Brace yourself for tornado season

Downed trees at the Emory law school, following a 2011 windstorm.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated February 6-10 Severe Weather Awareness Week for Georgia. Do you have a plan for what to do in case of severe winds or a tornado? If not, it’s time to get one. Click here for guidance from Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response.

Severe weather is common in Atlanta, where large trees make heavy winds especially dangerous. Last year, a windstorm took down 40 trees on the Emory campus alone.

Tornadoes have been reported throughout the year, but they are most likely to occur from March to May. Georgia lies within what is referred to as “Dixie Alley,” where tornado activity is on par with the better-known “Tornado Alley.” Tornadoes can spawn with very little warning. In Georgia, tornadoes are more likely to strike at night, tend to stay on the ground longer, and are often hard to see as they are wrapped in areas of rain and hail.

Below is video of a 2008 tornado as it approached downtown Atlanta.



Related:
Windstorm reshapes Atlanta forests

Chinese war secrets: Beyond 'Guns, Germs and Steel'

Emory historian Tonio Andrade explains why he wrote his latest book, “Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West,” in this column for Rorotoko.com:

"In 1997, Jared Diamond published his wonderful book, 'Guns, Germs, and Steel,' which asked why it was that some societies become rich and powerful and others don’t. His explanation was geographical—it depended on where those societies were located and what ecological resources they had available to them. Eurasians (that is the people of Europe and Asia) were unusually blessed just because of where they lived, and so they developed techniques and technologies that enabled them to expand around the world.

"It’s a great book, but it leaves open an important question: why did Europeans rather than other Eurasians become so powerful on the world stage in modern times—i.e., after around 1500? After all, Asians—most notably the Chinese—had been world leaders in science and technology for centuries. What accounted for the sudden leap in European power vis-à-vis Asia in recent centuries?

"Historians and sociologists have been vehemently debating this question, but with little progress.

"It seemed to me that one way to help answer it was to look at warfare between Europeans and Chinese. So I did. And the war that I describe in this book is a fascinating and exciting one. It really is an 'untold story'—the first ever major conflict between western European and Chinese forces, and the last one until the famous Opium War of the 1800s.

"The Chinese lost the Opium War. They won the Sino-Dutch War. Why? How? Technology, weather, and leadership."

Read the whole article in Rorotoko.com.

Laura Finzi: A physicist's view of life

Physicist Laura Finzi runs one of a handful of labs using single-molecule techniques to study gene transcription.

By Carol Clark

Have you ever had to remove a tiny speck of glass from your foot with a pair of tweezers? Imagine if that speck of glass was microscopic.

Emory physicist Laura Finzi uses magnetic tweezers and minuscule metal beads to tug on individual DNA molecules. Her lab studies the mechanics of DNA transcription, the first step in the expression of a gene, a process that is partly regulated by the bending and uncoiling of DNA. Protein-mediated loops in DNA operate like genetic switches. Often, when a loop is closed, transcription is “off” and when the loop is open, transcription turns “on.” In other cases, the loops connect proteins to turn on transcription. Identifying the physical and mechanical parameters of this process could lead to a better understanding of the causes, and potential treatments, for many diseases.

A native of Italy, Finzi is married to Emory biophysicist David Dunlap who has his research group in the cell biology department. In the interview below, Finzi tells eScienceCommons about her Italian roots, and why she became a physicist.

What makes your lab unique?

We are one of only a handful of physics labs using single-molecule techniques to study DNA transcription, and we combine three of these methods in our studies: Tethered particle motion, magnetic tweezers and atomic-force microscopy. In TPM, when you see the tethered plastic microspheres wiggle and shake, it’s like seeing the molecular world in action. With a tethered magnetic bead, a pair of magnets over the microscope stage becomes a pair of tweezers that we can use to twist and stretch the DNA precisely. In AFM, we see the macromolecules like bumps on an atomically flat surface.

Another thing that makes my lab unique is the gender balance: Five women and three men.

What was it like growing up in Italy?

My mother was a pianist and my father was a harbor engineer. We lived in Ravenna and Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, and later in Bologna. I have two elder sisters. My father always said that we needed to get married. But he also said that we had to be well-educated and have jobs that made us independent. He combined a traditional and a modern view.

What inspired you to become a physicist?

My father really wished that we all would have become engineers, and both of my sisters did. But as the youngest, I thought that they would have always told me, “Listen to us, we have more experience,” so I was eager to strike out in another direction.

Before graduating from college, I met a brilliant biophysicist, Carlos Bustamante, now a member of the American National Academy of Science. He offered me a position in his lab as a graduate student. He had a charming personality and was full of enthusiasm. He was always throwing fascinating challenges at his students. He’s the reason I became a biophysicist.

How did you and David Dunlap meet?

We were both graduate students at the University of New Mexico. David was very different from anyone I’d seen before and impossible not to notice. He’s very tall and often had mismatched, brightly colored socks. Given an Italian sense of fashion, I could not help but notice his bizarre taste. He thinks out of the box, and is a very creative and happy person.

What do you like to do for fun?

I enjoy downhill skiing, it’s like a ballet, very elegant and gentle and harmonic. And I love the white of the snow and the scenery above the tree line. It’s enchanting.

I like sports in general and being in shape. It feels good. We live near campus and I either walk or ride my bike to work. David and I have two wonderful and smart teenagers. The four of us, and Spark the dog, go for hikes and canoeing.

Do you cook Italian?

Yes, we like to cook at home, and we prefer a Mediterranean diet. My chocolate salami, an Italian dessert, is well-appreciated by my colleagues at Emory.

Related:
Undersea cables add twist to DNA research
Epigenetics zeroes in on nature vs. nurture

Epigenetics zeroes in on nature vs. nuture

Epigenetics is a relatively new field that looks at changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes in the underlying DNA sequence. DNA, in other words, is not necessarily destiny. One of the best-known examples of epigenetic change is seen in baby rats. Research has shown that rat pups that are licked and groomed more by their mothers are healthier and grow at a faster rate than those that don’t receive this maternal stimulation. And the pups that receive better nurturing also develop epigenetic differences that enable them to respond better to stress later in life.

While DNA cannot be changed, its packaging can be, and the process appears remarkably flexible. Emory biologist Victor Corces is among the researchers trying to piece together the mechanics of the processes behind epigenetics. One of the questions that his lab is currently focused on is how the organization of chromatin fibers in a cell nucleus affects gene expression. Watch the video of Corces’ recent presentation for the National Institute of Health’s afternoon lecture series, below, to learn more.



Photo at top by iStockphoto.com.

Related:
DNA is not destiny
Queen bee eats her way to the top
Undersea cables add twist to DNA research
How early nurturing affects adult love

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

By Carol Clark

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Images, top and bottom: iStockphoto.com.

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