Inquiry

Inquiry HONORS TUTORIAL COLLEGE

rtu i v s e r o expl w a p S Lexie

RESEARCH APPRENTICESHIPS 2012

. 24 p n o i t al evolu

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE briefs

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3 Molecular Genomes 3 Curating Feminism 4 From Algae to Energy 5 Turtle: An Incredible Journey 5 Bacteria Blocker

communication 7 The Days of Viewers’ Lives 9 Language of Identity 11 Mapping a Field

humanities 13 The Art of Invective

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15 A Charter’s Curse 17 The Voice of La Querida

science

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33 Communication Breakdown 33 Basic Intervention 37 Molecular Origami 39 Trace the Roots 41 A Better Measure 43 Salamander Sightings

ON THE COVER: Lexie Spaw, Biological Sciences ’14, works at the Witmer Lab. Photo by Rob Hardin, HTC Telecommunications ’08

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FROM THE

features

DEAN

19 Gettin’ Fishy with It 24 Link to the Extinct 27 “When Your Body Stops Being You” 30 Of Mice and Men

24 19

30 Meet the Staff Editor-in-Chief Gina Edwards Managing Editor Jessie Cadle Art Director Bridget Mallon

Writers Rachel Grimm Alex Menrisky Photographer Rob Hardin

Fact Checkers Amy Brighter Maggie Kreuger Brian Vadakin Illustrator Paula Welling

The HTC Research Apprenticeship Program is one of the premier undergraduate research experiences at Ohio University. Pairing a motivated HTC student with an outstanding faculty tutor, the program teaches our undergraduates how to conduct research in either their own or a complimentary discipline while giving the faculty member a bright, energetic student to help move a project forward.

Since its inception in the early 1990s, more than 260 research projects have been supported through this program.

Fifteen of our Outstanding Tutor Award winners have directed apprenticeships, usually multiple times. Many of our Distinguished Mentors and N. Victor Goodman Award winners have also directed apprenticeships.

As dean, I have attempted to maintain a (scaled back) research agenda. When my staff encouraged me to award myself a research apprentice last summer, I saw it as a chance to solve two problems at once: learn how the program really works and finish mapping out what’s left to do on my current book project.

With my apprentice’s help, I fulfilled both goals, becoming a firm believer in the efficacy of the apprenticeship program. I now know firsthand how beneficial this program is to both the student and the faculty member. My student learned what literary research really looks like, and my book project got the kick-start it needed.

Consequently, fostering and expanding the research apprenticeship program is now one of my top goals.

This year, I doubled the number of apprenticeships I awarded to 22, and funding this program is now a major cornerstone of the college’s fundraising efforts.

As you’ll see in the pages of this magazine, it’s one of the jewels of Ohio University!

Sincerely,

Jeremy W. Webster

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briefs

Projects at a Glance Molecular Genomes

By Rachel Grimm Under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Kittle in Chemistry and Biochemistry, third-year HTC Biological Sciences major Elizabeth Mathias tested simplified methods for genetic manipulation in bacteria. Although genetic manipulation has become a staple of contemporary molecular biology, current methods can produce unpredictable results. Dr. Kittle and Elizabeth hope to improve and simplify these methods through their research.

Dr. Joseph Kittle

Liz Mathias

Curating Feminism

By Rachel Grimm Under the supervision of Art History professor Dr. Jennie Klein, junior Art History major Barbara Jewell researched the exhibition content of ”Women Artists—Part II,” showing at the Kennedy Art Museum from September 21, 2012, to January 13, 2013. The second installment in a three-part series, the collection showcases female artists whose careers coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism, including local-born artists like Bernada Shahn, Jenny Holzer, and Maya Lin. As a whole, the exhibition series traces female artists throughout the evolution of second-wave feminism in the second half of the twentieth-century.

Barbara worked closely with museum curator Petra Kralickova and curator of education Sally DelGado to design and present interactive educational programs for local schoolchildren in conjunction with the exhibit. In preparation for the exhibition, Barbara also worked with Art History graduate student Alana Bowman to assemble biographical and interpretive information to be included in the exhibition’s wall tags and introductory material. For Barbara, “the key is to provoke thought,” providing cultural and historical background while leaving the interpretation of the piece up to the viewer.

Dr. Jennie Klein

Barbara Jewell

The third installment of the exhibition, featuring female artists whose careers fell after the height of second-wave feminism, will be opening at the Kennedy Art Museum in 2013.

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From Algae to Energy

By Alex Menrisky In an era when the question of energy is ever present, every ounce of research matters. At Ohio University, research teams are looking at unusual renewable energy sources bacteria and algae.

This duo could yield a new form of gas with little to no expense for the environment. The pioneer to champion behind this curious duo is unusual as well: an undergraduate.

Sarah Wyss, a senior studying cellular and molecular biology, has organized a project that incorporates civil engineering with molecular biology and genetics. She wants to promote cleaner, more efficient uses of energy. Sarah chose algae as her target: These organisms absorb light, convert it and produce lipids, or fats. These fats can be used as an energy source. If the algae can continually produce the lipids, the source is renewable.

But the process is often inefficient or expensive due to the cost of nutrients needed to keep the algae producing. Algae will continually produce lipids under high stress especially when deprived of nitrogen. Certain bacteria, namely Escherichia coli (E. coli) provide this environment, and Sarah’s goal is to genetically manipulate the bacteria to maximize their effect on the algae.

“I designed not only an experiment but also an engineering project,” Sarah said. “Not only am I trying to put these things together, I’m also trying to genetically modify the E. coli.” She found two advisors to assist with the two sides of the research: Dr. Joseph Kittle for the genetic side and Dr. R. Guy Riefler of the Russ College of Engineering for the algal research.

“This is a pretty attractive renewable technology, because most of the petroleum we use right now is actually old algal deposits to be begin with, so it’s actually drawing on historically how the planet stores solar energy,” Riefler said. “Algal biofuels could replace petroleum fuels, which could go a long way to reducing global climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels.” But he warned that the tools we have now are very inefficient, and will require refinement to make the system cost-effective.

Sarah hopes that by genetically manipulating the bacteria through a co-culture, she can force the algae’s nitrogen deprivation at a quicker rate, expediting the production of biofuel lipids. The

process is called paratransgenesis—or the coupling of a symbiont (the bacteria) with the target organism (the algae)—and modifying the symbiont instead of the organism. There are other benefits to this system besides increased production: creating a bio-sensor system.

“We can use the bacteria to say. ‘Gee, our algae is at a really great growth state,’” Sarah said. “It’s at a point where it’s ready to be harvested, and the bacteria themselves can then flip kind of a genetic switch and start the nitrogen starvation process instead of relying Dr. R. Guy Riefler on someone else to externally monitor it.”

Her work is remarkable not only because she is an undergraduate leading the research, but also because the field is almost entirely new.

“The idea of creating a symbiotic system and genetically modifying the symbiont rather than the target organism . . . is a relatively new idea that’s only come out of Sarah Wyss the past ten years or so,” Sarah said. “It hasn’t really been applied to agriculture, so starting to use this idea—to begin to apply it in new ways—will really have a lot of potential future applications that I can’t even imagine yet.”

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briefs

Turtle: An Incredible Journey

By Alex Menrisky Dr. Willem Roosenburg of the Biological Sciences Department and his research apprentice ElizaBeth Clowes traveled to the Chesapeake Bay to conduct their research this summer.

Their work concerns the nesting behavior and survivorship of the Diamondback Terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin), a species of sea turtle with known nesting beaches in the area.

Vegetation is promoted in the area as a method of decreasing shore erosion, rather than the erection of man-made equipment. But these plants act as a detriment to the terrapin, which must nest above the high water mark. Appropriate incubation temperatures exist in areas free of growth. Roosenburg and ElizaBeth cleared five ten-meter sections of nesting beach and preserved five overgrown areas as a control. They measured the temperature in each area, and also captured the newborns when they hatched to record their measurements and mark them before release into the wild. Comparison and data analysis will occur in the fall.

Dr. Willem Roosenburg

Beth Clowes

Bacteria Blocker

By Alex Menrisky The bacterium Shigella dysenteriae is responsible for some of humanity’s peskiest ailments, such as dysentery and bloodied diarrhea. Dr. Erin Murphy is working with her apprentice, Samantha Chang, to find new ways to stop the little villain from ravaging hosts.

To accomplish this, Murphy and Samantha are identifying genetic receptors in the bacterium’s DNA. Bacteria carry what is known as a virulence factor that determines their behavior, depending on their environment. For S. dysenteriae, this factor expresses itself through a DNA strand called VirB, which is complementary with a VirB RNA strand. When the nucleic acids at certain points on the VirB strand bond with their complements on the RNA chain, they create the unhealthy effects.

Dr. Murphy and Samantha are specifically studying an RNA strand called RyhB, which they believe also contains genetic material complementary to the VirB DNA strand. They will introduce RyhB to S. dysenteriae, hoping it will bond to the VirB DNA strand.

If it bonds, it will block the VirB RNA and inhibit the virulence fac-

tors. If their hypothesis is correct, medical practitioners could use this new way of blocking VirB to limit the harmful effects of S. dysenteriae.

“Anything that down-regulates production of VirB is going to decrease the ability of the bacteria to cause disease,” Murphy said. “So it’s really exciting to find a new regulator of that important factor. If we can figure out how it’s regulating we can mimic it or promote it . . . and knock down expression of VirB and decrease the ability of the bacteria to cause disease.”

Dr. Erin Murpjy

Samantha Chang

Ampersand | 6

1. Beth Clowes, a senior Biological Sciences major, holds up one of the hatchlings.

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2. The Chesapeake Bay beach in Maryland where Beth Clowes and Dr. Willem Roosenburg studied hatchlings.

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3. Beth Clowes checks her plots.

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communications

The Days of Viewers’ Lives Story by Alex Menrisky Illustration by Paula Welling

Dr. Christina Beck examines the lives of soap opera viewers and their love for the genre

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n the soap opera world, scenes drip with drama, romance and betrayal. Each hour-long installment offers new plot twists, and faithful viewers tune in Monday through Friday to keep up with the colorful characters. Researchers have studied soap operas since the 1980s, focusing primarily on show content, not audience reactions. Dr. Christina Beck, professor in the School of Communication Studies, is interested in committed viewers and how a recent rash of soap cancellations has affected them. Her goal is to provide a historical record of longtime viewers including those from families with multigenerational viewership.

“Because soap operas have gone on for so long—the youngest one is just turning 30—and people watch them every day, they have become intertwined with people’s lives,” Beck said. Iconic soaps, such as “All My Children” and “Guiding Light” have gone off the air within the last three years. For people who have watched the shows from their inception, or watched with members of older generations, losing “their stories” becomes akin to losing a loved one.

When Beck attended a soap opera event, she heard multiple people talking about their family’s long relationship with “Guiding Light.” “In fact, one person … said that she was the seventh generation because her great-great grandmother literally started listening to it on the radio, and it’s just been passed down through their family,” Beck said.

When “Guiding Light” went off the air in 2009, the fan was devastated, not only because she had followed the show so long but also because it was a part of her family history.

Beck stresses the importance of collecting such narratives because scholars can then create a cultural record of soap opera fans and their reactions to industry changes.

Longevity isn’t limited to the viewers. The actors as well often make long-term commitments, starring in shows for most of their lifetimes. For example, Helen Wagner spoke

Dr. Christina Beck Communication Studies

the first words on the soap opera, As the World Turns as Nancy in 1956 and passed away a few weeks before the show went off the air in 2010. She lived 54 years not only as Helen, but also as Nancy.

Beck’s research apprentice Benjamin Nutter assisted with data collection during his summer apprenticeship.

They focused on all U.S. soap operas, ongoing and cancelled. He followed social media, discussion boards, and fan threads to collect information and stories, while Beck also explored social media and received email updates when new testimony was uploaded to certain forums on Facebook. She hoped to include Benjamin in qualitative interviews with longtime viewers, but other data collection

“

People watch them every day. they have become intertwined with people’s lives.”

Dr. Christina Beck

consumed their time. Beck will devote fall and spring semesters to analyzing the stacks of data that were generated through their research over the summer.

Soap operas often permeate the lives of viewers. Audience members grow up as the soaps themselves grow and change, and this relationship forms a different kind of media bond. The show becomes like a companion, beside them for so long that it becomes integral to their lives.

Like a death of a friend or spouse, the end of a relationship with a soap opera can have drastic emotional effects. These viewers, however, still have their own stories, the stories that Beck hopes to preserve.

Benjamin Nutter Communication Studies

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communications

Language of Identity Story by Rachel Grimm Photo Provided

Dr. Yusuf Kalyango examines the connection between discourse and ideology

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hen President Barack Obama, in his 2008 inaugural address, repeatedly referred to his listening constituents as “my fellow citizens,” he was not simply stating a fact; he was, through his use of discourse, reaffirming an inclusive and diverse American identity. For critical discourse analysts like Journalism professor Dr. Yusuf Kalyango, ideology is always inscribed in discourse. It is through such discourse that ideology becomes social practice.

Kalyango’s forthcoming book, Why Discourse Matters: Negotiating Identity in the Mediated World, is an interdisciplinary analysis of the role of language and discourse in the formation of identity. For the book’s contributing authors, including Kalyango’s apprentice Jared Henderson, a senior studying Philosophy, discourse does not simply express identity, it forges it.

Take, for example, the case of Frieda, a working-class woman in England. When asked to talk about herself, Frieda repeatedly referred to herself as a “low-skilled laborer,” Jared explained. “Frieda was defining who she was and some of the relevant factors about her based on the people who had more money than her, the people who would employ her.” In other words, the way in which Frieda used language to talk about her selfidentity reflected an ideological bias, one that she had internalized from the ruling class’s rhetoric.

In Why Discourse Matters, Kalyango and Jared demonstrate how ideology can subconsciously manipulate what people say and how they say it. The point of critical discourse analysis, for Jared, is to “look at speech and media and text, and using linguistic

analysis, try to identify competing ideologies.” Jared described language as “a set of . . . choices and rules.”

These “choices and rules” largely regard the syntax of the sentence. “Someone’s use of a modal [verb], or someone’s use of a different tense, or the way they place their direct objects can have a direct impact on the actual content of the sentence,” Jared clarified.

Critical discourse analysis is above all an interpretive approach, an attempt to sift through the denotative meaning of discourse and to discern its connotative biases. Such research helps us better understand how language can inform and perform an ideological task.

In his chapter, “Framing Discourse of Africa’s Tyrannical Regimes: Libya and Uganda,” coauthored

by Kalyango, Jared is using critical discourse analysis to dissect speeches by Idi Amin, former dictator of Uganda, and Muammar Gaddafi, former chairperson of the African Union and former ruler of Libya. Jared wants to better understand how these two African dictators used rhetoric and discourse to forge an African identity. “[Gaddafi] uses discourse . . . [to] do things,” Jared said. “He was trying to rally political motivation, he was trying to stay in power, he was trying to gain an African voice in the UN Security Council . . . [and] he was trying to unify Israel and Palestine.” The unified, anti-Western, African identity that Gaddafi was trying to forge, then, was a direct product of his discourse.

For Jared, studying the language of identity is more than a matter of semantics. Indeed, how we communicate directly informs how we act. Kalyango and Jared’s research aims to better understand the connection between communication and action.

Dr. Yusuf Kalyango Journalism

Jared Henderson Philosophy

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communications

Mapping a Field Story by Alex Menrisky Photo Provided

Dr. Yea-Wen Chen analyzes the body of intercultural communication research

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n increasingly important area of scholarship in our global age is intercultural communication. This type of communication has roots in anthropology, sociology and linguistics.

Assistant professor of Communication Studies, Dr. Yea-Wen Chen is conducting a metaanalysis of the intercultural communication field’s research from various paradigms and documenting the history of the field itself.

“Some people argue that when the discipline started it was aparadigmatic,” or that there was no central doctrine to the field, Chen said. “But starting in the 1960s and 70s, to make the case for this discipline, researchers relied on the social scientific perspective.” Later, however, scholars argued that there were “turns in focus, from interpretive to linguistic to critical.”

Chen seeks to discover if these “turns” are actually represented by the literature produced in the discipline. She has created a coding manual that details a number of theoretical considerations, including meta-theoretical perspective and methodological orientation, as well as how authors conceptualized culture.

Chen’s apprentice, Emily Atherton who is a senior Communications Studies major, aids her in coding articles from two major intercultural communications journals, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication and the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research. Their goal is to chart trends in the

research over time.

“The biggest challenge is to keep everything the same because I’m trying to be consistent with my coding,” Emily said. “My background is more interpretive, so when I’m trying to find something [to code] in a statistical paper, it’s like I’m trying to pick out things in this jumble of statistics.”

Chen understands this frustration. “I think the challenge of [coding for a paradigm shift] is that a lot of those articles are written without naming the specific paradigm within which their article or their research was conducted,” Chen said. “I would not consider [Emily] just as an undergraduate student. The kind of work that she’s doing— reading those research articles and being able

Dr. Yea-Wen Chen to code—I think that’s graduate level work.”

Dr. Chen is confident that her research is worth the challenge. She believes every other discipline should have a known history, and she plans to write that history for hers. “Once we know where we’ve been, we can know where we’re going,” she said. “Part of the mapping is that hopefully we can suggest directions about which is the best way to make this field relevant.”

Dr. Yea-Wen Chen Communication Studies

“

Once we know where we’ve been, we can know where we’re going.”

Emily Atherton Communication Studies

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humanities

The Art of Invective Dr. Carey Snyder and apprentice Allie Dyer bring back a 20th-century dissident Story by Rachel Grimm Photos by Rob Hardin

For Beatrice Hastings, born Emily Alice Haigh, early 1900s periodical culture was more than a public arena for discussion; it was a combative zone.

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nd with over a dozen controversy-generating pseudonyms and personae—both male and female—Hastings considered herself an integral voice in this culture of intellectual exchange, even if at times she was debating with herself. Hastings wrote under as many as five pseudonyms at any given time, publishing opinion articles in direct contradiction with one another. Hastings was motivated by controversy.

Despite her intrigue, Hastings remains virtually unknown to most modernist scholars. Dr. Carey Snyder is determined to revive her. With the help of Allie Dyer, a junior studying Political Science, Dr. Snyder is proposing a manuscript for a Broadview Press edition of Whited Sepulchres, Hastings’ 1909 novella. Broadview Press primarily publishes unknown authors worth rediscovering, and in Dr. Snyder’s opinion, Hastings is a perfect candidate.

Published under the pseudonym Beatrice Tina, one of Hastings’ more “robust” and “less-ambiguously feminist” persona, according to Snyder, Whited Sepulchres was serialized over seven issues in The New Age, an early twentieth-century political and literary weekly.

Edited by A. R. Orage and presumably co-edited by Hastings herself, The New Age devoted itself to the advancement of debate.

“I can’t imagine a journal today that was just dedicated to the discussion of ideas,” Allie said. The New Age was a place where dissenting voices could engage in “tense, barbed exchanges,” Snyder explained, and it provided the perfect venue for Hastings’ satirical voice. Writing under several pseudonyms, sometimes in the same issue, Hastings launched satirical barbs at individuals and groups, deriding “every new –ism,’” Snyder said. The New Age’s perpetual devil’s advocate, Hastings satirized feminists and misogynists, suffragettes and politicians, traditional realists and avant-garde modernists.

In Whited Sepulchres, Hastings depicts marriage and motherhood as “total degradation” for women. With no realistic possibility of divorce, a lack of sex education, and limited access to birth control, marriage, to Hastings, was “really anathema to a liberated woman and at odds with the goal of self-realization and independence,” Snyder said.

But while Whited Sepulchres is for the most part consistent with

Dr. Carey Snyder English

many of the main themes of first-wave feminism, Hastings’ own position as a feminist is confounded by her role as a satirist. While Hastings’ relationship to feminism was provocative, “she finally ends up being this individualist, this lone . . . provocateur rather than being part of a movement that’s going to actually affect political change,” Snyder said. Hastings abandoned the women’s suffrage movement six years before women ever achieved the vote in England.

Although Hastings herself praised The New Age for reviving “the lost art of invective,” Dr. Snyder can’t help but wonder if Hastings’ own satire becomes hollowed out, or “invective for invective’s sake.” “She’s more interested in stirring things up than in getting things done, in a way,” Snyder said.

Snyder’s and Allie’s personal research interests overlap where Hastings public persona seem to lose credibility: at the intersection of literary satire and veritable political action. Allie is particularly interested in women’s relationship to politics and power, but working with Snyder has given her a new perspective on the cultural expressions of political thought. She sees a deep connection between the feminist debates in The New Age and the political expression of first-wave feminism. “That’s what politics is,” Allie said, “‘What people think, what people want.’”

And while Hastings herself is a problematic figure, Snyder continues to see her work as a “rich cultural document.” To prepare the proposal for the Broadview Press edition of Whited Sepulchres, Snyder and Allie are working together to provide cultural and historical context for the relatively unknown novella. Allie has been tracking debates in The New Age, available online through the Modernist Journals Project, and researching primary documents that will eventually comprise the novella’s appendices. These documents include everything from early twentieth-century sex education manuals, to birth control pamphlets, and British marriage and divorce laws.

The most interesting part of her research, according to Snyder, is “always the dialogue between the text and its moment.” The project is an effort to preserve and disseminate this cultural conversation, or to Hastings, this battleground of thought.

Allie Dyer Political Science

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humanities

A Charter’s Curse

Dr. Miriam Shadis studies medieval contracts with clauses that threatened the Virgin Mary’s wrath Story by Jessie Cadle

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Inquiry | 16

M

edieval charters, or contracts that dealt with property, wills and other agreements and treaties, threatened the wrath of God on the party who did not uphold his or her end of the deal. Part of a technical clause on each charter, these curses primarily invoked the wrath of God, but a few promised to also invoke the wrath of the Virgin Mary, through the iteration “Iram Maria.”

Dr. Miriam Shadis, an associate professor of history, hypothesizes that this invocation of Mary’s wrath coincides with a rise of women’s political power. From 1100 to 1250 C.E. in Iberia—namely in Portugal, Castile and Leon— there were a number of particularly politically powerful queens.

To test her hypothesis, Shadis worked with junior Dance and English double major Bethany Lopreste over the summer. Lopreste pored over tens of thousands of medieval charters in search of the Virgin Mary’s name in the small technical clause that contains the curse.

Shadis finds her analysis of women during this time period to have greater application to perceptions of women at large.

“I … think it’s really relevant, in a broad sweeping kind of way — both challenging assumptions about the medieval world, and maybe beginning to give a different lens with which to view our own world,” Shadis said. “Political women are everywhere today, and they still face all kinds of stereotypes and assumptions about what they should be or how they should act.”

Additionally during the Middle Ages, the cult of the Virgin Mary changed and grew among Christians. Prior to this time, Christians primarily viewed her as the “Christ-bearer,” but she now became known as a maternal

Dr. Miriam Shadis History

figure both to her son and to humanity, Shadis said. As the Cult of Mary grew over these years, she rose to become the most powerful and important Saint by the end of the twelfth century.

“New attention is placed on the humanity of Christ (both as a baby and as victim) and this in turn affects the way people related to Mary — they could understand cute babies and human suffering,” Shadis said.

While Shadis is drawn to myriad aspects of this project, Lopreste, who is not a history major, was originally drawn to the research, because Shadis is the first person to ever explore this correlation. “I really liked that she was the first person to go into this … she had specifically noticed the trend, and I was excited about [hopefully] proving that to be true,” Lopreste said, adding that as the research began, “I was really interested in learning about the identities of these people, and also the iconography of the Virgin Mary I thought was fascinating.”

The benefit to using charters as a basis of research is that they are everyday documents that shed light on the day-to-day interactions of the people at this time, Shadis said. And it is these daily actions that give a clearer picture of how those in this time period viewed the Virgin Mary, and offers some implications for how they understood powerful women.

While Shadis’ project sheds light on the perceptions of powerful women in early centuries, it allows readers to question how women are perceived now and the varying and somewhat paradoxical roles they play in society as maternal figures and as leaders.

“Although this particular project of mine is on just a tiny and possibly obscure aspect of medieval history, I think it can help us think about the ways in which we view women both in the past and the present,” Shadis said.

Bethany Lopreste Dance, English

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humanities

The Voice of La querida Story by Rachel Grimm Photo by Paula Welling

Until the mid 1990s, Paraguayan literature was virtually unknown to most Western scholars, including Dr. Betsy Partyka. If it hadn’t been for HTC alumna Marda Rose, Partyka’s first Spanish tutee, an entire generation of female Paraguayan authors might have passed unnoticed by mainstream scholarship.

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hen Marda received a Boren Fellowship to study women’s literature in Paraguay, she returned to the United States with photocopies of contemporary female writers’ texts that had only a few hundred

printed copies.

Marda eventually departed from her scholarship on women’s literature in Latin America to write her own fiction, but these authors, novelist Renée Ferrer in particular, became Partyka’s passion. Partyka traveled to Paraguay to meet Ferrer in 1996, and her working relationship with the author “blossomed from there.”

In the sixteen years that she has known Ferrer, Partyka has become her American representative and liaison, translating two of her works—Itinerario del deseo (Itinerary of Desire, a poetry collection) and Los nudos del silencio (Knots of Silence, a novel)— into English. This summer, Partyka worked with Katie Meisky a senior studying Spanish to draft a working translation of another of Ferrer’s novels, La querida (The Favorite).

Told from the perspective of the mistress of Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay from 1954–1989, La querida paints a grim picture of his vices and weaknesses. The narrator’s “whole goal is to become so important in the life of the dictator that he will . . . recognize her [publicly],” Partyka said. But in a twist of plot that is at once traumatic and perverse, the dictator ultimately proves to his lover that “she is nothing, that she is just another pawn in his game,” Partyka said.

“Power, power, and more power, with a capital P. That’s what the whole novel is about,” Partyka said.

Although Ferrer’s narrative voice is refined and lyrical, the subject matter itself is a sordid affair. Historically, Stroessner was known as both a “pedophile and a sodomite,” Partyka said. At one point in the novel, the mistress is forced to witness the dictator as he serially rapes virginal girls. Indeed, in the years preceding his overthrow in 1989, Stroessner’s regime was riddled with crime, corruption, and torture. Katie described one scene where the dictator’s secret police dunk political prisoners—the “disappeared”—in tubs of excrement to the point of unconsciousness. In another, the “disappeared” are drenched with water and then shocked with electric cattle prods.

“It’s kind of a scary book,” Partyka said.

While La querida is by no means a boring read, its acute cultural references are sometimes hard to translate. For example, when Ferrer mentions “little red riding hood” in the first chapter, she is not making an intertextual reference to the Grimms’ fairy tale; she

Dr. Betsy Partyka Spanish

is referring to the red truck that was used in the 1980s to “disappear” political dissidents, Katie said. And while everyone in Paraguay knows the latter meaning, it’s hard to maintain this degree of nuance in an English translation. The challenge, Partyka explained, is hiding the answers to these literary puzzles by sprinkling clues throughout the novel.

Katie has been studying Paraguay with Dr. Partyka for over two years, but even with her understanding of the country’s history and culture, the translation process has been challenging.

“I can understand exactly what [Ferrer] is saying, but I have no idea how to say that, how to convey that [in English],” she said.

Like many Spanish writers, Ferrer writes long, convoluted sentences. And with sentences of upwards of 45 words, sometimes the connection between the subject and the verb is, quite literally, lost in translation.

“Renée Ferrer makes me feel like I can’t speak Spanish,” Katie said with a laugh. “She is a level of fluent in the language that I will never be.” But while translation can sometimes be tedious, the project will ultimately improve her Spanish, she said. “This will enhance every vocabulary I’ve got,” she added.

Ferrer’s use of diverse vocabulary and lyrical prose pose a consistent challenge for the translators. Partyka’s job, then, is to sort through Ferrer’s lyricism to create a legible translation.

“Ferrer is first and foremost a poet,” Partyka said, “so she is definitely playing with all the rhetorical devices you could imagine … . You have to decide [if] you want it to be artistic, or . . . [if] you want it to be readable. And it’s actually a big decision.”

In general, Partyka tries to maintain the cadence of Ferrer’s lyrical prose, but, she added, “You’re never going to be perfect, whatever perfect means as a translator. Once the author gives it to you to translate, it’s yours.”

For Partyka, the most important aspect of the project is creating a wider audience for Ferrer’s work. “I want it to be out there, I want people to read it, and I want it to sound like good English,” Partyka said.

Partyka sees the lack of international dissemination of Latin American literature as a persistent problem, and each time she travels to Latin America she returns to the United States with boxes upon boxes of literature that would be otherwise unavailable on this side of the border. Publishing English translations of Ferrer’s novels through an American press, she hopes, will make this literature more easily accessible for a Western audience.

Katie Meisky Spanish

Gettin’ Fishy with It Dr. Molly Morris and her apprentice Nicole Kleinas delve into the mating strategies of fish Story by Alex Menrisky Photos by Rob Hardin

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A

single silver, violet and cornflower yellow fish flits through the water and glides through the seaweed in each tank. The brightly colored fish, a male with a sword on his back and lines up his sides, attracts female mates.

How he does it is what interests the researchers peering through the glass.

Dr. Molly R. Morris has spent more than 20 years studying swordtail fish (Xiphophorus multilineatus) and their mating strategies. She specializes in sexual selection and its role in the evolutionary process, and she is currently studying how certain social factors influence sexual dominance, activity and attraction. Research apprentice Nicole Kleinas, a sophomore studying Biological Sciences, is working with Morris to test the hypothesis that genetics is not alone in dictating speciation. “[Fish] are becoming sort of a model system for studying how

sexual selection plays a role in increasing biodiversity, and they’re very manageable in the lab,� Morris said. She has pinpointed two social factors she believes are instrumental in the growth rate, and thus sexual performance, of the fish: maternal investment and exposure to adult males. Specifically, how much attention and nourishment did the mother provide? Were there any male role models or potential sources of competition around?

The researchers are interested in determining how maternal investment and exposure to adult males affect aggression, which is tied to courting behavior. Morris has not studied aggression in depth before, and she hopes to learn how males possessing different sex-selected traits react to competition. After the eligible bachelors have grown a healthy amount, Morris and Nicole test their aggression. They position the fish by mirrors and quantify their reactions to their reflections, which they perceive as menacing com-

Inquiry | 22

petitors, within a given period of time. These aggressive responses vary from mundane (swimming back and forth) to violent (furious rushing and biting).

The research gets complicated in the expression of size. There is a window of size into which many of these fish fit—dictated by the genotype, the DNA coding, on the Y chromosome. However, within that genotypically influenced range of size, the fish are plastic; they can grow as they will. The difference is in genotype and the expressed physical phenotype. Morris has learned that seeing a large male as a child compels a fish to grow larger through a variety of means. But if all of them possess the ability to grow faster and larger, why don’t they?

“I think people think of growth rate as something that you should just do as fast as you can, and what this is making us realize is that growth has a cost,” Morris said. “You can grow fast and you can grow well. Those are two different things.” In some cases, depending on maternal attention and the presence of a large male, for example, growing faster or better is not necessarily the best or most obvious choice.

One of Morris’ former graduate assistants bred several populations of fish based on maternal care and exposure to an adult male.

Over time, these populations have been continually bred and separated into groups based on growth. The fish are categorized based on which have had greater maternal care, which have been exposed to older males, which have had experienced both and which have received nothing.

Nicole photographs the fish next to measurement devices and compares their growth over a period of time. She also scrutinizes the morphological changes, such as the vertical violet bars. Once they’ve grown, she runs the aggression tests with the mirrors, gauging how physical attributes affect aggression and which fish with

Dr. Molly Morris Biological Sciences

which social background are aggressive. Aside from taking these measurements, she performs a number of odd jobs around the lab. “I’m helping with cleaning, feeding,” Nicole said, and this is no small task. “We have a lot of fish. A ton of fish.” She also runs the preference test on the females to determine which social history in males yields more attractive specimens. (See sidebar on p. 23.)

But the effects these mothers and older males have on the young fish vary, as do the actions of these older figures. For example, the results are different by gender. “The mothers seem to invest differently in males than in females and how males and females respond to the maternal investment is different,” Morris said. “Those are really new findings we’re pretty excited about.”

The results so far support Morris’ hypotheses. In males, a larger display of maternal investment leads to a higher growth rate, as does the presence of an older male. However, when female young are on a high quality diet and they see a larger male, their growth rate goes down. But social forces aren’t limited to determining growth in fish. Every animal grows up in an influential environment.

Aside from fish, these experiments tell Morris and other scientists interesting things about sexual selection in many species, including humans, and support theories pressing social interaction as a major factor in growth. More startling by far are surfacing connections being made between growth rate and diabetes. The research suggests diabetes is an evolutionary strategy tied to growth in times of scarce resources.

“There’s a hypothesis out there that diabetes might be an alternative growth strategy,” Morris explained. “One of the reasons that we have the genetic aspect of diabetes is because the genes that produce people more sensitive to diabetes are selected for in that they allow individuals to grow when there’s very little food. . . . They call

Nicole Kleinas Biological Sciences

23 | Inquiry

LEFT: Nicole tends to the dozens of fish tanks.

TOP: Nicole and Morris discuss their project.

BOTTOM: Nicole measures the fish to keep track of their growth.

it ‘the thrifty genotype.’” Such revelations explain diabetes’ advantage, and enable researchers to better understand why the disease is genetically engrained in so many humans.

But this diabetes correlation is a more surprising result of the research. It is these smaller, sideline discoveries that are so useful in connecting research on the swordtail fish with humans.

The fish are useful to study: They are efficient for a lab, beautiful creatures to spend time working with, and “you can do a lot more manipulation with fish than you can with humans,” Morris said.

The males wait in their bachelor pads, circling in flashy purple movements, bred to teach us about how important our social pasts are to our aggression and our sexual attraction.

What Women Want What Morris, her apprentice, and many other researchers already know is what women want. The female swordtail fish respond positively to the sword, and even more energetically when the male is large. The vertical bars are also an attractive sign of masculinity, and symmetry plays a part in just how tantalizing the markings are.

Nicole runs experiments on females, dancing cut-out photographs of male specimens of varying sizes and morphological structures on either side of a tank and recording how much time the female fish spends near one specimen as opposed to the other.

“These fish have a lot of sexually selected traits,” Morris explained. “We have this sword, an extension off the back; we have this pigment pattern we call body bars. Females like those bars.” The traits Morris describes are a long, trailing portion of the tail fin that juts out from the bottom and a series of vertical marks along both sides of the fish, deep purple in color. The females, by contrast, do not possess this sword feature, and their markings are limited to a single, thick, horizontal dash of purple. In humans there are similar physical traits. Big muscles in men are a surefire point of attraction for females. Machismo is also a factor: The bigger the fish is (or the human male), then the higher the chances that he will be aggressive.

Inquiry | 24

Link to the Extinct Dr. Lawrence Witmer and apprentice Lexie Spaw virtually recreate dinosaurs using modern day descendants Story by Alex Menrisky Photos by Rob Hardin

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D

inosaurs in museums are typically fleshless bones. With the help of visualization software, however, future museumgoers will be able to see the extinct creatures in the flesh. Via video game-esque immersive experiences, audiences will be able to watch as dinosaurs evolve into modern birds and reptiles.

The initial steps in the development of such virtual exhibits are taking place in the Life Sciences Building at Ohio University. A lifesized T. rex skull grins maliciously on one table in a room packed with fiberglass casts of skulls that range in size from as small as a marble to as large as a boulder. Remains of birds and reptiles— smaller than their distant ancestors, but eerily similar—also populate the counters in this evolutionary bone yard. Actual fossils, on loan from museums from every continent except Antarctica, are kept under lock and key in a vault.

This is Dr. Lawrence Witmer’s playground. Using CT scanning— a method of x-ray visualization—and contemporary software, he builds dinosaurs in a virtual world. His models appear in 3D exhibits and software in an effort to enhance public education.

“In a sense there’s a paleontological component but . . . all the questions we’re asking are biological,” Witmer said. “So although I regard myself as a paleontologist, the kinds of questions we ask aren’t answered by going out into the Badlands and digging up fossils.”

Witmer ultimately studies how dinosaurs evolved using their closest living relatives: birds, crocodilians and lizards. Through his studies, he and other researchers can develop and test hypotheses regarding similar anatomies and physiologies of dinosaurs. Scientists and paleontologists have the bones and actual skeletal structures but not the “fleshy bits.”

“If dinosaur fossils are a collection of fossil bones, those fossil bones are not the animals. They’re just the bones of the animal,”

Dr. Lawrence Witmer Biomedical Sciences

Witmer explained. “If we’re trying to understand these animals as living, breathing organisms, we need to, in a sense, reconstruct all of those things that time has stripped away. . . . We need to flesh them out in some real sense.”

But to do so requires technological magic and precision. Using the CT scanner at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital and the smaller micro-CT scanner on campus, Witmer maps out the dinosaur bone structure without the risk of damage to the fossils. It can then be uploaded immediately to the software programs he and his assistants use to fill in the “fleshy parts” and recreate the prehistoric beasts.

“We can go in using the same software that Hollywood used to make Gollum from The Lord of the Rings or Shrek,” Witmer said.

“We can use that software to … reverse the ravages of time.”

Lexie Spaw, a junior studying Biological Sciences serves as Witmer’s research apprentice. She said their research is an illustrative model of the scientific process. Her primary work is the software reconstruction of an iguana skeleton, which is accomplished by identifying different bones and segmenting the skull using colorcoding.

She has completed other tasks around the lab. For example, she prepared a crow skeleton for research by first dissecting the carcass, carefully removing the bones and letting them dry. She then submerged the remains of the crow in a chamber filled with flesheating beetles to clean the bones more efficiently than any manmade machine.

The National Science Foundation funds a large part of Witmer’s work and repurposes it for a more practical mission: public education.

“Not only are dinosaurs like these really popular, engaging animals, . . . but we can really reach people about the science we’re doing and the implications for the science,” Witmer said.

Lexie Spaw Biological Sciences

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1

3

2 1. Witmer discusses the process of recreating the dinosaurs using the 3-D visualization software.

2. Flesh-eating beetles clean the bones.

3. A bird skeleton after it has been cleaned by the beetles.

4. Lexie studies replicas in the lab.

4

15 | Inquiry

“When Your Body Stops Being You” Story by Rachel Grimm Illustration by Paula Welling

Hollywood and its media representations often define public perception. Individuals with Parkinson’s disease rarely find accurate portrayals of their lives in movies or on TV. Dr. Jenny Nelson and her apprentice Stephen Toropov are studying how those with Parkinson’s then manage their identities in the online world.

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W

hen Dr. Jenny Nelson was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010, she decided to get informed about her disease and her options. But the more she researched, the more she felt that “there was something not [quite] right” in the stories she saw in the media. With the help of Stephen Toropov, a sophomore studying English, Nelson is studying the media narratives surrounding Parkinson’s in an effort to understand the media’s effect on how those living with the disease articulate their personal experiences.

Representations of Parkinson’s in the media can be summed up by an episode of the television medical drama “House,” Nelson explained. When Dr. House informs his patient that she might have Parkinson’s, she responds with a gasp that she would rather have cancer.

In the media, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s is a death sentence, a sort of “neurological boogie man,” Stephen said. “[It’s] a disease that nobody really wants to watch.” When the media depicts people with Parkinson’s—especially in advanced stages—it is in scenes that are meant to shock the audience.

In one such scene in the movie “Love and Other Drugs,” the protagonist, recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, sits in a trembling audience of Parkinson’s patients and listens to her peers rattle off a laundry list of the mundane complications plaguing their everyday lives. “F*** soup,” one character exclaimed.

The list of daily struggles is endless and includes: shoe laces, jewelry, brushing teeth, tying a tie, buttoning a shirt and holding a baby. In advanced stages, Parkinson’s affects even the most basic

motor skills, bodily functions and mental faculties. “It’s not a disease—it’s a Russian novel,” said the husband of one woman in “Love and Other Drugs” who suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease.

“These images . . . sort of impede your future,” Nelson said. “Is this a misrepresentation in the same way that I know women are misrepresented … that blacks are misrepresented?”

Dr. Jenny Nelson Media Arts & Studies

Stephen Toropov English

“

There is more and more hope for finding ways to manage and to cure Parkinson’s.”

Stephen Toropov, HTC English

The representations we see in the media—of gender, of race and even of disease—tend to reflect the dominant ideologies and institutions of a given society. Representations of Parkinson’s in the media are the collective visualization of pharmaceutical corporations, medical institutions and insurance companies, Nelson said.

In the 1970s, when medical shows first came into vogue, doctors were seen as “gods in white coats,” Nelson said. And while

29 | Inquiry

contemporary medical shows like “House” and “Scrubs” have begun portraying doctors as flawed characters, they still end up as heroes. But it’s hard to fit the hero mold when a doctor diagnoses a patient with a disease like Parkinson’s that simply cannot be cured at the end of the hour, she said.

For Nelson, one notable consequence of Parkinson’s media depiction appears within the therapy profession. Because Parkinson’s requires persistent palliative care—treatment or therapy that helps to relieve pain but does not cure its underlying causes—there is a “perceived non-reward,” she explained. Medical professionals want to help their patients get well, but “with Parkinson’s, you just see a slow decline,” Nelson said, laughing a bit grimly before she added, “‘caretaker’ sounds like such a funeral.”

But while the medical community and the media continue to treat Parkinson’s as a taboo, Stephen is a bit more hopeful.

“There is more and more hope for finding ways to manage and to cure Parkinson’s,” Stephen said. “If the only literature that is out there about this disease is this impenetrable wall of statistics and medical jargon, and it’s never looking at what someone who actually has Parkinson’s experiences . . . it’s going to adversely affect [the] quality of life aspect.”

As opposed to television representation, literature on Parkinson’s can be broken up into four main subsets: medical journals, health manuals, motivational literature and stories about the inevitable “end of the road,” Nelson said.

“I read one book that scared the shit outta me,” she admited. “Is that gonna be me?”

With no significant media representation, Parkinson’s patients are instead reaching out to one another through online forums that invite people to share their stories. Nelson and Stephen want to see how Parkinson’s patients are presenting their own narratives despite a seemingly unreceptive media. Stephen’s background in narratology—the study of narrative structure and function—has proved invaluable for this aspect of the research project.

Thus far, Nelson and Stephen have looked at three online forums. Already, they have noticed significant differences among the three sites of interest. While the European Parkinson’s Disease Association features a modern, easily navigated, and welcoming site, the American site pales in comparison. But Nelson’s favorite site thus far is Patient Commando, which, in her opinion, rescues patients’ personal experiences from the jargon of the medical community and the negativity of the media.

Nelson and Stephen are interested in analyzing just how Parkinson’s patients share their stories, and what social roles they assume within the micro-communities of the online forums. An equal part of Nelson and Stephen’s research involves looking at actor Michael J. Fox’s public Parkinson’s narrative.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991, Fox has, in Nelson’s opinion “single-handedly given Parkinson’s . . . a much wider appeal and a wider range of visibility.” And while Fox has been tireless in raising funds and awareness for Parkinson’s research, his position as the

spokesperson for the disease is, in a word, problematic.

“We’re interested in the way that he performs as himself, or as other characters in shows . . . His disease is visible . . . [but] he never calls it Parkinson’s,” Nelson said. When she watches Fox’s appearances in the media, she can’t help but ask herself, “How much is he willing to give away? How bad is it, brother?”

For Stephen, an aspiring creative writer, the question always comes back to narrative. “What does it mean to talk about having a serious disease?” he said. “What does it mean to have your body not be under your control. What happens when the reality of what your body is doing stops meeting the story you tell yourself about who you are?”

Everyone tells themselves a story about who they are, Stephen explains, and the body is the primary vehicle for the performance of this identity narrative. What happens, then, “when your body stops being you?”

Nelson, too, tells a story. A Fulbright recipient, an international scholar, and a breast cancer survivor, Nelson’s life story has been replete with ambition and success. On her right ankle, she has tattooed the European symbol for Parkinson’s. A green “P” and “D” wrap around one another like two hands cupped, and out of this embrace, a red tulip blooms.

Of Mice and Men

Dr. Edward List’s passion for research has grown into a love of instruction as he mentors students in his Konneker lab Story by Alex Menrisky Photos by Rob Hardin

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M

ore mice than humans occupy the Konneker Research Facility at the Ridges. Dr. Edward List, a scientist on Dr. John Kopchick’s team at the Edison Biotechnology Institute, studies the mice to learn more about aging, diabetes and obesity, and how growth hormone, or GH, affects all three. While GH is responsible for much of the growth humans experience in their lives, List studies its potentially harmful effects.

Wenjuan Zhang, a sophomore studying Neuroscience, is working as List’s research apprentice. By aiding him in various tasks around the laboratory, she not only advances his GH research but also gains valuable firsthand lab experience. The odd jobs she completes—using pipettes to disperse GH, dissecting groups of mice and setting up breeding schedules—help immerse her in List’s numerous experiments.

“The opportunity that this apprenticeship has given me is just huge,” Wenjuan said. While she is learning a great deal from the other undergraduate and graduate students who have experience in the lab, working directly with Dr. List has made the experience invaluable for her.

Sold as a drug in the United States under many names, including Genotropin and Humatrope, GH is prescribed for children and adults with growth hormone deficiencies. “One of the discoveries in our laboratory was that if you knock out growth hormone signaling, animals live longer,” List said, describing his process of blocking tissues that respond to the hormone. “Mice that . . . have a lot of growth hormone . . . have shortened life spans. So if you put the two together it seems like growth hormone actually is an aging gene, which is kind of scary because there are certain people out there that say growth hormone is anti-aging, and they’ll prescribe

Dr. Edward List Edison Biotechnology Institute

it for the elderly.” List hopes his results will inform physicians about how GH affects humans, and thus protect patients from potentially harmful drugs. List has built on this finding and launched several additional lines of GH research.

For example, the team put the mice on a high-fat diet, so they became obese and diabetic. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we take some of these obese and diabetic mice and inject this hormone that’s known to improve body composition,’” List said.

They found that, while GH has certain attributes that promote diabetes, it is ultimately the hormone’s body composition improvement factors that have more of an effect. That is, GH decreased fat mass and increased muscle mass more heavily than it promoted diabetes.

This project led to numerous smaller projects that don’t concern GH. List is glad for these offshoots. In his opinion, research should lead to more research, and more opportunities for him to teach students. It is one of these side projects that he and Wenjuan focused on this summer—a study of the life span of mice on different diets.

They are examining whether mice live longer when their calories fluctuate or when their weight remains stable.

“Is gaining and losing weight in and of itself bad for you?” List asked. Curiosity about his own weight fluctuations drew him to this question, after he received advice surrounding the dangers of rapid weight change. “Some say it is bad for you and some actually say it’s so bad for you it’s worse than remaining obese. And some say it has no effect at all on your health. And some say it actually is beneficial to your health,” he said.

List and Wenjuan are trying to find the truth about the effects of diet on lifespan. By breeding three groups of mice—one fed on a high-fat diet, one on a normal diet, and one on a fluctuating “yo-yo”

Wenjuan Zhang Neuroscience

Inquiry | 32

diet—List discovered that not only did the mice with a fluctuating diet live longer than the chunky ones, they matched the control group, even after consuming more calories.

While the results are preliminary, List thinks this means a yo-yo diet isn’t as bad for you as many scientists and dieticians believe.

But for him, the results are only half the prize: The discovery of new research projects is just as important.

“In general, we’re just trying to learn new things, as with any kind of science,” List said. “Basically we’re trying to learn the truth about things. You need to complete projects, see them through, and

always think about the next step in the future.”

List’s favorite part of his job is thinking up or stumbling upon new research opportunities. Not only does this let him continue his work, but he also brings in new students to mentor and teach about the lab.

“It’s a very unique situation to have a mentor and mentee relationship,” he said. “I remember having to introduce one of my first HTC students after helping him do his thesis and almost tearing up. You get attached to these people. You get very proud of them, like your own children.”

List and Wenjuan conduct multiple research projects involving specially bred mice at the Edison Biotechnology Institute.

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science

Communication Breakdown Story by Rachel Grimm Photo provided

Inquiry | 34

T

he brain is a complex network of communication—incoming and outgoing information and instantaneous interpretation of data used in decision-making. Neuroscience, then, is the study of this microscopic network of communication. And with over 100 billion neurons in the brain, it is neuroscientists’ challenge to understand how exactly these neurons exchange information.

“In order to communicate properly,” Dr. Daewoo Lee explained, “[neurons] have to use the right language.” This “language” is responsible for motor function, learning and memory, behavioral acquisition and information storing. But when neurons stop transferring messages, or “signaling,” a neurological communication breakdown results.

For the last year, Scott Varga, a senior studying Neuroscience, has worked with Lee to understand how neurons transfer and process information in the brain, and what happens when these neuron signals are pathologically impeded. When a patient develops Parkinson’s disease, Scott explained, the brain cells that make dopamine—a chemical compound that helps transfer neuron signals—slowly die. Once the level of dopamine in the brain depletes, neurons are no longer able to communicate properly with the motor center of the brain.

When neuron signaling is impaired, normal motor function gradually declines. Parkinson’s patients frequently experience

Dr. Daewoo Lee shakes, muscles aches, slowed movement and reaction time and difficulty walking.

But Scott’s research focuses on the non-motor symptoms related to Parkinson’s disease, specifically problems associated with learning and memory. Lee and Scott are curious about the link between levels of serotonin—a chemical compound like dopamine that is associated with learning and memory—and Parkinson’s. To better understand how serotonin affects learning and memory, Lee and Scott are studying serotonin’s role in fruit flies. While the nervous system of a fruit fly may seem like a far cry from the complex and sophisticated brain of a human, fruit flies share two-thirds of hu-

“

man’s disease-causing genes, Lee said.

Over the course of the year, Scott has become so intimately familiar with fruit flies that he can identify subtle differences in wing shape and even recognize gender. His lab station is populated by hundreds of fruit flies in cylindrical containers, and on the refrigerator where he stores food for the larvae, a full-color poster diagrams the fruit fly torso and wing.

To analyze learning and memory function in fruit flies, Scott performs a series of associative learning tests. First, the fruit flies learn to associate the smell of sucrose with food. Scent is an easy factor to work with because it is instinctively linked with survival, Scott said. Then, he genetically depletes serotonin levels and tests the fruit flies’ ability to learn. Although his results are just preliminary, Scott has found that his Parkinson’s-model fruit flies are, in fact, having difficulty learning to associate smell with food.

“They ARE?!” Lee exclaimed. This development is news to him, too.

When Lee talks about Scott’s project, he gets excited, and a tinge of almost parental pride colors his comments. Scott’s research is unprecedented for an undergraduate.

In addition to his research on fruit flies, Scott is the first in his lab to experiment with optogenetics, an increasingly popular research technique that allows scientists to genetically insert light-sensitive proteins into neurons.

Lee and Scott hope to stimulate weak or damaged neurons by shining specific wavelengths of light on them. “The biological studies are sometimes cruel,” Lee admitted, and many chemical drug therapies end up damaging surrounding cells. Light therapy is an important development in Parkinson’s research because it allows scientists to work on the level of specific cells. Together, they constructed the instrument they use to shine light on the genetically modified fruit flies.

Lee and Scott’s research has been replete with challenges and surprises, but their fascination with understanding a small part of the brain’s complexity brings them back to the lab almost daily.

In order to communicate properly, [neurons] have to use the right language.”

Dr. Daewoo Lee Biological Sciences

Scott Varga Neuroscience

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science

Basic Intervention

Dr. Morgan Vis, with the help of Ph.D. student Sam Drerup and HTC student Jessica Lindner, studies the ecology of Appalachian streams Story by Rachel Grimm Photos by Rob Hardin

Jessica Lindner collected data in clean and contaminated streams.

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T

hroughout southeastern Ohio, a network of rusty orange scars discolors Appalachia’s streams and rivers.

Contaminated by acid mine drainage, these streams and rivers are devoid of life, a corroded monument to years of environmentally irresponsible coal mining. But where stagnant streams of colored runoff now stain the landscape, teeming waters once hosted whole ecosystems of stream life. Sam Drerup, a Ph.D. student working under Dr. Morgan Vis, is investigating the effects of acid mine drainage on what remains of the ecosystems in Appalachia’s streams.

When coal is mined, high sulfur content in the coal bed is exposed to air and water, Drerup explained. The resulting chemical reaction creates sulfuric acid, and when abandoned mines leach, or drain, this acidic solution washes out into streams through cracks and leaks.

Heavy metals like iron are suspended in the mine run-off, but when the highly acidic drainage hits a stream with a more alkaline, or basic, pH level, the dissolved metals are deposited in solid form, blanketing the streambed with an orange crust.

“It’s actually rust,” clarified Drerup. “It’s iron oxide.”

These rusty streams are ecologically “dead,” so they are inhospitable to an entire ecosystem of organisms. This ecological death starts with the algae, the ecosystem’s “gatekeepers,” and works its way up the food chain, adversely affecting insects, fish, and water mammals. In this way algae are an indicator species; their disappearance signals bad omens for the stream ecology.

What makes algae more important is the fact that algae are also primary producers, capable of incorporating inorganic nutrients into their tissue and converting these nutrients into consumable, organic forms. “When a bug eats the algae, and then a fish eats that bug,” Drerup explained, “organic carbon is cycled through the food web.”

Periphyton, an “ecosystem within an ecosystem on a rock,” houses algae. It is a miniature community of organisms—including forms of bacteria, fungi and algae—that holds itself together with a Jell-O-like cement.

Dr. Morgan Vis Environmental and Plant Biology

“You’ve probably actually experienced [periphyton] if you’ve ever walked through a creek or a pond and you’ve noticed that the rocks are really slick,” Drerup said. When a stream is contaminated by acid mine drainage, this integral periphyton matter dies.

This summer, HTC Environmental and Plant Biology student Jessica Lindner, a sophomore, worked as a part of Drerup’s research team to collect and analyze data on nutrient levels in periphyton communities in both clean and contaminated streams. By analyzing how nutrients are cycled through the food chain, Drerup hopes to more effectively understand how algae communities function in rehabilitated streams.

Many of Jessica’s responsibilities involved data collection. In the field, Drerup’s team first takes measurements of the physical parameters of the stream and generic environmental conditions.

They then measure the water’s nutrient levels and collect samples of periphyton matter to analyze in the lab. Prior to this summer, Jessica had worked primarily in sanitized, organized, molecular genetics labs. It has been an eye-opening and fingernail-soiling experience to work in the field, in situ or on site, she said.

And while it is still too early for Drerup to make any conclusive statements about the restoration of devastated algae communities in contaminated streams, he is hopeful thanks to recent advances in stream rehabilitation.

“Once a stream is actually acidified through a [mine leak] it probably. . .won’t naturally remediate itself,” Drerup said. But ecologists are finding ways of chemically raising the pH of the stream by placing silos full of alkaline chemicals that deposit small doses of a remedial solution into the contaminated streams. And while this method does result in a “sacrifice zone” where the water is too alkaline to support life, ecologists are finding that ecosystems downstream are beginning to rehabilitate themselves. The reappearance of algae is a key indicator of the health of a restored stream.

Where rivers once ran orange through Appalachia, Drerup is hoping to see streams that support life. He is keeping an eye on the algae.

Jessica Lindner Environmental and Plant Biology

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science

Molecular Origami Dr. Jeffrey Rack and apprentice Jason Malizia shape photochemical molecules Story by Rachel Grimm Illustraion by Paula Welling

Inquiry | 38

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hotochemistry, for Dr. Jeffrey Rack, is as simple as a sunflower turning its yellow head to face the eastern sun. When a morning glory unfurls its flowers at dawn or when the pupil of the human eye adjusts like a camera aperture, the absorption of light triggers a chemical reaction, resulting in a change in molecular shape and structure. These light-induced chemical reactions, though microscopic, have a profound role in nature.

Everything from basic photosynthesis to the synthesis of vitamin D in the human body depends on light.

Although scientists have long understood the crucial role of these chemical reactions in nature, Rack is interested in pushing the boundaries of this natural phenomenon. This summer, he and Jason Malizia, a junior studying chemistry, tried to synthetically mimic and manipulate naturally occurring photochemical reactions. “It’s kind of [like] fooling nature. You gotta be good. That’s why so many chemists have egos,” Rack said.

But for all his talk of ego, Rack hardly seems to have one. Humble in his academic and professional successes—he was awarded the prestigious University Professor award for the 2012-2013 school year—Rack exudes enthusiasm. He talks with his hands to explain his summer research project, and he even takes down the molecular model hanging from his ceiling to provide a patient demonstration.

“When you shine light on it,” Rack explained, “the connectivity of the molecule itself changes.” In other words, the molecule has two configurations, or isomers, and scientists can flip back and forth between these two isomers by shining light of a specific wavelength on the molecule. This process is known as isomerization.

Isomerization is both “rapid and efficient,” and takes place in just a fraction of a second—mere picoseconds, to be precise. To measure this rapid reaction, Jason uses a laser spectrometer. This $500,000 instrument, one of only six in North

America, functions like a time microscope, allowing Jason to observe and measure reactions that occur in extremely small units of time. Jason is curious to measure just how fast the chemical reaction occurs when light is shined on the molecule.

When isomerization occurs, Rack further explained, the molecule changes both shape and color. When enough molecules are present, this change in color is visible to the naked eye, and it can be used to identify isomers. When one molecule has two identifiable isomers, they can be used to store information.

“One of the isomers

Dr. Jeffrey Rack can represent the 0 state in binary information code; the other isomer can represent the 1 state . . . this is exactly how computers work,” Rack said. And while computers store information digitally, these isomers can store information molecularly.

Working under the supervision of Rack, Jason synthesizes these light-sensitive molecules and analyzes, or characterizes, their photochemical properties. Jason’s lab is red like a photographer’s dark room to limit unwanted light exposure. Jason has been working for the most part on the level of single molecules, but he hopes to eventually synthesize symmetrical molecules that can then be assembled into polymers—long strings of molecules bonded together. This summer, Jason worked to create a polymer that, like its molecular building blocks, will change shape when it interacts with light. It’s origami on the molecular level.

The more we know about light-induced chemical reactions, the more we can exploit their potential, said Rack. And for him, the possibilities are as diverse as nature itself.

Dr. Jeffrey Rack Chemistry and Biochemistry

“

It’s kind of [like] fooling nature. You gotta be good.”

Jason Malizia Chemistry and Biochemistry

39 | Inquiry

science

ABOVE: AlexaRae studies samples of the plants.

Trace the Roots Story by Rachel Grimm Photos by Rob Hardin

The FDA requires that nearly all food and drug products have labels with ingredients. Such oversight is absent in much of the world. Dr. Melanie Schori and apprentice AlexaRae Kitko are tracing the ingredients for the Pakistani herbal industry.

Inquiry | 40

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n every mainstream grocery store or pharmacy in the United States, each product—from popcorn to toothpaste to overthe-counter allergy medication—has at one point passed under the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or its branch agencies.

While most American consumers take the FDA for granted, this kind of regulatory infrastructure simply doesn’t exist in much of the world, explained Dr. Melanie Schori, a Plant Biology postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Allan Showalter’s lab. In the United States, every step of the supply chain is regulated. But in Pakistan, herbal pharmaceutical companies like Qarshi, the country’s largest natural products manufacturer, do not undergo the same rigorous regulations that Western consumers have come to expect.

When Schori travelled to Pakistan last December, she had the chance to tour Qarshi’s headquarters. Although the Qarshi estate in Hattar, Pakistan, is surrounded by lush herbal gardens, most of the raw ingredients actually used in the company’s products come directly from the market. “There are these . . . big bags of dried leaves or twigs or roots. . . .[The herb] might have come from India, it might have come from Afghanistan. . . . And how it got to the market is anyone’s guess,” she said.

Through a joint initiative funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered through the National Academy of Science and the Pakistan government, American researchers like Schori are working with scientists in Pakistan to better regulate the country’s flourishing herbal industry by creating a reference library of DNA sequences in medicinal plants. It’s kind of like “quality control at the end of the supply chain,” Schori explained. Even if the plant sample is visually unrecognizable, the species can be genetically identified through gene sequencing, or barcoding.

With the help of AlexaRae Kitko, a sophomore Biological Sciences major, Schori is collecting and analyzing genetic data for over 100 medicinal plant samples. Working with everything from dried leaves to small seeds to bark and twigs, AlexaRae first extracts the DNA from her samples. Extracted DNA looks a bit like a “ball of snot,” Schori said. This mucous substance is then centrifuged— or spun at a very high velocity—until it forms a pellet.

Dr. Melanie Schori Plant Biology

Once the pellet of DNA is washed with ethanol, AlexaRae performs a process known by molecular biologists as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. Polymerase, an enzyme used to replicate DNA, binds to a specific gene region, and then copies it exponentially. Once the DNA has been replicated, or amplified, through PCR, the molecules are stained with ethidium bromide, a chemical that is fluorescent under ultraviolet light. “It’s a way to visualize the DNA,” explained Schori. “That’s how you know PCR worked.”

Thus far, AlexaRae’s attempts at PCR have been less than successful. But today, her results come out perfectly.

“Woah! Look at that! This is the best result she’s had so far!” exclaimed Schori. Schori points proudly at a strip of film that indicates that all 12 of AlexaRae’s DNA samples have responded positively to PCR. “This is what you want,” she said. “You want to have a 100% success rate. It doesn’t often happen with plants.”

“There are an infinite number of places where things can go wrong,” AlexaRae admitted. “Sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it’s not. It feels better when it’s not [but] it’s basically up to me to try to work through it and figure it out.”

“That’s why it’s called re-search,” joked Schori.

With a success rate ranging from 20% to 80%, depending on the enzyme used, establishing a comprehensive genetic reference library can be frustrating work. Some of the gene sequences that AlexaRae works with are “brand spanking new,” said Schori. “As far as we know, no one else has looked at these [gene regions] for these [species] before.”

AlexaRae’s DNA samples have been sent to Ohio University’s Genomics Facility for gene sequencing. This is the first step in establishing genetic “barcodes” for the medicinal plants AlexaRae and Schori are working with. “We’re establishing part of the reference library,” Schori explained. Schori hopes that this genetic information will one day be used to ensure quality control at Qarshi and to expand the company’s international market.

Although DNA barcoding would hardly seem a foreign policy concern, for Schori, this project is, above all, “a diplomatic relations effort,” an herbal remedy for the wounds of war.

AlexaRae Kitko Biological Sciences

41 | Inquiry

science

A Better Measure

Dr. Anne Loucks and apprentice Patty Arnold measure ulna bone strength Story by Alex Menrisky Photo Provided

Patty presents results at the 2012 Research and Creative Activity Fair.

Inquiry | 42

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he device looks like a cross between a microscope and a gym machine. A metal bar hovers like a crane and supports a compartment for an arm or a leg. Instead of building strength, however, the Mechanical Response Tissue Analysis system, or MRTA, measures it. Not concerned with muscle, the MRTA focuses on bones.

Dr. Anne Loucks in the Biological Sciences Department has been improving the MRTA for several years. With the help of her apprentice, Patricia (Patty) Arnold, Loucks is refining a machine that lay in the scrap heap for years. Her goal is to create a simpler, safer clinical method to assess bone strength.

Hospitals rely on DXA, or dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, Patty said, to measure bone-mineral density in patients. One drawback is that DXA poses a radiation risk. Thus its use is limited in healthy populations, such as growing children and adolescents.

Physicians use DXA to measure bone mineral density only because they do not have a way to measure bone strength.

The MRTA looks instead at the mechanical properties of the bone. “The MRTA device is a non-invasive, radiation-free way to measure bone strength,” Patty said. This means that it could be used safely on a broad range of patients. Plus, the MRTA can help in developing exercise programs to build bone strength and identify the likelihood of bone fractures. Besides solving DXA’s radiation problem, MRTA technology promises more cost-efficiency, too.

“We also think it’s a little more time-efficient,” Patty said. The actual DXA scan is quick but expensive, requiring a lot of time to approve the procedure and set up a radiation-friendly environment.

But the MRTA is based on mechanical vibrations.

MRTA applies a small shaking force to skin over a bone and records the resulting vibrations over a range of frequencies. After running a series of mathematical functions and equations, the researchers record several of the bone’s mechanical properties, especially stiffness, which is directly related to bone strength. But

Dr. Anne Loucks Biological Sciences

because they have had to build their own machine without a prototype as a guide, their fine-tuning of the new device is taking some time.

“We’re trying to further develop this instrument that was initially developed and designed by a mechanical engineer at Stanford in the late 1980s,” Loucks explained. “That instrument was utilized and supported by some NASA funding.” Back then, NASA was interested in how bones changed after space travel. Open space is detrimental to bone tissue, and so NASA wanted a machine that measured that loss. Faced with limited funding and manpower, the project petered out by the late 90s. Several other universities, including Virginia Tech, have used MRTA devices built in the 90s, but Ohio recently revived it and is the only institution testing a new, working prototype.

Loucks is focusing on the prototype’s precision and accuracy.

MRTA should come up with the same results with each try, all things equal, and the correct measurements for the actual bone strength. The tests and the resulting refinements require three steps. In the first, Loucks and Patty use aluminum bars with stiffnesses matching the ulna, the forearm bone, in a human population with ulna size and strength from small to great. They then run tests with artificial ulnas that are shaped like the actual bones. Last, they test the MRTA using ulnas from cadavers.

In testing for accuracy, they obtain the true measurements, or the “gold standard” of ulna strength using a secondary device called a mechanical testing system. They run the MRTA to hopefully get the same results and calibrate it accordingly. This mechanical testing system can’t be used clinically because it can only test bones that have been removed from the body. “Obviously we can’t do that with a bone in an intact organism,” Loucks said.

When her work is done, Loucks will have produced a machine that is fast, cost-effective, and eliminates the risk of radiation harm.

Those goals seem worthy of the bone-breaking labor.

Patty Arnold Biological Sciences

43 | Inquiry

science

Salamander Sightings Dr. Shawn Kuchta and apprentice Brett Weiler study the differences among local ravine salamanders

Story by Alex Menrisky Photos by Rob Hardin

Inquiry | 44

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o the untrained eye, most salamanders look identical. But ravine salamanders know who is and isn’t a member of their exclusive, species-based club. Dr. Shawn Kuchta is scrutinizing these amphibians’ differences to improve the taxonomic record—the classification of all animal life into species. With his study of the salamander populations in Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia, one does not need salamander senses to spot the differences among these sneakily similar creatures.

Kuchta organized two projects in his lab with the help of Brett Weiler, his research apprentice. His primary project asks many questions of these salamander species: how and why they evolved differently, what characteristics resulted from these changes, how to tell the species apart and how to classify them.

Kuchta uses modern genomic tools to build on previous studies that used anatomy and morphology to smooth out and refine previous research. He can then distinguish among similar species and better order them into classifications. “We can come back and reevaluate their biogeographical hypotheses,” Kuchta said. By further dividing these species, he can pinpoint which DNA sequences are unique and useful for studying, making the process faster and more cost effective. “Presumably at some point we’ll be able to sequence a whole genome in an hour for 15 cents,” he added.

For this team of researchers, concrete fact is based on observation, data collection and phylogenetic and population genetics theory. The two theories detail evolutionary history and its dispersal into populations.

The entire process begins with fieldwork and collection of DNA samples. Kuchta and others spend whole days “herping”—Kuchta’s term for reptile and amphibian hunting, short for “herpetology.” He nabs

a number of salamander species while herping, but this summer’s research focuses on two in particular: Plethodon hoffmani and Plethodon virgina.

When Kuchta finds salamanders in the field, he takes a tissue sample and brings it back to the lab.

Brett runs the blood samples through “buffers” to extract the DNA. He then cuts the DNA using various enzymes and ships it off to another site for gene sequencing.

Through painstaking repetition, researchers map parts of the genome. This data can create new hypotheses or update existing ones, helping Kuchta sort these species and record their differences.

The bulk of the fieldwork happens in the mild temperatures of spring and autumn, but in the summer Kuchta often pursues field work in Sweden for his second project, “running around with a butterfly net” to capture damsel flies in a second area of morphometric exploration. While Kuchta does the fieldwork himself, Brett has substantial freedom in the lab.

“My goal is to be available but not to micromanage,” Kuchta said. “I think people learn more and it’s more fun to not feel like you’re doing slave labor but actually doing science.” Brett said the independent work helps him figure out these methods and processes on his own via trial-and-error.

“Any lab that you work in is going to be able to open up your mind to different things and be able to think critically,” Brett said. He added that the research on salamanders is diverse enough to provide him with a wealth of lab experience, from getting a little knowledge of field work to actually dealing with DNA extraction and sequencing.

More importantly, the central goal of the project is applying a critical eye to earlier research, to refine it and attempt to further scrutinize these salamanders to tell them apart. While the salamanders can do it on the spot, the scientists require more leg work.

Dr. Shawn Kuchta Biological Sciences

Brett Weiler Biological Sciences

The Honors Tutorial College 35 Park Place Athens, OH 45701 740.593.2723

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Jessica Lindner, an HTC Enviornmental and Plant Biology student, studies stream ecology