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_DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

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22 _A SOBER ANALYSIS When Washington became the first state to privatize liquor sales since Prohibition, it provided a rare chance to observe the impact of alcohol availability on public safety. _EXAMINE

ORNITHOLOGY _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

_INTO THE TREES A few times a year, scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University venture to remote regions of the planet on some of the most important field trips in the name of science : collecting expeditions. The material they bring back has the potential to open new lines of research and answer limitless questions about life on Earth.

o institution in the Americas has as rich a history of international field collecting in ornithology as the NAcademy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. For over two centuries, the Academy has sent ornithologists to vanishing wild places to survey and sample local bird populations. Recently, Academy scientists Jason Weckstein and Nate Rice, the assistant curator and collection manager of the Academy’s Ornithology Collection, respectively, traveled to Parque Ejidal San Nicolás de Totolapan, a protected reserve about 20 miles southwest of Mexico City in Mexico. There were many reasons this location was selected for a collecting expedition, but one in particular demanded attention — it was time. “Most of our collection from Mexico was collected around World War II or earlier,” says Rice. “Our collection is really strong in New World holdings (North and South America), but in that, our weakest points are what we call Mesoamer- ica, which is Mexico and Central America. Mexico is a great place for us to add material that’s new for the collection or add to series that haven’t been added to in decades or even a century.” The pair worked with long-time collaborators from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for a 10- day trip along the thick forest terrain of the park. At roughly 3,000 meters above sea level, the air was thin, the nights cold and the mornings foggy, but it was all worth it for the “gold mine” of material brought home to the Academy. The team has several projects in progress already with the Mexico specimens — Rice has been filling in gaps in the Academy’s Ornithology Collection, which consists of study skins and tissue samples (and one of the world’s best collections of avian parasites, since Weckstein’s arrival in 2015). Weckstein plans to study the hippoboscid flies collected from bird specimens in the field to learn more about which birds the insects are feeding on. He is also conducting malarial screening on the tissue and blood samples from the trip. And for the specimens that may not be of immediate scientific use, each day that passes makes them more historically valuable to the scientist who will surely come looking 100 years from now. – Katie Clark

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ORNITHOLOGY

The golden-crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa) is a species that can be found outside the Academy’s doors in Phila- delphia. Although tiny, it can survive in cold, wintry environments, eating insects and insect eggs. Weckstein said he plans to compare this subspe- cies collected in Mexico with its counterparts from North America currently housed in the Academy’s collection.

THE_PROCESS To “process a bird,” ornithologists follow a certain order of steps. Here, Weckstein works with Erick Alejandro García Trejo, a professor in the department of evolutionary biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), to prepare a bird for the collection. First, birds are captured in a mist net, which is a fine mesh suspended between two poles, like a volleyball net. The scientists then record the bird’s weight, measurements and coloring; take a blood sample; make a blood film (a smear of blood on a slide, used later to look for blood parasites); euthanize the bird; “ruffle” the bird by placing it in a bag with a cotton ball of ethyl acetate to euthanize any parasites that may be living on its skin or in its feathers; ruffle the bird’s feathers to shake out parasites and other debris; and skin the bird to prepare it for study.

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At the bottom of this vial is a hippoboscid fly collected from a bird. Hippoboscid flies are one of the groups of avian parasites that Weckstein’s lab is studying. Weckstein will use the collected flies to determine their levels of host specificity — that is, how dependent the parasite is on a single host. The dogma in the science literature says that hippoboscid flies are general- ists that feed on many hosts, yet this has never been rigorously tested. This is important data because these flies are vectors for Haemoproteus, a relative of malaria, and they also move lice and mites between avian hosts.

LET_THE_RECORD_SHOW This image highlights one of the most important steps in the collecting process: recording scientific data. The data sheets follow a specimen through the entire process from how it was caught, to its weight, to the coloring of its eyes, bills and legs, to what parasites were present on its body. The vials contain tissue samples and blood samples, both of which will be used for various projects. For example, Weckstein and his team will examine the blood for malarial parasites (Plasmodium, Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon, for example). He’ll screen individual birds for these infections and then sequence DNA from those pathogens infect- ing birds to characterize their diversity, host specificity, distribution and evolutionary history.

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ORNITHOLOGY

Weckstein and Rice brought back specimens of a russet nightingale- thrush (Catharus occidentalis), which will be used by environmental science doctoral student Matt Halley to study the genus Catharus. Halley is sequencing the DNA of the specimens using tissue samples, and then comparing these sequences to help determine how many species there actually are. He is also using DNA sequences to reconstruct the family trees of all species of Cathrus thrush. It turns out, Halley says, there are some cryptic species that have long been overlooked — he’s gathering evidence to make the case (for or against) revising the taxonomy by adding or subtracting species.

UNDER_THE_SKIN Nate Rice has been preparing, or “skinning,” birds for decades. He is an artisan of sorts, and takes pride in his craft. After a bird is euthanized and all of its data collected, the next step, Rice says, is to open the bird along the chest, pull the skin back and remove all muscles, bones and organs. The same goes for the head — the neck is turned inside out to remove most of the skull as well as the brain and eyes. Lastly, the skin is filled with cotton and stitched back up. The goal is to make the bird look as it did in life. Rice can make a robin-sized skin in 20–25 minutes; on the Mexico trip, he prepared about 10 specimens per day. Though they’ll never sing again, these birds will speak to scientists well into the future about the genetic, evolutionary and geographic changes influencing their species.

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_ONLINE Visit exelmagazine.org to view more images of the expedition and the wildlife the researchers observed.

Host countries set limits on how many birds of each species can be collected during field expeditions. On this particular trip, the team was allowed five per species. The one exception was the allowance of seven specimens of one particular species designated by the Academy for close study, the red warbler (Cardellina ruber).

THE FINAL HAUL The researchers from the Academy and those from the Na- tional Autonomous University of Mexico each took an equal split of the specimens, taking into account whose research interests centered around which birds. In addition to what can be seen in the photo, each team also took blood and tissues samples back to their home institutions. “This material will absolutely benefit a whole slew of projects,” says Weckstein.

EXELmagazine.org 9 _CONTENTS

_EXEL 20132016 26 THE THINKER Drexel’s John Kounios and his collaborator were the first scientists to use brain scans to study how our minds make the leap from methodical thinking to sudden insight. In their new book, Kounios shares what A SOBER22 ANALYSIS 36 they’ve learned about VANISHING Should Pennsylvanians worry cultivating creativity. In Ghana, over half of all about the impact liquor privatiza- by Lini S. Kadaba forest understory birds 01 tion may have on public safety? have vanished in just 15 _EXAMINE For an answer, one researcher years as unchecked illegal Field logs from a bird- studied the data from Washing- collecting expedition logging, economic stress and in Mexico ton’s privatization in 2012, and it demand for African timber isn’t pretty: An increase in alcohol take their toll on the nation’s retailers is associated with more rainforests. by Mike Unger violence. by Scott Pruden 13 _VISIT EXEL ONLINE

14 _TECH/SCIENCE Hyperloop pod, 3-D printed stem cells, crash lab, round crystals, atomic sandwiches, distracted driving, molecular materials, history’s spear, carbon films, stem cell algo- 12 rithms, algae filter _PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Research that takes a fresh perspective 30 _NATURE/ENVIRONMENT Black holes, new species, energy from tires, map of the world, Dimetrodon discovery, fate of the dinosaurs, Brook- trout Lake, Bioko bushmeat

cover photo by the voorhes 10 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

_EXEL 20132016

44BOTS IN THE BLOODSTREAM An international team of roboticists is collaborating on a groundbreaking treatment for blocked arteries that 64 CHILD’S PLAY would put swarms of microscopic, Most therapies for magnetically controlled robotic children with cerebral beads directly inside blood vessels. palsy focus merely on by Jen A. Miller improving mobility, while overlooking the relationships that lead to a fulfilling life. A new approach by Drexel researchers puts the emotional and social 52THE INFECTION needs of these children CONNECTION first. by Lini S. Kadaba SECOND80 CHANCES Despite billions spent on Strict “zero tolerance” Alzheimer’s research to policies in public schools date, the precise cause of trigger terrible collateral the disease remains a puz- consquences for youth that zle. Drexel microbiologist diminish their life chances and genomics expert Garth considerably. Psychology Ehrlich is pursuing an professor Naomi Goldstein intriguing new theory that is working with the City of suggests a microbial infec- Philadelphia on a program tion triggers the disease’s that permanently re-routes devastating symptoms. the “school-to-prison” by Katie Clark pipeline. by Tim Hyland

58 _PUBLIC HEALTH E-cig marketing, fighting obesity, Ebola’s lifecycle, asthma drugs and autism, behaviorial health “home,” pollution and health, secondhand smoke, 48 depression and poor grades, _BODY OF RESEARCH rainfall collection The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University’s malacology collection contains more 74 than two centuries of specimens _CULTURE/SOCIETY Cameras for cops, disconnected youth, video games in the classroom, marketing fonts, CEOs and 68 venture capitalists, sexual abuse _MEDICINE and anonymity, appetite and Astrocytes, athletes and depres- romance, the study of takeover sion, Down Syndrome differences, bids, repurposing food waste quantum dots for cancer, Alzheimer’s drug, crystallizing PKU, growing blood vessels, crystallography and antibiotics

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_DREXEL UNIVERSITY _RESEARCH, WITH FRESH EYES RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016 A different approach to crucial questions

EDITORIAL_STAFF

Editor _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

Sonja Sherwood _ONLINE EXELmagazine.org

Senior Editor Katie Clark

STAFF_CONTRIBUTORS Mark Eggerts Rachel Ewing Alissa Falcone Britt Faulstick Niki Gianakaris Lauren Ingeno Alex McKechnie Frank Otto

DESIGN Pentagram

ADMINISTRATION 22 President _A SOBER ANALYSIS John A. Fry When Washington became the first state to privatize liquor sales since Prohibition, it provided a rare chance to observe the impact of alcohol Senior Vice President, availability on public safety. University Communications Lori Doyle

Senior Vice Provost, Research _ABOUT THE COVER e often refer to “the Drexel difference,” because this isn’t a typical university. There is Aleister Saunders These photographs nothing ordinary about our signature model of experiential learning, our students, nor were taken by shooting our outcomes. EXEL_MAGAZINE downward into glasses W EXEL Magazine is published filled with liquors and Nowhere is this truer than in our research enterprise. Drexel owes its exceptional ap- annually by the Office of liqueurs. The resulting proach to inquiry to our belief that academics have a practical role to play in the world and University Communications image is reminiscent that institutions of higher education should help to answer socially important questions. 3141 Chestnut St., Suite 309 of petri dishes and Philadelphia, PA 19104 I’m especially proud of the practical ingenuity on display in this edition of EXEL Maga- perfectly captures the Telephone: 215.895.1530 zine, our annual compendium of Drexel research. Whether wringing new insights from Fax: 215.895.6157 topic and the approach of the cover story on simple methodologies or boldly experimenting with new materials that seem straight out Office of the Vice Provost liquor privatizataion. of science fiction, the researchers whose work is presented in these pages are gazing with for Research 3141 Chestnut St. open minds at problems that urgently demand a fresh perspective. 234 Randell Hall From the psychologist who combined simple brain scans in a new way to explain how Philadelphia, PA 19104 creativity is sparked … to the expert microbiologist pursuing a new infectious disease Telephone: 215.895.6091 theory of Alzheimer’s … to the engineer building microscopic “bots” to burrow through plaque inside blood vessels blocked by atherosclerosis — Drexel researchers veer from well- worn paths in pursuit of bold, impactful discoveries that can truly make a difference. I hope you enjoy this edition of EXEL and find as much inspiration as I do in the unique contributions Drexel is making toward a healthier, safer and better world.

John A. Fry / President

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_EXPLORE EXEL ONLINE

Connect with EXEL Magazine on the Web for online-only exclusive content, inter- views with Drexel researchers, more in-depth coverage and videos about our work, updates from our growing research enterprise and more. Visit exelmagazine.org.

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AMONG_THE_HIGHLIGHTS_FROM_THIS_ISSUE 01 Learn more about the Drexel Hyperloop team and see some animated renderings of the final prototype. 02 See in vivo microswimmers successfully steer and maneuver through fluid environments on command. These robotic, biodegradable nano-beads were created by Drexel’s MinJun Kim to clear arteries as an alternative to surgically implanted stents. 03 Hear from Drexel’s Andrew Cohen on the new methods his team has developed to study stem cells and how a better understanding of them could help in treating everything from Alzheimer’s disease to spinal cord injury. 04 View a slideshow of Drexel’s Nicole Arcilla in the field and images of the breathtaking birds that are threatened due to illegal logging in Ghana. 05 Explore the Sloan Digital Sky Survey website, which features the most detailed three-dimensional maps of the universe ever made. Drexel’s Gordon Richards was a key participant in the survey and is part of the team working on the development of a new, even more powerful telescope that will reveal new details about the universe. _TECH / SCIENCE

_ONLINE To see animated renderings of the pod prototype, visit EXELmagazine.org ENGINEERING _GREASED LIGHTNING

A group of Drexel undergraduate engineering students is among the last teams standing in the race to design a transportation pod for SpaceX’s high-speed transit test track. An aerodynamic flap creates air resistance for breaking. When the flaps open, a pocket magine zooming between bang, down to a design for of air is created inside the tube cities in a high-speed a pod transit station. through which the pod travels, transportation pod at Those teams that have which slows the pod down. The I pod is also designed with two 700-plus miles an hour, all made the cut — meaning other backup breaking systems. the while levitated above a they secured tech company small pocket of air. sponsors to build proto- Now imagine designing, types that can cost upwards engineering, manufac- of $70,000 — will test their turing and marketing a designs in Hawthorne, prototype of that very pod, California, on a mile-long all from scratch and while Hyperloop, which is the still an undergraduate stu- near-vacuum transporta- dent, with a chance to have tion tube that Musk pro- your design incorporated posed in 2013. into a new mode of super- The concept works like fast transit envisioned by a puck on an air-hockey SpaceX founder and inven- table: Pods for either pas- tor Elon Musk. sengers or cargo float on For about 70 students a very thin air cushion to at Drexel University, it’s minimize the friction, the all real. They are one of main culprit that limits 31 college teams, out of speed, and as a result at- 1,200 original contestants tain miles per hour, at least from around the world, theoretically, close to Mach who have been chosen to 1. A six-hour car ride be- advance in Musk’s 2016 tween Los Angeles and San SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Francisco would be a mere Competition after present- 30 minutes on a Hyperloop. ing their initial design to Musk, academics and other judges in January.

At press-time, the Drexel This, called the “dynamic Hyperloop team is putting floor,” is the structure that will hold the pod and its sus- the finishing touches on pension system together. its ambitious concept — a prototype of the bullet- like capsule that would hold passengers in Musk’s visionary transit system. “This is not just a project you do in school,” says Om Mahida, 22, a junior computer engineering student who’s involved in _GLIDING ON AIR software development for The round hockey-puck-like nodes at the bottom the pod’s control system. of the dynamic floor are an air bearing system that is unique to the Drexel team’s design. Pres- “You’re basically running surized air tanks on board the pod direct streams your own startup.” of air downward from these bearings, which puts Most teams are focusing a small pocket of air between the pod and the on a subsystem, but the track. The air bearings allow the pod to basically levitate over the track without friction. The con- Drexel Hyperloop team is cept is similar to hydroplaning, when a thin layer among the few that decided of water separates a vehicle’s tires from direct to take on the whole she- contact with the surface of the road.

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This is one of the POD_1.0 pod’s aerodynamic break flaps. This is the version of the passenger pod that the Drexel team submitted to the initial Design Weekend contest. On the basis of this design, the team was asked to continue in the contest and create a prototype with some modifications and improvements. The latest incarnation of their design, which is lighter and easier to manufacturer, is below.

The seating was created to ensure the comfort and safety of passengers. Passengers will ride facing backwards, as is required by FAA standards for travel at high speed. Passengers won’t be able to sense their direction because of the lack of acceleration or windows inside the tube, so to help orient them to their journey, the team has The original design featured proposed displaying a digital “video” of realistic an aerodynamic undercarriage passing scenery on the interior walls. design that helps the pod maintain its fast speeds. In the newest prototype, the undercarriage mechanicals have been absorbed into a single molded chassis.

TECH_SUPPORT The Drexel team has rallied companies to its cause. Among the sponsors are ide Group, a product design and development company with offices outside Philadelphia and in Sydney; Exelon Generation, a power generator serving the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, Texas and California; and M2VP, a technology strategy consulting firm from West Chester, Pennsylvania. New Way Air Bearings, an air bearing manufacturer in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania, is working with the team to make the hoover pads will that allow the pod to float along the rails at super-fast speeds.

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BIOFABRICATION MATERIALS _STEM CELL ‘LEGOS’ _THE BREAKING POINT

Using a custom-designed 3-D printer, an engineer Inside her custom-designed lab, Leslie Lamberson smashes, cracks and has devised a way to manufacture the building pushes materials to better understand, and extend, their limits. blocks of life.

nside his Biofabrication ing to other cell types and Lab, engineering could be used as the ‘lego SMASH_AND_CRASH Iprofessor Wei Sun is bricks’ to build tissue con- Lamberson’s research so making strides toward structs, larger structures far has included replicating rapid prototyping the of tissues and potentially asteroid impacts; designing building blocks of life us- even micro-organs.” protective gear for soccer ing an extrusion printer, Sun’s bio-printer, which athletes and soldiers; exam- designed by him, that was originally created with ining cortical bone frac- squeezes out a mixture of the goal of printing bone tures; and testing tungsten hydrogel and stem cells. and tissue scaffolds, has carbide, one of the hardest also been modified to print metals known to man, for living cancer tumors. It use in drill bits. does so by extruding the cells in a temperature-controlled hydrogel mixture 2 and depositing a three- dimensional grid-like structure, which not only keeps _WEI SUN them viable, but helps 1 Sun is the Albert Soffa chair professor in the them grow and multiply. Department of Me- “There is still a long way chanical Engineering and Mechanics in the to go from a varying sized College of Engineer- embryoid body to a regen- ing and director of the erated organ, but our work Biofabrication Lab. provides a promising tool Sun’s process, which to facilitate this develop- was recently published ment,” says Sun. in Biofabrication, gives The benefit of being able scientists a head start to carefully manipulate the at growing living three- environment that exists in dimensional tissues. a “block” of stem cells is “We are able to apply that it gives researchers a a 3-D printing method to controlled platform from grow embryoid bodies (pre- which to study how and cursors of organs) in a con- why the cells differentiate 1 TARGET PRACTICE trolled manner to produce into precursors of organs. f you truly want to assistant professor in the This patented two-stage highly uniform ‘blocks’ of Down the road, this know what something College of Engineering. “If light-gas gun can propel a pro- embryonic stem cells,” says could mean that scientists Iis made of, you push it you know how something jectile into a target at hypervel- Sun, who co-authored the will be able to more effi- past its breaking point, or breaks, that knowledge ocity speeds of over 7,000 mph. Lamberson personally designed research with colleagues ciently grow organs in a lab so the adage goes. informs design. You can the machine for around $30,000, from Tsinghua University by printing and growing That’s the idea be- tailor it to break in a which is approximately how much in Beijing. “These ‘blocks’ the organ’s corresponding hind Leslie Lamberson’s certain way, or even not to it costs to run the NASA Ames are capable of differentiat- embryoid body. Dynamic Multifunctional break by understanding its Vertical Gun Range (a similar facility) for just one week. Lam- Materials Laboratory, a dynamic properties.” berson uses the device to create one-of-a-kind materials To keep costs down and micrometeoroid, orbital debris, testing lab she built from creativity and capability and asteroid impacts within scratch for the purpose of, high, Lamberson designed her lab. Plus, the first stage of the two-stage gun can be used basically, breaking things. and built — and even individually as a blast tube to rep- “We push materials to patented — most of the licate the pressure profiles of an day 0 day 3 day 5 day 7 their extremes to get a bet- equipment in her lab using IED explosion on the battlefield ter understanding of their Drexel’s Machine Shop and, — information that she’s using ORGANS_TO-BE behavior under complex, in some cases, spare parts to propose ways to improve the protective foams inside soldier’s Three-dimensional stem cell clusters formed by Sun’s bio- real-world loading condi- she acquired from eBay, helmets with the Office for printer continue to grow and retain their ability to differentiate. tions,” says Lamberson, an Craigslist and even Ikea. Naval Research.

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MOLECULAR SCIENCE _DIFFERENT KIND OF CRYSTAL BALL

A new method has been discovered for growing spherical crystals that could be used for drug delivery.

o two snowflakes are alike, they say. And Nsome are very different, indeed. A Drexel materials scientist has discovered a way to grow a spherical, microscopic crystal — like a snowflake but in a 3-D orb — in a lab that could be used to encapsulate medication for more effective delivery inside the body. The discovery was detailed by Professor Chris- topher Li and lead author Early tests indicate that Li’s “crystalsomes” are Wenda Wang, a ’15 Drexel a few hundred times graduate who is currently stronger than liposomes, which makes them a a post-doctoral researcher sturdier option for at Princeton University, medicine encapsulation. 3 along with other collaborators in a paper in Nature Communications. Before now, crystals have grown in rigid, structured formations; think of how snowflake crystals are webs of straight lines connecting to form a grid. Crystals form this way because their molecules are predisposed to align themselves in a way that links them via the stron- to engineer his hollow if you’ve ever tried to make gest electrochemical crystal spheres. vinaigrette. They created a bond available. His “crystalsomes” are tiny bubble of oil to encase 2 LASER FOCUS 3 STRESS BEAM The green laser light here is This 20-foot Kolsky bar, also named for their similarity water molecules. When used as a lighting source while test- known as a split-Hopkinson pres- to liposomes — tiny bubbles the surfactant bubble was ing and photographing hypervelocity sure bar, is used to measure how with the same membrane as cooled to the appropriate impacts, because regular white materials respond to dynamic strain cells that are being explored temperature, the molecules light does not have enough focused rates. A researcher would place a intensity to illuminate impact for the material to be tested between two for use as biological pack- inside began to crystalize. high-speed camera (to the right of long cylindrical bars, and then use ages for delivering drug But rather than forming the laser) to catch. The camera can a short projectile bar to strike the treatments. an angular web of con- take images up to 1 million frames uprange end, to create a stress Li made his crystalsomes nections, the molecules, per second, allowing it to capture wave that propagates through the _CHRISTOPHER LI all stages of damage evolution in test material. Lamberson uses Li is a professor in spherical by containing instead, lined up along the order to understand how deforma- the device to study the effect of the Department of them inside a droplet. A interior of the oil bubble tions, accelerations and fracture rate-dependent compression and Materials Science and rough equivalent of this — crystallizing in a hol- Engineering in the properties of growing cracks evolve confinement on materials, and also College of Engineer- would be forcing a single low, spherical shape. under stress. “Using digital image has the capability to electrically load ing and head of the snowflake to form inside With funding from the correlation and other full-field and measure the stress and strain Soft Materials Lab. optical diagnostics, we can get of a material under these extreme a tiny snow globe, rather National Science Founda- critical information on quantitative loading conditions. The equipment But crystal formation than in the open expanse of tion, Li’s team is now ex- mechanical properties while the can be used with either two 9-foot is strongly influenced by the atmosphere. ploring ways to control the material is failing; and this informa- steel bars to study hard materi- the environment in which To do this, the research shape and strength of the tion can be used to aid in the design als like ceramics and rocks, or of next-generation materials and polycarbonate bars to examine soft a crystal forms. Li uses team employed a little trick spheres by making them structures,” Lamberson says. materials like rubbers and foams. this molecular property that you might recognize out of different molecules.

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MATERIALS COMPUTER SCIENCE MATERIALS _ATOMIC SANDWICHES _DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION _TINY SWITCH

Drexel engineers’ recipe for ‘sandwiching’ Bodies release telltale signals when we’re distract- bit of stray moisture atomic layers expands the possibilities for ed, bored or stressed, and it may be possible to use during an experiment making materials that store energy. that information to build adaptive technologies. A tipped off scientists about the strange behavior he scientists whose job it t used to be that you did as functional near-infrared of a complex oxide mate- is to test the limits of one thing in your car: spectroscopy (fNIRS) to rial they were studying — Twhat nature — specifi- IYou drove. That’s it. look at “people’s brains shedding light on its poten- cally chemistry — will Now, cars have become in the real world while tial for improving chemical allow to exist just set up vehicles of infotainment they’re doing real things,” sensors, computing and shop on some new real es- complete with Bluetooth not just while driving but information storage. tate on the Periodic Table. phones, GPS routing in other scenarios, such Using a method they _BABAK ANASORI screens and even wi-fi. as learning environments. invented for joining Anasori is a research In Drexel’s Advanced She also uses non-invasive associate in the A.J. disparate elemental layers Drexel Nanomaterials Interaction Research Lab, body sensors to pick up into a stable material with Institute. Director Erin T. Solovey is signals we naturally give uniform, predictable prop- studying how our brains off, such as changes in erties, Drexel researchers titanium between monoa- and bodies handle dis- heart rate. are testing an array of new tomic layers of another tractions in real-time by In one study, she and _JONATHAN E. combinations that may metal, such as molybde- measuring the physiologi- researchers at Massachu- SPANIER vastly expand the options num, with carbon atoms cal changes individuals un- setts Institute of Technol- Spanier is a professor available to create faster, holding them together, we dergo while multi-tasking. ogy asked 100 participants in the Department of Materials Science and smaller, more efficient discovered that a stable One possible outcome of to drive on the highway Engineering and the energy storage, advanced material can be produced,” while attached to sensors Department of Physics. electronics and wear-resis- Anasori explains. “It was “Right now, that measured heart rate tant materials. impossible to produce a and skin conductivity (as In the presence of dis- Led by A.J. Drexel 2-D material having just computers cannot well as other things such as sociated water molecules Nanomaterials Institute three or four molybdenum pick up the signals steering wheel position and on its surface, the layered Research Associate Babak layers in such structures, velocity). The participants material emits ultraviolet Anasori, a team from the but because we added the we’re giving off. If were asked to perform light from its interior. The Department of Materials extra layer of titanium as a they could, it could periodic cognitive tasks as researchers — who hail Science and Engineering connector, we were able to they drove. from Drexel, the Univer- created the material- synthesize them.” really change our The researchers then sity of Pennsylvania, the making method that can The discovery was mined the data to see if University of California sandwich two-dimensional recently published in the experience with it was possible to identify at Berkeley, and Temple sheets of elements that journal ACS Nano. It’s signifi- technology.” when the participants were University — discovered otherwise couldn’t be cant because it represents engaged in the other tasks. they could control UV light Erin T. Solovey, Director of combined in a stable way. a new way of combining Drexel's Advanced Interaction “It was very clear in the production via a chemical And they proved its ef- elemental materials to Research Lab data that we were able to reaction that functions like fectiveness by creating two form the building blocks detect distraction based on flipping a light switch. entirely new, layered 2-D of energy storage technol- her research could be devel- body signals,” says Solovey. “This discovery is quite materials using molybde- ogy — think batteries, opment of an automotive If technology gets to a remarkable because we num, titanium and carbon. capacitors and supercapaci- system that detects when a point where we wear brain uncovered a chemical “By ‘sandwiching’ one tors, as well as superstrong driver is multi-tasking and sensors the same way that a reaction at the surface that or two atomic layers of a composites, like the ones compensates to make driv- lot of people wear a FitBit, prompts the emission of transition metal like used in phone cases and ing safer or issues an alert this information could be light from the interface body armor. Each new the driver. incorporated into vehicle within,” says Drexel’s MIX_AND_MATCH combination presents new “Right now, computers operating software. Jonathan Spanier, “and we Drexel researchers have properties and researchers cannot pick up the signals “If a company is intro- are able to turn it off and made several new layered suspect that one, or more, we’re giving off,” says So- ducing a new in-vehicle in- on again. Amazingly, we materials and predict that of these new materials lovey, who is also an assis- terface, we can look at how can also make it stronger they can make as many as will exhibit energy storage tant professor of computer that changes the workload by increasing the distance 25 new combinations using and durability properties science in the College of in the car while driving,” between the molecules their new method for atomic so disproportional to its Computing & Informatics. she says. “We could take and surface and the buried “sandwiching.” size that it could revolution- “If they could, it could re- this brain data and input interface, by using thicker ize technology. ally change our experience it into the system that can films, for example.” with technology.” then adapt and be more Their findings appeared Solovey uses portable, supportive of the user’s in the American Chemical wearable technologies such changing state.” Society journal Nano Letters.

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MATERIALS _TINY SWITCH _DREDGING UP HISTORY A Drexel lab is using digital technologies to replicate a long-hidden remnant of Philadelphia’s revolutionary history.

his massive, iron-tipped spear was affixed to the Tbottom of the Delaware River during the Revo- lutionary War to thwart British ships intending to invade Philadelphia. More than two centuries later, HULL_PIERCER the giant spike — which Measuring 11.5 feet and weigh- was pulled from the murky ing approximately 250 pounds, depths of the river about the weapon has a width roughly eight years ago — is being STYRO_SPEAR equivalent to a telephone pole with recreated in the Hybrid Students and a sharp metal tip capable of punc- Making Lab in Drexel’s faculty produced a turing the hull of a boat. life-size foam rep- Westphal College. lica of the cheval Using a 3-D scan of the using a Computer cheval-de-frise made by Numerical Control digital media sophomore router tool. Mark Petrovich in 2007 and a tool that creates objects by rapidly carving a block of foam, Hybrid Making Lab Director Erik Sundquist and digital media junior Riley Stewart 138.2 inches x 18.1 inches are producing a life-size replica of the weapon to serve as a stand-in as the Philadelphia’s Indepen- dence Seaport Museum prepares the genuine artifact for public exhibition. Weapons like this were originally developed in Europe as land obstacles to prevent cavalry charges. But during the American Revolutionary War colonial forces modified the design of the weapon for maritime defenses in the Delaware and Hudson rivers. portion of weapon DELAWARE_DEFENSE As part of Drexel’s digi- recovered from the This Revolutionary-era tal cultural heritage work, Delaware river map shows the positions of the chevaux de led by Associate Professor SUNKEN_TREACHERY frise in the Delaware Glen Muschio, the cheval According to war historians, several of these river near the New Jer- is being recreated to allow weapons — known as chevaux de frise — would sey side. The spear-like the Seaport Museum to be attached to boxes affixed to the river bottom. weapons, combined with land-based artillery, build a brace for display- Along the Delaware River near Philadelphia, were an effective deter- ing the actual cheval. artillery fire rained down on ships from forts rent for British ships. on both sides of the river, forcing British boats directly into the path of the submerged spikes.

EXELmagazine.org 19 _TECH / SCIENCE

MATERIALS SCIENCE STEM CELL RESEARCH _CHIP COMBO _STEM CELL ALGORITHM

The discovery, which was Using image-tracking technology, Drexel scientists observe nature vs. recently reported in the nurture in neural stem cells — information that could lead to breakthroughs journal Science, is the culmi- in regenerative medicine. nation of years of collaborative research by the team. ne of the longstanding and posterior embryonic The same group of research- debates in science that mouse cerebral cortex. ers had previously pub- Ohas permeated into the They provided the cells _YURY GOGOTSI lished a 2010 paper in Science field of stem cell research is with an identical environ- Gogotsi is a distinguished announcing their creation the question of nature versus ment in tissue culture, university and trustee chair professor in the of a carbide-derived carbon nurture influencing develop- then made time-lapse Department of Materials film material — made by ment. Science on stem cells movies of how they Science and Engineering and director of the A.J. etching supercapacitor thus far has suggested that divided and dif- Drexel Nanomaterials electrodes into conductive their fate is not predestined. ferentiated into Institute in the College titanium carbide substrates But new research from the cortical cells. of Engineering. — that possessed a volu- New York-based Neural Stem “If the fter more than half a metric capacity exceeding Cell Institute and Drexel’s answer to the decade of speculation, that of existing micro- and College of Engineering sug- age-old ques- Afabrication, modeling macro-scale supercapaci- gests otherwise. tion was, in and testing, an internation- tors, by a factor of 2. fact, ‘nurture’ al team of researchers led Their latest announce- then these cells by Drexel’s Yury Gogotsi and ment confirms the team’s would behave Patrice Simon, of Paul Sa- long-standing belief that the same, given batier University in France, carbon films are versatile the identical en- have confirmed that their enough to be seamlessly vironments,” says process for making carbon integrated into the systems Sally Temple, who led films and micro-supercapac- that power a multitude of the group at the insti- itors will make it possible modern personal electronics. _ANDREW COHEN tute. “But if the answer Cohen is an associate to combine microchips and “The place where most professor of electrical was ‘nature’ then they their power sources on the people will eventually and computer engineer- would behave differently. ing in the College of same silicon wafer. notice the impact of this Engineering. And this is actually what “With this achievement, development is in the we found — anterior and the future is now wide open size of their personal In a recent paper pub- posterior stem cells are in- _FAMILY TREE for chip and personal elec- electronic devices, their lished in Stem Cell Reports, trinsically quite different Drexel’s computational im- tronics manufacturers,” says smart phones, fitbits and researchers present volu- from each other.” age analysis programs can Simon, who led the research. watches,” says Gogotsi. minous video evidence to This discovery was made generate a stem cell lineage support their discovery of possible by a powerful tree from a series of time- distinct, intrinsic differ- set of biological tracking lapse microscopic images. ences among stem cells programs, developed in found in the brains of mice. Drexel’s Computational Im- appearance and that are Through time-lapse imaging age Sequence Analysis Lab in the right place to be of cells cultured in identical led by Andrew Cohen, an the cells we’re tracking,” in vitro environments, re- associate professor in the Cohen says. “From there searchers were able to iden- College of Engineering. The we use other algorithms tify differences in growth, programs, called LEVER to cross-check the results movement and differentia- and CloneView, automates multiple times, until we’re tion that exist between stem the process of analyzing almost 99 percent sure that cells found in two different tens of thousands of time- the things LEVER has iden- areas of the brain. lapse images. They can tified in all these pictures Neural stem cells are track the growth, move- are, in fact, cells.” some of the most fascinat- ment and proliferation of Displayed in CloneView, ing and unique cells in cells and use this informa- a time-lapse movie of a the body, but very little is tion to visually enhance single stem cell is overlaid known about their unusual the time-lapse movies and by a uniquely colored out- behavior. A research group produce an entire family line of its inner boundary. WAFER_THIN at the Neural Stem Cell tree for each cell. As it grows and eventu- The team can deposit carbon films on silicon wafers in a Institute in New York “Basically, the algo- ally divides, new cells are variety of shapes and configurations to create dozens of studied single neural stem rithms look for groups of delineated with a different supercapacitors on a single silicon wafer. cells from the anterior pixels that have the right color. Each of these colors

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WATER FILTRATION _NATURE’S FILTER

Algae scooped from an urban fish pond are the slimy secret ingredients in a bioreactor that Drexel environmental engineers say is more effective at treating wastewater than many processes employed in city treatment facilities today.

their new reactor. Wastewater enters The system can remove the bioreactor with high up to 80 percent of nitro- concentrations of ammo- gen from a waste stream, nia and nitrate. Inside, according to data Sales 350 different species of reported in the Journal of microbes either metabo- Visualized Experiments. lize ammonia to nitrate _CHRIS SALES The system does not re- or convert dead algal cells Sales is an assistant professor in the Col- quire settling tanks because and algae byproducts into lege of Engineering the flow of the reactor is carbon dioxide. The algae and a member of the research team at the designed to naturally pro- use the carbon dioxide and A.J. Drexel Institute mote settling of biomass. a combination of ammonia for Energy and the This separation, Sales and nitrate to grow and Environment. speculates, could one day perform photosynthesis, ssistant professor make the algae cultivated which, in turn, produces Christopher Sales in these bioreactors an oxygen that helps the Ais using algae’s sym- appealing source of biofuel bacteria thrive. Thus the biotic relationship with feedstock by reducing the cycle removes nitrogen bacteria to remove excess amount of energy required from wastewater while also nitrogen from water — a to dry the algae biomass. growing a healthy crop of process that could aid mu- The lab-scale prototype algae and bacteria. The nicipal wastewater treat- resembles an elaborate algal biomass can then be ment plants. chemistry experiment — recovered as a product and In 2006, Sales and a col- which it is, essentially. used as a source of biofuel. league from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania first CHEMISTRY SET developed a high-density A 1,000-milliliter graduated bioreactor to cultivate a cylinder filled with green dense mixture of microor- liquid is the centerpiece of ganisms — called activated the prototype’s plumbing sludge — which is used circuit. The plumbing begins to remove oxygen organic in a water jug of synthetic carbon compounds from wastewater, feeds through a wastewater. pump, a bubbling beaker and Since then, Sales and his eventually through the flask lab at Drexel have added of algae and bacteria before corresponds to the cell’s called processes that can algae to the mix to improve emptying into a bucket as node on the lineage tree, look like a separate cell. the reactor’s nitrogen- “treated effluent.” which is displayed in a “Human validation is removal capabilities. separate frame next to the a very important part of This development is movie. This gives research- our process. We are still significant because today’s ers a quick way to check the most accurate judge of predominant nitrogen- More than the video to make sure when cells have divided,” removal techniques are 350 microbial LEVER correctly identified Cohen said. “By running the multi-step processes with species exist inside the the cells and their progeny. time-lapse images through long waiting periods. bioreactor. Once checked by human the program we get an By contrast, Sales’s biore- eyes, the images are run output video that’s easy to actor works by continuously through the program again visually verify. As these cor- cycling water through an for more precise delinea- rections are made, the pro- algae and bacteria-laden tion of the cells — this program can spot related errors environment, almost like cess is especially arduous and automatically fix those. a biological filter, remov- when tracking stem cells The key is to minimize the ing nitrogen by storing it because they often have amount of effort required in algae that can be easily long arm-like appendages from the humans.” separated from water in _FEATURE

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for decades, the debate raged. “When,” legislators and citizens asked, “will our state government get out of the business of wholesale purchasing and retailing alcohol?” Proponents of liquor privatization promised better se- lection, lower prices, opportunities for independent businesses and a windfall for state coffers. Opponents called the movement a corporate-backed cash grab that would put state employees out of work, with only short-lived benefits for taxpayers and potentially long-term public health consequences. We’re talking about Washington, here; but it could easily be Pennsylvania. Both states have long weighed the pros and cons of their _LONI PHILIP TABB Tabb is an assistant state-run monopoly on alcohol sales amid organized efforts professor of biostatistics to privatize it. in the Dornsife School of Public Health within the So when Washington voters finally agreed to sell off Department of Epidemi- state-owned liquor stores and convert to an open market in ology and Biostatistics. 2011 — becoming the first “control” state to do so since Pro- She studies how alcohol intersects with violence hibition — it behooved Pennsylvanians to pull up a chair, in urban settings. pour a stiff one and see how things turned out. A few years in, there are signs that Washington’s Ini- tiative 1183 has not gone down as smoothly as promised. A 2014 report in the Seattle Times noted that after liquor sales expanded from 328 state stores to more than 1,400 outlets, the average cost of a liter was 11 percent higher, due to fees the state added to make privatization revenue neutral. The paper also reported that half of the former state stores auctioned off to entrepreneurs closed within two years, crushed by new competition. Of course, the devil is in the details, and Pennsylvania legislators and voters could structure privatization very differently to avoid Washington’s pitfalls. But either way, one outcome would likely be the same: a significant increase in urban violence.

EXELmagazine.org 23 _FEATURE

NATURAL EXPERIMENT When Washington passed Initiative 1183, Drexel researcher Loni Philip Tabb saw the perfect opportunity to put her interests in statistics and public policy to work studying the relationship between violent crime and increased alcohol To test her hunch, she acquired data on aggravated and availability. non-aggravated violent crimes from the Seattle Police De- Tabb is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Dorn- partment, broken down by small census blocks, and com- sife School of Public Health with bachelor’s and master’s pared it with liquor licensing records from the Washington degrees in math from Drexel and a doctorate in biostatis- State Liquor and Cannabis Board. tics from Harvard University. She also collected 2010 census data that she used to control She specializes in spatial and spatio-temporal statistics, for variables often correlated with local crime data, such as which means she observes not only how data changes with- a neighborhood’s percentage of vacant housing units, fami- in geographic locations, but also how the data may change lies that were low-income and/or headed by a single female, over time. residents age 15 to 29, density of bus stops and “risky” retail “In order to address certain disparities, you need to outlets, and broader indicators of racial and ethnic diversity. non-aggravated assaults know where these disparities exist and ultimately where to “The nice thing about being in a big data environment is focus intervention and prevention resources to eliminate you’re able to access data through various settings,” she says. them,” she says. With a wealth of information available, Tabb was able to Existing research already showed a correlation between compare the rates of violence in each census block group the availability and consumption of alcohol and social and within Seattle for both the two years prior to privatization health problems. In her study, Tabb cites studies from as far and the two years after it went into effect in 2012. back as 1983 to as recently as 2010 showing a connection. The data revealed an apparent “smoking gun.” Aggravat- Tabb herself has previously studied how liquor privati- ed assaults, which are typically those involving a weapon zation could potentially affect Philadelphia, in a 2012 pa- with an intent to cause bodily harm, increased 8 percent per published with five co-authors inBMC Public Health. The for each additional off-premises outlet in a given neighbor- team used geospatial analysis to map existing alcohol retail hood, and 5 percent for each additional on-premises outlet. outlets throughout the city, including bars and restaurants The rate of non-aggravated assaults also increased, by 6 where alcohol is sold for on-premise consumption, and re- percent and 5 percent for each type of retailer respectively. tailers that sell alcohol to be consumed off-premise, such In Seattle overall, aggravated assaults increased 42 per- as state-owned wine and spirits stores and small groceries, cent and non-aggravated assaults increased 74 percent pizza shops and bodegas that sell beer. between 2010 and 2013, the period overlapping the state’s aggravated assaults They noticed that crime rates tended to be higher around transition to an open alcohol market. off-premise retailers where individuals may be purchasing South-central Seattle, the northwestern portion, and alcohol to consume nearby, such as in a vacant lot or at home. some blocks on the eastern border bore the brunt of the Then they asked what this might mean for Philadelphia worsening violence. 1.5, 13.51, 1.5 .8, 1 .07, .08 if the city privatized alcohol sales. They found that Phila- Although the use of aggregate data, as Tabb used in her delphia’s zoning rules, which restrict alcohol retailers near study, unintentionally lends itself to a research problem schools, playgrounds and places of worship, could accommo- known as the ecological fallacy, which involves drawing UNINHIBITED date an additional 60 percent more outlets, or 1,115 more city- conclusions about individuals based on analyses involving To track the impact of liquor wide, bringing with them the “negative health, crime and neighborhood-level data, her study sheds light on the vari- privatization on violence in quality of life outcomes that accompany such an increase.” ous relationships that exist at the neighborhood level that Seattle, Loni Philip Tabb For her latest exploration of the subject, Tabb endeav- can’t be ignored. examined crime data in the ored to avoid the cross-sectional approach of previous “The more alcohol available in a neighborhood, the ten- city, census block by census studies and instead do a longitudinal analysis, tracking a dency there is for more violence,” she says. “Since this pol- block. She compared the data real-life situation over time — an approach that is more icy allows for increases in sales and ultimately availability from the two years prior to rigorous in pointing toward causation. in these neighborhoods, we’ll likely see more violence in privatization with the two years “We said, ‘Let’s try and find an area in the United States these neighborhoods as well.” afterward, and controlled for where they actually implemented some sort of policy that Washington attempted to head off this problem by re- a host of variables that are affects alcohol sales and see what happened,’” she explains. quiring new off-premises outlets to be large retailers, such also typically associated with Although a few states — Washington among them — as supermarkets and warehouse stores. This was a direct at- crime. She found a statistically have recently relaxed laws governing marijuana sales and tempt to avoid more liquor sales in corner stores and bode- significant uptick in both ag- consumption, “with alcohol, it’s not like you have states gas in already-disadvantaged neighborhoods. Such factors gravated and non-aggravated that go through this all the time, so Washington was per- could be considered in Pennsylvania if the state were to ap- incidents for every additional fect,” Tabb says. prove privatization, for the very same reasons, Tabb says. retail outlet that opened in the “Philly has a stronger relationship between alcohol and city after 2012. In the maps SMOKING GUN violence [than Seattle],” Tabb says. “Smaller stores are sell- above, anything above a “1” Tabb began the study with the hypothesis that increased ing alcohol in neighborhoods that are even more disadvan- indicates an area where an availability of alcohol would result in more violence in the taged than in Seattle.” excess risk of assault exists. areas affected. She theorizes that on-premises alcohol retailers such as the bars in Philadelphia’s Old City attract less violence crime because they self-police.

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“They have a real vested interest in setting up a neighborhood where their customers are safe,” she says. “I think if you’re going to have an additional [wine and Against privatization are the unions and their members liquor] outlet, I’d prefer that it be at a BJ’s rather than an — particularly the approximately 4,500 state workers who [urban] mom-and-pop store that’s going to potentially at- staff the state-owned wine and spirits stores — as well as tract other risky behavior often associated with alcohol the Democratic lawmakers who depend on their support. and violence,” she says. “The people who champion the privatization of liquor With Philadelphia capable of hosting as many as 1,115 stores promise better prices and no change in the current additional alcohol outlets should privatization ever go rates of crime or alcoholism, but their argument is a Trojan through, Tabb says she hopes her study helps further in- horse,” says State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, a Demo- form the liquor privatization debate in Pennsylvania. crat whose district includes Philadelphia and Delaware “I know for Philadelphia, there’s going to be a significant counties. “The Washington state study proves there are in- impact with respect to privatization,” she says. “There will creases in both when there is greater access to alcohol. That be a substantial uptick in alcohol outlets, and we need to greatly concerns me, and it should greatly concern most make sure there are policies in place that address the po- people who value community and a good quality of life.” tential complications.” And even though beer distributors are private enter- “This kind of study is very useful for policy,” says An- prises licensed by the state, privatization would likely also drew Lawson, a distinguished professor at the Medical Uni- negatively impact their business, just as Washington liquor versity of South Carolina who is also founding chief editor retailers discovered when they suddenly got more competi- of Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, the Elsevier journal tion from other outlets than many could handle. where Tabb’s study is under review. “Public health depart- “Eighty to 90 percent of our income comes from beer sales,” ments need to make decisions all the time about whether Mark Tanczos, president of the Malt Beverage Distributors there is risk in a certain geographic area, like in the case LIQUOR LIMITS Association of Pennsylvania, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News. of environmental pollution from toxic waste dumps or in- Seventeen states, plus small “How are we going to be making a living if everyone has it?” cineration sites. These are known as ‘cluster alarms’ in the jurisdictions within Alaska, Those in favor of privatization are represented by an al- public health literature and health departments get them Maryland, Minnesota and most exclusively Republican coalition that promises that a every day from people claiming that there is some adverse South Dakota, control alcohol state-licensed private enterprise system would provide con- health risk in their neighborhood. The methods used by Dr. sales or wholesaling in some venience and choice at lower prices, plus more tax revenue Tabb are used widely in those investigations.” form. They control the sale of from additional stores. distilled spirits and, in some “Other states do this and the world has not fallen apart LAST CALL cases, wine through govern- there, unless you’re assuming that Pennsylvanians and Lore has it that Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot created ment agencies at the whole- Washingtonians are unique in some way,” says State Rep. the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board in 1933, just as Pro- sale level. Thirteen of those Kate Harper, who supports privatization. hibition came to an end, expressly to “discourage the pur- jurisdictions also exercise The Montgomery County Republican says she sees the re- chase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient control over retail sales for sults of Tabb’s study as being potentially helpful in setting and expensive as possible.” off-premises consumption; zoning limits for new retailers under liquor privatization. That pretty much sums up the experience Pennsylvania either through government- However, she’s troubled by the notion that disadvan- drinkers have dealt with ever since. operated package stores or taged neighborhoods might receive limited access to alco- The PLCB’s rules and stores have become more consumer- designated agents. hol because of the potential for violence. friendly in recent years and, at press time, Pennsylvania “To pick out people in a neighborhood and say, ‘Sorry, Pro- passed a new law that will soon allow gas stations, grocers hibition still applies to you,’ I don’t think that’s fair,” she and hotels to sell take-out wine and beer (the law is being says. “I think it’s completely inappropriate for government regarded as a stalking horse for eventual full privatization). to set socioeconomic limits on the consumption of alcohol.” But up until this recent law change, the system has restrict- That said, with Gov. Tom Wolf’s veto of the latest privatiza- ed liquor and wine sales to state-owned stores and beer sales tion bill in July of last year, Harper expects other, more urgent to distributors and to bars or grocery stores with special li- state issues to take precedence, such as the state’s budget. censes. For a long time, evening and Sunday retail hours at “I’ve voted for [privatization] twice now,” she says. “It’s state-owned stores were restricted, and bars weren’t allowed not the biggest issue for my constituents or on my agenda.” to offer happy-hour specials for more than two hours per day. For Tabb’s part, she wants to make sure those who are Pennsylvania also adds a hefty tax to every bottle, cour- in positions to decide the matter have all of the facts at tesy of a supposedly temporary 10 percent tax instated in their disposal. 1936 to help rebuild Johnstown after one of its many floods. “Being here and knowing that it’s something that is proba- The mining town was eventually rebuilt, but the tax was bly going to be implemented in my lifetime, I thought it was never repealed. Instead, Pennsylvania increased it — to necessary to continue to build the evidence,” she says. “I like 18 percent, where it generates $334 million for the state to think that policymakers try to find the information that’s treasury but also contributes to high prices and a perennial out there with respect to how neighborhoods function. My chorus of voices demanding change. role is to conduct sound research that allows for an evalua- Among the policymakers and influencers who have tion and assessment of these complex relationships.” staked out positions in the liquor privatization debate, the lines are drawn almost indelibly.

EXELmagazine.org 25 _FEATURE

26 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

THE THINKER Drexel’s John Kounios and his collaborator were the first scientists to use brain scans to study how our minds make the leap from methodical thinking to sudden insight. In their new book, Kounios shares what they’ve learned about cultivating creativity. _ by Lini S. Kadaba

ow does a brain scientist known for discovering the neural pathway of sudden, creative insight achieve his Hown flashes of inspiration? It’s all about getting into the right headspace. When Drexel Professor of Psychology John Kounios has a A decade ago, the scientists identified problem to solve, he takes a ride in the quiet car on the re- the “neural signature” of insight through gional rail line. He leans back in his seat for the 45-minute cutting-edge brain-imaging studies, and commute between his home in West Chester and Drexel’s ever since, the work has generated buzz. University City Campus. He dons special noise-cancelling Most recently, Kounios was interviewed headphones, slaps on his sunglasses and closes his eyes. No on WHYY’s “Radio Times” and appeared cellphone ringtones. No chatter of voices. No distractions, in the Philadelphia Inquirer. not even the rumble of the train nor the scenery streaking Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychol- past the window. ogy at Harvard University and author of Then, Kounios lets his thoughts wander. the book “The Seven Sins of Memory,” In this relaxed state where the mind is most open, the calls the scientists pioneers. affable, 58-year-old with a shock of gray hair meditates “They’ve shown insight is not just an _JOHN KOUNIOS Kounios is a professor and allows associations to flow as he turns thoughts over ephemeral thing that happens once in a of psychology in the in his mind. while,” he says. “It is something you can College of Arts and Sciences and director Often enough, he has what’s called a eureka! or aha! mo- study. You just need the right paradigm.” of the PhD program in ment, that sudden awareness of a new idea, new perspec- The researchers, he quips, have “obvi- Applied Cognitive and tive or solution. ously had some insights into insight.” Brain Sciences. “I really think the modern lifestyle is not as conducive to this deep creativity that produces really powerful in- FLASH IN THE PAN sights,” says Kounios, who also directs the doctoral pro- In his third-floor lab in Stratton Hall on gram in Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences at Drexel. Drexel’s University City Campus, Kounios “We’re too busy, too distracted, too stressed out. We don’t and his graduate students explore the com- get enough sleep. We’re too tired. It’s hard to get into this plex workings of the creative mind with the creative state.” simplest of tools: EEGs and word puzzles. Insight is a unique phenomenon within the brain that The modest room houses computer terminals, a couple can be encouraged by creating the right conditions, argues of chairs and two Styrofoam head models — nicknamed Kounios. In a new book, “The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Aristoteles and Bartholomew — used to store the lab’s two Creative Insight, and the Brain” (Random House, 2015), he elastic EEG caps equipped with red, yellow and green elec- unpacks his groundbreaking insight research conducted trodes that connect to a Kleenex-sized box that amplifies with co-author Mark Beeman, a professor of psychology and electronic signals. neurosciences at Northwestern University. On a recent summer day, doctoral student Monica True- love-Hill, 28, has volunteered to demonstrate a typical insight study. The electrode-laden cap is positioned on her cranium. Next, each electrode, including reference nodes behind her ears, is painstakingly filled with a conducting gel that ferries a small voltage from the scalp to the electrode.

EXELmagazine.org 27 _FEATURE

Put the two together, the researchers figured, and they TRAIN OF might see what happens in the brain at the precise moment of an insight. The next challenge was to design an experiment to illuminate the instant when a person solved a problem with a sudden idea. After all, Kounios and Beeman couldn’t follow THOUGHT around subjects 24/7 hoping for epiphanies. That’s where word puzzles came in. Consider pine, crab and When John Kounios started out, there was sauce. Then figure out a common word that makes a familiar no name for the field of science he has compound or phrase with each. (Spoiler alert: apple.) These helped shape and define. Few people be- puzzles can be solved either with solutions that pop into the lieved that insight was even a topic worthy mind suddenly or through a process of elimination. of study. Then, Truelove-Hill is shown a series of ana- Each did the experiment in his own lab with a set of sub- As an undergraduate at Haverford College, grams. For example, she sees the letters free, jects and analyzed the data. Then the scientists traded brain this son of a banker and schoolteacher and comes up with reef. Or she sees endo, and scans. When the images were overlaid, what they saw was knew he wanted to double major in psychol- finds done. After each try, she notes whether astounding in many ways. ogy and music theory and composition. she arrived at the solution through insightful “You couldn’t find a more perfect match,” Beeman says. Kounios delighted in playing the piano, thought — that is, a sudden, unexpected an- Here’s what the researchers uncovered: At the moment of which he occasionally still does, but psy- swer — or through analytical thought, which insight, high-frequency EEG activity known as gamma waves chology seemed a more practical career. requires methodically trying different options. occurred above the right ear. (Gamma waves represent cogni- In graduate school at the University of Reef, she says, required analysis, but done just tive processes that link together different pieces of informa- Michigan in Ann Arbor, he studied seman- came to her. tion.) The fMRI showed a corresponding increase in blood tic memory, earning his doctorate in 1985. All the while, her brain waves rise and fall flow in part of the brain’s right temporal lobe involved in He also joined a Greek Orthodox church like peaks and valleys on a mountain range on making connections between ideas (think jokes or meta- choir and met a fellow Greek American, a nearby computer screen. Later, the research- phors), as Beeman suspected. Constantine Papadakis, who would go on ers scan the waves for signals that stand out The kicker: This activity was not present in analytical so- to become president of Drexel and prove from the general noise of the working brain. lutions to the word problems. pivotal in Kounios’ career. “It’s like panning for gold,” Kounios says. The two had discovered the pathway in the brain trig- The field he ultimately pursued — cogni- “You get rid of the junk and then you find that gered during an aha! moment: the right temporal lobe, tive neuroscience — did not even exist. It nugget.” located just above the right ear, lights up when a flash of wasn’t until the development of neuro- By now, most cognitive psychologists agree knowledge occurs. imaging in the mid- to late-1980s that that insight is distinct from analytical thought, “By showing that insights have a different neural correlate scientists began looking at the functional but when Kounios and Beeman met as research- from analytical thought … we could show that insight is re- aspects of the brain. ers at the University of Pennsylvania in late ally different,” Kounios explains. “This sudden neural event After a post-doc at Princeton University, 2000, skeptics in cognitive science were argu- occurs right about the time an idea pops into awareness.” where he explored the origins of memory, ing that aha! moments were nothing more than Their 2004 article in the journal PLOS Biology fired the pub- Kounios joined Tufts University in 1987 as emotional reactions to otherwise deliberate, lic’s imagination. The Times of London proclaimed the discov- an assistant professor. Eventually, he made analytical thoughts. Kounios and Beeman be- ery of the brain’s E-spot, E standing for Eureka! his way to the University of Pennsylvania in lieved something else was going on. Insight, “John is one of the leading EEG researchers in the world,” 1996 and soon became director of the Cog- accompanied by a rush of excitement, even joy, says James D. Herbert, inaugural dean of Drexel’s Graduate nitive Electrophysiology Lab at the school’s just felt different. College and former head of the psychology department. He Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. In what might now be regarded as an inspired points out that EEG has often been the stepchild of fMRI, There, Kounios had his own Eureka! choice, they decided to use then-new technolo- even though it is considerably cheaper to use. “What he is Insight, he realized, would be an ideal new gies — brain scans — to study a topic long ex- brilliant at is using EEG to address questions that everyone field to explore. While creativity, includ- plored only with behavioral experiments. else is using much more expensive technology to address,” ing insight, had been studied for decades, Each scientist brought his expertise to the says Herbert. nothing had been done on the neural basis lab. Kounios’ work on the neural basis of se- In fact, Kounios is finding more ways to translate his work of the process. mantic memory (how people acquire, use and into inexpensive, real-world applications. He’s investigating By 2003, Kounios was recruited to Drexel, sometimes forget knowledge) involved EEG how to use EEGs as an early screening test for conditions as by none other than his grad-school friend scans; Beeman was versed in functional MRI diverse as Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. Another project Papadakis. Within a year, he and Beeman (fMRI, a method of measuring brain activity underway applies EEG to the emerging field of neuro-mar- had published their discovery. through changes in blood flow) through his keting to better predict consumer interest in products. study of language comprehension and the “It’s in keeping with the Drexel way: Doing things in the brain’s right hemisphere, which is used to most efficient way possible,” says Herbert. draw together distantly related information. The EEG can spot when things happen in the brain within milliseconds. But it’s not so great with where. fMRI, however, can produce “exquisitely detailed” maps of where things are happening. Its limitation was in pinpointing when.

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1. STAY POSITIVE. A good mood has a powerful effect on creativity, he says. 2. FOCUS INWARD. Take time outs to recharge, even if only for a split second. In fact, an early study by Kounios and Bee- man produced a surprise. A second before the gamma wave activity, a burst of alpha waves appeared on the right side of the brain at the back of the head. It’s called a “brain blink” BEYOND THE ‘E-SPOT’ because it restricts visual input. Kounios has taught introductory and graduate level courses, Visual information can “hijack thought,” says Kounios. but his first love is research, and he and Beeman, who moved “By looking at a blank wall, or closing your eyes, or look- to Northwestern in 2002, have continued to collaborate, with ing down, you cut off that distraction and that boosts the some interesting results. signal-to-noise ratio of that weakly activated, unconscious One study showed that a couple of seconds before a puzzle is idea,” he says. presented to a subject, the brain engages in different activity 3. CATCH SOME ZZZS. Naps work. Besides improving mood, depending upon whether that individual ultimately solves sleep consolidates memories. “It brings out the non-obvious the problem insightfully or analytically. Another document- connections and associations in the details of a memory,” ed that even during a resting brain state, distinct areas light Kounios says. up, pushing subjects toward one type of thought or other. Kounios saw the virtue of a nap play out while struggling “We’re getting very consistent results,” Kounios says. to come up with a title for his book. One late night his wife, “When an idea pops into awareness, it seems to come from Yvette, fell asleep on the couch. An idea jolted her awake and nowhere. But it’s not coming from nowhere. There are she immediately woke her husband. THE_AHA!_MOMENT events in the brain that lead up to that aha! moment.” “I have the title for the book,” she told John. At the moment of insight, Going forward, the scientists want to explore the influ- Her idea was The Eureka Factor. high-frequency EEG activity ence of genetics on creativity and what other factors, besides It stuck. known as gamma waves occur mood and anxiety, might play a role. above the right ear. At the same Currently, Kounios has a proposal out that will look at time, there is a corresponding whether people who have a track record of creative accom- increase in blood flow in the plishment tend to move back and forth between insight and brain’s right temporal lobe. analysis more often than the average person. Most people have a predilection, says Kounios. Kounios says he favors insight, and he recently co-authored a paper in Thinking & Reasoning that he says shows that solutions to problems that were derived by insight are more accurate than analytically derived solutions. The reason for that, he says, is that analytic thinking is fragile and error-prone because it can be rushed or sloppy. In contrast, insights are the product of unconscious processes that can’t be rushed and that come to a conclusion only in their own time. A person may fail to have an “aha moment” and thereby draw a blank, but if they do have one, chances are that it is a correct solution. True success demands measures of both. Every great idea needs an analytical workhorse to make it happen. And the most methodical person will never achieve significant progress without a dose of spur-of-the-moment creativity. The Eureka Factor is replete with interesting examples. Did you know that Paul McCartney keeps a piano bedside to try out ideas that come to him in the middle of the night? Judah Folkman, a cancer surgeon and researcher, created the new field of angiogenesis around his insight that cancer tumors need a substantial blood supply to grow. “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin says he overcomes writ- er’s block by taking six or more showers a day, as a way to cut off distractions. For the rest of us, Kounios suggests three strategies to stimulate creativity:

EXELmagazine.org 29 _NATURE / ENVIRONMENT

_ONLINE To see some of the galactic images captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, visit EXELmagazine.org ASTROPHYSICS _SHINING A LIGHT ON BLACK HOLES

Astrophysicist Gordon Richards has discovered more black holes than anyone else in the universe. With assistance from a powerful new telescope being built in Chile, he plans to beat his own record.

lack holes are typi- composition and distance cally known for the of those objects. But he Babsence of light, so and his colleagues realized it’s ironic that astrophysi- they could apply modern cist Gordon Richards has data mining techniques discovered more black to identify quasars, using holes than anyone else in the type of Big Data algo- the universe by finding the rithms common today but light, so to speak. _GORDON RICHARDS rare back in the early ’00s. “It’s an oxymoron: Richards is a profes- “In the same data that sor of physics in the There’s this black hole that College of Arts and we had found 10,000 isn’t emitting any light, Sciences. quasars through this but when nearby gas and prism technique, we found dust from star explosions million black holes. 100,000 through modern spiral into the black hole, When quasars were first statistical techniques,” he they heat up and become discovered in the ’60s, says. “Once we had a bigger very bright,” says Richards, maps of the universe were area, we basically ratcheted who published two papers only available on huge that up. We don’t know if this year in The Astrophysical glass plates. If you wanted each one is a quasar, but to look closely at a certain we can put a statistical "There’s this black part of the sky, you’d have probability to it.” to find an institution that This technique was later hole that isn’t stored these glass plates. adapted by others in the emitting any light, In the 1990s, the process field, but Richards was one became easier through the of the first to embrace it. but when nearby Sloan Digital Sky Survey He expects to discover gas and dust from (SDSS), which used a tele- even more quasars in the scope at Apache Point Ob- near future through his in- star explosions servatory in New Mexico volvement with the Large to digitally map the sky. Synoptic Survey Telescope spiral into the Between 1998 and 2009, re- (LSST) project, which aims black hole, they searchers were able to map to build a far more power- a quarter of the sky. ful telescope in Chile by heat up and be- When Richards started 2022. The LSST will take a come very bright." working with the SDSS as full survey of the entire a graduate student, the night sky every three days Journal. “These black holes common practice was to — completing what the that are outshining the rest filter the light from stars SDSS project accomplished of their galaxy are called and galaxies through a in eight years. quasars, and they’re actu- sort of prism, breaking the “SDSS is like making a ally some of the brightest light into different color map of the sky; LSST will things in the universe.” components revealing the make a movie,” he says. How many black holes has Richards spotted, SUPER_LENS exactly? Well, first he was This image, from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Hubble part of a team who counted Ultra-Deep Field, is sharp and magnificently detailed 10,000 black holes, back in because the Hubble telescope is in outer space, outside of the ’90s. After integrating the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, technological advances and its limitation is that it is focused on only a tiny portion of statistical algorithms into the universe. While no land-based telescope can match the his detection research in clarity of Hubble’s images, the new LSST telescope being the early ’00s, he was able built in Chile will be capable of discovering galaxies just as to detect 100,000. Now, he distant, numbering in the billions, and will be able to scan says, he’s closer to about a half of the night sky every three days.

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cientists from Drexel and the Academy of S Natural Sciences of Drexel University regularly discover, describe and pen

new species into the cata- ), log of life on Earth. Here hans

), are some of the most recent fly

stonewort — from the slimy to the ( )

crane winged to the squirmy and ( perez microscopically beautiful — that have made their way illustration william weintraub

), into the scientific record. jason : catfish ( grasshopper ( evers credits

otte photo georg dan

EXELmagazine.org 31 _NATURE / ENVIRONMENT

TAXONOMY ENERGY _NATURAL-BORN MYSTERIES _WHEN RUBBER HITS THE ROAD

cientists from Drexel WEST COAST DIATOMS THE RHEOPHYTE PUZZLE Old tires could find new life as energy-storing materials and the Academy of Diatoms are a group of unicellular Until recently, the flora of the thanks to a process developed in part at Drexel. Natural Sciences of algae that exist all over the Earth. interior of Cambodia’s Cardamom S This year, the Academy received region has remained largely Drexel University regularly samples of two new species that uncatalogued. But as Cambodian esearchers have figured discover, describe and pen were discovered in the Cascade and international survey teams col- out a way to turn the new species into the catalog Mountains in western Oregon. laborate, more and more species Rrubber from old tires of life on Earth, often are coming to light. into material that can store Diatom expert Marina Potapova, investigating specimens assistant curator of diatoms at Such was the case for Sarcolobus energy — a discovery that that have eluded classifica- the Academy, was able to deter- cambogensis, a rheophytic shrub could aid in recycling some 300 tion for a long time. Here mine that the diatoms’ skeleton discovered in the Tatai River in of the nearly 300 million are some that have made structure — made from silicon the Koh Kong province. tires that are discarded an- MILLION dioxide, or glass — were unique their way into the scientific enough to be named as two new Academy scientists used speci- nually in the United States. Number of tires discarded record this year. species: Navicula volcanica and mens and images provided by annually in the United States. Navicula subwalkeri. Although several collectors to determine both species likely interact in the that the plant was a unique

of a common game catfish in the US: 12-24" Average length of new species: 2"; environment, Navicula subwalkeri Sarcolobus species similar to can be found in more places than but distinct from two other spe- Navicula volcanica. Additionally, cies, Sarcolobus luzonesis and Navicula subwalkeri have wider Sarcolobus borneensis, from valves, among other features. the Philippines and Borneo, respectively. “The new species are clearly en- _YURY GOGOTSI demic of the Cascade Mountains,” Sarcolobus cambogensis differs Gogotsi is a distin- Potapova says. “This finding from the latter two species in guished university and 1.5 contributes to our understanding its broader leaves, prominent trustee chair professor in the Department MILLION of the biogeography of microbes coronas on the stamens and and helps us to better use diatoms a differently shaped pollen trans- of Materials Science and Engineering and as environmental indicators.” port apparatus. director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Navicula “This is the third species of rheo- Institute in the College volcanica phyte described from Sarcolobus,” of Engineering. TONS Amount of carbon powder Clearwater says Tatyana Livshultz, assistant River, curator of botany at the Academy. The research, which was that could be produced if all Oregon “The three species are geographi- co-developed by scientists discarded tires were recycled A LOCAL SECRET cally isolated from each other. from Oak Ridge National for this purpose. More than 3,700 recognized catfish Did the rheophytic habit evolve Laboratory and Drexel species exist worldwide, but in one independently in each place or are area of Sumatra in Indonesia, lo- these species all descended from University’s College of cals have known about a previously a single most-recent common Engineering, appeared in be used in batteries and unidentified species for years. ancestor exclusive to them?” the journal ChemSusChem. supercapacitors. It suggests that about 50 “If we were to recycle This year, that catfish got a name, Sundolyra latebrosa, after the percent of the mass of a all of the scrap tires, that Academy was contacted by a tire could be converted to would translate into 1.5 colleague in Singapore asking for carbon powder that can million tons of carbon, help gathering information about which is half of the annual the bony skeleton. global production of graph- Despite the specimen’s poor ite,” says Drexel researcher state of preservation, this Yury Gogotsi. international team of scientists Sarcolobus The process entails was able to determine that the cambogensis, fish, known to reach only about Cambodia pretreating the tires and 2 inches in length, was different heating them in a special from other catfishes in the family tube-shaped furnace, and Bagridae, in that it had an eel- then depositing the resul- like body, no spine on the leading fin on its back and less bone tant carbon on a thin film. projecting from the back of its In addition to Gogotsi, co- skull. The species most closely authors of the paper include resembles Olyra longicaudatus, Muhammad Boota, a doc- but Sundolyra latebrosa has a dorsal fin farther forward on toral candidate in Gogotsi’s its body that also features a lab; and Oak Ridge’s Amit long spine instead of a flexible Naskar, Yunchao Li, Ko- ray, the spines of side fins are kooubi Akato and Parans smooth without serrations, and the tail fine has more fin rays, Paranthaman. among other distinct features.

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GEOLOGY PALEONTOLOGY _SCIENCE UNDERFOOT _DIMETRODON DISCOVERY

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University celebrated the 200th A prehistoric fossil is “discovered” in the anniversary of the geological map that laid the foundation for earth science University’s collections and finally classified with a rare public viewing this year. with its close relatives, 160 years after being dug out of the ground.

ince 1845, a segment “They were able to zero in of an upper jawbone on unique features of this Swith serrated, inches- specimen that we’ve suspect- long teeth has resided on ed for a long time,” says Ted a shelf at the Academy of Daeschler, the Academy’s Natural Sciences of Drexel vice president for systemic _TED DAESCHLER University under the name biology and the library. “The Daeschler is an associate professor in Bathygnathus borealis. images they were able to the College of Arts But like many of the develop allowed them to say and Sciences and millions of specimens at the ‘This is a pelycosaur, specifi- associate curator of vertebrate zoology Academy, this 270-million- cally Dimetrodon.’” and vice president for year-old fossil still had a Dimetrodon is believed to be systematic biology and the library at the story to tell. the first land-based animal Academy of Natural Researchers from the to sport “ziphodont” teeth Sciences. University of Toronto Mis- meant for ripping flesh. mong the artifacts sissauga, Carleton Univer- The jaw was initially dis- housed within the sity and the Royal Ontario covered in Canada on Prince A collections of the Museum, led by Kirstin Edward Island in 1845. A Academy of Natural Sci- Brink, used the Academy’s farmer was digging a new ences are many remarkable fossil specimen to deter- well when the fossil was items that never see the mine that Bathygnathus discovered nine feet down light of day. borealis was not actually a nestled in red sandstone. At least, until one cel- unique kind of animal. With no natural history ebrates an anniversary. By scanning and study- museum in Canada at the A massive map of Great ing the eight preserved time, the specimen was sold Britain created by geologist teeth in the jaw, the to Joseph Leidy, a promi- William Smith in 1815 was researchers found the nent paleontologist and brought out this year in evidence they needed to curator of the Academy. honor of its 200th birth- change the classification Leidy presented and day. It was the world’s of the fossil to Dimetrodon, named it at an Academy first nationwide geological high, a necessary size to a “mammal-like reptile” scientific meeting in 1845. map, and it helped develop “This was the first meet Smith’s specification that lived 40 million years “He called it Bathygnathus stratigraphy and biostratig- detailed geological of five miles to the inch. before the first dinosaurs. borealis, which means ‘deep raphy as we know it. Smith’s expertise came jaw from the north,’ basical- When Smith created map, and maps from years as a land sur- GOT_BACK ly,” says Daeschler. “That’s his map, scientists were like these are the veyor and canal builder, Featured in the 1959 movie how it was back then. They still debating the origin mapping coal formations “Journey to the Center of the just stood up at those meet- and structure of the earth. foundation for doing and assessing values for Earth” and many children’s ings and presented.” Smith’s brilliance came landowners. toys, Dimetrodon was a with a deeper understand- earth science. To be “Smith began to put four-legged animal with a ing of the continuity of able to express on evidence together about spiny, sail-like back ridge. strata (stratigraphy) and the geological formations the use of fossils within a map the geology that were encountered those layers to help with underfoot in a sen- in coal mines and as they correlation (biostratig- surveyed or dug canals,” raphy). Both of these are sible and usable way says Daeschler. “He began foundational ideas in to realize that geology was unraveling the history of was a huge step.” predictable; that you can the planet. Ted Daschler, Academy of map it and understand that The map shows England, Natural Sciences a sequence in one area is Wales and part of Scotland often repeated in another and it measures about five area. That was all some- feet wide and nearly 10 feet what revolutionary.”

EXELmagazine.org 33 _NATURE / ENVIRONMENT

VOLCANOLOGY ECOLOGY _WHAT REALLY KILLED THEM? _BREATHING LIFE BACK INTO BROOKTROUT LAKE

A new theory suggests that the dinosaurs’ fate A group of ecologists prove that recovery is possible for lake ecosystems was sealed by not just one, but two separate devastated by acid rain — and that clean air regulations do work. disasters around 66 million years ago. rooktrout lake was hen an enormous aster- once teeming with oid struck the planet B the speckled fish after W66 million years ago, a which it is named, but by worldwide quake shook the the 1980s, it had become 1990s magma plumbing of a mas- one of hundreds of lakes TO sive, active volcano — radi- and ponds in the Adiron- 2000s cally changing its style of dacks of upstate New York As the lake slowly eruption and hastening the _LOYC that were devoid of fish. end of the age of dinosaurs. VANDERKLUYSEN The culprit: acid rain from stabilized, phy- Vanderkluysen is an toplankton and This sequence of events assistant professor the burning of fossil fuels. zooplankton species is supported by a new study in the Department of The bodies of water in recovered. published last year in the Biodiversity, Earth & this region are among the Environmental Sci- Geological Society of America ence in the College of most impacted by acid depo- Bulletin by a team of scien- Arts and Sciences. sition in the United States. tists, including Drexel Uni- But reductions in sulfur versity volcanologist Loÿc presented in the new paper dioxide emissions over the Vanderkluysen, and led by suggests that the impact past three decades, fostered geologists at UC Berkeley. coincided with a major shift by federal environmental 2005 Evidence for this in the volcano’s activity. regulations, have allowed colossal, catastrophic “Suddenly, the flows are the pH of the Adirondack chain reaction came from much larger, the morphology lakes to stabilize over time When the waters geological features of a is different and the chemical — giving scientists a unique had improved massive lava flow field in composition is different,” opportunity to attempt to enough, scientists central-southern India Vanderkluysen explains. reintroduce fish to the lake. reintroduced fish to known as the Deccan Traps. “This was an existing Two researchers from the lake. Lava erupted in this region massive volcanic sys- the Academy of Natural for half a million years or tem that had been there Sciences of Drexel Univer- more. The event occurred probably several million sity — Donald Charles and 2010 very close, in geologic time, years, and the impact gave Frank Acker — were part to the major asteroid strike this thing a shake and it of a nine-institution group off the coast of Mexico 66 mobilized a huge amount that has spent two decades Within five years, million years ago. In fact, of magma over a short documenting changes in the brook trout were for a time, it was believed amount of time,” says team the lake and their effects able to successfully that the asteroid strike had leader Mark Richards in on species such as bacteria reproduce. triggered the eruption. UC Berkeley’s press release. and fish. It has since been estab- “The beauty of this theory Their research, which By 2005, the waters had This achievement was lished that the eruption was is that it is very testable, was published in 2015 in the improved enough that sci- the first demonstration of already underway before the because it predicts that you journal Environmental Science entists decided to re-intro- food chain recovery through asteroid hit, but evidence should have the impact and Technology, marks the duce fish to the lake. re-introduction and re- and the beginning of the most comprehensive long- In the paper, the re- establishment of fish in a LAVA_OCEAN extinction, and within term study of how acidifica- searchers describe the com- region that had been heavily This mountainous region is 100,000 years or so you tion affects lake ecosystems plex process by which they affected by acid deposition. part of a massive lava flow should have these mas- to date. reconstructed historical Most significantly, the field in central-southern sive eruptions coming out, The researchers docu- conditions, re-introduced study underscores the India known as the Deccan which is about how long it mented the water quality tagged fish to the lake and success of national and Traps. The lava that flowed might take for the magma and aquatic plant and ani- then meticulously moni- international environmen- there millions of years ago to reach the surface.” mal life recovery through- tored changes in the lake’s tal regulations that limit was so abundant that an area out the 1990s and 2000s. species and water chemistry pollutants, enabling nature the size of Texas would have They discovered that, as over time. to begin its healing process. been submerged a mile deep. lakes recover, more species Finally, in 2010, the “Although it took a long of phytoplankton and zoo- researchers discovered time, the recovery of fish in plankton were found, thus that the brook trout could Brooktrout Lake shows that beginning to rebuild the not only survive but also the reduction in emissions food chain. reproduce. did pay off,” says Charles.

34 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

_LAW OF THE JUNGLE, IGNORED On Equatorial Guinea’s island of Bioko, rising prosperity and lax conservation enforcement have devastated the population of primates and other animals prized by consumers as “bushmeat” delicacies.

hirteen years of data Total number collected by a team of carcasses of researchers on the 120 T Total number of island of Bioko show how primate carasses ineffective the country’s lax 100 environmental conservation laws were in stemming the 80 growth of illegal hunting.

The team’s full dataset 60 from their long-running study was published for the first time last year in the 40 journal PLOS One. Researchers tallied 20 the types and amounts Number of carcasses recorded for sale during the 13-year of bushmeat sold at mar- study. At the peak of recorded activity in 2010, on any given 0 day, more than 30 freshly killed primates, such as Bioko 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 ket in the capital city of red-eared monkeys and drills, were brought to market. Malabo between 1997 and 2010 and measured the BUSHMEAT_BULL_MARKET increases in relation to 18,000 other Shown are the total number of animals and primates the country’s prosperity The most over 4,100 birds captured on Bioko overall for bushmeat between 1997 and and other political and abundant nearly 2010. Market growth was consistent over time for overall species legal conditions. With the hunted was 59,000 carcasses, as the mean number of carcasses per market discovery of offshore oil, the Blue LARGE day increased progressively over three periods: 1997–2003, Duiker, MAMMALS the island’s prosperity representing 2003–2008 and 2008–2012. In the later years of the study, over has increased, and so has 25% of all endangered monkeys became more frequently hunted. carcasses. 80,900 demand for the meat. over 35,200 RODENTS The legal protections MONKEYS Equatorial Guinea enacted in 2007 to limit hunting and sales of primates were BIO_HOTSPOT not upheld — and even Bioko, part of the nation backfired to the point of Equatorial Guinea, is where bushmeat hunting a volcanic island in the Gulf of Guinea located off actually increased. the coast of Cameroon in The study was conducted central Africa. Bioko’s as part of the Bioko Biodi- 01 02 03 04 tropical coastal and versity Protection Program, mountain forests are a a joint venture of Drexel 01. Bioko black relatively understudied University and the National colobus biodiversity hotspot 02. Golden-bellied and home to numerous University of Equato- crowned monkey species of threat- rial Guinea. The program 05 06 07 03. Bioko Preuss’s ened and endangered monkey was established in 1998 by monkeys at risk from 04. Bioko drill Gail Hearn, now a Drexel ENDEMIC_PRIMATES monkey commercial hunting. emeritus professor. After A later study by the team found that all 05. Bioko Stampfli’s putty-nosed her retirement in 2014, it of the island’s monkeys were vulner- monkey was taken over by Associate able to heavy hunting except Cercopi- 06. Bioko red-eared Professor Mary Katherine thecus erythrotis (6), Cercopithecus monkey 07. Pennant’s red Gonder. Drew Cronin, PhD nictitans (5) and Cercopithecus preussi colobus environmental science ’14, (3), with the Procolobus pennantii (7) BIOKO ISLAND was the study’s lead author. being especially vulnerable.

EXELmagazine.org 35 _FEATURE

Nicole Arcilla story By Mike Unger

In Ghana, over half of all forest understory birds have vanished in just 15 years as unchecked illegal logging, economic stress and demand for African timber take their toll on the nation’s rainforests. _by Mike Unger

36 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

One calm, moonless night in the Ghanaian rainforest, Nicole Arcilla heard the rumble of an approaching truck. ¶ Arcilla was camping in the forest with special permission from the Ghana government to conduct research on the impact of logging on local wildlife populations. During the two-year project, she often slept outdoors so that she could start work before dawn, when the forest’s array of beautiful birds chirp to life, greeting the sun. ¶ No one else was

supposed to be there at night. ¶ “Our truck was The study, published last year in Biological Conserva- parked in the middle of the road, and we had tion, compared data collected by Arcilla between 2008 to move it so they could pass,” she recalls. “I and 2010 to a previous study of the forest’s birds 15 years thought, ‘Wait a second. The only reason they’re earlier, from 1993 to 1995. Comparing her findings to the earlier data gave Arcilla _NICOLE ARCILLA here is to do something illegal.’” Arcilla is a post- a rare chance to measure doctoral research Arcilla, a postdoctoral research associate in the Biodiversity, the long-term effects of logging activities on forest birds, associate in the Biodiversity, Earth Earth & Environmental Sciences Department in Drexel’s and the results were alarming. & Environmental College of Arts and Sciences, reported the illegal loggers to Between 1995 and 2010, the level of legal and illegal log- Science Department the authorities, but she had little hope that anything would ging in Ghana’s forests shot up more than 600 percent, and in the College of Arts and Sciences. come of it. Hardly a day passed in the forest without her or over half of Ghana’s birds disappeared. someone on her team seeing evidence of illegal activities. Environmentalists everywhere have taken note. An on- Although the West African nation is a peaceful, vibrant line petition asking the president of Ghana to crack down democracy, enforcement of its forestry and wildlife laws is on illegal logging has garnered more than 40,000 signa- extremely weak, a fact Arcilla and her co-researchers un- tures, and the results of the study have been published by covered in a study that sheds light on the serious effects media around the globe. both legal and illegal logging are having on the country’s un- “To our knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed scien- derstory bird populations. tific study that links illegal logging to declines in forest wildlife,” Arcilla says. “Illegal logging is a major problem in many countries with tropical forests, which sustain most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. If the world doesn’t take this issue seriously, I think we’re going to be losing a lot more global biodiversity — birds, other wildlife, and a lot more of our forests — in our lifetimes.”

EXELmagazine.org 37 _FEATURE

found 13 times more evidence of poachers (gun cartridges, snare traps, hunting camps, etc.) than evidence of mammals (tracks and feces) in logging concessions. Previous research by British primatologist John Oates and colleagues documented the global extinction of an endemic West African monkey from Ghana and neighboring Côté d’Ivoire due to the combined effects of uncontrolled hunting and habitat loss; many other forest primates, including Western chimpanzees, teeter on the brink of extinction in Ghana. Gilbert Adum, a Ghanaian graduate student who conducted amphibian research alongside Arcilla’s team, found Growing up on the central coast of California, Arcilla was en- that the habitat loss and damage in Ghana’s forests was chanted by nature in wild places such as Big Sur and Yosemite. threatening native forest amphibians and drawing inva- In high school she won a scholarship to study in Ger- sive amphibian species into their domain — another clear many, which sparked her love of travel. Marrying the two, indication that Ghana’s forest reserves are in danger, Arcil- however, would have to wait until after she earned her la says. Adum is now executive director of Save the Frogs! undergraduate degree from Yale University. She had her Ghana, an organization working to advance conservation eye on medical school until four years in the Peace Corps in Ghana’s forests. as an environmental protection volunteer took her to the Arcilla had originally planned to study just the effects of tropical Pacific islands, the Caribbean, and Gabon and Togo legal logging on the understory bird populations, but she in tropical Africa. Her experiences during those years con- quickly saw that illegal logging was a major problem, mak- vinced her of the urgency of working to understand and ing up as much as 80 percent of Ghana’s logging activity. protect the planet’s increasingly imperiled wild nature. “It turned out to be everywhere,” she says. So she pivoted her career and academic goals, earning One day, when her team was in the forest doing bird a master’s degree in natural resources from Cornell Uni- surveys, a truck with a sticker on the windshield that said versity, and her PhD in wildlife ecology and management “CASH” rambled past with a cargo of boards covered by a from the University of Georgia. For her dissertation re- tarp. The boards were clearly cut into lumber. search she went to the Peruvian Amazon to study the ef- “In Ghana, that means it’s not a logging company,” says fects of logging on birds. Arcilla. “Companies take out the whole tree and then take In 2008 she landed a job in Ghana with the Zoological it to a mill, so when you see boards being taken directly out Society of London working closely with logging companies of the forest, you know it’s illegal.” to monitor the impacts of their practices on the forests and The more that she learned to recognize the signs, the wildlife. She used the two years she spent in the field there more she saw: “We’d arrive at a protected forest that was as the basis for her forest birds study. supposed to be recovering from a legal logging operation It’s important to note that controlled, minimal and care- years ago, and instead we’d find that illegal loggers had fully managed logging, while possibly disruptive to an eco- punched big holes in the forest by cutting many huge trees, system, can be sustainable, says Nat Annorbah, a Ghanaian the sawdust still fresh.” who helped Arcilla set up her research project. He is the au- Logging — both legal and illegal — has other unintend- thor of a new study, related to Arcilla’s, which shows that ed consequences for Ghana’s forests. Roads built to give African Grey Parrots have nearly been wiped out in Ghana trucks access to the timber make it easier for poachers to due to habitat loss and the pet trade. enter the forest. “However, the rampant and indiscriminate excessive “Snare traps are against the law, but we saw them every- Arcilla had originally logging currently practiced in Ghana inevitably alters where,” Arcilla says. “In some cases a single trapper can set planned to study just the both the macro- and micro-environments for many species, hundreds of snares that kill indiscriminately and often go effects of legal logging resulting in unsuitable habitats which means that many unchecked. Shotgun hunting is only legally allowed during on the understory bird species fail to flourish,” says Annorbah, now a teaching certain times of the year for certain species, but we found populations, but she doctoral candidate at England’s Manchester Metropolitan poachers using guns throughout the year, and many told us quickly saw that illegal University. “This situation ultimately results in species they felt compelled to kill any animal that could be eaten logging was a major population declines and the eventual loss of biodiversity.” or sold. We also repeatedly observed evidence of poachers problem, making up as Mammals and amphibians also are suffering. Arcilla’s using dogs, traps and setting fires to smoke out animals, all much as 80 percent of team found mammal abundance five times lower in logged practices that are illegal, but common.” Ghana’s logging activity. forest compared with unlogged forest, and she’s not the only researcher to document problems in Ghana’s forests. Sylvain Gatti, a French primatologist who conducted transect surveys for mammals as part of Arcilla’s team,

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“This is the first study to our knowledge that links illegal logging to declines in forest birds. The crux of our study was that over a 15- year period for which we have empirical data, we’ve shown that over half of Ghana’s forest understory birds have disappeared. If the world doesn’t take this issue seriously, I think we’re going to be losing a lot of biodiversity — birds, other animals, and a lot of our forests.”

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“These are forest birds. Like other forest species, they may persist in logged forests that are protected from excessive damage, but they cannot survive in farmland or urban areas.”

“In general, the illegal logging and poaching are so nor- 01 02 mal and accepted in Ghana that people don’t even really think about it — it’s all out in the open,” says Arcilla. “Many people prefer to eat ‘bushmeat’ — or wildlife — rather than meat from readily available domestic animals like chicken or goat, or fish. Even many poor people pay more to eat wildlife because it is considered a delicacy.” When it comes to wildlife protection, incidences of law enforcement are few and far between. Almost all of Ghana’s legally logged timber is exported to wealthier nations in Europe, North America and Asia, where it fetches a much higher price than it would at home. Ghana’s policy of exporting almost all of its legal timber leaves the country’s own burgeoning population — it has increased fivefold in the past 60 years — struggling to find the materials it needs to build. In fact, Arcilla says, there is little legal timber for sale on Ghana’s domestic market — the vast majority of it is illegal, and much of this illegal timber is sold in neighboring 06 07 African countries. Independent studies by multiple researchers, both Ghana- ian and foreign, estimate that logging in Ghana is proceed- ing at four times the sustainable rate. “This is effectively deforestation,” Arcilla says. “If the current trajectory is not altered, Ghana could lose much of its remaining forest in the next 25 years.” Which leaves the forest birds of Ghana with no place to go. One might ask why they can’t simply fly away and relo- cate elsewhere, to which the answer is “what elsewhere?” Ghana has already lost 80 percent of its precolonial forest, says Arcilla. “Take away the forests, and the forest wildlife goes with them,” she says. To measure the impacts on birdlife, Arcilla spent 80 days at 27 sites in 15 forests counting birds. She and her team set up 10 fine mesh nets that immobilize birds without harming 11 12 them and counted the birds they caught every 20 to 25 minutes before releasing them back into the forest. Among the species they found was the Red-fronted Ant- pecker, a songbird the size of a sparrow that is considered threatened with extinction in the near future by the IUCN, or International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “We caught only two pairs of them in a single location in a single forest. This bird has a very limited range, and this finding shows you how vulnerable they are; if a logging operation is done in that area, and the birds are already on the brink, that could contribute to wiping out a species,” Arcilla says. “These are forest birds. Like other forest species, they may persist in logged forests that are protected from excessive damage, but they cannot survive in farmland or urban areas.”

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BIRD_ IN_HAND During the two years that Nicole Arcilla spent netting 03 04 05 and counting Ghana’s birds, she collected 20,000 photos, mostly of birds and other wildlife. Many of the species native to Ghana’s forests could not survive outside the forest’s canopy.

01. Red-fronted Antpecker 02. Fraser’s Sunbird 03. African Goshawk 04. Blue-billed Malimbe 08 09 10 05. Forest Robin 06. Finsch’s Fly- catcher Thrush 07. Red-chested Owlet 08. Blue-headed Crested Flycatcher 09. African Dwarf Kingfisher 10. Bristle-nosed Barbet 11. Western Long-tailed Hornbill 12. Finsch’s Fly- catcher Thrush 13. Blue-headed Wood Dove 14. Latham’s Forest Francolin 13 14 15 15. Green Hylia 16. Rufous-sided Broadbill 17. Black-headed Paradise Fly- catcher 18. Western Bluebill 19. Grey-headed Bristlebill 20. Red-thighed Sparrowhawk

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Illegal logging was far less prevalent 15 years ago, when Arcilla’s co-author Lars Holbech conducted his earlier study of Ghana’s birds in many of the same forests. Holbech, who is on the faculty in the Department of Animal Biology and Conservation Science at the University of Ghana, says that the severe impact on the area’s biodiversity appears relatively irreversible. “Compared to two decades ago, the problem has more than doubled, literally,” Holbech says. “Heavily logged areas will require 50 to 100 years to recover, but some rare species may a deal with Norway to accept payments to shift from log- be in danger of local extinction.” ging its forests to protecting them, while including forest communities as beneficiaries. The White-necked Picathartes is a sort-of white whale for “This partnership shows tremendous foresight and lead- bird watchers. Thought to have gone extinct from Ghana, ership,” Arcilla says. “I hope it will inspire other such part- it was rediscovered in 2003 by American museum collectors nerships, where wealthy countries step in to assist develop- — sparking efforts by the Ghana Wildlife Society to protect ing countries to save their forests before it’s too late.” the species in the forests where it has survived. Liberia’s partnership with Norway is an example of an To Arcilla, at least, the bird provides a symbol of hope for approach called “direct payments for biodiversity conserva- all of Ghana’s wildlife. tion,” which has been used in other places where poverty is “I do see solutions,” she says, “but for these to succeed, an obstacle to conservation. serious conservation steps need to be taken, and there is no In Cambodia, for example, local farmers and hunters time to lose.” were rewarded for safeguarding the nesting sites of nine First, she says, until the government of Ghana effec- bird species threatened by the collection of eggs and chicks. tively tackles its illegal logging problem, it should put a Since the program’s inception in 2003, it has protected moratorium on exporting timber. “There is simply not more than 2,700 nests over more than 1,200 miles of habi- enough timber left in Ghana’s forests to supply the world tat. Local people were directly paid about $65 to $120 per market and its own growing population,” she says. “Right nest and the overall program cost $30,000 a year to operate, now they are trying to have their cake and eat it, too: making it relatively affordable. Exporting large volumes of timber for foreign consump- The protected nests produced far more fledglings than tion and allowing a high level of illegal logging to feed control nests, and the population of three of the species domestic demand.” increased during the program, though results weren’t uni- ”It’s basically a free-for-all,” she says. “Imagine if we form. The program did nothing to influence other threats to had no traffic police on our streets. People would be speed- species, such as clear-cutting for development, and at least ing and running stoplights.” one species declined regardless of the effort. A tentatively Limiting the timber trade is easier said than done, of optimistic evaluation of the program published in 2012 in course. Ghana’s economy, like many in Africa, is dependent Biological Conservation concluded, “Direct payments can be a on its natural resources. Ghana is Africa’s second-biggest highly effective conservation tool in those cases where pay- producer of gold after South Africa, and it’s also rich in ments correctly target the cause of biodiversity loss.” diamonds, bauxite and oil. But the government was forced In Ghana, one idea that might work would be to pay res- to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund last idents to patrol the forests or to gate and maintain road year and the recent plunge in oil prices has worsened the closures after logging company trucks depart, so the roads Heavily logged areas will country’s economic options. can’t be used by illegal loggers. require 50 to 100 years On the other hand, tourism has been growing in Ghana “Direct payments for conservation has great potential,” to recover, but some rare and is an increasing source of revenue, Arcilla notes. says Arcilla. “If local people can financially benefit from species could face local Back to the White-necked Picathartes: It’s a very charis- conservation I think they will rally to the cause.” extinction in that time. matic bird and very rare — only about 10,000 exist. “Peo- The problem is not going to go away by itself, says Arcilla. ple will pay thousands of dollars to join birding tours to But if urgent, effective action is taken, she says, and those come see them and other African wildlife,” Arcilla says. working for forest conservation in Ghana receive the help But ecotourism alone can’t replace logging revenues, and support they need, Ghana’s remaining rainforests can Arcilla acknowledges, and investments are needed to moti- be saved. vate governments to keep forests standing. “What gives me hope is knowing some wonderful people A big step in this direction was recently taken by the in Ghana who are fighting to protect their forests and wild- neighboring West African country of Liberia, which made life,” she says. “But they can’t do it alone. Like anything, it’s going to take a political shift, and conservation-minded partners to help them in this fight. Ultimately, it’s not up to anybody except the people of Ghana. It’s in their hands; it’s their country.”

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“Direct payments for conservation has great potential. If local people can financially benefit from conservation I think they will rally to the cause.”

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_B T S IN THE BLO DSTREAM

An international team of roboticists is collaborating on a groundbreaking treatment for blocked arteries that would put swarms of microscopic, magnetically controlled robotic beads directly inside blood vessels. _by Jen A. Miller / illustrations by Joe Lertola, Bryan Christie Design

any children of the ’80s remember “Innerspace,” the Steven Spielberg sci-fi comedy starring Dennis Quaid M as man miniaturized inside a tiny submersible during a secret experiment and injected into a human body. Not everyone who saw the movie thought tiny machines moving through the body were possible. Min Jun Kim did. And he’s trying to make it happen. “It was a science fiction movie, but it didn’t seem out of reach to me,” jokes Kim, who is a professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics and director of the Biological Actuation Sensing & Transport Laboratory (BASTLab), one of only a small handful of micro and nanorobot research groups in the United States. Kim has spent his career combining microorganisms with engineering controls to create novel types of biomi- crotechnology. As a doctoral student and now as the director of the BASTLab, Kim has tested ways to co-opt the movements of bacteria and protozoa — and later inorganic, biodegradeable beads that move like flagellated bacteria — to get them to perform tasks inside a fluid environment. Now, he’s putting his bio-inspired micro and nanorobotics knowledge to work as a member of a new, ambitious international research initiative that aims to create a minimally invasive nanorobotic toolkit for clearing fully blocked arteries within five years. _FEATURE

The $18 million project combines 11 institutions that are home to some of the top roboticists and engineers in the world, including ETH Zürich, Seoul National University, Hanyang University and Samsung Medical Center, among others. The project is backed by the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technologies and organized by the Daegu Gyeongbuk In- stitute of Sciences and Technology, a government-funded research entity in South Korea. Kim’s team, which includes Drexel post-doctoral researcher U Kei Cheang, is the only member of the group from the United States. Kim is already well on his way to having a working model and will test the technology in animal models as early as this summer. “Microrobotics is still a rather nascent field of study, and very much in its infancy when it comes to medical applications,” Kim says. “Microrobots are scalable, easily manipulated and non-disruptive to the human body; they can do many things, such as deliver medication to tumors or unclog arteries, without using open surgery. A project like this, because it is supported by leading institutions and has such a challenging goal, is an opportunity to push medicine and microbotics into a new and exciting place.”

BEADS AND MAGNETS This is only the first year of a five-year partnership, but Kim has been refining the science of his design for a long time already. Kim’s microrobots, which he calls “microswimmers,” are chains of three or more flexible iron-oxide particles, rigidly linked together through chemical bonds and magnetic force. In a series of papers published in Physical Review, Applied Physics Letters and the Journal of Nanoparticle Research in 2014 and 2015, Kim and his research team chronicle their progress in achieving control over the beads. In lab tests, using an external electromagnetic field to actuate and control the microswimmers, they’ve been able to combine beads into chains and disperse them at will. They’ve also propelled two different microswimmers in opposite directions simultaneously in the same fluid environment. And they’ve moved the pair Each microswimmer consists of three beads made of magnetic iron- at the same and at different speeds, too. oxide. To bind the beads strongly to each other, some are coated with the small molecule biotin and others with the bacterial protein strepta- “We can control speed, direction, orientation, docking and undocking,” Kim says. “It vidin. The biotin-streptavidin bond is one of the strongest noncovalent was truly a challenge to develop a 2D/3D magnetic field control system with micro and interactions in nature. nanoscale precision as well as control theories and algorithms for in vivo environments.” The beads are so small — 4.40 micrometers in diameter, about half the size of a red Kim modeled the corkscrew movements of his micro- blood cell and a third of the size of a white blood cell — that they can glide easily through swimmers after a bacterium that wreaks havoc in the body the bloodstream. by burrowing through healthy tissue. Borrelia burgdorferi, The beads are put in motion by an external magnetic field the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, is classified by its that causes each bead to rotate. Because they are linked togeth- “Microrobots are spiral shape, which enables its movement. Kim hopes to er, their individual rotations propel them forward in a twist- scalable, easily harness the malicious structure and motion that makes ing corkscrew pattern, ideal for burrowing through arterial Lyme so destructive to improve lives instead. plaque to loosen blockages in the bloodstream. manipulated and “This international collaboration is a way to grab onto The team’s plan is to use the microswimmers in concert non-disruptive to the opportunity to introduce our robots to the world,” says with a probe that resembles a tiny drill, which is being de- Kim. “If our microrobots can drill through clogged arteries, signed by another member of the team, Professor of Robot- the human body; it would help many people who suffer from atherosclerosis.” ics and Intelligent Systems Bradley Nelson at ETH Zürich. A catheter will be used to deliver the microswimmers and the they can do many THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM drill directly to the blocked artery. From there, the swim- things, such as Heart disease is the world’s largest public health problem, mers would push their way into the blockage, after which responsible for killing more than 375,000 Americans each the drill would clear it completely. deliver medication year — more than any other cause of death. Medical re- The Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute asked Kim to be involved in to tumors or search has raced to keep up with treatments as the number the project because the organizers believed he might be able to of cardiovascular operations and procedures has grown by help them achieve better control over the drill robot, Kim says. unclog arteries, nearly a third to 7.6 million between 2000 and 2010, accord- “But they would also like to see if our beads can do the drill- without using ing to statistics compiled by the American Heart Association. ing,” he says. “Our tool is easier to fabricate; theirs requires at The most common type of heart disease, atherosclerosis of least a week to manufacture.” open surgery.” the coronary arteries, happens when the vessels that supply As Kim and the team envision it, a trained surgeon will blood to the heart become narrowed by a buildup of choles- control the microswimmers’ speed and direction inside a patient by manipulating an ex- terol and plaque on their inner walls. ternal magnetic device made up of electromagnetic coils, similar to a mini-MRI. Kim has engineered a couple of these devices, each about the size of a tissue box, to steer and manipulate micro and nanorobot prototypes in his lab. During the next couple of years, other researchers in the partnership will develop a sophisticated version of the device that doctors can use to direct surgeries. The partnership anticipates testing the technology in lab and clinical settings within in the next four years.

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If those arteries become blocked suddenly, a heart attack results. But for about 10 percent of patients, blockage builds up slowly, and an individual may walk around for several months or more with a fully blocked artery, experiencing fatigue and chest pain as his heart slowly starves for oxygen. This slow-motion heart attack is known as chronic total occlusion, and it’s the condition that most interests the researchers assembled by the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute. It used to be that the only treatment for a totally blocked artery was open-heart bypass surgery. In the past few years, cardiologists have had increasing success using angioplasty and stents to treat total occlusions. Angioplasty pushes out the blockage by expanding the artery with a balloon-like probe, while stents are mesh-like structures placed inside blood vessels to create a channel for blood to flow through. MEDICINE INSPIRED BY PATHOGENS But overall success rates for treating total blockages using stents and angioplasty can vary, Bacteria — their movements, their shapes — have depending on the condition of the patient and the skill of the surgeon, from 60 percent to 85 been at the root of Kim’s robotics since he was a percent — far below the 98 percent success rate that can be achieved in patients with partial doctoral student at Brown University. blockages. And blockages are known to recur inside stents 10 to 20 percent of the time, with At Brown, Kim experimented with a strain of E. many patients needing another procedure within a year of insertion. coli bacteria that had been genetically modified by That’s too many failed procedures, especially for an organ as important and delicate as Howard Berg, a Harvard University physics professor the heart. (Kim would later become a postdoctoral fellow at This is where micro and nanorobotics comes in. the Rowland Institute at Harvard) to have a varying The tools being developed by the Daegu Gyeongbuk team promise to be less invasive than number of flagella. Flagella are lash-like append- a stent placement, and could also cut down on the risk of post-surgery complications. Many ages that propel certain microorganisms; by altering stents are made of metal that become part of the permanent wall of the blood vessel and their number, the organism’s rotation speed can be sometimes trigger the development of scars or clots at the stent site. The beads that Kim controlled by external factors, such as chemicals, has developed are made of materials that won’t trigger an immune response and that will specific wavelengths of light and electric fields. degrade in the body without leaving a trace or damaging the integrity of the artery wall. Kim’s idea was to harness E. coli’s motility as a sort of motor to power other things, and in 2006, MILE MARKER ONE he attached the bacteria to the bottom of a micro- The crucial test for the Daegu Gyeongbuk team will be to successfully translate lab results fabricated structure to create a bacteria-powered to human studies. Kim’s microswimmers will be first tested in mice in 2016 and then in microrobot. He successfully showed that the increasingly complex mammals over the next few years. hybrid could be used for micro-manipulation and Kim has already shown that the technology works “in the glass” — that is, in a controlled obstacle avoidance. liquid environment. In videos produced in his lab, microswimmers are filmed conducting That same year, Kim came to Drexel, where his small orchestrated tasks like moving toward targets and mimicking pre-set patterns and interests shifted toward applications that could shapes, such as the outlines of the letters D and U (a microscale nod to Drexel University). improve human health, one of the main tenets of Inside the surging arteries of a human body, however, fluid dynamics are relatively chaotic. Drexel’s translational research mission. And while “We have a lot of trial and error to do, but I’m excited,” says Kim. his experiments had shown promise of having some It’s a goal with a huge payoff. Nanobots have potential beyond just treating blocked ar- practical applications, E. coli is still E. coli. Even teries. If they can be successfully steered inside the body, they could bring unprecedented modified to reduce its innate toxicity, E. coli has the precision to many medical treatments. potential to startle the immune system and throw the Kim is studying ways to make microswimmer beads move in swarms and work together body into chaos. “People don’t want bacteria inside toward a common goal, such as delivering doses of drugs in effective quantities to a target site them,” Kim says simply. in the body. For instance, after they’ve helped to clear an artery, his microswimmers could Kim continued to dabble in experiments involving disperse and deliver anti-coagulant medication directly to the affected area to prevent clotting. artificially magnetotactic (prone to self-align with Another possibility is that medicated beads could be injected close to a disease site in the the Earth’s magnetic field) protozoa until 2011, but body and moved to the precise target. by then his team had largely switched their focus to “For cancers that have antigens, microrobots could deliver the antibodies right to the man-made biodegradeable particles, such as the mi- tumor site,” Kim says. “Or the structure and movement of the microrobots could allow croswimmers he is currently studying as a treatment them to penetrate through the cancer membrane, vastly increasing drug effectiveness.” for blocked arteries. Kim is able to move a microswimmer with a margin of error of less than 2 microns — Not only do non-cell-based materials eliminate the which would be valuable in surgeries where precision and nimbleness are essential, such risk of an immune system response, but magnets as brain operations. promised to be a more accurate and safer way to di- “Given what we’ve shown so far, nanorobots could be deployed and not damage a single rect their creations around the body — with no need neuron,” Kim says. to convince a skeptical public that their tool isn’t a Kim hasn’t stopped seeing his dream up on screen in the years since Dennis Quaid land- dangerous pathogen. ed a tiny craft on Martin Short’s optic nerve in “Innerspace.” Shows like “Arrow,” “Futura- ma” and movies like “GI Joe” have taken the mental leap that Kim hopes to make a reality. “‘Fantastic Voyage’ came out 50 years ago,” Kim says, referring to the 1966 movie about a submarine shrunk small enough for its crew to repair brain damage — a poster of which he keeps on his computer for inspiration. “And to realize this science fiction dream in real life is what we’re working for.”

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MALACOLOGY _TWO CENTURIES OF SHELLS Scientists and naturalists have spent more than 200 years building the Malacology Collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, making it one of the richest and largest collections in the country, and even the world. It’s no wonder, then, that researchers from across the globe are regularly knocking on the Academy’s door, asking for access to it.

he malacology Collection at the Academy of Nat- Tural Sciences of Drexel University is the oldest of its kind in North America, and the third largest in the world. Collection Man- ager Paul Callomon is its gatekeeper. Only he doesn’t keep anything from anyone. The collection is meant to be explored, it’s meant to be used. It’s a record of the natural world with the potential to answer limitless questions. Researchers from around the world come to the Acad- emy to tap into its riches. Many come from countries like Brazil and Singapore, countries that perhaps never had museums or biological collections as old as the Academy’s, to learn more about the biological history of their own country, Callomon says. Within the museum, Academy scientists often discover new species while organizing and cataloging the collection, a seemingly never-ending task when you have more than 8 million specimens collected over two centuries. Recent- ly, Callomon reclassified a a growing role as a “calen- specimen — the spindle dar of climate change.” shell (Fusinus) — that was “We have specimens that new to science but which were collected 150 years had previously grouped in ago and in geological time with existing names. that’s nothing, but in terms 4 “We are discovering new of climate change, that’s stuff in our cabinets all the a big deal,” he says. “You time,” he says. can’t go back in time and While the collection is get these specimens. So, it’s primarily used for system- not necessarily how much atic work like identifying we have in the collection; species or describing new sometimes it’s about how ones, Callomon says, it has old some of this stuff is.”

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1 _ARGOPECTEN LINEOLARIS Lamarck, 1819 Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Venezuela, taken by local fishermen at 30 fathoms. 1980s. 2 _BRACTECHLAMYS CORALLINOIDES d’Orbigny, 1840 Eastern Atlantic Ocean off Punta Teno, Tenerife, Canary Islands; taken by free diver at 22 meters. 2012. 3 _FLEXOPECTEN GLABER Linnaeus, 1758 Ionian Sea off Taranto, Italy; netted by 2 local fishermen. 2010. 4 _CARIBACHLAMYS PELLUCENS Linnaeus, 1758 3 Western Atlantic Ocean off Palm Beach, Florida, in rubble at 65 feet. 1980s.

iimages by rebecca anderson, academy of natural sciences EXELmagazine.org 49 _BODY OF RESEARCH

MALACOLOGY

1 2

1 _SCAEOCHLAMYS SQUAMATA Gmelin, 1791 Sulu Sea off Zamboanga City, Philippines, at 100 meters deep, in a tangle of nets set for shell fishing. 1986. 2 _COMPLICACHLAMYS WARDIANA Iredale 1939 Indian Ocean at Broome, Western Australia; under rocks 4 on a reef. 1985. 3 _ARGOPECTEN GIBBUS Linnaeus, 1758 Caribbean Sea, in seagrass beds on north side of Isla de Coche, Nueva Esparta State, Venezuela; taken by SCUBA diver at night at 45 feet. 1993. 4 _DECATOPECTEN PLICA Linnaeus, 1758 Mindanao Sea off Surigao City, Surigao del Norte Province, Philippines, taken by local fishermen. 2013. 5 _EUVOLA ZICZAC Linnaeus, 1758 Caribbean Sea off La Isleta, Islas Margarita, Nueva Esparta State, Venezuela; dredged in 11–14 meters. 1990s. 6 _MIMACHLAMYS VARIA Linnaeus, 1758 Mediterranean coast of Morocco, by local fishermen. 1980s. 7 _MIRAPECTEN RASTELLUM Lamarck, 1819 Camotes Sea off Nocnocan Island, Bohol Province, Philippines, by local fishermen. 2012.

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These were the attributes that caught the attention of David P. Gillikin, associate professor of geology at Union College in New York, who was searching for freshwater mussels from Africa. The Academy’s database of freshwater mussels happens to be one the collection’s strongest assets. Gillikin and his team are in the middle of a four-year Belgian Flemish Science Foundation-funded project 5 to reconstruct the paleohy- drology and hydroclimate of Africa, using freshwater mussels to study ancient rainfall patterns by comparing shell chemistry and water chemistry over time. They’ve collected modern specimens — anything collected in the past 10 years — in the field but when it came time to examine 6 centuries-old specimens, the Academy’s collection was the clear choice. Gillikin accesses the shells’ chemistry through destructive sampling, which usually means drilling a small hole in the shell and placing the powder in an isotope ratio mass spectrometer. This practice is allowed, Callomon says, when the Academy has multiple examples of a particular species. “Having curators and col- 7 lection managers who are open to this is really useful for this type of work,” says Gillikin. “And luckily, since we’re working with bivalves, we only sample from one of the two shells each animal produces.” His work would not be possible without the Academy’s specimens, he says. “Without the shells from the Academy and the blessing to do destructive sampling, we would have a huge hole in our dataset of African shells.”

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_by Katie Clark

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DESPITE BILLIONS SPENT ON ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS, THE PRECISE CAUSE OF THE DEADLY DISEASE REMAINS A PUZZLE. DREXEL MICROBIOLOGIST AND GENOMICS EXPERT GARTH EHRLICH IS PURSUING AN INTRIGUING NEW THEORY THAT’S GAINING MOMENTUM AMONG SCIENTISTS — ONE THAT SUGGESTS A MICROBIAL INFECTION TRIGGERS THE DEVASTATING SYMPTOMS.

This microscopic image shows bacterial biofilms (shown in green) growing on the middle-ear mucosa of a child with a chronic middle- ear infection. Host nuclei are shown in red. _FEATURE

hen it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, there is no denying the staggering numbers: It affects 5.4 million Americans and claims the No. 6 spot among the leading causes of death in the United States. It is the only one of the nation’s Top 10 killers that cannot be prevented, cured or slowed. Now they’re ready to test the Alzheimer’s chronic-infection hypothesis. For those lucky enough to reach the age With brain samples supplied by the University of Arkansas, Ehrlich has designed a W of 85, roughly half will develop the dis- blinded study of post-mortem samples that uses a commercial pan-domain diagnostics as- ease and likely die from its complications. say and a second, more powerful, pan-domain assay newly developed in his lab, both of “If you live long enough, this is almost an inevitability,” which can identify essentially all species of bacteria present within human tissue. says Aleister Saunders, Drexel’s senior vice provost for re- If the team confirms bacterial infections in the brains of the patients who died of search, who has been studying Alzheimer’s disease since Alzheimer’s, the findings could shift the research paradigm toward the development of the ’90s. tests for bacterial detection in the central nervous system and new treatments for combat- Serious dollars have been spent in the hunt to better ing chronic infections and inflammation. understand the disease — in 2015, Alzheimer’s and other It’s a theory that “deserves to be rigorously tested,” Ehrlich says. dementias cost the nation $236 billion. By 2050, these costs All that’s needed is funding. could rise to $1.1 trillion, according to the Alzheimer’s Asso- ciation. And these figures do not include the loss of wages for family caregivers, which typically equal or even exceed ‘A MOVING TARGET’ the cost of the health care. Still, the disease’s etiology remains unknown. And the Ehrlich has been studying the infectious causes of disease for three decades. He’s an expert research dollars, which are only a fraction of that spent on bacteria and how they communicate with one another, how they grow and spread, how on diseases like HIV and cancer, are not enough, not by far. they function; he’s spent his career marveling at how they’ve evolved over the last four bil- Most research grants go toward studies based on the lion years, including their adaptation to survive modern medical attempts to fight them. widely accepted hypothesis that the disease is caused by One of the ways he believes bacteria cause the long-term ravages of Alzheimer’s is either intracellular neurofibrillary tangles or extracellu- through their ability to form biofilms, which are slimy matrixes of living and dead bacte- lar buildups of sticky beta-amyloid plaques in the brain, ria cells bonded together by DNA, proteins and complex sugars that provide adherence to both of which are thought to interfere with communica- each other and to surfaces in the body. Biofilms congregate on mucosal surfaces; within tion between neurons and lead to inflammation, memory spaces in the body like the sinuses and the cavities of the middle ear; and around foreign loss, cognitive decline and eventually death. It remains objects such as artificial joints and pacemakers. Think of the way plaque forms on teeth unknown, however, whether these processes cause the dis- and harbors cavity-causing bacteria — the plaque is a biofilm. ease, or are merely symptoms. Biofilm formation starts when a single cell attaches to a surface. It waits. Finds friends Garth Ehrlich, an internationally recognized profes- that have attached nearby. They link up, they form colonies, then form slime. Within the sor of microbiology and genomics in Drexel’s College of layers of slime, the innermost cells are able to ramp down into a metabolically dormant Medicine, is one of an increasingly vocal number of sci- state that shields them from antibiotics. entists who think Alzheimer’s research is headed in the They’re also able to swap genes amongst themselves to create new strains, “like sex for wrong direction. bacteria,” Ehrlich explains, only half jokingly. It’s a virulence “Despite the billions that have been spent, we have no ef- phenomenon Ehrlich himself first postulated, known as the dis- fective drugs, we have done nothing to change the natural tributed genome hypothesis. history of the disease,” says Ehrlich. “This stands in stark In one study of long-term infection conducted by Ehrlich in contrast with the other chronic conditions that we deal with the early 2000s, his colleagues collected throat swabs from a child like cancer, stroke and heart disease. For Alzheimer’s we with chronic ear infections, so-named “Patient 19,” for seven have nothing. The approach people are taking is not right.” months — and he found that one strain appeared over and over, Some scientists now believe that chronic microbial in- but kept changing. “This one strain underwent 24 transformation

fection of the brain is the culprit in Alzheimer’s disease. _GARTH EHRLICH events, replacing 8 percent of its genome with pieces of its bud- Chronic infectious disease happens to be Ehrlich’s wheel- Ehrlich is a professor in dies,” Ehrlich notes. house. He and his team have spent years perfecting tools the departments of Mi- The ability to go dormant and to share genes, some of them crobiology & Immunology for studying how bacteria form multicellular and polymi- and Otolaryngology–Head progressively more resistant to antibiotics, makes bacteria living crobial communities that can persist for years as deeply and Neck Surgery in the in biofilms very, very difficult to identify through cell cultures or College of Medicine. He is entrenched infections protected by extracellular matrices also executive director of to eradicate. in the body. the Center for Advanced “Because the cells in a biofilm are transforming and exchang- Microbial Processing and ing genes and creating new strains, the body’s immune system is the Center for Genomic Sciences, both in the always chasing a moving target,” Ehrlich explains. “How do you Institute of Molecular combat something that is always changing?” Medicine and Infectious Disease. And he serves as Ehrlich began studying the way bacteria communicate, collabo- executive director of the rate and colonize into biofilms in 1996, when he befriended mi- Genomics Core Facility, crobial ecologist Bill Costerton, known in the field as “the father which is part of Drexel’s Clinical and Translational of biofilms.” At the time, Costerton was director of the NSF-fund- Research institute. ed Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University,

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NOT-SO-SIMPLE CELLS Bacteria may be single-celled organisms, but they shouldn’t be underestimated. In addition to forming biofilms for self protection and reproduction, they’re capable of combining into multiple large-ordered structures, analogous to the tissues of highly differentiated animals such as ourselves.

HIGHLY ORGANIZED EXTRACELLULAR STRUCTURES BUILT BY THE COMMON OPPORTUNISTIC PATHOGEN BACTERIUM, PSEUDOMONAS AERUGINOSA. top regular hexag- onal extracellular matrix that the bacteria form. middle actual bacteria (each point of red is a bacterium). bottom superposi- tion of the top two images which shows the bacteria embedded in the organized matrix that they have produced.

BACTERIALLY PRODAUCED FILAMENTS

top matrix only

middle bacteria

bottom bacteria embedded in the matrix they have extruded.

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which soon became the leading biofilm research center in North America. Late one night, Ehrlich was reading an article in Science magazine authored by Costerton that included the sentence, “Bacteria in biofilms can be very difficult to culture and are resistant to up to one thousand times the concentrations of antibiotics that can kill their free-swimming counterparts.” A light blub went off, Ehrlich says. He immediately recognized that Costerton’s biofilm paradigm would explain the contra- dictory results he had been seeing in chronic middle-ear infections in children. He and his colleague, an ear-nose-and-throat surgeon named Chris Post affiliated at the time with the University of Pittsburgh and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, had found evidence of live, metabolically active bacteria in the middle ear canals of children with chronic effusions. Puz- zlingly, the bacteria could not be cultured, yet survived repeated courses of antibiotics. Ehrlich contacted Costerton, and together they forged a fruitful collaboration resulting in a series of papers demonstrating that all of the common bacteria associated with sore throats and other childhood maladies could form biofilms in the middle ears of both chinchillas and children. Through subsequent research, they were eventually able to generalize these BIOFILM findings to all chronic mucosal infections and eventually to all chronic bacterial infections. Ehrlich went on to devote years to studying biofilm science and perfecting DNA tests to ON THE BRAIN prove the presence of hard-to-culture bacteria. He has published more than 100 papers and two textbooks proving that many chronic inflammatory conditions are actually biofilm Drexel dermatologist Herbert Allen has experience infections. studying how biofilms interact with immune cells in About six years ago, he began to consider the possibility that the inflammation associated the skin and shares Ehrlich’s interest in the biofilm- with Alzheimer’s might also be a symptom of an established infection that had traveled from Alzheimer’s hypothesis. the sinuses to the brain. Biofilms that form in middle-ear mucosa and on implanted devices like pacemakers and Allen, who is chairman of Drexel’s Department of artificial joints can be removed surgically, but what about biofilms in the brain, he wondered? Dermatology in the College of Medicine, showed that One theory he’s exploring for removing biofilms involves “debulking” the biofilm slime eczema may be caused by biofilms in a 2014 study. The that shelters bacteria. Since bacterial cells inside biofilms are most impervious to antibiot- study proposed that staphylococcal bacteria that live ics when they’re metabolically dormant, or “starving,” he’s looking at ways to “feed” the on the skin produce a biofilm that blocks sweat ducts, cells pharmacologically to make them active again. “If you increase the metabolic rate, activating the immune system, which causes itching they become more susceptible to treatment with antibiotics,” Ehrlich says, quoting a paper and irritation. he published more than a decade ago. “You could get rid of a lot of the cells and, if you get the infection small enough, the host’s immune system might even be able to clear it.” More recently, Allen published a small study in Neuroinfectious Diseases that investigates whether spirochetes in the brain could be operating in the same A TRAIL OF CLUES way to cause Alzheimer’s. The idea that Alzheimer’s may be caused by an infection has been catching. In the early Allen and a team of collaborators examined seven ’90s, pathologist and Lyme disease expert Alan MacDonald, currently a research associate at post-mortem brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, the University of New Haven in Connecticut, originated the theory that Alzheimer’s disease comparing them to 10 control samples from people may have a bacterial component. Later, Judith Miklossy, who is director of the International who had died from other causes. Alzheimer Research Center at the Prevention Alzheimer International Foundation in Swit- zerland, made a profound observation when she showed that neurosyphilis (a bacterial dis- In each of the Alzheimer’s brains, the researchers saw ease of the brain) and Alzheimer’s were essentially identical on a tissue-level basis. what they believe to be biofilms. The researchers also In a subsequent small study, Miklossy and her colleagues found multiple types of cork- identified a protein called TLR 2, which plays a key role screw-shaped bacteria called spirochetes, which are relatives of the syphilis-causing bacte- in activating the body’s immune system. rium, in the brains of more than 90 percent of Alzheimer’s disease patients. One of the bacteria was Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease. Others were peri- Allen is a member of the camp that hypothesizes odontal pathogens closely related to syphilis, which is known to cause amyloid deposition, that the spirochetes enter the brain during a dental inflammation and, eventually, dementia similar to Alzheimer’s. Studies by other research- procedure or after a person contracts Lyme disease, ers have made similar connections between bacterial or viral infection and dementia. and then spin out a protective biofilm. The body’s first The unique pattern of the disease’s progression also hints at an infectious origin. responders try to clear the infection, but immune cells Ehrlich points out that when the brains of people afflicted with Alzheimer’s are autopsied, cannot penetrate the biofilm matrix that encases the it’s possible to see damage to the brain spreading out radially in many directions from the organisms. Instead, the immune system destroys the hippocampus, where the nerve cells from the olfactory system terminate. Ehrlich believes surrounding tissue.

“So it’s neither the infection, nor the biofilm, nor the beta-amyloid that causes the disease, but the body’s own immune system,” Allen argues. — Lauren Ingeno

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“THERE IS ONE PLACE There was even a documented instance, published in the journal Nature, in which WHERE THE BRAIN IS Alzheimer’s-like amyloids were discovered in the autopsied brains of eight adults in the United Kingdom who had died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The seeds of Alzheimer’s were believed to have been transmitted through a contaminated medical procedure that NOT PROTECTED BY all eight patients had received, contradicting the mainstream belief that Alzheimer’s is primarily genetic. Proving the infection theory — or even disproving it — both carry equal weight, says THE BLOOD-BRAIN Drexel’s Saunders. “Following this line of research is so crucial because even if it shows that infection isn’t causative, that’s just as important,” he says. “In our discipline, data talks and what Ehrlich is proposing involves studying thousands of [brain] samples. That BARRIER. WE SUSPECT will be definitive and help sway what the scientific community thinks.”

THE PATHOGENS FIERCE FIGHT FOR DOLLARS

As for why funding agencies and other scientists have been largely unreceptive to the CAUSING ALZHEIMER’S “microbial” Alzheimer’s hypothesis, Ehrlich defers to a quote from German physicist Max Planck: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” “Scientists are supposed to be the most open-minded people in the world, but many of USE THIS ROUTE.” them are not,” Ehrlich says. He says that many experts in the field conduct a kind of turf war and will actively work to suppress other ideas. “But my question is, if they are such experts, why haven’t they figured out the disease?” he asks. that this is because infections are crossing into the brain The Alzheimer’s Association, the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer’s research, has from the olfactory epithelia. said that it is very interested in funding “out-of-the-box” ideas. In fact, one of the first signs that a person will develop “I like to use the hockey analogy — you never know when you’re going to score, so you dementia is the loss of their sense of smell, he says. need as many shots on goal as you can get,” says Keith Fargo, the association’s director of “Our brains are protected by a unique capillary architec- scientific programs and outreach. “We have to have new avenues of research, with people ture called the blood-brain barrier — but there is one place taking a look at this disease from as many different angles as possible.” where the brain is not protected by that barrier and that’s But, competition for federal dollars is fierce, Fargo notes. the olfactory epithelium,” he explains. “We know that’s the He says that there was some light at the end of the tunnel in 2011, when President path herpes simplex virus has used to get to the brain, and Barack Obama signed into law the National Alzheimer’s Project Act requiring the estab- we suspect that the pathogens causing Alzheimer’s also use lishment of a national plan to accelerate the development of treatments for the disease this route.” through coordinated research, federal services and funding. Other scientists have also found tantalizing clues sug- But though the act resulted in a decent bump in research dollars, it still wasn’t quite gesting an infection connection. Recently an internation- enough, Fargo says. Currently, the government allocates about $991 million annually for al group of more than 30 senior scientists and clinicians, Alzheimer’s and other dementia research, which is a fraction of what is needed to fulfill including specialists from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh the national plan’s $2 billion per year goal. and Manchester universities, authored an editorial in the “What that means is that there is very high competition for those research dollars, so respected Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease calling upon the scien- difficult decisions have to be made,” says Fargo. “Some avenues that are promising may get tific community to give the hypothesis credence. overlooked in favor of other avenues that are more developed.” They point out that viruses and other microbes are pres- And while Alzheimer’s disease research is indeed expensive, it’s also quite tricky. The ent in the brains of most elderly people. Although usually brain is a complex organ made up of billions of cells — “the best estimate is about 80 bil- dormant, reactivation can occur after stress or a treatment lion cells with literally trillions of connections — and different cell types,” says Fargo. from antibiotics. The writers also note that Alzheimer’s has “It’s a really tough nut to crack.” long been known to have a prominent inflammatory com- “In HIV and cancer drug development, there have been some sterling successes,” ponent characteristic of infection and, even more inter- Drexel’s Saunders says. “Something that was once a death sentence, now isn’t. If cancer esting, the writers point out that features of Alzheimer’s shows up in a patient, you can biopsy it and then tailor treatments, but we can’t do that in pathology are transmissible by inoculation of an Alzheim- Alzheimer’s disease, because it’s in your brain. And this is something that probably starts er’s-affected brain to primates and mice. developing in your 40s and manifests when you’re around 75 or 80 — that’s not something The authors name the herpes simplex virus — the type we’re used to.” that causes cold sores — and Chlamydia pneumoniae as pos- Ultimately, the scientific community is going to have to marshal a consensus, says Fargo. sible culprits. They cite growing evidence in the literature, “The onus is really on the people who believe in the infection hypothesis to prove it, for including more than 100 studies related to the herpes virus lack of a better word,” Fargo says. “Yes, there is a suggestive link, but research has to be alone, that suggest a possible link. done to establish that link.” “We propose that further research on the role of infectious agents in [Alzheimer’s disease] causation, including prospective trials of antimicrobial therapy, is now justi- fied,” they wrote.

EXELmagazine.org 57 _PUBLIC HEALTH

CIGARETTE MARKETING _RETURN OF #MARLBOROMAN

Researchers measuring the reach of e-cigarette marketing on social media find that pro-smoking messages travel easily and widely, with potential to reach many underage audiences.

hile plenty of legisla- tion exists to shield Wminors from cigarette marketing, e-cigarettes are less regulated than their paper-and-tar progeni- tors, and when it comes to social media, market- _CHRISTOPHER ing messages are about as YANG Yang is a computer containable as secondhand science professor in smoke, a study reports. the College of Com- The study, conducted by puting & Informatics. researchers at Drexel and the University of South- ern California and pub- The data yielded an eye- lished in the journal PLOS opening data visualization ONE, is one of the first to map (at right). track how far e-cigarette “The retweet network marketing spreads on in our data demonstrated Twitter beyond its origi- how rapidly and widely nal target audience. messages diffused — reach- The researchers looked ing an exponential number at three months of data of users,” says co-author from Twitter users that Christopher Yang. “By the originated with tweets second level of followers, from @blucigs, the Twitter there was a large change in handle used by Blu, the the types of users who were largest e-cigarette brand on seeing the messages, expos- ing those who might not ex- plicitly support e-cigarettes, "The retweet net- or potentially vulnerable work in our data populations such as youth.” By the end of the three demonstrated how months, a single tweet that rapidly and widely originally reached 214 @blucigs followers eventu- messages diffused ally made its way to more — reaching an than 2,600 unique users. “The diffusion of tobacco- exponential number related marketing messages through social media sug- of users." gests a need for real-time Christopher Yang, College of surveillance of brand mar- Computing & Informatics keting messages through in- ternet channels that do not the market. They tracked require age-verification,” the growth of the audience Yang adds. “As consensus pool from followers of on the public health impact @bluecigs to the followers of e-cigarettes grows, of those who retweeted restrictions may need to be @blucigs to the followers placed on how companies of those who retweeted market their products via the retweets. social media.”

58 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

A B

BLOWING_SMOKE These data visualization maps show the number of Twitter followers of e-cigarette company Blu who retweeted the company’s marketing messages (A) and the total number of Twitter users who eventually saw that tweet in their feed (B). courtesy of PLOS ONE

EXELmagazine.org 59 _PUBLIC HEALTH

OBESITY INFECTIOUS DISEASE _THE $150 BILLION PROBLEM _THE SECRET LIFE OF EBOLA

A multidisciplinary team is developing ways to The discovery that the Ebola virus can survive longer in wastewater than was battle the obesity epidemic by helping people lose previously known has implications for how governments respond to outbreaks. weight and keep it off.

staggering 34.9 percent of the U.S. popula- A tion is obese, and its resulting effects — heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer — are all on the rise. This ever- worsening endemic costs _MEGHAN BUTRYN Butryn is an associate the nation nearly $150 research professor in billion each year. the Department of Psychology in the Associate Research College of Arts and Professor Meghan Butryn Sciences. is developing ways to help people not only lose weight, but keep it off. It’s that College of Nursing and second part of the equa- Health Professions, and tion — keeping the weight Eugene Hong from the off — that has most flum- College of Medicine are moxed dieters and health working with 300 par- professionals. ticipants to determine whether exercise or diet is more important for keeping weight off after initial weight loss. All 78.6 participants will receive 18 months of group-based MILLION behavior modification, and will be followed for another [OR] 18 months afterward. Butryn, Forman and Michael Lowe, who is also from the Department of 34.9 Psychology, also have a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. That project, which also enrolled 300 participants and is currently in he deadly outbreak of waste might underestimate in wastewater for at least a the follow-up phase, used a Ebola virus disease in the virus’ ability to survive week or longer. similar approach to study TWest Africa that began in wastewater. The researchers gath- how the “food environ- in March 2014 raised new Current official epidemic ered their data by observ- ment” and specialized questions about the resil- response procedures advise ing the change in viral behavioral skills influence ience of the virus and tested that after a period of days, particle concentration in participants’ ability to keep scientists’ understanding of Ebola-contaminated liquid two samples, spiked with weight off. how to contain it. can be disposed of directly different concentrations of Total number / percentage The goal is to help people The latest discovery by into a sewage system with- the virus, over an eight-day of% Americans who are obese. develop the lifestyle habits a group of researchers, out additional treatment. period, all in a secured lab and mental framework including Drexel’s Charles However, new data from at NIH. While the research- With a recently awarded that will allow them to live Haas, the LD Betz Professor researchers at Drexel, the ers observed a 99 percent $2.5 million grant, Butryn the lives they’ve dreamed of Environmental Engineer- University of Pittsburgh decrease in concentration and Drexel co-researchers of — free of the extra ing in the College of Engi- and the National Insti- after the first day, the Evan Forman from the weight, and free, too, of the neering, suggests that the tutes of Health indicate remaining viral particles Department of Psychology, many health problems that procedures for disposal of that Ebola can survive in were detectable for the du- Stella Volpe from the weight can bring. Ebola-contaminated liquid detectable concentrations ration of the experiment.

60 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

AUTISM AUTISM _ASTHMA-AUTISM LINK _A HOME BASE

Prenatal exposure to anti-asthma drugs is A virtual “home” for the behavioral health needs of associated with increased risk for autism. children and young adults on the autism spectrum aims to provide better outcomes at a lower cost. hildren of mothers who Additional co-authors took certain asthma were Associate Professors prescribe a drug treat- Cmedication during Brian Lee, Igor Burstyn and ment, which then requires pregnancy were 30 percent Yvonne Michael and Craig more drugs to treat the more likely to be diagnosed Newschaffer, director of the side effects of the original with autism spectrum A.J. Drexel Autism Institute. drug — and still not treat disorder, Drexel researchers Gidaya and the research the real issue. have found. team drew their sample A better approach is to After studying a decade from 57,200 children born JAMES E. screen the child first to of birth records from Den- in Denmark between 1996 CONNELL JR. determine if their issue Connell is a professor mark, the team concluded and 2006 with a biological in the School of Educa- is physical or behavioral, that children whose moth- mother who’d been living in tion and clinical direc- followed by a behavioral tor of the A.J. Drexel ers took (B2AR) agonist Denmark for at least a year. Autism Institute. specialist recommendation drugs such as Advair, The study found that 3.7 for behavioral concerns. Symbicort or Dulera during percent of children diag- reating children with Connell is now working pregnancy were at greater nosed with autism spectrum many different health with Jordan Weisman of risk. These drugs can cross disorder had mothers who Tneeds can be a tricky the placenta and reach the took the B2AR agonist drugs and expensive business. If “The Behavioral fetus, potentially affecting during pregnancy. the right specialist isn’t its developing neurons. Of children not diagnosed found, a child can be put Home works in “Since the teratogenic with autism spectrum disor- on an unnecessary drug, potential of most drugs… der, 2.9 percent were born to which can lead to more conjunction with is generally understudied, mothers who took the drugs. wrong drugs, when what physicians’ offices I would hope my research “A challenge here is that the child really needs is a would encourage more the effects of the underly- behavioral intervention. to help identify researchers to explore ing health conditions, them- That’s what the Be- behavioral health prescription drug use as a selves, can also influence havioral Home Model, potential autism spectrum developmental outcomes,” developed by Professor needs, then get the disorder risk factor,” says says Newschaffer. “Newly James E. Connell Jr. and Nicole Gidaya, a doctoral pregnant women taking set to be implemented in right specialists alumna of the Dornsife medication for asthma need 2016, aims to address. Its to work on that School of Public Health to work with their health purpose is to keep children and the lead author of the care provider to weigh the healthier with fewer concern in an in- study, which was recently benefits of continuing medi- pharmaceuticals while tegrated, interdis- published in Pediatrics. cation use against risks.” also cutting unnecessary costs from their treatment. ciplinary system.” Right now, Connell says, James E. Connell Jr, School of high-risk, high-need users Education and the A.J. Drexel Historically, it was can cost up to $300,000 a Autism Institute believed that the virus year to treat. could only be transmitted The “home” isn’t a phys- the Philadelphia Mental through direct contact with ical building but instead Health Center, with whom bodily fluids, but there have a database and electronic Connell proposed the been cases where people health record system that behavioral home model contracted the disease with- brings the right players to to Community Behav- out apparently coming in the table when treating a ioral Health, a division of contact with infected fluids. child. For example, Con- Philadelphia’s Department This, the study suggests, nell says, some children of Behavioral Health and could be an indication that with autism have food Intellectual DisAbility Ser- large liquid droplets might selectivity issues, but a vices that handles mental be a vector for the virus pediatrician may misin- health and substance abuse — which means greater terpret these symptoms as services for the city’s Med- care should be taken when AUTISM_AND_ASTHMA gastrointestinal distress icaid recipients, includ- handling contaminated Children whose mothers took agonist drugs such as Advair, and send the child to a ing autistic children and liquid waste. Symbicort or Dulera during pregnancy were at greater risk. GI specialist, who could young adults.

EXELmagazine.org 61 _PUBLIC HEALTH

POLLUTION AIR QUALITY MENTAL HEALTH _FUMES AND PLUMES _NO BUTTS _PARENTAL BLUES & POOR GRADES

Drexel researchers found a significant link Research conducted There’s a connection between depression in parents between elevated air pollution and the occurrence by the Dornsife School and poor academic performance by their children. of several chronic health conditions. of Public Health was an important part of the n a massive study of more ities with heavy pollu- Philadelphia Housing than 1 million children, tion are slowly harm- Authority’s decision to Iresearchers found that C ing their residents, enact a smoke-free policy parental depression at home according to a review of in all public housing. coincides with lower grades data by a Drexel team of in class, which can have public health epidemi- ast summer, Philadel- lasting repercussions as ologists, environmental phia’s public housing children mature. health and environmental _LONGJIAN LIU Lwent smoke-free in one The Drexel-led team engineering experts. Liu is an associ- of the largest public health found that children whose ate professor of The team, led by Associ- epidemiology and changes of its kind in the mothers had been diagnosed ate Professor Longjian Liu, biostatistics in the country. The new policy was with depression are likely Dornsife School of found that heart disease, Public Health informed by a solid base of to achieve grades that are stroke, diabetes and hyper- scientific evidence — some 4.5 percentage points lower tension, along with all-cause causes of death in the coun- of which was generated than peers whose mothers FÉLICE LÊ-SCHERBAN mortality, were found in a try,” says Liu. through evaluation research had not been diagnosed AND BRIAN LEE greater percentage of people Liu and his team will conducted by city agen- with depression. For chil- Lê-Scherban is an living in cities and counties continue to analyze data cies and Drexel’s Dornsife dren whose fathers were assistant professor and Lee an associate with a higher concentration — looking at pollution School of Public Health. diagnosed with depression, professor in the of air pollution indicators — levels during different Ann Klassen, a profes- the difference is 4 percent- Dornsife School of which were primarily in the times of year and different sor in the School of Public age points lower. Public Health. northeastern and southern neighborhoods within and Health, has worked with Put into other terms, Public Health. On average in parts of the country. between cities and com- the Philadelphia Housing when compared with a the United States, she says, “If we are able to iden- pared to other countries Authority and Philadel- student who achieved a 90 an adult without a high tify and control the risk — to measure the impact phia Department of Public percent, a student whose school degree earns half as factors, then we should be of climate change and air Health since 2011 on the mother or father had been much as one of their peers able to prevent or signifi- pollution on environmen- evaluation of the impact of diagnosed with depression cantly reduce the occur- tal health disparity and smoking in public housing. would be more likely to rence of these diseases, public health in urban The monitoring data from achieve a score in the 85–86 which are the leading populations. this evaluation was an percent range. important element of the How well a student does Children whose mothers had been evidence used in support of in school has a large bearing diagnosed with depression are FINE PARTICLE CONCENTRATION the new policy. on future job and income likely to achieve grades that are 4.5 percentage points lower than Through her research, opportunities, which peers whose mothers had not been Klassen found that 70 to 85 has heavy public health diagnosed with depression. percent of common areas implications, says Félice Lê- and over 20 percent of non- Scherban, assistant profes- with a college degree and smoker apartments had sor in the Dornsife School of also has a life expectancy detectable nicotine levels. that is about 10 years lower. “That provides impor- “Anything that The research team, which tant evidence that previous included faculty from the policies were not effective creates an uneven Karolinska Institutet in in protecting residents, playing field for Stockholm, Sweden, and and that it is not possible the University of Bristol to avoid harmful levels of children in terms in England, conducted a 1.22-6.13 secondhand smoke without cohort study of more than 1 6.14-9.54 of their education 9.55-14.80 0 340 680 13,60 mi community-wide smoke- million children born from NA free policies,” Klassen says. can potentially have 1984 until 1994 in Sweden. “When tobacco is used Using computerized data BAD_AIR anywhere in a multi-unit strong implications registers, the scientists Researchers compared daily air pollution data from the Envi- building, there’s really no for health inequities linked parents’ depression ronmental Protection Agency and health outcomes data from part of the building that diagnoses with their chil- the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and found won’t have air exchange down the road.” dren’s final grades at age 16, the greatest correlations in the northeastern and southern and won’t be exposed to Félice Lê-Sherban, Dornsife when compulsory schooling parts of the country. that secondhand smoke.” School of Public Health ends in Sweden.

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_DOWN THE DRAIN A new study suggests that city residents could be letting the benefits of an ubiquitous natural resource go to waste, when it could be used to reduce their water bills.

100 ood news for residents of Phila- 80 G delphia, New York, Seattle and Chicago: It 60 rains so much in these cities that if residents 40 collected and stored the rain falling on their 20 roofs, they could signifi- citywide % reduction in residential citywide % reduction in residential cantly reduce their water roof runoff with 100% adoption of RWH 00 03 06 09 12 15 consumption, according 3 to research by a team of volume of storage tank (m ) Drexel environmental _LESS RUNOFF engineers. This chart shows what impact 100 percent Toilet flushing is the adoption of rainwater harvesting systems could have on citywide reductions in roof biggest use of water runoff from residential buildings. By installing a standard in households in the 1,000 gallon home storage

United States. But there tank, researchers found is no reason that clean, that a three-person family 100 treated, municipal water could reduce their overall needs to be used to flush 80 household potable water a toilet when rainwater demand enough to slash is plentiful. 60 the municipal water bill “People have been for an average-sized catching and using rain- 40 home by as much as water for ages, but it’s one-fourth. only been in the last 20 20 to 30 years that we have

realized that this is some- citywide % reduction in potable water used for 00 03 06 09 12 15 thing that could be done residential toilet flushing with 100% adoption of RWH volume of storage tank (m 3) systematically in certain urban areas to ease all dif- _LOWER WATER BILLS ferent kinds of stresses on Significant reductions in potable water used watersheds; potable water to flush toilets in residential buildings in four major cities could be achieved if rainwater treatment and distribu- harvesting systems were adopted in 100 per- RAIN_FOR_GAIN tion systems; and urban cent of the cities’ residential buildings. An average drainage infrastructure,” residence with a says team leader Franco 1,000-gallon rain- Montalto, who is an as- water harvesting sociate professor in the system could reduce College of Engineering and runoff by over 40 director of the college’s percent, according Sustainable Water Re- Toilet flushing is the With a 1,000-gallon to the study. source Engineering Lab. biggest use of water storage tank, a three- The study was recently in households in the person family with published in the journal United States, ac- an average roof size counting for nearly would have enough Resources, Conservation and one-third of potable water to cover over 80 Recycling, and is one of the water use. percent of its flushes. first to show how feasible, and beneficial, rainwater catchment would be.

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64 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

Child’s Play

MOST THERAPIES FOR _LISA CHIARELLO & BOB PALISANO Chiarello is a professor CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL and Palisano is a distinguished professor in PALSY FOCUS MERELY ON the College of Nursing and Health Professions’ Department of Physical IMPROVING MOBILITY, Therapy and Rehabili- WHILE OVERLOOKING THE tation Sciences. RELATIONSHIPS THAT LEAD o one, in all the years of ther- TO A FULFILLING LIFE. apy for his cerebral palsy, N had ever asked 12-year-old RESEARCHERS AT DREXEL HAVE Jonathan Bamberger this one, simple question: SPENT A DECADE DEVELOPING What do you like to do? No therapist had asked his AN APPROACH THAT PUTS THE mother, Terry, about her son’s interests, either. EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL NEEDS That changed in 2009, when a physical therapist working with OF THESE CHILDREN FIRST. a Drexel researcher named Tracy Stoner ’08 did just that as part of a Drexel-led case study on a novel, _by Lini S. Kadaba five-step model of intervention for children affected by the neurological brain disorder or injury. Called participation- _photographs by based therapy, the model is designed to help children with Jeff Fusco cerebral palsy engage more in their community life. According to Bamberger, those six words — integral to participation-based therapy — created “a life-altering experience” for her and her son. “That was very powerful,” says Lisa Chiarello, a professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation sciences at Drexel who is a lead researcher in formulating the new model. “It’s not the therapist’s goal. It’s the child’s goal.” The model significantly shifts the paradigm of physical therapy’s role — from improving impairments to fostering participation and relationships. “I’ve always been interested in children’s social interactions with peers, which is unique for a physical therapist,” says Chiarello, who has been a key investigator over the last decade in three major studies (see sidebar, “A Decade of Data”) of children with cerebral palsy that focus on the child’s participation in activities that build social relationships. “Physical therapy is about physical functioning.

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But you often are using physical functioning in these social interactions to have relationships with others.” Going forward, Chiarello, along with Drexel co-investigator Bob Palisano and other researchers, seeks to further refine and test how well the model supports a child’s inter- “It’s a really important mental switch for the profes- action with parents, siblings and friends. sion,” Schreiber says. “To me, this level is the ultimate goal,” Chiarello says, “be- Two of the team’s studies, Move and PLAY and On Track, cause participating in life really gives their life meaning.” also broke ground by involving parents as research collabo- They hope that the data they accumulate can one day be rators, who offer lived-experience perspectives and play used to create first-of-their-kind longitudinal developmental significant roles in the study. curves and therapy recommendations for the 1 in 323 chil- “It’s not the norm,” Chiarello says. “We envision it be- dren in the United States living with the disorder, similar coming much more so. People affected by research should to a pediatrician’s growth chart or a What to Expect resource. be involved in research, and not just as participants.” THE FIVE STEPS OF Such a tool is long overdue in the field of pediatrics. In the Move and PLAY study, two parents started as con- PARTICIPATION- While parents of developmentally typical children have ac- sultants, offering feedback on study recruitment literature FOCUSED THERAPY cess to charts and data alerting them to typical milestones and such, but over time moved into larger roles that con- — is your child smiling by 6 weeks? is she walking at 12 tinue with On Track. An additional five parents joined the Develop a collaborative months? — no such benchmarks exist for children with team, and Palisano runs monthly teleconference meetings relationship with the cerebral palsy to help caregivers gauge how they are pro- between them and investigators. family and child. gressing, particularly recreationally and socially. “Increasingly, our voices were more and more valued,” “Resources exist for gross motor skills, but life is so much says Tina Hjorngaard of Toronto, whose 17-year-old daugh- Establish mutually more than gross motor skills,” says Stoner, who is a Philadel- ter has cerebral palsy. The parents have helped design ma- agreed-upon goals phia regional coordinator for a current study with Chiarello. terials and translate results into formats useful to families. for participation in “As clinicians, we have never had anything like this.” They’ve also presented at conferences alongside academics, home and community and written articles for lay publications. activities. MEET AND GREET Hjorngaard says her only regret is that participation- It has long been known — and Chiarello’s research confirms based therapy was not common when her daughter was Assess the child’s and — that children with cerebral palsy participate less and in younger. “She felt really isolated,” Hjorngaard says. family’s strengths in the fewer activities than other children. Participation-focused Barbara Sieck Taylor, a parent collaborator from Pitts- context of the specific therapy uses a five-step process to address that challenge. burgh whose 24-year-old son has cerebral palsy, says the goals. This includes the Participation-based therapists begin by establishing rap- relationship works in large part because Chiarello is the family ecology, meaning port directly with the family and the child, usually in the “queen of listening.” its connections to the family’s home or community setting. Together, they come “Parents can help by reminding people who are deeply community and access up with goals that are important to the child and family; embedded in data and models that those abstractions rep- to resources — factors for example, a child may want to go to the playground. resent individuals,” says Taylor. that affect participation. They then develop real-life strategies to accomplish the Chiarello’s research thus far provides the foundation for goal. That might mean that a therapist accompanies a child a new, as-yet-unfunded pilot study to test participation- Implement strategies to the playground to see firsthand her obstacles, so the two based therapy. that work in real life. can brainstorm and implement solutions. The therapist Such studies are often considered “messier,” because of That might mean a then evaluates outcomes with the family. the focus on lived experiences and numerous variables that therapist accompanies “We need to support the child’s adaptive behavior,” can affect outcomes. “But in the end, you have much richer a child to her evening Chiarello says, “and we also need to support the family and much more data,” says Annette Majnemer, director activity to see firsthand in expecting from the child the best [he or she] can do. … and associate dean of the School of Physical and Occupa- the child’s frustrations Participation is multi-dimensional, the physical doing, the tional Therapy at McGill University in Montreal. and how possible solu- social belonging, and the being, which is the fulfillment, Majnemer, who co-edits the journal Physical and Occupa- tions actually work. learning and enjoyment a person gets from participating. tional Therapy in Pediatrics and is familiar with Chiarello’s A therapist needs to scaffold all of that as they’re trying to work, says that the real strength of her studies is the use Finally, the outcomes foster a child’s participation.” of very large samples, which allow the researchers to draw are evaluated with the Chiarello and her team are leaders in this field of physi- statistically significant conclusions. child and family. cal therapy, says Joe Schreiber, president of the pediatrics “Sometimes we really get caught up in these random- section of the American Physical Therapy Association and ized control trials,” says Audrey Wood ’95, who serves as a professor of physical therapy at Chatham University in coordinator of the Move and PLAY study for Greater Phila- Pittsburgh. delphia and is a physical therapist at Children’s Hospital “She’s been an incredible advocate,” says Schreiber. of Philadelphia. “These qualitative studies are important, New participation measurement tools that came out too. They really speak to everyday life.” of the team’s studies have proven useful to clinicians, he notes, and therapy focused on participation has made the HAPPY TOGETHER profession more effective. For Jonathan Bamberger, participation-based therapy was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. When the Maryland pre-teen joined the study, he needed help with transfers from his motorized wheelchair, getting around and self-care. At times, his speech was hard to understand, and he had a visual impairment.

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Previously, his physical therapy had always focused simply on stretches and transfers. It did nothing to give him the sense of belonging that comes through joining after- school activities alongside his peers. Once he joined the case study, he met with Stoner, who talked with him and his mother about his interests. She A DECADE OF DATA probed his likes and dislikes, his routines and abilities. She Over the course of three groundbreaking, multi-site and multi- took notes about his goals and his family’s goals. year studies of children with cerebral palsy, Lisa Chiarello and At first, his mother kept saying: “We want him to trans- Bob Palisano have amassed an extensive body of research detail- fer better. We want him to sit better.” ing the challenges and importance of participation-based therapy. Stoner was persistent. “I kept asking, ‘Why do you want to transfer better? Why do you want to sit better?’” CAPS Stoner and the Bambergers brainstormed four real-life The Children’s Activity and Participation Study interviewed 600 experiences that Jonathan could join: Boy Scouts, a base- children ages 3 to 21 between 2006 and 2008. The children were ball challenger league, chorus and a church youth group. asked about their involvement in 55 activities, such as playing with The trio decided to pursue the youth group, where Jonathan puzzles, doing team sports, or going to concerts; how often they hoped to meet girls and make friends. partook; and how much they enjoyed the activities. “I thought it was a godsend,” Bamberger says. “Those are CAPS produced more than a dozen publications and concluded the things that are important to parents and the kids.” that a child’s adaptive behavior — that is, his or her motivation, Stoner, in her role as assessor for this case study, suggested perseverance and ability to interact with the demands of a particu- therapy that worked toward specific, youth-group–related lar situation — was a crucial factor for participation. outcomes. She knew Jonathan would need to learn to speak The study was funded with $850,000 from Shriners Clinical louder, to express his needs, to explain to others how to pro- Outcomes Program. vide physical assistance and to practice social interactions. “Those were really useful life skills he wanted to learn,” MOVE AND PLAY says Stoner. The Movement and Participation in Life Activities for Young Chil- Bamberger recalls her initial reaction was surprise. dren with Cerebral Palsy study followed 430 preschoolers ages “Wow, this is what you guys consider therapy?” she asked. 18–60 months over a year, collecting data at three points on the To develop strategies and implement them, Stoner actually factors that support motor function, self-care, play and participa- accompanied Jonathan to several of the 7 p.m. youth group tion in daily activities. According to Chiarello, the 2006–09 study meetings, smoothing the way for him. She worked with the developed several important measurement tools, including child group director on how to include Jonathan in activities and engagement in daily life and ease of caregiving for children. how to help with transfers, with eating the customary pizza One finding was that a child’s ability to adapt to a situation has dinner and with emergencies, such as choking. the biggest influence on participation and playfulness. This sug- At the first meeting, Jonathan was bombarded with ques- gests that rehab services should be conducted in the context of tions from the group in their zeal to include him. Stoner real-world experiences, such as going to the playground or visiting says she taught the kids that Jonathan needs a little extra a library for story time, Chiarello says. time to process and answer a question. Move and PLAY was funded with $450,000 from the National “You need to see it in action to say this is not working,” she Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research and $925,000 says. “It was being able to step out of that clinic environment from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). … and work with the people interacting with him.” Soon, Jonathan was initiating conversations with the ON TRACK adults and other kids. As the weeks unfolded, he joined the The team’s latest study, which began in 2012 and continues into singing, played a part in a skit and talked with three girls. 2017, is monitoring about 720 children with cerebral palsy ages By the end of the therapy, Jonathan was thrilled with the 18 months to 11 years over five check-ins. It’s a longitudinal, experience, Bamberger says, and she rated her overall satis- labor-intensive undertaking that is expected to yield insight into faction with her son’s participation a top score of 10. developmental changes over time. “It gave me a lot of hope that there are ways to include A key objective of the current study is to produce baseline charts children with disabilities,” she says. Her son, now 18, still of participation levels at different ages and at different degrees of maintains friendships he began in youth group. motor impairment. For Stoner, the participation-based therapy was eye open- On Track is funded with $1.9 million from the Patient-Centered ing. “I saw the progress in a way I never did in clinic,” she Outcomes Research Institute in Washington, D.C., and $1 million says. “It makes physical therapists think outside the box. In from CIHR. the end, it’s how happy they are in life. What does it matter if I teach them to sit better if they can’t go to the mall and hang out with their friends?” Exactly, says Chiarello.

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_ONLINE To read the full-length articles that appear in this section, visit EXELmagazine.org BIOLOGY _ONE CELL, MANY ROLES

Specialized cells called astrocytes were once thought to be bit players in the central nervous system, but closer inspection suggests they have complex roles.

patient regains con- sciousness after a A devastating accident to learn that his spinal cord has been crushed and he may not walk again. A soldier suffers from memory

loss after being struck with A. DENISE GARCIA shrapnel that enters his Garcia is an assistant brain. An elderly patient professor in the De- partment of Biology in succumbs to the confusion the College of Arts and and jumbled speech of early Sciences. She specializes in cellular and mo- Alzheimer’s. lecular neurobiology. While the precipitating neurological damage in each of these examples is distinct, in each case, the researchers are studying central nervous system un- how central nervous sys- leashes a chain of biochem- tem cells respond to injury. ical and cellular responses Drexel neurobiologist that irreversibly destroys Denise Garcia has focused the brain’s neurons. on relatively under-studied Why can’t the nervous cells called astrocytes. Astro- system heal itself the way cytes are a type of glia cell, other parts of the body do? so named because they were To answer that question, once regarded as mere “glue” that provides structural support to neurons. Historically, “Evolution has se- they’ve been overlooked by lected for this for neuroscientists, but that’s starting to change. a reason. There’s a Garcia believes they are more than just support staff. tradeoff: You lose For one thing, higher some function but species have a higher ratio of glial cells to neurons. perhaps you get Leeches have one astrocyte more tissue spared. for every 30 glial cells. Rodents have one for every Long term, some- three. Humans are believed one can take this to have a ratio of one to one. It has been estimated knowledge and de- that astrocytes are the most numerous cell type in the velop therapies that central nervous system, promote the cells’ and some neuroscientists ASTROCYTES believe that the ratio has Transgenic mouse brain showing astrocytes in red. positive functions, increased across evolution Garcia’s lab utilizes conventional and advanced while attenuating to facilitate increasingly microscopy of fixed and living tissues to study how complex cognitive tasks. astrocytes respond to injury. the negative.” Indeed, astrocytes are now

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known to be an important component of synaptic formation and communication between neurons. When it comes to injury, astrocytes wear both white and black hats, and their role isn’t trivial. “They are principal players,” Garcia says. “Some are hostile to neuron survival, and some are conducive to repair and help to spare the central nervous system from further damage.” When the central nervous system suffers trauma, astrocytes are known to release inflammatory molecules that can interfere with healing. In severe cases, they proliferate and form a “glial scar,” like an internal scab, that neurons can’t bridge, which in the case of spinal cord injury results in permanent pa- ralysis. However, they also serve a helpful role by forming web-like enclo- sures around macrophages that would otherwise infiltrate an injured area and destroy neurons. How does this one cell type do these disparate things? It’s a question Garcia has been pursuing in her lab at Drexel. “Evolution has selected for this for a reason,” says Garcia. “There’s a tradeoff: You lose some function but perhaps you get more tissue spared. Long term, someone can take this knowledge NEURONS and develop therapies that Transgenic mouse brain in which a subset of neurons promote the cells’ positive are selectively expressing green fluorescent protein. functions, while attenuat- The Garcia lab studies how astrocytes regulate the ing the negative.” organization and function of neuronal synapses.

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MENTAL HEALTH ALZHEIMER’S _VARSITY BLUES _CLUES TO A DOWN-ALZHEIMER’S CONNECTION

A large study of college athletes found that con- Children with Down Syndrome have distinctive differences in the structure trary to popular belief, jocks are just as likely to of their cerebral cortex that could help to explain the link between Down have down spells as the general population. and Alzheimer’s.

articipation in college look at depression in col- he thickness of the athletics typically lege athletes. brain’s cerebral cortex P isn’t regarded as a risk “[This study] highlights Tcould be a key to factor for depression — in the need for increased unlocking answers about fact, quite the opposite is mental health screening intellectual development in true. Because sports involve for athletes as part of youth with Down Syn- regular exercise and a sup- standard sports medicine drome. It could also provide port group of peers, they care,” says Eugene Hong, new insights to why indi- would seem to be positive an associate dean for pri- viduals with this genetic for mental health. mary care and community neurodevelopmental dis- But a new study by health at the College of order are more susceptible researchers at Drexel Medicine and the study’s to early-onset Alzheimer’s University and Kean Uni- principal investigator. disease than the general versity found that college Student-athletes may ex- population. athletes aren’t any more perience stressors unique immune to mental illness to the athletic experience, than other students. including high-pressure The researchers exam- expectations and inju- ined data collected over ries, said study co-author three consecutive years Andrew Wolanin, director from 465 undergraduate of the Department of Ad- athletes who attended a vanced Studies in Psychol- NCAA Division I private ogy at Kean. _NANCY RAITANO LEE university. They found that “There is lot of oppor- Lee is an assistant professor In the nearly a quarter of Division tunity for failure, which Department of Psy- I college athletes reported can be a key component of chology in the College of Arts and Sciences depressive symptoms, with depression,” he said. and a child clinical women almost twice as Nearly 24 percent of the psychologist special- likely to experience symp- 465 athletes in the study izing in developmental neuropsychology. toms than male peers. reported a “clinically rel- The multi-year sample, evant” level of depressive Brain-imaging research published in the British symptoms, and 6 percent published in the journal Journal of Sports Medicine, is reported moderate to Cerebral Cortex and led by one of the largest to date to severe symptoms. Drexel psychologist Nancy Raitano Lee shows that A 40% 37% the cortex is thicker on average in youth with CEREBRAL_SIGNS Men 35% Down Syndrome than in These scans show reductions in cortical surface area and 31% 30% Women 40% typically developing youth, increases in cortical thickness in brains of youth with 25% even though the overall Down Syndrome relative to typical controls. Panel (A) 25% volume of the cortex is displays surface area findings; panel (B) displays cortical 20% lower in those with Down thickness findings. The peak regions in which cortical 18%

17% health Syndrome. surface area and thickness were most different from 15% 13% 12% The cerebral cortex is the control are marked with small red circles. mental outer layer of brain tissue,

10% of a folded region about 2–4 of Mental Health who per- Syndrome and 45 typically 5% millimeters thick, that is form structural magnetic developing peers. institute

0% involved in many impor- resonance imaging (MRI) The cause of the in- Track & Field Soccer Football/Baseball Lacrosse Prevalence of clinically relevant depressive symptoms tant aspects of brain func- of the brains of children creased cortical thickness national

tion including sensory and and youth to better un- in Down Syndrome is still ., al DISPIRIT_DE_CORPS cognitive processes. derstand aspects of brain uncertain, but one pos- et

While past research has tended to focus only on specific sports Lee conducted the development. They com- sibility is that the brain in lee or genders, this study examined whether the prevalence of research with colleagues pared MRI measurements Down Syndrome doesn’t :

symptoms varied between gender and across a variety of sports. at the National Institute from 31 youth with Down prune excess neural con- brains

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CANCER ALZHEIMER’S _IMPROVING THE PICTURE _PLAQUE BUST

The same nanocrystals used to produce sharp Drexel is leading a images in liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions landmark investiga- can be engineered to glow red when bonded to tion of a new drug that cancer cells — giving surgeons a rapid way to may prevent the plaque verify that they’ve removed all of a tumor. buildup thought to cause Alzheimer’s dementia. hen cancer surgeons surgeons rapidly verify remove tumors from the presence of unexised rain scans show that Wthe body, the differ- cancer cells. protein plaques asso- ence between success and The Shihs’ dots are B ciated with Alzheim- failure can come down to both safer and cheaper er’s disease accumulate just a single errant cell. If than dots commercially for years or even decades the surgeon fails to encapsu- synthesized for research before people begin to ex- late all of the cancerous purposes, but their most perience cognitive decline. cells within a solid buffer of valuable feature is that Once the process takes healthy cells, any malig- they’re built for speed. hold, there is little doctors nant material left behind The method the Shihs can do to reverse it. could lead to a recurrence of developed, with guidance Researchers believe the the cancer. from Drs. Vanlila Swami best hope is to stop the pro- Wan Shih, as associate and Ari Brooks, who were gression of plaque buildup professor in the School both professors in the before symptoms begin. of Biomedical Engineer- Drexel College of Medi- A new landmark ing, Science and Health cine, generates a fast and study will evaluate a Systems; and Wei-Heng, a accurate result. Once the new drug, called solan- professor in the Materials tumor is removed, it is ezumab, that may reduce Science and Engineer- submerged in a solution plaque formation. ing Department in the of quantum dots for about The study, called A4 for College of Engineering, 10 to 15 minutes, then Anti-Amyloid in Asymp- are developing a special rinsed with water. Next, an tomatic Alzheimer’s molecular dye made of infrared camera captures Disease Study, will examine fluorescent nanocrystals, a series of images, which healthy people whose brain called quantum dots, that are immediately viewed on scans show the build up of clings to cancer cells and a computer screen or with the protein associated with glows under infrared light. special goggles. the disease — but who do The luminescent dye lets This procedure has been not yet have any memory tested in 10 clinical excised loss or other symptoms. HIGH-REZ_SURGERY tissues with good prelimi- The study will determine if Fluorescent nanocrystals, nary results. The procedure solanezumab can clear the B called quantum dots, are and applications on animal built-up plaque of the pro- part of the technology used models have been reported tein, called amyloid, before to produce the sharp images in the International Journal of brain cells are impaired. nections as effectively as said the difference found of LCD televisions. Surgical Oncology. The principal investigator in typical development, a between Down Syndrome is Carol F. Lippa, director process believed to occur and typical development in of the Cognitive Neurology during childhood and youth could turn out to be and Alzheimer’s program young adulthood as part an early indicator of sus- at Drexel Neurosciences of reaching cognitive ceptibility to Alzheimer’s Institute, which is one of maturity. later in life. 60 study sites around the Some of the brain re- Lee hopes that her finding world. G. Peter Gliebus, as- gions with increased corti- will spur further research sistant professor of neurol- cal thickness were nodes in on animal models to more ogy in the institute, is also the Default Mode Network clearly draw the connection part of the research team. (DMN), the part of the of how genetic abnormalities “Clearing out the amy- brain that is active when cause brain abnormalities loid is like clearing out the a person is at rest. Because — knowledge that could kindling before the fire deterioration in the DMN inform potential biomedical starts,” Lippa says. “We are has been associated with treatment approaches for hopeful we can prevent Alzheimer’s disease, Lee intellectual disability. Alzheimer’s.

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CRYSTALLOGRAPHY IMMUNOLOGY _A STEP TOWARD SOLVING PKU _BODY, HEAL THYSELF

For the first time, scientists have a model of the enzyme that is defective A biomedical engineer is investigating how to use in patients with the metabolic disorder PKU — opening the door to new the body’s own immune cells to grow blood drug discovery. vessels necessary to wound healing.

tion, due to the cells’ ability to change their form and function — each orches- trating events specific to different stages of repair. Though this process has been identified, it is not _KARA SPILLER well understood. Spiller is an assistant Once macrophages are professor in the School of Biomedical better understood, Spiller Engineering, Science and her research team hope and Health Systems. to develop a biomaterial platform and strategy for cientists are getting delivering drugs to control closer to mending macrophages and encour- Sdamaged tissue and age vascularization by the even creating whole organs, body’s own cells. thanks to advancements in regenerative medicine. But a significant roadblock exists: “Damaged tissue the absence of blood vessels — due to cancer, inside damaged tissues. Spiller has been studying a bone fracture ways to naturally spawn or a disease like CRYSTAL_CONUNDRUM blood vessels to feed new The PAH enzyme eluded crystal-structure determination for years, until researchers discov- tissue growth by taking diabetes — happens ered that the enzyme is represented by two distinct structures rather than one. Once they advantage of the body’s could separate the two, they were able to grow crystals from which they could determine one response to injury and because insufficient of the two structures. disease. She believes that blood vessel growth vital immune system cells, or the one in 20,000 Dairy products, meat, fish, The team’s breakthrough called macrophages, are key has cut off oxygen. people born in the chicken, eggs, beans and came from discovering that to that process. If we cannot engi- FUnited States each nuts are off limits. the enzyme is represented The National Institutes year with the rare metabol- Because maintaining by two distinct structures of Health has awarded her neer blood vessel ic disease phenylketonuria, this strict diet can be a rather than one. with a five-year, $1.9 million every meal is an exercise challenge, researchers are “Knowing the structure grant to study the cells. networks, then in abnegation. always looking for new, at this high resolution is Macrophages roam we cannot repair In phenylketonuria, non-dietary treatments to expected to speed up any throughout tissues in the or PKU, the enzyme that combat PKU symptoms. current drug discovery pur- body and engulf any patho- any tissue.” breaks down the amino Recently, Drexel re- suits,” says Emilia Arturo, gens in their path. Though acid phenylalanine is searchers and an interna- a Drexel graduate student these immune cells destroy “The idea is that if you either missing or defective. tional group of scientists in the College of Medicine foreign invaders, they have can manipulate the mac- Those afflicted must adhere made a critical step toward and study co-author. earned a bad reputation, rophages via just a single to a protein-restricted diet understanding the disorder Results were published Spiller says, because they drug, then the macrophages throughout their lives to by successfully solving the in the Proceedings of the also contribute to inflamma- will be able to control the prevent mental and behav- first X-ray crystal structure National Academy of Sciences. tion, causing bruises, ulcers blood vessels,” Spiller says. ioral abnormalities. of phenylalanine hydroxy- Using what they have and sometimes, degenera- A microscopic view of That means eating lase (PAH), the enzyme learned from this study, tive diseases. macrophages, immune system only carefully measured that is defective in patients the team is now working However, more recent cells that may be key to blood amounts of fruits, vegeta- with the disorder. on solving the structure studies have shown that vessel growth. bles and low-protein breads For decades, researchers of activated PAH, which macrophages, and inflam- and pastas, supplemented have tried to determine functions to prevent blood mation more generally, can with a special phenylala- the structure of the PAH phenylalanine from rising play an important role in nine-free medical formula. enzyme without success. to neurotoxic levels. tissue repair and regenera-

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_CRYSTAL CLEAR X-ray crystallography is used to create three-dimensional A_HOW-TO The process of models of molecules that help researchers understand how the growing crystals is molecules function within the body — knowledge that can be used laborious and famously to develop new antibiotics. prone to failure.

Researchers first must couple of years ago, 01 generate large quantities Patrick Loll and his MODELS_FOR_MEDS 01 of the molecule of inter- A students solved a Loll estimates that he est. This step can require many months of trial and nearly 70-year-old mystery. has grown thousands of Using crystallography, they crystals, including those error, and in some cases it simply fails outright. became the first research- displayed at right. ers to understand precisely Researchers then purify how bacitracin, a house- 01. Bacitracin is a natural- 02 away other kinds of mol- product antibiotic best known hold antibiotic derived 02 ecules, so that only the as a component of “triple desired molecule remains from the bacterium Bacillus antibiotic” ointments. in the test tube. subtilis var Tracy and first approved in 1948, combats 02. This is a crystal of the In the crystallization step, COX1 enzyme, which is the 03 infection in the body. researchers experiment target of aspirin, ibuprofen, with different reagents in Crystallography — the naproxen and other NSAIDs. hopes of finding an additive study of how atoms in a that coaxes the delicate material are arranged — 03. Ramoplanin is a new molecules into assembling investigational antibiotic that involves the creation of 03 into a nicely ordered 3-D is being tested as a treatment lattice. The crystalliza- three-dimensional models for C. difficile infections. tion step is very sensitive of molecules. The models 05 to outside variables. allow scientists to see how 04. Porin is a protein from Many projects fail at this the molecules are struc- the outer membrane of the stage, and even the ones bacterium E. coli, where it that work usually require tured, in order to better mediates the uptake of vari- thousands of experiments understand how they func- ous nutrients and drugs. to hone in on the right tion. In the case of antibi- set of conditions for good 05. PfeA is a protein from crystallization. otics such as bacitracin, the the outer membrane of structural models reveal 04 Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Researchers then shoot how these molecules latch an opportunistic pathogen. 04 a beam of X-rays at the onto and interact with crystal, which scatters their bacterial cell targets. the X-rays in different directions. High-tech By elucidating the struc- geranyl tail of lipid detectors capture the ture of bacitracin, Loll, his BACITRACIN’S_SECRET scattered radiation and student Nicoleta Economou, Loll and his collaborators learned this information is fed into that Bacitracin works by targeting and their Drexel collabora- bacitracin a series of calculations a lipid that harmful bacteria use to tor Simon Cocklin were able backbone that ultimately yields an shuttle essential building blocks to image of the molecule. to determine that the anti- their cell walls. Bacitracin is able to biotic works by targeting a grab onto the lipid and prevent it from lipid that harmful bacteria delivering materials that the bacterial cell needs to survive, and it dies. use to shuttle essential building blocks to their cell walls. Bacitracin is able to grab onto the lipid in a way _CRYSTALS OF no one had predicted; this VANCOMYCIN interaction prevents the lip- The rise of bacterial resis- id from delivering materials tance to vancomycin (often that the cell needs, thereby considered the antibiotic of last resort) has motivated research- killing the bacteria. ers to find alternatives. Through Their finding was pub- crystallography, Drexel researchers lished in the Proceedings of the seek to understand how vancomycin National Academy of Sciences of recognizes its target, with the goal of exploiting this information to design new, the United States of America. more effective variants.

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_ONLINE To read the full-length articles that appear in this section, visit EXELmagazine.org SECURITY _CREDIBILITY, ON CAMERA

A Drexel professor will evaluate a new body camera initiative launched by Philadelphia’s transit agency meant to reduce crime and improve officer-citizen relationships.

JORDAN HYATT Hyatt is an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Criminology and Justice Studies.

ominating the headlines over the past several Dyears has been an increased demand for police accountability, the need for autonomy in law enforcement and the public’s desire for transparency. In response, the South- eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) serving Philadel- county,” Hyatt says. “The phia launched an initia- development of solid, tive this year to equip all empirical research has not of its transit police officers kept pace. Working with with body cameras. This the SEPTA police depart- policy will seek to reduce ment, an agency committed crime, strengthen rela- to evidence-based policies, tionships with the public presents an opportunity to and provide valuable evi- rigorously examine the ef- dence for investigations. fects of body-worn cameras Drexel criminology on a number of important EYES_ON_OFFICERS professor Jordan Hyatt has dimensions, including Philadelphia’s transit been tapped to evaluate crime within the transit police are required to the program’s success. system and the nature of activate the cameras when The team will examine officer-citizen interactions.” they are interacting with the impact of the camera “We believe it gives the the public and respond- program on some key SEPTA Transit Police De- ing to calls from police measures, including crime partment more credibility radio. When recording is in the system, complaints with the community,” says in progress, officers are against officers and use of SEPTA Police Chief Thomas expected to notify the in- force. They also will study Nestel III. “These cameras dividuals with whom they officer attitudes toward will also greatly aide with are speaking. use of the body cameras our investigative efforts.” and public perceptions. This initiative enhances The first results will be SEPTA’s overall video cover- presented in the fall. age of the transit system, “Body-worn cameras are which currently includes being used, with increasing over 18,000 surveillance frequency, by law enforce- cameras at stations and on ment agencies across the trains, buses and trolleys.

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TRANSIT POLICE

EXELmagazine.org 75 _CULTURE / SOCIETY

LABOR MARKET EDUCATION _THE GREAT DISCONNECT _BINARY BLACKBOARDS

Too many Philadelphia youth are disconnected Video games aren’t just for recreation; when brought into the classroom from school and work at a crucial juncture in they can help students discover their destiny. their lives, a Drexel study found.

ne in four people in the size of the disconnected Philadelphia between 18- to 24-year-old popula- Othe ages of 18 and 24 tion in the city and the are “disconnected” from surrounding suburbs. The the labor market — neither researchers compared basic employed nor in school — measures of the develop- according to a recent study ment of human capital from Drexel’s Center for traits for disconnected Labor Markets and Policy. young adults and their Nationally, the rate of connected counterparts disconnected youth was just including education, labor 17.7 percent. force attachment and prior “These numbers are work experience. extraordinarily high,” Within the city, discon- says Paul Harrington, nection rates were as high who is director of Drexel’s as 38 percent in East Phila- Center for Labor Markets delphia and 29 percent in and Policy in the School of North Philadelphia. The Education and co-author of Center City area was the the report with Neeta Fog, exception with a disconnec- a labor economist in the tion rate of just 10 percent. center. “Disconnected youth Males were more likely are disengaged from school than females to be unem- and work, both of which are ployed and out of school considered ‘human capital’ at 28.5 percent versus building activities that add 22.7 percent. to the long-term productive So, if these young people abilities of individuals.” aren’t in school or at work, The study used the most where are they? recent three years (2011– They are “essentially 2013) of American Commu- idle,” the report states, “at ow do kids learn about Education, Foster, along nity Survey data to measure a time in their lives when what they might with then-graduate student most young people are H want to be? About Mamta Shah ’15, assessed intensely investing in the what they might expect teacher knowledge on development of their long- to do? How do they put using game-based technol- term productive abilities on different hats and try ogy in the classroom, and and simultaneously making out different roles to see found it’s not a style regu- key career and life deci- possibilities of a future _AROUTIS N. larly taught in education sions that will impact the self without worrying that FOSTER courses. “In a classroom,” quality of their lives and they’re going to fail? Foster is an associ- Foster explains, “teachers ate professor in the the lives of their children Through something School of Education. can’t afford the luxury of for decades.” they’ve been doing outside trial and error when their ONE IN the classroom for centu- in things they wouldn’t jobs are at stake.” FOUR ries: gaming. otherwise think about,” he He saw the need to School of Education says. This can be especially give teachers preparation PEOPLE Associate Professor Aroutis powerful in introducing with systematic ways to in Philadelphia between the ages of 18 and 24 are neither Foster wants to bring games students to careers in teach with games and employed nor in school into the classroom, and STEM, he adds, especially other immersive digital show teachers how to make for students who don’t environments. them work systematically. have role models showing Foster developed a model “Teachers are able to them otherwise. by working with in-service use those same things kids In a study recently teachers and students — are already interested in published in the Journal over the course of a year at and capture their interest of Technology and Teacher a high school and during

76 _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

MARKETING MANAGEMENT _GAME OF FONTS _THE VC-CEO DYNAMIC

A study of consumer behavior has found that Startups should be aware that the more power shoppers are more drawn to sales prices when they assign to their CEO, the more risk the they are displayed in a hard-to-read font. chief could be willing to take on, especially in the beginning. ig name companies like Target, Mattel, enture capitalists (VCs) attenuate the negative B Staples and The North tend to encourage effect of VC funding on Face are keeping things Vtheir investees to innovation novelty. On nice and easy — at least, pursue risky and novel the other hand, CEOs when it comes to the font innovations in the early with a lot of technological they use to convey their stage of a new venture, brand to consumers. They _RAJNEESH SURI but discourage them “We’re not saying all use Helvetica — an Suri is an expert in from doing so late in the consumer behavior one type of CEO is easy-to-read, so-called “flu- and a marketing pro- game — where they may ent” font. fessor in the LeBow be sitting on a profit they better or worse — One might assume that College of Business. don’t want to risk losing, fluent fonts are the best participants found fluent according to a new paper we’re hoping our way to communicate with prices easier to grasp, but recently published in the findings will be consumers. that sales promoted using journal Organization Science But LeBow College of a disfluent font inspired co-authored by two LeBow helpful to boards, Business Professor Ra- more purchases. College of Business man- jneesh Suri has found that Suri doesn’t think that agement professors. VCs and CEOs disfluent, or more ornate marketers should go and H. Dennis Park and Dan- as they consider fonts such as Bradley, buck switch all of their sale iel Tzabbar found that pres- that trend, at least when price displays to the Brad- sure to pursue riskier and risk-tolerance it comes to showing prices, ley font, but it is worth more novel innovations can orientation.” and that they turn brows- considering — and more be tied to a specific type of ers into buyers more often. research. CEO — those who hold a –H. Dennis Park, LeBow College of Business “Marketers have a “These fonts make them higher degree of structural management professor tendency to go to the more interesting to the or expert power. easy-to-read font,” he says. participant,” says Suri. “These companies with expertise tend to balance “But when it comes to ac- “Consumers are more very powerful CEOs — the the innovation-oriented tual purchase behavior, we engaged when the fonts ones that hold a bunch agenda throughout differ- found that, when we used look good.” of titles such as CEO, ent stages of the ventures. another six months at a the more ornate font, sales chairman, etc. — tend to Park says the findings of middle school — to study were significantly higher.” push their agenda more this study could help start- teaching game analysis, In a study published in SHOPPERS’_SCRIPT as compared with CEOs ups to choose the best CEO game integration and eco- the Journal of the Academy of Twenty-three percent more with fewer titles and less depending on their objec- logical conditions impact- Marketing Science, Suri and bags of Doritos sold when power,” Park and Tzabbar tive — and provide insight ing game use in schools. He a team of researchers went the prices were displayed in explain. “And when they into how much power to also tested the model with into a supermarket for a the “disfluent” Bradley font, have more structure of assign to the CEO. 14 pre-service teachers at month and analyzed how compared with Helvetica. power, they tend to push “We’re not saying one Drexel. The resulting model bags of Doritos chips sold for greater risk taking.” type of CEO is better or supports a systematic when promotional sale They argue that this ex- worse — we’re hoping our process for designing games prices were listed in the plains why findings will be helpful to and teaching with games. fluent Helvetica font com- we are most boards, VCs and CEOs as His research has shown pared with how they sold likely to see they consider risk-tolerance that using games in the when promotional sale the greatest orientation,” says Park. classroom can trigger prices were listed in the innovation The researchers based identity exploration and disfluent Bradley font. novelty early in their findings on an self-relevance in a safe They found that 23 the investment analysis of 482 U.S. biotech environment. percent more bags of Dori- process, when a companies. “Kids have a sense of tos sold when the prices VC partners with a They assessed whether learning in schools that were displayed in the structurally power- the companies received VC failure means ‘I’m in big Bradley font. ful CEO. However, funding or not and how trouble.’ Games provide a They also asked people to they note that in the VC-CEO relationship safe space where you can look at two fictional ads for the late stage of the changed through the life- fail and try again,” he says. cell phones, and found that venture, such CEOs cycle of the startup.

EXELmagazine.org 77 _CULTURE / SOCIETY

SEXUAL ABUSE PSYCHOLOGY CORPORATE GOVERNANCE _HIDDEN IN PLAIN SITE _GUT REACTION _THE ART OF THE TAKEOVER

The anonymity of online forums may be a unique The way to a woman’s Public companies that refuse generous takeover bids source of support, guidance and healing for heart is through her stom- face punishing consequences in the stock market. survivors of sexual abuse. ach, a new study shows. Feb. 1 2008 May 5 2008 he private and personal ow can you get a wom- Microsoft bids for Microsoft Yahoo! withdraws nature of sexual assault an to become more 30 Tmeans that more than Hreceptive to romance? half of survivors don’t Feed her! report the abuse or seek Michael Lowe, a psychol- 25 outside help, even when ogy professor in the College talking about their experi- of Arts and Sciences, and ences with others could _NAZANIN ANDALIBI alumna Alice Ely ’14 col- 20 Andalibi is a doctoral help them cope. candidate in informa- laborated on research that A new study finds that tion studies in the shows women’s brains 15 anonymous online forums College of Computing respond more to romantic & Informatics. may fulfill that unmet need. cues on a full stomach than ROLLER_COASTER In a study of how sexual online,” Andalibi says. on an empty one. When Microsoft gave up its generous bid for Yahoo! Inc. in abuse survivors interact “Sometimes people have The study, published May 2008, four months after making an offer in February, online when they are able never shared these experi- online in the journal Ap- the company’s market value slid 15 percent. to mask their identity, a ences with anyone before petite, found results that are multi-institutional team online or off and they feel contrary to previous studies fter reviewing thou- offers that were more, or led by Drexel doctoral can- they need to.” that showed people typi- sands of recent cor- less, than expected — and didate Nazanin Andalibi The team looked at cally demonstrate greater Aporate takeover bids what happened next. and advised by the College publicly available posts on sensitivity to rewarding that didn’t go through to “Firms that turn down of Computing & Informat- the social networking/news stimuli like food, money assess how the stock market good offers tend to be ics’ Assistant Professor website Reddit in three and drugs when they are reacted, researchers found punished,” he concludes. Andrea Forte found that abuse-related forums, called hungry, says Ely. that there is intelligence in “They are more likely to people are willing to ask subreddits. The messages “We found that young the machine. eventually go out of busi- for help — both emotional were posted over the course women both with and Companies that resist a ness or be delisted from support and information of 10 months in 2014. without a history of dieting “bad” takeover offer gener- the stock exchange. The — sometimes for the very “This suggests the poten- had greater brain activation ally were not punished CEO is more likely to be first time. tial of designing new kinds in response to romantic in the market, while the pushed out, and they tend Additionally, men are of provisions that subred- pictures in reward-related obverse is true when firms to do worse, fiscally.” more likely to disclose that dit moderators could use to neural regions after having turn down “good” bids, A classic example of that they’ve been victims of identify potential support- eaten than when hungry,” according to a recent paper is Yahoo!, says Becher. In sexual abuse if they can seeking and sensitive says Ely. “This data suggests co-authored in the Journal 2008, the struggling search post about it without iden- disclosures by throwaway that eating may prime or of Financial and Quantitative engine company received a tifying themselves. accounts, so they can direct sensitize young women to Analysis by LeBow College of public bid from Microsoft “We found that people timely help and support,” rewards beyond food. It also Business finance professor valued at approximately sometimes referred to the authors wrote. supports a shared neurocir- David Becher. $47 billion, representing unmet disclosure-related The paper was published cuitry for food and sex.” “Sometimes, an offer is more than a 60 percent pre- needs when posting in the Proceedings of the 33rd The latest finding, based rejected because it’s a bad mium over Yahoo’s pre-bid Annual Association for Com- on a small pilot study, grew deal,” Becher explains. stock price. puting Machinery’s Conference from earlier work looking at “But sometimes, companies Yahoo executives on Human Factors in Comput- whether the brain response turn down a good deal — rebuffed the offer, which ing Systems. to food differed signifi- probably because the target Microsoft then increased cantly in women who were is entrenched.” by 14 percent. That bid was historical dieters versus Becher and his co-author also rejected, and Microsoft PRIVATE_FORUM those who had never dieted. defined a “good offer” as withdrew. People are more comfort- That study, published in one where the premium The bid’s withdrawal able disclosing sexual Obesity in 2014, found that offered was higher than coincided with a 15 percent abuse and seeking help the brains of women with a what the market was ex- reduction in Yahoo’s market anonymously online. history of dieting responded pecting, with the average value — drawing the ire more dramatically to highly premium in deals being of shareholders. Pointed palatable food cues when around 40 percent. criticism was directed at the fed as compared to women Then they looked at firms negotiating skills of then who had never dieted or that turned down offers for Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, who who were currently dieting. mergers — broken down by was eventually replaced.

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_NEW LIFE FOR LEFTOVERS With roughly 40 percent of food in the United States going to waste, food researchers are exploring ways to repurpose groceries destined for the dumpster.

owhere is the problem of The Drexel Food Lab looked at the food waste more obvi- During the month-long food items that were commonly go- Nous than at supermar- project, a representative ing to waste — bananas, tomatoes, kets, where fresh produce sample of nearly 35,000 greens, sweet potatoes — and devel- is routinely tossed out for pounds of produce oped low-cost, limited-skill ways to cosmetic reasons. were collected from repurpose them into recipes. “If I offered you a bruised grocery stores in banana, you probably Philadelphia. “So, for example, we took those wouldn’t be interested,” brown bananas, peeled them, says Professor Jonathan froze them and food processed Deutsch. “But what if I of- them to create banana ice cream, fered you some banana ice which is much more appeal- cream on a hot summer day? ing. If we then wholesaled those I bet you’d find that a lot products back to the grocery more appealing.” 25% store, they could be sold at nearly It was this simple observa- was rotten and not suit- double the original retail price.” tion that inspired researchers able for culinary uses. to explore ways to recover supermarket surplus food and 33% of the remainder was repurpose it to feed hungry suitable for use as is people, generate revenue and at area food shelters An experimental sample + even create jobs. and pantries. taken from THE REMAINING $90,000 Deutsch, along with re- 15,000 POUNDS was used This could generate more than $90,000 in searchers from the University 10% for recipe research and monthly gross revenue for the stores, enough of Pennsylvania, Cabrini of the remainder development inside Drexel’s to support several employees at a family wage. consisted of small College and the Environmen- quantities of specialty Food Lab, where Drexel culi- tal Protection Agency, piloted ingredients that did nary arts and food science a surplus food management not warrant further students used the produce model in West Philadelphia research. to develop new products. in 2015 that diverted fresh- but-unsold fruit and vegetable groceries from landfills and processed the food for dona- tion or for new businesses. If diverted to new foods, each of the country’s 46.1 million SNAP recipients could figuratively receive an equivalent of 24 pounds 1.1 of food a year. BILLION “An important way to POUNDS address global food security is to make better use of the food already produced,” the The researchers called researchers wrote. “[The their model the Food model] could help relieve System-Sensitive Method- chronic hunger and address ology (FSSM). Preliminary the cost barriers that prevent results suggest that the these important sources of potential food saved from land- healthy dietary nutrients fills nationally could be about from reaching lower-income 1.1 billion pounds a year. Americans.”

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CHANCES

_SECOND for First-Time Offenders Strict “zero tolerance” policies have led to a disturbing number of in-school arrests — about 1,600 in the School District of Philadelphia annually. Once in the justice system, youths’ life chances are diminished considerably. Psychology Professor Naomi Goldstein is working with community partners to divert students from the damaging “school-to-prison pipeline,” improving outcomes for youth and making Philadelphia a national leader in the process. _by Tim Hyland / illustrations by Brian Stauffer

fter spending nearly two decades working to transform juvenile justice in America, Naomi Goldstein understands that changing people’s minds about crime and punish- Ament — especially crime and punishment for at-risk youth — is no easy task. But Goldstein, an associate professor of psychology in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sci- ences, also knows that change is possible, and sometimes, she says, a simple shift in mind- set can make all the difference. “In all of my work, it’s about transforming this idea that there’s no hope for these youth,” Goldstein says. “It’s about recognizing that, if we use em- One couldn’t find a situation more “high-pressure” than pirical data, if we enact the right changes in philosophy and if we that of a police interrogation room. It was in that context change the structure of the system, these young people can lead that Goldstein, as a graduate student at the University of positive lives. And that’s not only better for them; it’s better for Massachusetts in Amherst and on clinical internship at the their communities, for their states and for the country.” University of Massachusetts Medical School, first became cu- Goldstein has emerged as one of the nation’s leading thinkers in rious about the workings of the juvenile justice system. the area of juvenile justice reform. More specifically, she developed an interest in how well Her unique research interests — which range from anger man- — or how poorly — adolescents would perform in the con- _NAOMI GOLDSTEIN Goldstein is an associ- agement to trial competence and from interventions with girls in text of interrogation. ate professor of psy- juvenile justice facilities to Miranda rights comprehension among It didn’t take her long to discern that many young people chology in the College of Arts and Sciences, youth suspects — have uncovered serious structural problems with- don’t have the capacity to make informed decisions such as director of Drexel’s in the nation’s juvenile justice systems. whether to waive their Miranda rights or to provide confes- Juvenile Justice Perhaps most importantly, her work has delivered real solutions sions to police. Research and Reform Lab, and a Stoneleigh to some of the trickiest problems facing those systems today, and “These kids are brought in for questioning, and it’s a Foundation Fellow. has offered greater hope to an untold number of at-risk youth in very intense situation,” Goldstein says. “The police are al- Philadelphia and beyond. lowed to deceive suspects — even juvenile suspects — in order to get a confession, and many youth simply have fun- ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL damental misunderstandings about what their [Miranda At the core of Goldstein’s work is the very simple, very problematic and, to Goldstein’s mind, rights] mean.” entirely undeniable fact that the American juvenile justice system was adapted from the During a typical interrogation, there is no sympathetic adult system and, therefore, designed for mini-adults, not kids. adult in the room advising the young person. “We know that adolescents don’t make decisions the same way that adults do, particularly “Even when there is, the adult may be pressuring the kid in high-pressure situations,” she says. to respond to the police — to cooperate with them and take responsibility for what they may have done,” she says. “The adult is not encouraging the child to assert their rights to silence and legal counsel, which would be in the child’s best legal interest.”

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About 90 percent of youth in juvenile justice facilities report histories of traumatic events, and the seclusion, loss of privacy and perceived lack of safety in these residential facilities can exacerbate mental health problems. Goldstein’s work on Miranda rights eventually led her to question juvenile justice more Once released from juvenile justice facilities, youth can broadly. She began to think about how the legal system treats youth as opposed to adults experience a cascade of negative consequences. More than and about how the unique psy- half will drop out of school chological characteristics that upon release, Goldstein says. may increase youths’ risks for A history of arrest and convic- entering the system under- tion can trigger the family’s mine their abilities once they eviction from public housing enter the system. and the youth’s disqualifica- In short, she has developed a tion from many colleges and broad-based interest in not just jobs. Those with a criminal re- identifying the problems with- cord may be ineligible for mili- in our nation’s juvenile justice tary service — no small issue system, but also in developing for the many young people who and implementing solutions. may see that as their path out In Philadelphia, Goldstein’s of a disadvantaged upbringing. work on two related projects So, Goldstein says, it only has already gone a long way makes sense to keep the youth toward improving outcomes who present little risk to the for at-risk youth. community out of those facili- With the support of a fellow- ties and out of the juvenile jus- ship from the Stoneleigh Foun- tice system whenever possible. dation, a Philadelphia-based “The simple fact of the mat- foundation focusing on juve- ter is that residential juvenile nile justice and child welfare justice facilities have incred- reform, Goldstein has been ibly negative impacts on young partnering with Philadelphia’s people,” she says. Juvenile Probation Depart- And since not all arrests can ment and juvenile justice lead- or should be avoided, Goldstein ers to reform the city’s juvenile focuses on preventing arrest probation system. when appropriate and also on By making the system more reforming probation systems responsive to the ways ado- for youth who have entered lescents make decisions about the system. their behaviors, Goldstein be- “What we hope to do with lieves these youth can be better the probation reform work is positioned to successfully com- to reduce the number of kids plete the terms of probation. in detention, and reduce the At the same time, she is number of kids in longer-term evaluating a citywide program residential placements,” she established two years ago that explains. “If kids are low-risk aims to give students who offenders, then we want to misbehave at school a second keep them out of placement.” chance to stay out of the justice system. The Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program was established and implemented THE POWER OF POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT in all Philadelphia schools in May 2014. It’s completely normal for kids to break the rules, says Under the program, a student who commits a lower-level offense on school property, Goldstein. For some, that means breaking the rules of the and who has no history of a delinquency finding in juvenile court, is not arrested. Instead, house. For others, it’s getting into trouble in school. And with this one-time opportunity, he or she is diverted to community-based prevention pro- for some others still, that rule-breaking can cross into crim- gramming to address the underlying challenges in the lives of the student and family. inal activity. The program — a collaborative effort between the Philadelphia Police Department, the But even the latter situation should not necessarily por- Philadelphia Department of Human Services and the School District of Philadelphia — is tend a bleak future. intended to address the underlying reasons for misbehavior rather than subjecting the “The vast majority of kids who do these things go on to be- youth to the immediate and collateral consequences of an arrest record. Goldstein is evalu- come completely well-adapted individuals who don’t com- ating the program with support from a grant from the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and mit crimes,” Goldstein says. Delinquency Prevention. This innovative approach is built on a rather simple premise: Once a young person is arrested and placed in some kind of correctional facility, his or her chances of ever leading a normal, productive life are slashed considerably.

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Unfortunately, even for kids who do manage to stay out of legal trouble after their first offense, the justice system can be stacked against them. And the problems caused by that structural flaw are far-reaching. Sixty percent of delinquent youth receive probation as their primary legal disposition. a Philadelphia Department of Human Services social work- That at least keeps them out of detention and residential placement. Unfortunately, half er and is referred for intensive prevention services after of those youth will eventually end up in a juvenile justice facility anyway, not because school. Therapy and other support is available not only to they committed a second crime, but because the strict terms of probation are easy to vio- the youth, but to parents and families as well. late. Violation can be as simple as missing a mandatory meeting with a probation officer Imagine a 12-year-old boy carries a knife to school because or skipping school. he feels unsafe in his neighborhood. In previous years, this Complicating matters further is the fact that many “first offenses” may be very minor or student would likely have been arrested. Now, school police even sometimes accidental, says Goldstein. Imagine this scenario: A student and staff address how to improve his com- who works an afternoon job at a warehouse accidentally brings his box cut- “If these young mute to school and the student is provided ter to school with him — careless mistake or not, that offense often sends with the support services he may need. an otherwise innocent student into the system. people on probation “It’s a one-time deal, yes, but at least When Goldstein argues against automatically arresting youth or putting learn that there is with that first incident, they are staying probation violators in detention or residential placements, she has biology out of the system,” says Goldstein. and psychology on her side. something for them The Philadelphia Police School Diversion The undeveloped adolescent brain is wired differently than an adult to work toward and Program showed its full potential during brain. Chemically and physiologically, teenage minds are prone to impul- its first full year of operation, in the 2014– siveness and risk taking and are geared toward emphasizing short-term to achieve, it can 15 school year. rewards over long-term negative consequences. promote positive According to Goldstein, total school-based This can create problems for youth on probation. The immediate fun of arrests dropped 54 percent from the previ- partying with friends on a Saturday night is a more powerful motivator behavior in the long ous year — falling from 1,582 to just 724. than the risk of probation revocation at next month’s court hearing be- Arrests related to the possession of weapons cause of a curfew violation and failed drug screen. run. That’s a big were down 87 percent, and those tied to the “Historically, if you fail one of your, often, very numerous probation part of this work.” possession of marijuana fell 85 percent. requirements, the thinking has been, ‘Well, OK, you’ve violated your pro- The results from the 2015–16 school year bation and so our only option is to lock you up.’ What I’m doing is applying empirical are on track to be even better, with a further decline in the data to the juvenile justice system — data that suggest that the use of behavioral-shaping number of school-based arrest across the city. principles will work to improve youth probationers’ behavior.” In fact, as of December 2015, more than 800 students had Establishing a juvenile probation system that reinforces positive behaviors while pro- been diverted through the program, and of those, only 36 viding proportional consequences for negative behaviors can help shape youths’ decision — 4.5 percent of the total — were later arrested for new making, and, as a result, help them successfully complete probation. offenses in school or in the community. This is particularly “We’re trying to move away from this ‘all or nothing’ mentality when it comes to proba- notable, Goldstein says, because national data suggests that tion,” Goldstein explains. between 37 percent and 67 percent of young people who end For instance, one common requirement of probation is daily school attendance. But up in custody will be re-arrested. imagine the student, raised by a single mother working irregular jobs or suffering from an In truth, the program is succeeding far beyond what illness, who skips school to take care of younger siblings. even she had expected. “You don’t see results like this very “[This kid] hasn’t been to school in two months and is now attending a couple days a often,” she says. “It’s pretty amazing.” week,” says Goldstein. “You can either tell this kid that he has failed to fulfill his probation Some of the biggest fans of the program are the arrest- requirement or you can recognize that going from no school to two days per week is a big ing police officers, many of whom had been dissatisfied improvement — and that he actually deserves credit for that behavior. with the old policies. “The vast majority felt it was not only “If these young people on probation learn that there is something for them to work helpful to the youth directly involved, but it was actually toward and to achieve, it can promote positive behavior in the long run,” she says. “That’s increasing the overall safety of the schools,” Goldstein says. a big part of this work.” The more successful Philadelphia’s programs become, Goldstein says, the more hope there will be for at-risk youth ONE-TIME GET OUT OF JAIL CARD nationwide. In Philadelphia, Goldstein’s somewhat radical ideas are being put to the test in the form of “There’s a lot of attention on this topic now, but that cer- the city’s Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, a city-wide program initiated by tainly wasn’t the case a decade ago,” Goldstein says. “Phila- the Philadelphia Police Department. delphia really took the lead on reform efforts in this area. So far, the approach is passing with flying colors. …My hope is that a lot of these projects will be successful The diversion program was initially rolled out in all Philadelphia schools in May 2014. not only in Philadelphia, but in other cities around the Though the program launched during the tail end of the 2013–14 school year, it immedi- country as well.” ately showed great promise. Under the rules of the program, a first-time offender who commits low-level delinquent This is an updated version of a story that previously appeared in acts on or around school premises is not arrested — which is to say, he or she never for- Ask Magazine. mally “enters the system.” Instead of being handcuffed, removed from school, taken by police car to the police station, held for up to six hours for processing and finger printed, the student meets with

EXELmagazine.org 83 _FRAMEWORK

_ABOUT DREXEL

_SCHUYLKILL YARDS ounded in 1891 in Philadelphia, Drexel is a comprehen- Natural Sciences of Drexel University, America’s oldest In March, Drexel and sive urban university of more than 25,500 students, natural history museum. Brandywine Realty Trust consistently ranked in America’s Top 100 by U.S. News Drexel advances its culture of innovation by encouraging announced the planned F development of Schuylkill & World Report. multidisciplinary collaboration, technology commercial- Yards, a 14-acre, $3.5 billion Drexel is a leader in experiential, technology-infused ization and entrepreneurship — an approach exemplified “innovation neighborhood” education, enriched by the nation’s premier cooperative- by the ExCITe Center, the interdisciplinary A.J. Drexel built on long-underutilized education program. The University’s recognized excellence Institutes, Drexel Ventures, the Innovation Center @ 3401 Drexel-owned land adjacent to Amtrak’s 30th Street Sta- in translational research is supported by the Coulter Founda- Market Street, the Close School of Entrepreneurship and tion in West Philadelphia. tion through the Coulter-Drexel Translational Research Part- the Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship. nership and by $101 million in sponsored research awards. Drexel operates out of its 123-acre University City Campus Drexel enrolls students in on-campus and online programs in West Philadelphia and at four additional locations: the leading to associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral and Center City Campus for the College of Nursing and Health professional degrees (including MDs and JDs) in 15 colleges Professions and the Academy of Natural Sciences; the Queen and schools. Drexel also has some of the richest specimen and Lane Campus in East Falls for the College of Medicine; and artifact collections in the world through the Academy of through its online platform, Drexel Online.

_ONLINE Learn more about Drexel University at drexel.edu 84 This Disease Will Self Destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2…

Exploding Parasites Spell Progress in the Battle Against Drug-Resistant Malaria

The mosquito-borne malaria parasite kills nearly 500,000 children every year. As the parasite continues to spread and evolve, the best drugs that we have to fight it are losing potency. If humanity is to gain the upper-hand in the battle against this global menace, we need new weapons, fast. A team of Drexel University College of Medicine researchers, led by Dr. Akhil Vaidya, has discovered a new class of chemicals to combat malaria. These compounds — pyrzaoleamides — block the parasite’s ability to maintain normal sodium levels in its cells, causing the organism to swell and burst. Their work is a continuation of more than 50 years of malaria research at Drexel, all aimed at better understanding and combating this deadly disease. When tiny bugs pose huge threats to public health, Drexel researchers race to even the odds in humanity’s favor. _DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2016

_ONLINE EXELmagazine.org

22 _A SOBER ANALYSIS When Washington became the first state to privatize liquor sales since Prohibition, it provided a rare chance to observe the impact of alcohol availability on public safety.