Kenya and 'the double life of kale'

Kale’s discovery by affluent consumers in the United States is an example of how much high-income societies can learn from the dietary habits of the poor, says Emory anthropologist Peter Little.

Emory anthropologist Peter Little wrote an article for Sapiens about how the trendy American health food of kale is similar to a variety with humble origins in Africa, where the poor depend on the leafy green vegetable as a staple. Below is an excerpt:

"Nutritional and health benefits aside, kale’s recent popularity and the premium prices kale-based products command in the United States might seem comical, if not downright ridiculous, to many East Africans. In Kenya and Tanzania, kale is a key staple in highland farming communities, where it is referred to as sukuma wiki, which in Swahili means “to push the week.” (East African kale is slightly different from the varieties that are grown and eaten in the U.S., but still very similar.) Eaten with a thick, maize-based porridge called ugali, kale is what allows many East African families to get through the week, often with little more than a sprinkling of tomato, onion, or, in better-off families, a few pieces of meat mixed in. When an individual is invited to eat with a rural Kenyan family, as I have been on many occasions over the past 30-plus years, it is almost certain that at least one of the dishes will be sukuma wiki. Indeed, the poorer the family is, the more likely kale, along with ugali, will be the main part of the meal."

Read the whole article in Sapiens.

Related:
What we can learn from African pastoralists

Why Zika risk is low for Olympic athletes in Rio

An aerial view of Rio de Janeiro, host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. "August is the winter season in Rio, when mosquito populations are at their lowest," says Emory disease ecologist Uriel Kitron.

By Carol Clark

Some health professionals have lobbied to postpone the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics due to the risk of the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitos and – less commonly – through sexual intercourse. Other experts disagree that Zika poses a significant enough threat to warrant changing the venue or date of the games, set for August 5 to August 21.

“The risk of Zika infection in Rio during the Olympics is very low,” says Uriel Kitron, chair of Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences and an expert on mosquito-borne diseases. “But if you are pregnant, or are thinking of getting pregnant right now as part of a couple, then you may want to consider even this low risk of transmission, given the potential serious complications.”

He refers travelers to the current advisory of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC advises women who are pregnant “to consider not going to the Olympics,” due to the link between Zika infections and severe birth defects. The CDC also recommends special precautions for men and women to practice safe sex following any possible exposure to the Zika virus.

When Zika popped up in Brazil last year, Kitron already had ongoing research projects in the country focused on how urban mosquitos spread the viruses of dengue and chikungunga. The population had no immunity to Zika and the virus swept like wildfire through the country. Kitron and his Brazilian colleagues quickly expanded their research to include cases of Zika, which can cause a rash and relatively mild illness, although most of those infected have no symptoms at all. It was not until months later that the more insidious effects of the Zika virus became apparent.

Kitron and his colleagues completed one of the first epidemiological studies, now out in Emerging Infectious Diseases, showing the strong link between the epidemic curve of the outbreak and a spike in cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and babies born with smaller than normal heads, a condition known as microcephaly.

In the following interview, Kitron discusses some of what is now known about this emerging infectious disease and why mosquito surveillance and control is currently the key to containing its spread.

Why do you think the risk is low for Zika virus transmission during the Olympics?

For one thing, August is the winter season in Rio, when mosquito populations are at their lowest. And the areas where the athletes will be staying and competing are well-maintained, making Olympic visitors even less likely to encounter a mosquito.

The rates of Zika infection in Brazil have gone down drastically since last year, probably because the population now has herd immunity, so that further lowers the risk of transmission. Brazil is no longer the “hot spot” of the Zika pandemic. The horse has already left the barn as Zika has moved throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where an outbreak began more recently, currently has high rates of new Zika infections and summer is the high season for transmission.

The Nilton Santos stadium in Rio, one of several Olympic venues.

What is the risk of contracting Zika virus from a mosquito in the United States? 

Unless you are in the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands, the risk is very low for most of the United States and will likely remain very low.

In the past, we have seen a few cases of locally transmitted dengue fever and chikungunya in South Texas and South Florida. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main vector of dengue, chikungunya and Zika, can be found in states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. The much more widespread Aedes albopictus, better known as the Asian tiger mosquito, has also shown that it can transmit these diseases, at least in a laboratory setting. Aedes albopictus, however, is not as effective as a vector.

We’ve greatly reduced the density of Aedes aegypti in most of the country. It feeds almost exclusively on humans, prefers a tropical climate and particularly thrives in dense neighborhoods with substandard housing. People in warmer areas of the United States generally have window screens and air-conditioning.

While we could see limited transmission of Zika virus from mosquitos in the Gulf states, it would be unlikely to develop into intensive transmission. We have relatively better methods of disease surveillance and mosquito control in the United States, which is one reason why we haven’t had a major outbreak of dengue fever. So far, we have been able to catch cases early and control the spread.

Is the Zika virus a disease of the poor? 

Mosquitos bite everybody so it’s not only the poor who are affected by diseases like dengue and Zika. But, of course, there are more mosquitos in poorer areas and less protection from them. So the poor are generally at much higher risk.

What are the prospects for effectively combating the Zika virus globally? 

I’m optimistic that we will have a vaccine for Zika within a few years because there is only one strain of the virus, unlike the dengue virus, which has many different strains.

People have proposed releasing genetically modified, sterile male Aedes aegypti mosquitos. The idea is they would compete with the wild sterile males to reduce populations of disease-carrying mosquitos. Genetically modified mosquitos might be one tool to fight mosquito-borne diseases, but I’m skeptical whether they would compete that well with other mosquitos in natural conditions. The jury is still out on that question.

For now, good mosquito surveillance and larvae control remain the keys to prevent and contain outbreaks. It’s generally much easier to control mosquitoes at the larval stage by eliminating breeding sites.

A study led by the Emory Vaccine Center recently found that people infected with dengue virus develop antibodies that cross-react with Zika virus. Can you talk about how that relates to your ongoing epidemiological research in Brazil? 

I’m part of a collaboration with Brazilian scientists focused in Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia in the northeast region of the country.

We are continuing to study the epidemiology and ecology of the Zika, chikungunya and dengue viruses. We’re particularly interested in the co-circulation of the three. What does it mean to have several arboviruses circulating among a population as far as the complications in humans? For instance, during the Zika outbreak last year in Bahia, we think there was more chikungunya circulating than was previously realized. And it’s possible that the spike in Guillian-Barré cases may be more related to chikungunya.

It’s important to gather data on the interactions of people, pathogens and disease vectors like mosquitos. Not only could it help us combat current outbreaks, the data may help us deal with the next emerging infectious disease.

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Human mobility data may help curb urban epidemics 

Measuring happiness and well-being across cultures and incomes

Emory anthropologist Peter Little visits with a family in Baringo, Kenya. He is studying low-income communities to understand the relationship between material well-being and reports of overall well-being.

By April Hunt, Emory Report

How is it that people living in rural, poor areas of the globe can report being happier than those who live in the relative affluence of the United States?

Emory anthropologist Peter Little and philosopher Mark Risjord aim to answer that question as part of a team that has been awarded a “Happiness and Well-Being” grant. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation and St. Louis University, their work is part of a larger research program in the growing field of well-being.

“The idea is to compare the subjective meaning of the good life and see if that affects the relationship between material well-being and reports of happiness and overall well-being,” says Little, the project’s principal investigator.

The project, which includes economist Workneh Negatu of Addis Ababa University, will study two specific low-income communities: South Wollo, Ethiopia, and Baringo, Kenya.

Little has long studied the politics, economy and ecology of eastern Africa. When he was completing his dissertation in 1983, there was only one college graduate in the Chamus Maasai community of Baringo, Kenya, where he studied. Since then, there have been significant social changes and there are now dozens of college graduates among the Maasai-related pastoralists population, he says.

That makes that area in Kenya a good place to understand relative well-being and poverty where, as in the U.S., people are poor relative to their neighbors. South Wollo, by contrast, remains populated by those in absolute poverty. A bad harvest there, or lost jobs, still can lead to dire hardships and even starvation.

The United Nations’ annual World Happiness Report this year ranked Ethiopia a dismal 115 out of 147 countries according to citizens’ happiness levels. The United States ranked 13th in the analysis, which looked at factors such as life expectancy, health and freedom from corruption in government and business.

Yet Ethiopia ranked 94th on the 2012 Happiness Index, the most recent available from the New Economics Foundation. The United States ranked 105th in that study, which included a factor called “life satisfaction.”

Kenya, likewise, ranked poorly in the U.N. report, at 122nd, but also bested the United States with a rank of 98 on the Happiness Index.

“This is huge for public policy,” Little says. “Kenya’s therapy industry is starting to emerge, because people’s expectations of what the good life is have changed drastically, and they’re not meeting those expectations.”

Risjord’s role will be to help provide a philosophical framework for the qualitative study. In his section of the project proposal, Risjord wrote that past study of well-being seems to take sides on longstanding philosophical disputes on whether it is a universal sense or different in different contexts.

Risjord, who is teaching philosophy of science in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in southern India as part of the Emory-Tibet Sciences Initiative, says his role will be to understand how the feeling varies with context based on historical, cultural and economic data gathered in both Ethiopia and Kenya.

“The philosophical contribution of this project will be to develop a more robust and articulate conception of how human well-being varies with social, economic and environmental context,” Risjord writes in his proposal section.

The study will become part of the larger Happiness and Well-Being project at St. Louis University, which is designed to promote dialogue and collaboration among well-being researchers across a broad range of disciplines. Little, whose proposal was one of just 21 funded from a pool of 300, says he hopes to begin travel under the $248,000 grant by August.

He will build upon that work back in Atlanta, too. Long-term, he plans to get students to look at the Ethiopian diaspora here, to gauge if their sense of well-being changes when they arrive in the U.S.

“To me, it’s really exciting to do cultural interpretations of well-being and poverty,” Little says. “It’s a fascinating way to look at culture.”

Related:
The economics of happiness

Conspicuous consumption may drive fertility down

"As competition becomes more focused on social climbing, as opposed to just putting food on the table, people invest more in material goods and achieving social status, and that affects how many children they have," says anthropologist Paul Hooper.

By Carol Clark

Competition for social status may be an important driver of lower fertility in the modern world, suggests a new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

“The areas were we see the greatest declines in fertility are areas with modern labor markets that have intense competition for jobs and an overwhelming diversity of consumer goods available to signal well-being and social status,” says senior author Paul Hooper, an anthropologist at Emory University. “The fact that many countries today have so much social inequality – which makes status competition more intense – may be an important part of the explanation.”

The study authors developed a mathematical model showing that their argument is plausible from a biological point of view.

Across the globe, from the United States to the United Kingdom to India, fertility has gone down as inequality and the cost of achieving social status has gone up. “Our model shows that as competition becomes more focused on social climbing, as opposed to just putting food on the table, people invest more in material goods and achieving social status, and that affects how many children they have,” Hooper says.

Factors such as lower child mortality rates, more access to birth control and the choice to delay childbirth to get a higher education are also associated with declining fertility. “While these factors are very important they are insufficient to explain the drops in family sizes that we are seeing,” Hooper says.

In addition to Hooper, the study authors include anthropologists Mary Shenk, from the University of Missouri, and Hillard Kaplan, from the University of New Mexico. They are pioneers in an emerging field of “computational anthropology,” which blends methods from biology, economics, computer science and physics to answer fundamental questions about human behavior.

The study is featured in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, devoted to how evolutionary approaches can help solve the puzzle of why human fertility varies substantially.

Hooper first became intrigued by variability in human fertility while researching the Tsimane indigenous people of Bolivian Amazonia. The Tsimane (pronounced chee-mahn-AY in Spanish) are foragers and horticulturalists who live in small, isolated communities along the Maniqui River in the Amazonian rainforest.

“In a hunter-gatherer society, parents have a limited number of things available to invest in: Food, clothing and shelter,” Hooper says. “The average Tsimane family has nine children and they can provide these basic needs for all of them.”

Hooper noticed a pattern, however, when Tsimane families leave the rainforest and move closer to Spanish-speaking towns where they come into contact with market economies and industrialized goods. “When they start getting earnings for the first time, they spend money on things you wouldn’t really expect, like an expensive wristwatch or a nylon backpack for a child attending school, instead of sending them with a traditional woven bag,” Hooper says. “I got the impression that these things were largely symbolic of their social status and competence.”

The Tsimane family size also tends to drop when they move closer to town, he adds: From eight or nine children in remote villages, to five or six in villages near town, to three to four in the town itself. 

Hooper hypothesizes that a similar pattern plays out as societies develop from mainly agrarian to more urban and affluent. “In my grandparents day, it took a lot less investment to be respectable,” he says. “It was important to have a set of good clothes for church on Sunday but you could let the kids run around barefoot for the rest of the week.”

Today, however, keeping up with the Jones has become much more complicated – and expensive. 

“The human species is highly social and, as a result, we appear to have an ingrained desire for social standing,” Hooper says. “The problem is that our brains evolved in a radically different environment from that of the modern world. Evolution didn’t necessarily train us very well for the almost infinite size of our communities, the anonymity of many of our interactions and the vast numbers of goods that we can use to signal our status. Our evolved psychology may be misfiring and causing us to over invest in social standing.”

Related:
Amazonian study quantifies key role of grandparents in family nutrition

Image: Thinkstockphoto.com

A beginner's guide to sex differences in the brain

By Donna Maney, Emory Professor of Psychology

Asking whether there are sex differences in the human brain is a bit like asking whether coffee is good for you – scientists can’t seem to make up their minds about the answer. In 2013, for example, news stories proclaimed differences in the brain so dramatic that men and women “might almost be separate species.” Then in 2015, headlines announced that there are in fact no sex differences in the brain at all. Even as I write this, more findings of differences are coming out.

So which is it? Are there differences between men’s and women’s brains – or not? To clear up the confusion, we need to consider what the term “sex difference” really means in the scientific literature.

To illustrate the concept, I’ve used a web-based tool I helped develop, SexDifference.org, to plot some actual data. The three graphs below show how measurements from a sample of people are distributed along a scale. Women are represented in pink, and men in blue. Most people are close to the average for their sex, so that’s the peak of each “bump.” People on the left or right side of the peak are below or above average, respectively, for their sex. I’ve added individual data points for three hypothetical study subjects Sue, Ann and Bob. Not real people, just examples. Their data points are superimposed on the larger data set of hundreds of people.

Before we get into the brain, let’s look at a couple of familiar sex differences outside the brain. Many of us, if asked to describe how men’s bodies differ from women’s, would first mention the sex difference in external genitalia. The graph below depicts the number of nontransgender adults that have a “genital tubercle derivative” (clitoris or penis) of a given size.

Size of human genitalia. Data from Wallen and Lloyd, 2008. (Graphic by Donna Maney.)

All of the women in this sample, including our hypothetical Sue and Ann, fall within a certain range. All of the men, including Bob, fall into a different range. With relatively rare exceptions, humans can be accurately categorized into sexes based on this measure.

Sex differences in human height. Data from Sperrin, et al., 2015. Graphic by Donna Maney. 

Next, let’s consider another difference that we can all see and understand: the sex difference in height. Here, we see overlap, depicted in purple. Unless a person is very tall or very short, knowing only that person’s height will not allow us to categorize that person as male or female with much certainty. Yet, even though we all know that some women are taller than some men, we would probably all call this a sex difference.

A typical sex difference in the human brain. Data from Tunc et al., 2016. (Graphic by Donna Maney.) 

Now let’s consider a typical sex difference inside the human brain. This graph depicts a sex difference in structural connectivity, or the degree to which networks of brain areas are interconnected, as reported in a recent study (the median effect size from the study is shown). The distributions of values for men and women are essentially the same; they overlap by 90 percent. Sue and Bob have fairly similar values, and Ann’s value is higher than the average man’s. We can see that this sex difference in the brain is quite different from the sex difference in genital measurements. With only the measurement of brain connectivity, the odds of correctly guessing a person’s sex might be as low as 51 out of 100. Since the odds aren’t perfectly 50:50, this is technically a sex difference. The term means that sex explains a portion of the variability in a trait, not that men take one form and women another. There may be a few more women at one end of the range and a few more men at the other, but for the majority, the trait is not that related to sex.

Small differences such as this one are important. The discovery of any sex difference is valuable for scientists and physicians because it points to other, more meaningful sources of variation. Because the sexes differ according to factors such as genes, hormones, and environment, a sex difference in the brain provides clues about the impact of these other factors on the brain. Following up on those clues helps us understand why susceptibility to disease, efficacy of drugs and even the course of normal development are different among all individuals, not just between men and women.

Despite their relevance to human health, the scientific value of sex differences is rarely discussed in the news media. Instead, sex differences become clickbait for promoting stereotypes. Small differences in the brain have been reported to explain a wide variety of presumably sex-typical behaviors, from hunting to cleaning the house. Although it makes intuitive sense that a difference in the brain must translate to a difference in behavior, there is very little evidence linking any sex difference in the human brain directly to a particular function or behavioral outcome. So think twice before you assume that greater brain connectivity confers better multitasking or map-reading skills.

The graphs above are meant to illustrate why it’s not particularly informative to ask a yes-or-no question like “Do the sexes differ?” We need to ask more sophisticated questions: to what extent do the sexes differ? How much do they overlap?

Any decent scientific report of a sex difference contains all of the information needed to answer these questions. But not many journalists look at the actual report; they often rely on press releases, which may misrepresent the nature and meaning of a difference. As a result, the headlines can turn out to be wrong. For example, in the 2013 study reportedly showing that men and women differ profoundly, the sexes overlapped by an average of more than 86 percent. And the 2015 study that supposedly showed no sex differences in the brain? The authors never actually made such a claim. In fact, they provided a long list of bona-fide sex differences.

The next time you read about a sex difference, if you have access to the research report you can graph the difference yourself on SexDifference.org. Enter the average value (reported as the “mean”) and variance (reported as the “standard deviation”) for each sex. The tool will automatically draw a graph and calculate the degree of overlap. You can then see for yourself the extent to which the trait is related to sex.

Don’t be surprised if you can’t find the values you need to graph the difference. The authors may not report them, or they may not have actually compared the sexes. Take, for example, the report last year on thermal comfort in office buildings. The media were aflutter for days, explaining why women are always cold at the office. A quick look at the scientific paper itself shows that there were no men in the study at all! This makes calculating the overlap a bit problematic.

Overlap between the sexes may seem so obvious that it needs no discussion. But its underappreciation is leading educators to separate boys and girls into single-sex classrooms in order to accommodate their different brains, and physicians to consider sex, instead of more relevant factors such as body weight, when prescribing drugs. Although well-intentioned, these practices amount to stereotyping because they assume the distribution looks like the top graph above when it may look more like the bottom one.

Nearly every day, new research is published that, if overinterpreted, could be used to promote sex stereotypes. Most neuroscientists are not interested in doing that. The few neuroscientists who do overinterpret their data, often to the great delight of the media and the public, provide fuel for discriminatory practices and cast the entire field in a negative light. The best way to deal with dubious interpretations is to examine the data and draw our own conclusions. The data will speak for themselves.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

Top image: Thinkstock.com

Beauty and brains: Best-in-breed show dog assists with Emory neuroscience on the side

Emory alum Lindsay Fetters and her best-in-breed winning vizsla, Eli, enjoy their moment at the Westminster Kennel Club. (Photos by Teddy Lei.)

By Carol Clark

The crowd applauded as Atlanta resident and Emory alum Lindsay Fetters, clad in a powder-blue suit dress, dashed into the ring with Eli, a graceful, spirited vizsla with a golden-brown coat. It was the recent Westminster Kennel Club’s best sporting dog competition. Fetters and Eli had just won a best-in-breed event at the show – making Eli the top vizsla in the country. Fresh from this victory, the pair seemed to glow as they glided across the green carpet.

Dog lovers around the country were watching the TV broadcast from Madison Square Garden as the announcer gave a bit of backstory: “Eli’s a participant in the Dog Project at Emory University, which is where dogs go into MRIs fully awake and unrestrained so we can learn a little more about their intellectual and emotional abilities.”

That’s right. While Eli did not take the prize for best sporting dog, he did get a nod for being the only Westminster show dog that assists with neuroscience research in his spare time.

“After we won best in breed and moved on to the sporting event, I had to fill out a card for the announcer to say some unique things about Eli, so I put down the Dog Project,” says Fetters, who is the owner, breeder and handler of Eli. “The general public watches the show and I wanted people to know that these dogs are much more than just pretty faces. Many of these dogs do therapy work and other important things.

Celebrating with a high five

“Also, I love Emory, so I wanted to plug it as much as I could,” adds Fetters, who received her MBA from Goizueta Business School in 2014.

Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns watched the Westminster show from Atlanta. Berns is the director of Emory’s Center for Neuropolicy and also heads up the Dog Project, which is researching evolutionary questions surrounding humans’ best, and oldest, friend. The project, which began with two dogs and has since expanded to 80, was the first to train dogs to voluntarily enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and remain motionless during scanning, without restraint or sedation. The Dog Project has already identified regions of the canine brain associated with reward and processing faces and scents.

“Lindsay and Eli have been part of the Dog Project almost since the beginning and they have participated in four experiments,” Berns says. “Now that Eli’s won best in breed, I worry that maybe he will be having too much fun fulfilling his stud duties to stay involved in our research.”

Fetters was introduced to dog shows early by her mother, who specialized in Irish setters. “I started showing her Irish setters when I was four years old,” Fetters says.

By the time she was 15, she wanted her own dog to show, and chose the Hungarian vizsla, a medium-sized canine bred for hunting and pointing birds, known for its energy and intelligence. “I named my first vizsla Traitor, because I was cheating on the Irish setters,” Fetters recalls. (Eli, now six-and-a-half-years-old, is the offspring of Traitor.)

While she was still in high school, Fetters began working part-time at a non-profit in Alpharetta called Canine Assistants, which trains service dogs for people with disabilities. She continued working there throughout her undergraduate years at the University of North Georgia, and even after she graduated.

“It was a great job,” Fetters says. “I trained the dogs, and I loved being with them. And then I trained the people how to use the dogs. It was really rewarding to know you were enriching someone’s life. People with disabilities are often used to having a caregiver. But having these dogs makes them a caregiver, in a sense, which is empowering. I saw some people who previously rarely left their house find a sense of purpose when they got the dog. They would start getting up to care for their dog and go for walks and then decide to start school or find a job.”

"It’s hard to explain the feeling of being recognized on a national level with a dog that you raised and trained," Fetters says.

By 2013, Fetters decided that, after 15 years at Canine Assistants, she wanted dogs to just be her passion and not her job. She had already started looking at MBA programs. She was studying for her GMAT at a coffee shop when another customer noticed her Canine Assistants t-shirt and told her about the Dog Project.

“I thought it was really fascinating,” Fetters says. “I like the science behind the Dog Project, and also the challenge of getting a dog to be still in an MRI machine with all the noise and distractions.”

Plus, Eli needed a job, she says. “He’s very task-oriented and needs a lot of interaction. He’s really energetic so staying very still in an MRI is difficult for him but he loves a challenge. He especially likes the treats he gets afterwards.”

During high school and her undergraduate years, Fetters had worked so she wanted to quit her job and devote herself fully to enjoying the student life while getting an MBA. She found her match at the Goizueta one-year MBA program, where she focused on business management.

“When I toured Emory, I knew it was for me,” Fetters says. “I immediately felt at home there: I love the Emory culture and the sense of community, especially within the business school.”

A highlight was her experience in the Gouizeta Advanced Leadership Academy. “For spring break, we went sailing in the British Virgin Islands,” Fetters says. “We worked in teams and were given new challenges every day.” One day she was a navigator and the next day the captain.

“The year at Goizueta changed my whole life,” Fetters says. “I met friends that I will have forever, along with top professors and alumni that I can learn from and call on for advice. It opened my eyes to all the opportunities out there.”

Fetters found a great job as an asset manager at the Goddard Investment Group, a commercial real estate investment firm. Eli is part of the team.

“He goes to work with me every day and sits at my feet in my office,” Fetters says. “My boss is a great dog person and all my co-workers love Eli. He sometimes delivers mail to people because he loves to carry things around. He also enjoys just visiting peoples’ offices to get a treat.”

Every workday, Eli stops in at the convenience store in the office building where the owner gives him a boiled egg. “He doesn’t even have to pay for his egg like everyone else,” Fetters says. “She peels it for him and breaks it into little pieces and hands it to him. His nickname is Prince Eli and he definitely lives up to that.”

When he’s not raising office spirits or assisting in neuroscience, Eli dabbles in acting. Watch for his subtle performances in the Sundance Original TV series, “The Red Road.” Going against type, Eli acted sad while sitting next to a tombstone and afraid as a policeman chased him off a porch.

When they returned to work, Eli and Fetters were greeted with flowers and a party. (Courtesy Lindsay Fetters.)

Eli already had a huge fan base as he set off to compete at the Westminster Kennel Club, the most prestigious dog show in the United States and one of the oldest of any sporting events, now in its 140th year. Fetters and Eli had spent many weekends during the past year competing at dog shows across the country. Eli ranked among the top five vizslas, earning him an invitation to Westminster.

He did not disappoint. “He was kind of a super star the day he won best of breed, happy and outgoing and just wagging his tail the whole time,” Fetters says. “He’s just a heck of a show dog and embodies the ideal vizsla: Light-footed, graceful, smooth and really muscled. He looks like a dog that could go out into the field and hunt all day.”

Fetters is no slacker herself. “Winning best of breed at the Westminster Kennel Club is the thrill of a lifetime, something I’ve dreamt of since I was old enough to watch TV,” she says. “I’m not a professional, but I was showing against professionals in that venue, so to win was a huge honor. It’s hard to explain the feeling of being recognized on a national level with a dog that you raised and trained.”

Fetters’ cell phone and email were soon flooded with messages of congratulations. The Wall Street Journal ran a photo of Eli giving Fetters a high five and the Denver Post ran of a photo of him holding his best-of-breed ribbon.

When Fetters and Eli finally returned to the humdrum work-a-day world of their office, they were greeted with a surprise celebration party.

You will be glad to learn that Eli remains grounded. Yes, he’s in demand for stud services. To Eli, however, sex is not as important as relationships.

“We plan to keep doing the Dog Project,” Fetters says. “Both of us are at our best when we’re busy and interacting with others. And Eli enjoys learning the tasks and getting the attention from the people involved. He’s a little bit of a ham.”

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Pioneering work on the causes of crime

"Climate change will impact most of the leading causes of crime," says criminologist Robert Agnew. (Emory Photo/Video)

By April Hunt, Emory Report

Robert Agnew, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology, recently won the American Society of Criminology’s highest honor, the 2015 Edwin H. Sutherland Award, for his pioneering work on the causes of crime. Agnew developed General Strain Theory (GST) — one of the leading explanations of crime and its causes. GST states that certain strains or stressors, such as economic problems and peer abuse, increase the likelihood of crime. These strains create negative emotions, including anger and frustration. Individuals sometimes cope with these strains and negative emotions through crime as a way to reduce or escape from them. Examples include crimes such as theft to obtain money, revenge against the source of strain or related targets (such as assaulting abusive peers), or use and abuse of illicit drugs to alleviate negative emotions.

Agnew, who served as president of the American Society of Criminology in 2012-2013, is currently working on a book exploring the social consequences of climate change, including the effects of climate change on crime.

In this interview, Agnew explains the basics of GST and why climate change is the greatest threat of our time.

What are the major causes of crime in General Strain Theory?

GST does not state that all strains or stressors increase crime, only some do. Those strains most likely to increase crime have several features. Among other things, they are high in magnitude, seen as unjust, associated with low social control, and readily resolved through crime. Let me give an example. Many professors face a good deal of strain; they work long hours, their research papers are rejected, and their grant applications are denied. But these strains typically do not lead to crime, partly because they are associated with high social control. These professors have prestigious jobs and they have worked very hard for a good many years to get these jobs. So they have much to lose by engaging in crime. But other strains do increase the likelihood of crime. These strains include parental rejection, child abuse, abusive peer relations, severe economic problems including chronic unemployment, criminal victimization, homelessness, discrimination and the inability to achieve certain goals. I detail and explain all of these strains in my book, “Pressured Into Crime: An Overview of General Strain Theory” (Oxford, 2006).

Not everyone who experiences something like a violent childhood or poverty reacts to that strain with crime. Does your research indicate what factors account for this? 

Most people do not cope with strains through crime; they cope in a legal manner. For example, they cope with economic problems by cutting back on expenses, working longer hours or borrowing money from others. Criminal coping is more likely when people lack the ability to cope in a legal manner. For example, they lack problem-solving skills and have no one they can turn to for support. Criminal coping is more likely when the costs of crime are low. For example, people are in environments where the likelihood of being sanctioned for crime is low and they have little to lose if sanctioned. And criminal coping is more likely when people are disposed to crime. For example, they believe that violence is justified if you are insulted, they associate with others who encourage criminal coping, and their personalities are such that they are quick to anger and tend to act without thinking.

You have argued that climate change is likely to become one of the major drivers of crime. How would that work? 

Climate change will impact most of the leading causes of crime. It will increase strain, reduce social control, weaken social support, foster beliefs favorable to crime, contribute to traits conducive to crime, increase certain opportunities for crime, and create social conflict. Climate change will increase exposure to strains, including extreme weather events (such as heat waves, flooding, droughts), food and freshwater shortages, the loss of livelihood, health problems, forced migration, poverty and inequality, and exposure to armed conflict. We are already starting to see many of these effects, and research suggests that these strains will increase the likelihood of crime. I plan to further examine the negative social effects of climate change, including the effects on crime, in a book project. Indeed, I feel a special obligation to do so. I have no doubt that climate change is the greatest threat to confront humanity, with the lives and well-being of billions at stake, especially the poor and those in developing countries.

Related:
Gritty childhood shapes criminologist

Zika virus raises issues of both abortion rights and disability rights

Women in 2015 protest a bill in North Carolina to increase restrictions for women seeking abortions.

Chloe Angyal writes in the Huffington Post about how the Zika virus may put abortion rights and disability rights on a collision course (although the causal connection between Zika and birth defects has not been established). Below is an excerpt from the article:

"While abortion rights advocates might well point to Zika-linked microcephaly as evidence that the U.S. needs to liberalize abortion laws, disability rights advocates might argue otherwise. On the issue of abortion, the feminist and disability rights movement often come into uncomfortable conflict as they struggle to accommodate both the rights of a woman to control her own fertility and the rights of people with disabilities to exist.

"Now, with the threat of Zika-linked fetal abnormalities looming, that fault line could well crack open, and at least one thought leader in disability rights is concerned by the hastiness with which calls for loosened abortion restrictions are being made.

"There are clear parallels between the experiences of women and those of people with disabilities (not to mention overlaps between the two groups), noted Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a professor of English at Emory University and a pioneer of the discipline of disability studies. Through much of history, she said, able-bodied women were not allowed to control their own reproduction.

“'There’s a long, deep and troubling history of women’s reproduction being taken over by men and by a variety of other cultural institutions,' she told HuffPost. Likewise, people with disabilities have long been subject to reproductive coercion, from the abandonment of newborns with disabilities to mandatory sterilization of women with disabilities. They have, said Garland-Thomson, 'been eugenically eliminated from the world through selective abortion and other biomedical practices.' 

"Both groups have similar histories of subjugation, particularly around medical decision-making. And on the issue of access to abortion, particularly in the age of prenatal fetal testing, those histories collide."

Read the whole article in the Huffington Post.

Related:
Why we stare at those with disabilities

Image: Thinkstockphoto.com

Not all psychopaths are criminals: Some of their traits are tied to success

Tom Skeyhill made grandiose claims about his combat experience during the World War I battle of Gallipoli.

By Emory psychologist Scott Lilienfeld and Emory Ph.D. candidate Ashley Watts

Tom Skeyhill was an acclaimed Australian war hero, known as “the blind solider-poet.” During the monumental World War I battle of Gallipoli, he was a flag signaler, among the most dangerous of all positions. After being blinded when a bomb shell detonated at his feet, he was transferred out.

After the war he penned a popular book of poetry about his combat experience. He toured Australia and the United States, reciting his poetry to rapt audiences. President Theodore Roosevelt appeared on stage with him and said, “I am prouder to be on the stage with Tom Skeyhill than with any other man I know.” His blindness suddenly disappeared following a medical procedure in America.

But, according to biographer Jeff Brownrigg, Skeyhill wasn’t what he seemed. The poet had, in fact, faked his blindness to escape danger.

That’s not all. After a drunken performance, he blamed his slurred speech on an unverifiable war injury. He claimed to have met Lenin and Mussolini (there is no evidence that he did), and spoke of his extensive battle experience at Gallipoli, when he had been there for only eight days.



You have to be pretty bold to spin those kinds of self-aggrandizing lies and to carry it off as long as Skeyhill did. Although he never received a formal psychological examination (at least to our knowledge), we suspect that most contemporary researchers would have little trouble recognizing him as a classic case of psychopathic personality, or psychopathy. What’s more, Skeyhill embodied many elements of a controversial condition sometimes called successful psychopathy.

Despite the popular perception, most psychopaths aren’t coldblooded or psychotic killers. Many of them live successfully among the rest of us, using their personality traits to get what they want in life, often at the expense of others.

Psychopathy is not easily defined, but most psychologists view it as a personality disorder characterized by superficial charm conjoined with profound dishonesty, callousness, guiltlessness and poor impulse control. According to some estimates, psychopathy is found in about one percent of the general population, and for reasons that are poorly understood, most psychopaths are male.

That number probably doesn’t capture the full number of people with some degree of psychopathy. Data suggest that psychopathic traits lie on a continuum, so some individuals possess marked psychopathic traits but don’t fulfill the criteria for full-blown psychopathy.

Not surprisingly, psychopathic individuals are more likely than other people to commit crimes. They almost always understand that their actions are morally wrong – it just doesn’t bother them. Contrary to popular belief, only a minority are violent.

Read the whole story in The Conversation. 

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Tuvan throat singing gives voice to a unique way of life

On Friday, Emory will host a free performance by the Alash Tuvan throat singers, masters of a unique musical tradition. The trio includes, from left: Ayan-ool Sam, Bady-Dorzhu Ondar and Ayan Shirizhik. 

By Carol Clark

The first time that Emory anthropologist Paul Hooper went to Tuva, in 2013, it didn’t take long to make friends – including members of the famed Tuvan throat-singing ensemble, Alash. The Anthropology department is hosting Alash in a free concert at the Emory Performing Arts Studio on Friday, January 29 at 7 pm.

Hooper had traveled to the small Republic of Tuva in Russia, on the southern edge of Siberia on the border of Mongolia, to research nomadic herding economics. “I drove in over the mountains and started meeting people pretty quickly,” he recalls.

Within a few days, he was invited to a local barbecue on the outskirts of the capital city of Kyzyl. He and other guests mingled by a yurt, in a high mountain landscape of pine and birch forests. “We ate some really delicious goat, roasted over an open fire,” Hooper says, “and washed it down with araga, the local wine, which is fermented cow’s milk that has been distilled into a clear liquid. Araga is also delicious – it tastes like saki with some parmesan cheese melted into it.”

But the best thing about the party was the entertainment by some of the fellow guests, the Alash throat singers. “I was awestruck, having just arrived a few days earlier and here I was meeting the country’s super stars,” Hooper says. “The Alash members perform internationally and they are like ambassadors to the outside world because they’ve traveled much more than most Tuvans.”

They played handmade instruments and emitted low, droning voices that vibrated into high-pitched, harmonic whistling. “It’s incredible because each singer can generate two or three harmonizing tones at once,” Hooper says. “When you have three guys who are doing this together, and they are all masters at it, they create a musical landscape that is almost extraterrestrial in terms of the sensation it gives you. There is nothing like sitting on a high mountain peak and getting to hear Tuvan throat singing.”

Tuva, tucked into the mountains, remained relatively isolated during the era of the Soviet Union. “It was a refuge for this form of folk music that developed separately from other musical traditions and has grown into a fine performance art,” Hooper says. “Throat singing is now Tuva’s biggest export, in a way."

Fans of “The Big Bang Theory” may be familiar with Tuvan throat singing since it’s a hobby of Sheldon Cooper. But Sheldon falls far short of the masters of the art, Alash.

Hooper hosted Alash for an Emory concert once before, during their 2014 U.S. tour, so Friday will be a return performance, and a reunion of friends.

“They’re wonderful guys, incredibly hospitable,” Hooper says of the trio. “They’ve each invited me to stay with their families in yurts in the countryside. I went to Tuva to learn about nomadic herding, but throat singing is such a beautiful, unique tradition, and Alash is so welcoming, that I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in the musical side of the country as well.”

Reporting from Paris: Student updates on COP21

Among the 10 undergraduates representing Emory at COP21 are, from left: Savannah Miller, Naomi Maisel, Taylor McNair, Mae Bowen and Siyue Zong.

“In a basement auditorium in a quiet Parisian neighborhood, writer Naomi Klein held an event to talk about the ‘Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another,’” reports Emory junior Clara Perez from the scene.

“Climate change, Klein said, is the catalyst to transformative change in all kinds of struggles – indigenous, class, anti-racism, among many others. She called for addressing climate change in a way that is ‘based on justice and redressing historical wrongs.’”

Now midway through a two-week trip to Paris, a delegation of Emory undergraduates are providing real-time updates on the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) and related events.

On the web site they’ve created, the students have posted photos of a demonstration that happened shortly after they landed in Paris. And they are gathering “snapshot” bios of other attendees, under the heading “Humans of COP21.”

Senior Taylor McNair writes: “From a business perspective, carbon pricing at COP21 is arguably the most exciting news to emerge from the first few days of the conference.”

Senior Mae Bowen was intrigued by an event at the Kedge Business School in Paris. Jean-Christophe Carteron presented a Sustainability Literacy Test he developed as a tool for universities and corporations to assess and develop the knowledge of their community members.

“While ‘sustainability’ is still a complicated term,” Bowen writes, “the goals of the Sustainability Literacy Test are admirable and a step in the right direction. No business or government leader should be able to claim ignorance when making decisions that negatively affect the future of our planet and humanity.”

Watch the web site for daily updates and follow the students’ updates on Twitter: @EmoryinParis.

And check out the podcasts that the students created as part of the Emory course “Paris is an Explanation: Understanding Climate Change at the 2015 United Nations Meeting in France.”

Related:
Peachtree to Paris: Emory delegation headed to U.N. climate talks

Peachtree to Paris: Emory delegation headed to U.N. climate talks

On a recent Saturday, 30 students represented a country, or block of countries, to simulate the U.N. talks. Naomi Maisel, right, made the case for India. "You have to rethink your reality based on all the countries involved and figure out how to make it work," she says. (Beckysteinphotography.com)

By Carol Clark

More than 40,000 people from around the world are expected to descend on Paris, France, from November 30 to December 11, for what many see as the best chance yet for a universal climate agreement. The goal of the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) is to keep global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Everyone from President Obama to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed will be on the ground in Paris for high-stakes conversations about the fate of the planet. Ten Emory undergraduates and two faculty are also joining the historic event with the status of official U.N. observers.

“This is an unprecedented time,” says Taylor McNair, a senior majoring in environmental sciences and business. “People are coming into this conference with a mindset they have never had before. I’m optimistic that there will be some progress coming out of Paris, and that we will see some serious change during the next few years.”

McNair and three other Emory students will actually spend part of COP21 inside the main hall where delegates from 195 countries will negotiate reductions of their greenhouse gas emissions. And all 10 of the students will be gathering information from the milieu of related conferences, demonstrations, exhibits and informal discussions that will be humming around the main COP21 meeting.

The students will post photos and dispatches on a special web site they are creating for the event (http://climate.emorydomains.org), through the Emory Writing Program's Domain of One's Own. And they will use social media to further connect Emory and the Atlanta community to what’s happening in Paris, as it happens. You can follow their conversations on their Twitter handle @EmoryinParis, and via their hash tag: #PeachtreeToParis. Senior Tyler Stern is helping develop the team's social media platforms, which also include Instagram (EmoryParis15) and Snapchat (EmoryInParis).

After four hours of tense negotiations, students participating in simulated U.N. talks were only able to achieve caps on greenhouse gas emissions for a temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius, short of the 2 degrees goal. 

“Climate change is not an issue that is coming in 100 years. It’s happening now,” says Naomi Maisel, a junior majoring in anthropology who will be making the trip. “We want to convey the sentiments of the people that we meet and give Emory students a sense of how the rest of the world is thinking about and dealing with climate change."

The students plan to also bring back lessons for what everyone can do to get involved. They will help organize an Emory “Climate Week” and a series of COP21 related events on campus in the Spring – including art exhibits, panel discussions and special lectures – in conjunction with the Climate@Emory initiative.

Debating the fate of the planet.

“I’m optimistic that some kind of meaningful deal will be reached in Paris,” says Mae Bowen, a senior majoring in environmental sciences and political science, who is headed for COP21. “But once a deal is made, that’s when the real work starts, making that deal come to fruition.”

The Paris trip is the capstone to a Coalition of the Liberal Arts (CoLA) course, aimed at integrating the liberal arts experience across the humanities and sciences. The course, “Paris is an Explanation: Understanding Climate Change at the 2015 United Nations Meeting in France,” was developed and taught by three faculty: Wesley Longhofer, an expert in organization and management at Goizueta Business School; Eri Saikawa, an expert in climate science in the department of environmental sciences and Rollins School of Public Health; and Sheila Tefft, senior lecturer in the Emory Writing Program. Bowen and another undergraduate, Adam Goldstein, also helped develop the course.

Both Longhofer and Saikawa will accompany the students on the trip to Paris.

Throughout the fall, the students are exploring climate change from environmental, business, media and political perspectives. Saikawa led discussions about the complex atmospheric science surrounding emissions. Longhofer organized mock UN negotiations so that the students could better understand perspectives of the various countries involved. Tefft focused on issues of communications and trained the students in journalistic techniques and technology, including podcasting and social media.

The Emory students have a range of research interests that they plan to hone in on as COP21 is underway. Below are brief bios, and a guide to their plans for Paris.

Taylor McNair

BUSINESS: Taylor McNair is a senior from West Port, Connecticut, majoring in business and environmental sciences. “I have a big interest in renewable energy,” he says. “I’ve had some work experience in that field and it’s helped shape what I think will be the defining challenge of the future: How will we switch from cheap fossil fuels and power our lives and economies with renewable energy?”

He notes that major companies like Google and Facebook have already announced they will be moving toward renewable energy sources for their datasets.

“We need more market-based solutions for addressing climate change,” he says. “It’s beginning to make economic sense to make investments in energy efficiency and renewable fuel sources. I think more people are waking up to the fact that this transition can not only be beneficial from an environmental and health aspect, but also from a financial aspect.”

POLICYMAKING: Mae Bowen is a senior majoring in environmental sciences and political science. Bowen, who is from Panama City, Florida, personally experienced the social and ecological impacts of hurricanes and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Even after the beaches near her home were cleaned and declared safe following the spill, tourists did not return for years due to public perceptions and media coverage.

Mae Bowen

“I was fascinated and frustrated by that,” Bowen says. “I’ve been thinking about the best ways to communicate environmental issues ever since.”

Bowen’s other passion is policymaking. She is a member of the Emory International Relations Association – a team of students that travels to universities across the country to participate in simulations of U.N. negotiations, based on real-world situations and research. While these exercises help Bowen see the challenges of policymaking, they have not made her cynical. “The fact that we have people from different countries and cultures coming together to try and solve a global problem like climate change – that’s kind of awesome,” she says. “I’m just so excited to go to COP21 and get to hear the actual deliberations over the issue I care most about.”

The Paris talks may not achieve the goal of reducing emissions to reach the goal of 2 degrees, “but it’s going to take us forward,” Bowen says. “I’m a big picture person. I would rather have a deal that goes part of the way than to have nothing at all. You have to take things one step at a time.”

Savannah Miller

EMORY AND ATLANTA: Savannah Miller, a senior majoring in environmental sciences and creative writing is focused on climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts at the local level. She is currently an intern for the city of Atlanta, working with the team developing a major climate action plan. “Emory was an early supporter of the Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge,” Miller says. “The university has been a leader in sustainability for years and our efforts keep gaining momentum.”

While at the Paris talks, she will be researching how other communities from around the world are implementing adaptive technologies and strategies for increasing energy efficiency. “One of our biggest goals is to bring back information about environmental policies and communicate them in a way that reaches our generation,” Miller says.

In addition to contributing to the Emory group web site for COP21, Miller has developed her own site, sustainable-directions.com, for communicating environmental issues. Her first post looked at the connections between climate change and recent historic flooding in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.

Naomi Maisel

AGRICULTURE: Naomi Maisel, a junior majoring in anthropology, is researching the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security. “Farmers are starting to see effects faster and more intensely, especially in the developing world,” Maiesel says. “We don’t know if a lot of food systems can withstand more or less rainfall, more or less heat, and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide.”

Maisel contacted a farmer outside of Paris who has agreed to give the students a tour of his farm and explain his experience of climate change.

While growing up in San Diego, Maisel recalls that many discussions about climate change were debates about whether it was happening. “Now, most of the conversations I’m hearing revolve around questions like, how bad is it going to be and what are we doing about it,” she says. “People are finally starting to take it seriously. And they realize that it is not just a science problem. It’s an economic issue, a security issue and a public health issue. Everybody is going to be affected, so everybody needs to be involved.”

Clara Perez, a junior majoring in sociology and sustainability, is focused on how climate change will disproportionately impact lower socio-economic groups.

Caiwei Huang (a junior majoring in interdisciplinary studies and political science) and Siyue Zong (a senior environmental sciences major) both want to follow the crucial negotiations of the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters: The United States and China. (Huang is developing a web site to introduce students to the fundamentals of Chinese politics: thecapitalc.org.)

Samuel Budnyk, a junior majoring in comparative literature and music, is especially interested in communicating to the general public and hopes to write a post a day for the Emory Wheel during the talks.

Adam Goldstein and Mark Leone (both seniors majoring in business) will be focused on gathering information about climate finance – the move toward investing in low-carbon and more resilient economies.

Lionfish study explores idea of eating an ecological problem

"Some areas where lionfish have taken over reefs show a marked decrease in biodiversity," says Emory fisheries expert Tracy Yandle.

By Carol Clark

The lionfish is a ferocious ocean carnivore with a flamboyant “mane” of venomous spines. This exotic maroon-and-white creature, native to the Indo-Pacific, made its way west through the aquarium trade. During recent years, however, wild lionfish became established in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic. Releases of lionfish and their eggs from aquariums have been blamed for this invasion.

While the long-term impact of the lionfish is unknown, fisheries experts are worried. The lionfish, from the Pterois genus of venomous marine fish, reproduces rapidly and has few natural enemies outside of the Indo-Pacific to keep its population in check. Meanwhile, lionfish are devouring small crustaceans and the young of commercial fish species like snapper and grouper, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

“Some areas where lionfish have taken over reefs show a marked decrease in bio-diversity,” says Tracy Yandle, an associate professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences. Yandle studies issues around the regulation of the fishing industry and the governance of natural resources.

Luckily, the invasive lionfish is not just ecologically “evil.” It is also tasty. Many describe lionfish meat as a mildly flavored, nicely textured white fish, similar to snapper.

Yandle recently received a $300,000 grant from the NMFS to research the opportunities and challenges of creating a market for lionfish as food in the U.S. Virgin Islands, one area where the invader is proliferating. Co-investigators on the grant include Emory post-doctoral associate Jennifer Tookes, Emory environmental sciences lecturer Michael Page and Sherry Larkin from the University of Florida.

About 30 percent of people in the USVI live below the poverty line and food can be expensive in the islands. The fishing industry is also a traditional part of the USVI’s economy, as well as its cultural heritage, so finding ways to control the lionfish population is especially critical.

“The traditional goal of fisheries regulation is to try to avoid overfishing and to preserve a species,” Yandle says. “In the case of the lionfish in the USVI, the lionfish is invasive, so the concept of over-fishing doesn’t really apply.”

Some people in the Caribbean have already acquired a taste for lionfish and are experimenting with ways to prepare the invader. Photo by Scott Crosson.

As part of the project, Emory undergraduates will spend classroom time next spring learning about fisheries management, research methods and the culture of the USVI. They will then travel to the islands to work in the field.

The students will survey seafood consumers at local markets. and the tourists who often patronize restaurants, to help access the social and economic viability of the lionfish as a food fish. A graduate student from the Masters in Development Practice program will spend a summer practicum in the USVI coordinating efforts between this research project and The Nature Conservancy’s reef preservation efforts.

“Lots of great natural science work has already been done on lionfish,” Yandle says. “This is a human project. We want to talk with the local people and understand how they think about lionfish and whether they are interested in fishing and eating them.”

Lionfish have already started popping up as an “eco-chic” option on a few select U.S. coastal restaurant menus, from Miami to Maine, and in parts of the Caribbean.

“There’s the sustainability factor,” Michael Schwartz of Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink in Miami, told Garden and Gun Magazine, “but also just that the meat tastes good. We make a great lionfish sandwich.”

So what’s the catch?

Lionfish, which grow to about 15 inches, are rarely reeled in by hook and line. They are most often taken by more labor-intensive methods, such as a spear or a hand-held net, or as bycatch in trap fisheries.

Then, there are the long, venomous spines jutting out from every lionfish. Special care must be taken during their handling because these spines can cause painful injuries.

The good news is that the flesh of a lionfish is not poisonous.

The bad news: It does not have much flesh compared to other species like grouper. “Lionfish are bony and the yield rate is about 30 percent, which is less meat than some species,” Yandle says. 

The project will analyze whether there are viable ways to deal with these challenges in the local context of the USVI and create a new market for sustainable seafood.

In addition to consumers, the research team will also survey local fishermen. The fishermen will be asked their knowledge of where lionfish are most prevalent in the local waters, and whether those areas overlap with sites known for ciguatera. Ciguatera is a naturally occurring toxin found in Caribbean waters that can accumulate in coral, algae and seaweed, contaminating fish stocks and leading to food-borne illness.

Page, an expert in geo-spatial analysis, will combine the information from the surveys of the fishermen with previous data gathered by scientists to create maps of the safest and best places to harvest lionfish. The local fishermen will be given books of these maps, as well as a kit with tools to assist fishing for lionfish, at the end of the project.

The findings of the study will be shared in local meetings and added to the online lionfish portal of the Gulf and Caribbean Research Institute, so that the public may benefit.

“At the end of the project, we will figure out if there can be a viable market for the lionfish, and if so, we will provide guidance for how the market could be developed,” Yandle says.

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The case of the golden crabs: Cracking mysteries of how fishermen stay afloat
Fishing for a living comes with a catch

Mathematicians find 'magic key' to drive Ramanujan's taxi-cab number

A British taxi numbered 1729 sparked the most famous anecdote in math and led to the origin of "taxi-cab numbers." The incident is included in an upcoming biopic of Ramanujan, "The Man Who Knew Infinity," featuring Dev Patel in the lead role. Above is a still from the movie. (Pressman Films.)

By Carol Clark

Taxi-cab numbers, among the most beloved integers in math, trace their origins to 1918 and what seemed like a casual insight by the Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Now mathematicians at Emory University have discovered that Ramanujan did not just identify the first taxi-cab number – 1729 – and its quirky properties. He showed how the number relates to elliptic curves and K3 surfaces – objects important today in string theory and quantum physics.

“We’ve found that Ramanujan actually discovered a K3 surface more than 30 years before others started studying K3 surfaces and they were even named,” says Ken Ono, a number theorist at Emory. “It turns out that Ramanujan’s work anticipated deep structures that have become fundamental objects in arithmetic geometry, number theory and physics.”

Ono and his graduate student Sarah Trebat-Leder are publishing a paper about these new insights in the journal Research in Number Theory. Their paper also demonstrates how one of Ramanujan’s formulas associated with the taxi-cab number can reveal secrets of elliptic curves.

“We were able to tie the record for finding certain elliptic curves with an unexpected number of points, or solutions, without doing any heavy lifting at all,” Ono says. “Ramanujan’s formula, which he wrote on his deathbed in 1919, is that ingenious. It’s as though he left a magic key for the mathematicians of the future. All we had to do was recognize the key’s power and use it to drive solutions in a modern context.”

“This paper adds yet another truly beautiful story to the list of spectacular recent discoveries involving Ramanujan’s notebooks,” says Manjul Bhargava, a number theorist at Princeton University. “Elliptic curves and K3 surfaces form an important next frontier in mathematics, and Ramanujan gave remarkable examples illustrating some of their features that we didn’t know before. He identified a very special K3 surface, which we can use to understand a certain special family of elliptic curves. These new examples and insights are certain to spawn further work that will take mathematics forward.”

A close-up of the taxi-cab plate, in a scene from the upcoming movie, "The Man Who Knew Infinity." (Pressman Films.)

Ramanujan, a largely self-taught mathematician, seemed to solve problems instinctively and said his formulas came to him in the form of visions from a Hindu goddess. During the height of British colonialism, he left his native India to become a protégé of mathematician G.H. Hardy at Cambridge University in England.

By 1918, the British climate and war-time rationing had taken their toll on Ramanujan, who was suffering from tuberculosis. He lay ailing in a clinic near London when Hardy came to visit.

Wanting to cheer up Ramanujan, Hardy said that he had arrived in taxi number 1729 and described the number “as rather a dull one.” To Hardy’s surprise, Ramanujan sat up in bed and replied, “No, Hardy, it’s a very interesting number! It’s the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”

Ramanujan, who had an uncanny sense for the idiosyncratic properties of numbers, somehow knew that 1729 can be represented as 1 cubed + 12 cubed and 9 cubed + 10 cubed, and no smaller positive number can be written in two such ways.

This incident launched the “Hardy-Ramanujan number,” or “taxi-cab number,” into the world of math. To date, only six taxi-cab numbers have been discovered that share the properties of 1729. (These are the smallest numbers which are the sum of cubes in n different ways. For n=2 the number is 1729.)

The original taxi-cab number 1729 is a favorite nerdy allusion in television sitcoms by Matt Groening. The number shows up frequently as an inside joke in episodes of “Futurama” and the “The Simpsons.”

But like much of Ramanujan’s discoveries, 1729 turned out to contain hidden meanings that make it much more than a charming mathematical oddity.

“This is the ultimate example of how Ramanujan anticipated theories,” Ono says. “When looking through his notes, you may see what appears to be just a simple formula. But if you look closer, you can often uncover much deeper implications that reveal Ramanujan’s true powers.”

Jeremy Irons portrays G. H. Hardy and Dev Patel plays Ramanujan in "The Man Who Knew Infinity." (Pressman Films.)

Much of Ono’s career is focused on unraveling Ramanujan mysteries. In 2013, during a trip to England to visit number theorists Andrew Granville and John Coates, Ono rummaged through the Ramanujan archive at Cambridge. He came across a page of formulas that Ramanujan wrote a year after he first pointed out the special qualities of the number 1729 to Hardy. By then, the 32-year-old Ramanujan was back in India but he was still ailing and near death.

“From the bottom of one of the boxes in the archive, I pulled out one of Ramanujan’s deathbed notes,” Ono recalls. “The page mentioned 1729 along with some notes about it. Andrew and I realized that he had found infinitely near misses for Fermat’s Last Theorem for exponent 3. We were shocked by that, and actually started laughing. That was the first tip-off that Ramanujan had discovered something much larger.”

Fermat’s Last Theorem is the idea that certain simple equations have no solutions – the sum of two cubes can never be a cube. Ramanujan used an elliptic curve – a cubic equation and two variables where the largest degree is 3 – to produce infinitely many solutions that were nearly counter examples to Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Elliptic curves have been studied for thousands of years, but only during the last 50 years have applications been found for them outside of mathematics. They are important, for example, for Internet cryptography systems that protect information like bank account numbers.

Ono had worked with K3 surfaces before and he also realized that Ramanujan had found a K3 surface, long before they were officially identified and named by mathematician André Weil during the 1950s. Weil named them in honor of three algebraic masters – Kummer, Kähler and Kodaira – and the mountain K2 in Kashmir.

Just as K2 is an extraordinarily difficult mountain to climb, the process of generalizing elliptic curves to find a K3 surface is considered an exceedingly difficult math problem.

Ono and Trebat-Leder put all the pieces in Ramanujan’s notes together to produce the current paper, illuminating his finds and translating them into a modern framework.

“Ramanujan was using 1729 and elliptic curves to develop formulas for a K3 surface,” Ono says. “Mathematicians today still struggle to manipulate and calculate with K3 surfaces. So it comes as a major surprise that Ramanujan had this intuition all along.”

Ramanujan is well-known in India, and among mathematicians worldwide. He may soon become more familiar to wider audiences through an upcoming movie, “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” by Pressman Films. Ono served as a math consultant for the movie, which stars Dev Patel as Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons as Hardy. (Both Ono and Bhargava are associate producers for the film.)

“Ramanujan’s life and work are both a great human story and a great math story,” Ono says. “And I’m glad that more people are finally going to get to enjoy it.”

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