Gary Laderman of Emory University, the American icon had a curious obsesson with death. As early as 1929, on the heels of his first big splash with Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie, Disney offered a biazrre follow-up entitled The Skeleton Dance, which opens, not surprisingly, with a terrified owl perched in a tree. ...

"The graveyard romp turned out to be a macabre hit, and over the next decades, as America faced economic hardship, war, nuclear annihilation and drastic social change, Disney's films helped the nation navigate good and evil, vice and virtue. And for most of his early tales, Laderman observes, 'death, or the threat of death, is the motor, the driving force that enlivens each narrative.'"

Read the whole article in USA Today.

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.”

Related:
Bees 'betray' their flowers when pollinator species decline 
Emory to ban bee-harming pesticides
Mystery of monarch migration takes new turn
Pumping wings: Muscles make migrating monarchs unique
Democracy works for Endangered Species Act

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.”

Graduate strives to help female scientists in Africa

Emory graduate Kwadwo "Kojo" Sarpong, a native of Ghana, felt compelled to do something about the opportunity gap in Africa between men and women scientists. Emory Photo/Video.

By Kimber Williams, Emory Report

When a White House invitation to the first U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit showed up in his email last year, Emory senior Kwadwo Sarpong didn’t give it much thought. “I honestly thought it was some kind of a joke,” says Sarpong, who graduated from Emory this month with a degree in neuroscience and behavioral biology (NBB). 

But when a second invitation soon followed, Sarpong took notice.

“The Obama Administration’s Office of Public Engagement was interested in what I was doing to bridge the opportunity gap between male and female scientists in Africa,” explains Sarpong, who is known to his friends as “Kojo.”

That’s how Sarpong, who is from Ghana, found himself attending an event with top African officials, international leaders and U.S. cabinet members, where he represented the African Research Academies for Women (ARA-W), an organization that he co-founded to nurture the interests of aspiring female scientists in Africa by providing hands-on experience in research laboratories.

Sarpong arrived in Atlanta in 2009 with one goal: education.

Growing up in Ghana, the youngest of four boys, he was deeply aware of shortcomings within the nation’s healthcare system. When one of his brothers became ill with paralytic polio, he recalls that some blamed it on evil spirits.

Stricken with severe fevers while growing up, Sarpong spent considerable time in hospitals himself, an experience that would feed a budding interest in medicine.

During his first year of studies at the University of Ghana, Sarpong was thrilled to learn he’d “won a green card” and the chance to travel to the U.S. “Like a lot of African students, I had very high hopes and dreams — I was going to transfer directly into an American university,” he recalls, smiling. “Instead, I ended up living with my cousin in Atlanta and working as a housekeeper at a medical center and a cashier and warehouse associate at Walmart.”

As friends back in Ghana were preparing to graduate from college, Sarpong studied their Facebook photos. While their lives were moving forward, his seemed stuck. “Everybody thinks that you come to America and your life will change,” Sarpong says. “I was beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake.”

In time, he began taking classes in chemistry at Georgia Perimeter College. Motivated by his brother’s experience with polio, “I became very interested in neuroscience,” he says.

With the help of Emory’s Initiative to Maximize Student Development — a program funded by the National Institutes of Health to expand scientific workforce diversity — Sarpong arrived as a transfer student in Fall 2013.

Talking about his experiences one day with a friend who had graduated from the University of Ghana, he was shocked to learn that she had taken a job as a bank teller — the only position she could find. “There is nothing here for women in science,” she told him.

Sarpong felt compelled to do something about the opportunity gap that exists in Ghana — and much of the developing world — between men and women in the sciences. “Ghana is still a male-dominated culture,” he explains. “I began thinking about what I could do to create social change with something I really love — research.”

Read more in Emory Report.

The economics of hypnotic meditation

Graduating senior Hal Zeitlin is set to begin a one-year internship with The Levy Centers for Mind-Body Medicine and Human Potential. He then plans to join the Houston Teach for America corps.

To graduate with honors from the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, students must complete an honors thesis, a comprehensive project that involves months of original research and analysis on a topic of their choice under the guidance of a faculty adviser. The result is a final paper and an oral defense of their thesis to a faculty committee.

Hal Zeitlin's thesis is entitled: "Silent Economics: The Cooperative Effects of Hypnotic Meditation." His adviser was Kelli Lanier, instructor of economics.

"I examined the impact of meditation alone versus the same meditation preceded by hypnotic relaxation procedures on the economic cooperative behavior of 160 undergraduates," Zeitlin explains. "Hypnotic meditation is used to relax a meditator before they practice any scientifically valid form of meditation. There was a significant change of relaxation within the hypnotic group, greater than the change in the meditation-only group. The meditation-only group maintained cooperative behavior for two of three rounds, and the hypnotic group for all three. Since these results could be attributed to random variation, I recommend that the study be repeated with a larger sample."

A growing amount of scientific evidence has revealed that certain meditation practices can positively change the human brain. "I am interested in helping to introduce scientifically valid meditation practices into American schools, for the benefit of youth," Zeitlin says. "My thesis experience provided me an opportunity to begin a professional investigation into meditation and its effects on pro-social behavior."

Read about more honors thesis projects in Emory Report.

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'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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What literature can teach us about sleep

"I never met a man who was quite wide awake," Thoreau wrote in "Walden." The sketch shows the cabin where he withdrew from society.

By Maria Lameiras, Emory Report

As a winner of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for 2015, Emory English professor Benjamin Reiss will spend the upcoming academic year working on his third book, a cultural and literary study of modern sleep and its almost-obsessive management by society and the medical profession.

Reiss's Guggenheim project is "Thoreau's Bed: How Sleep Became a Problem in the Modern World," a book whose idea germinated in a course Reiss co-taught with Emory neurologist David Rye on "Sleep in Science and Culture." The book "asks how sleep became a nightly ordeal in need of micromanagement, medical attention and pervasive worry."

In his Guggenheim proposal, Reiss states, "Far from a simple biological constant, sleep actually is one of the most rule-bound and tightly regimented activities of our society — and yet the rules we adhere to (sleep in one unbroken stretch for roughly eight hours; do so in a private, sealed room with at most one other consenting adult; train your children to sleep alone through the night from a very young age) seem particularly maladaptive to the waking worlds we inhabit."

While teaching a course on Thoreau's "Walden," Reiss says he realized the book was "a rich record of sleeping and waking." "When I began to pull out that thread of sleep in his writing, his understanding of what had gone wrong with sleep seemed very contemporary to me," Reiss says.

"In 'Walden,' there is a famous chapter, 'Where I Lived and What I Lived For,' in which he says 'I have never met a man who was quite wide awake.' He also talks about people being addicted to news and gossip, writing 'Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's the news?' as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.'

"Part of what he was witnessing was the birth of the modern world and he was recording how that affected people's rhythms."

"Thoreau's Bed" is scheduled to be published in 2017, the 200th anniversary of Thoreau's birth.

Read more in Emory Report.

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Her father’s trip to the moon showed her the power of evidence

Commander David Scott emerges from a hatch during the Apollo 9 mission. The 10-day flight in 1969 provided vital information on the operational performance, stability and reliability of lunar module propulsion and life support systems. NASA photo.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t think flying into space was a big deal. All my friends’ dads went into space,” says Tracy Scott, senior lecturer in sociology and director of Emory’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP).

The goal of Emory’s QEP topic, “The Nature of Evidence,” is to empower students as independent scholars capable of supporting arguments with different types of evidence. Scott’s interest in the topic was formed while growing up immersed in the culture of NASA.

Her father, Commander David Scott, was an astronaut who flew on Gemini 8, Apollo 9 and Apollo 15. He’s one of only 12 people who’ve ever set foot on the moon.



“The thing that was exciting for me was the chance to discover new evidence on the moon,” Scott recalls of her father’s lunar trip. “Here was a new environment that humans had never experienced before and there was a huge amount of knowledge to be gained. My dad took a lot of time before the Apollo 15 mission to explain the scientific goals to me. And particularly the experiment he was going to do on the moon. He helped to find new evidence to confirm a very old theory.”

Watch the video, above, to see Commander Scott conduct his famous hammer and feather experiment while standing on the moon. In a vacuous space, without air resistance, they fell at the same rate, just as Galileo predicted in 1589. It was a striking visual demonstration of what we now know as the equivalence principle: The influence of gravity and the influence of inertia are exactly the same.

“I thought it was really cool that my dad was able to do an experiment that linked all the way back to Galileo,” Scott says. “Learning about the power of evidence when I was a child inspired me. I developed a keen sense of seeking out evidence to deepen what I was being taught, and to support my own arguments and to create new knowledge.”

Seeing people in a Congolese aid camp in a new way

All the photographs in Aubrey Graham's exhibition "Disneyland" are active collaborations between herself and the people being portrayed.

By Carol Clark

“I sat down with Marciella on some rocks in front of her house and had a chat, I asked her how she wanted to be represented,” recalls Aubrey Graham, a photographer and a PhD candidate in anthropology at Emory. “She said that she wanted to be shown suffering, no question about that. So I asked her how she wanted to portray her suffering. She took her beautiful headscarf off to show her gray hair and clasped her hands to her face. It was quite dramatic.”

Marciella was thrilled with the resulting photographs (above and right), says Graham. The striking images are part of an exhibition of Graham’s photographs on the ground floor of the Emory Center for Ethics, where Graham is currently an artist-in-residence through the Ethics and Arts Program. She will be giving a talk on the exhibition at noon on Wednesday, April 15, in the Center for Ethics, room 102.

“Portraits in Disneyland: Stories of Mugunga III,” on view through May, consists of photos that Graham made in collaboration with internally displaced people in a camp near the humanitarian hub of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Graham describes the camp, known as Mugunga III, as having “been visited and photographed by nearly every errant aid worker, VIP, celebrity and journalist who arrives in the region – to the degree that its frustrated coordinators casually dubbed it ‘Disneyland.’”

Graham spent a year in the DRC, including eight months creating the images. “The change over time was amazing,” she says. “You get looped into peoples' lives in really intricate and wonderful ways. I loved getting invited back to photograph the progression of a pregnant woman, then her newborn, and then the baby sitting up.”

Though Marciella wanted to show herself as “suffering,” other subjects wanted to be portrayed with a prize possession, such as a radio, or going happily about their daily routine, surrounded by the people they care about most.

“I want to unsettle how we think about life in those camps and the people in them,” Graham says. “They are not always miserable.”

Her original question was: What are the implications of humanitarian photography in a region saturated with aid for over 20 years? “Through my research,” she says, “that question has expanded to look at both local Congolese and humanitarian photographic practices to understand the broader implications of photography upon identity and the politics of the region.”

To learn more about Graham’s project, read this Q&A with her on the Laney Graduate School web site.

Ghosts of the past leading to modern science

Detail from the cover of "History Lessons: A Memoir of Madness, Memory and the Brain," by Clifton Crais.

Among the raft of recent books by Emory faculty are three from historians that draw heavily from science to tell their stories. Below are summaries of the volumes from the latest issue of Emory Magazine.

HISTORY LESSONS: A MEMOIR OF MADNESS, MEMORY AND THE BRAIN, by Clifton Crais.  For those moved to tears easily, prepare for a river. Crais offers a haunting account of his childhood—the parts he can remember. He suffers from chronic childhood amnesia, the most common and least understood form of the disorder. Crais grew up in New Orleans with an alcoholic mother who tried to drown him in the bathtub at the age of three. A year later, she tried to kill herself.

As Crais notes of his training as a historian, “I have spent a lifetime sifting through the records of others . . . revealing the hidden patterns of our common past.” And yet—“It’s my own life I can’t remember.” He turns to plane tickets, postmarks, court and medical records, and crumbling photo albums for answers. And he consults experts about the neuroscience of memory. In the end, Crais reaches, if not an epiphany, at least accommodation with what is. “There is something different now,” he writes. “It’s not memory but still powerful: the knowledge that helps fill in the blank spaces where a child once walked all those lost years ago.”

A CLIMATE OF CRISIS: AMERICA IN THE AGE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM, by Patrick Allitt.  Although environmentalism has been widely reported for more than four decades, this is the first general intellectual history of the movement. Allitt takes readers back, well beyond the first Earth Day in April 1970. In his mind, the movement owes its birth to the “mood of crisis created by the first atom bombs and the Cold War arms race,” which influenced ideas about population, resources, and climate change. 

Does the media hype the dangers to the planet? The answer is almost certainly, in part because the science is complicated. As Allitt notes, “Only when scientists’ cautious conclusions were turned into thrilling headlines predicting disaster would citizens take notice.”

VACCINE NATION: AMERICA'S CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH IMMUNIZATION, by Elena Conis.  The sugar cube that many of us remember containing our polio vaccine was a treat for the tongue. The recent history of vaccination in the US is more bitter, but it wasn’t always so.

As Conis reports, in 1943 New York health official Leona Baumgartner reported results of a poll exploring Americans’ attitudes toward immunization: more than 90 percent trusted in vaccines. This is a far cry from conditions in the new millennium, as the role of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine in autism is debated endlessly; the vaccine against HPV (human papillomavirus) sparked controversy when lawmakers attempted to require it for sixth graders; and parents marched on Washington. As Conis points out, “The larger debate over vaccination . . . wasn’t just about vaccine risks. At a deeper level, it was a debate about the roles of children in our society, our heath care politics, gender relations, chronic disease risks, and more.”

Amazonian study quantifies key role of grandparents in family nutrition

A Tsimane grandmother (right) provides support for her infant daughter, her adult daughter (left), granddaughter and grandson.

By Carol Clark

Anyone who has ever loved a grandmother or grandfather knows the nurturing role that grandparents can play. A study of indigenous people in Amazonia, who survive on food they hunt, forage or cultivate, quantifies the evolutionary benefit of that role. The results show that grandparents contribute a biologically significant amount of food calories to their extended families.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B published the results of the study of the Tsimane people of Bolivia, led by Paul Hooper, an anthropologist at Emory University.

“We quantified the net flow of calories among individuals in an environment where access to food is limited and depends on people generating it themselves,” Hooper says. “The results support the theory that grandparents are key to our relatively long childhood and long lifespan, which are a big part of what makes us human. Their efforts have likely been underwriting human society for hundreds of thousands of years.”

The study found that fathers and mothers contributed the most net calories to their nuclear family unit, followed by grandfathers and grandmothers, then uncles, aunts and children above the age of 12.

Relative to other primates and mammals, humans mature later and live longer, including many post-reproductive years. Evolutionary theories have proposed that intergenerational resource transfers bolster these distinctive features of human life history. This new study is the first to fully unite the production of resources over a lifetime with inclusive fitness theory, and then test the unified model in an empirical analysis.

Members of a family work together to prepare a meal from ingredients they have gathered from their environment. "About 95 percent of their food comes directly from their own labor," Hooper says.

“Our data give a clear picture of how the life history of our species is supported by high surplus food production in older age and the redistribution of that surplus to younger kin,” Hooper says. “Beyond showing that food resources flowed from older to younger generations, we were able to predict how much each person gave to each other, based on their relative productivity and the closeness of their relationship.”

Hooper led the research as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and then as a post-doctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His co-authors include anthropologists Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven and Jeffrey Winking.

The researchers spent five years collecting data on 239 Tsimane families from eight villages. The Tsimane (pronounced Chee-mahn-AY in Spanish) live in small, isolated communities along the Maniqui River in the Amazonian rainforest that are only accessible by canoe or logging roads. These communities speak their own language, lack modern sanitation and electricity, and have access to few consumer goods beyond axes, machetes and other basic supplies.

The Tsimane clear small patches of forest to cultivate cassava, plantains, rice and corn. They also forage plants and fish and hunt meat in the form of peccary, deer, tapirs, monkeys and capybara (a large rodent). “About 95 percent of their food comes directly from their own labor,” Hooper says. “It’s an isolated, small-scale society that gives us an idea of the way humans lived before modern industrialization.”

The study broke down average caloric intake by various age groups of the participants, ranging from about 700 calories per day for an infant to more than 3,000 calories per day for adults. They also quantified the amount of calories each family member contributed to the household, from a bushel of plantains or a kilo of rice to the meat of a butchered deer.

The evolutionary value of grandfathers has been largely overlooked, Hooper says.

The results showed that Tsimane parents and grandparents provide net economic contributions to kin into the seventh decade of life. Households with higher food productivity and fewer dependents provided net transfers to closely related, usually younger, households with lower productivity and more dependents.

The value of grandmothers had been highlighted in previous studies linking them to improved outcomes for grandchildren. The contribution of grandfathers, however, has been largely overlooked, Hooper says.

While food is a limiting resource among the Tsimane, Hooper notes that in order to conduct a similar study in an industrialized society the focus should shift from food to money and time.

“Whether you’re a hunter-gatherer or an accountant, you’re good at what you do because someone supported you while you developed and learned skills,” Hooper says. “The economics of learning are what makes grandparents so important to humans compared to other primates.”

In modern, fast-paced societies, undergoing rapid technological change, the value of grandparents may be overlooked, he adds. “When technology moves at a fast rate, it can shift the age of competence to younger ages. We’re in danger of not recognizing the wisdom of older people, accumulated over lifetimes.”

Hooper, who lost his last grandparent, his maternal grandmother, a few weeks before the study was published, says she influenced his career choice. “She completed a graduate degree in biology during the 1930s, so she was way ahead of her time,” he says. “I learned about Darwin and evolution from her. She taught me the importance of biology for understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.”

Photos courtesy of Paul Hooper

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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.