UF Explore Magazine | Fall 2014 by University of Florida Research Explore Magazine

FALL 2014

Deep Thought

UF Neuro Team Stimulates Brains

Dr. Bernie Machen President

Fall 2014, Vol. 19, No. 3

Dr. David Norton Vice President for Research Board of Trustees Steven M. Scott, Boca Raton â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Chair C. David Brown II, Orlando David L. Brandon, Palm Harbor Susan Cameron, Ft. Lauderdale Christopher T. Corr, Lake Lure NC Charles B. Edwards, Ft. Myers James W. Heavener, Winter Park Pradeep Kumar, Gainesville Carolyn K. Roberts, Ocala Jason J. Rosenberg, Alachua Juliet Murphy Roulhac, Plantation David M. Thomas, Windermere Cory Yeffet, Gainesville Explore is published by the UF Office of Research. Opinions expressed do not reflect the official views of the university. Use of trade names implies no endorsement by the University of Florida. ÂŠ 2014 University of Florida. explore.research.ufl.edu Editor: Joseph M. Kays joekays@ufl.edu Art Director: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger Design and Illustration: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger Paul Messal Nancy Schreck Writers: Cindy Spence David Noonan Copy Editor: Andrew Kays Printing: StorterChilds Printing, Gainesville Member of the University Research Magazine Association www.urma.org

UF neurosurgeon Kelly Foote performs brain surgery on patient Rodney Haning. Photo by Bob Croslin

The Plant Whisperer

Oceans of Opportunity

Horticultural scientist Kevin Folta is decoding plants' responses to light across the spectrum.

Scientists turn to the sea for breakthroughs in brain research.

Extracts

Research News Briefs

Cover Story

Deep Thought Scientists and surgeons collaborate to make UF a center for deep-brain stimulation.

Rating Risk

UF Rising

UF scholar is Securities and Exchange Commission's new chief economist.

UF pumps up muscle research.

Brain Research Epitomizes UF Preeminence Initiative

David Norton Vice President for Research

ecoding the mysteries of the human brain is truly one of the grand challenges for science. Indeed, some liken it to a moon shot. But as this issue of Explore illustrates, the University of Florida is already making a difference in brain research. In fact, neuroscience research is one of the top priorities of UF’s Preeminence Initiative. At UF’s McKnight Brain Institute and Whitney Laboratory for Marine Biosciences, Leonid Moroz takes to heart President Obama’s challenge to map the human brain in the next decade as part of the BRAIN Initiative announced last year. Moroz is exploring the depths of the oceans to find animal models whose unique neural networks can help us understand how human neurons work and how memories are processed. While Moroz’s work is focused on the building blocks of brain function, researchers at the UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration are already treating patients. Neurosurgeon Kelly Foote and neurologist Michael Okun use a procedure known as deep-brain stimulation to provide patients with relief from tremors and other disorders that can make simple activities — sipping a cup of tea, putting a golf ball — difficult or impossible. So far the procedure has been used for diseases like Parkinson’s and Tourette’s, but in the future the duo hopes to use it to improve outcomes for patients with afflictions like post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. With 86 billion neurons in the human brain, there is much research to be conducted in this new golden era of brain science. The University of Florida expects to be leading the way.

UF receives record $702 million in research funding in 2014

University of Florida faculty received a record $702 million in research awards last year, surpassing by $24 million the previous record of $678 million set in 2010 during the federal economic stimulus program. Research awards have increased 42 percent since 2005 and included more than 50 grants of at least $1 million in 2014.

UF Sponsored Research Awards, 2005–2014 4

Fall 2014

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Researcher continues quest for peanut that won’t cause allergic reaction A University of Florida scientist has moved one step closer to his goal of eliminating 99.9 percent of peanut allergens by removing 80 percent of them in whole peanuts. Scientists must eliminate peanut allergens below a certain threshold for patients to be safe, said Wade Yang, an assistant professor in food science and human nutrition in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. If Yang can cut the allergens from 150 milligrams of protein per peanut to below 1.5 milligrams, 95 percent of those with peanut allergies would be safe. It’s challenging to eliminate all peanut allergens, he said, because doing so may risk destroying peanuts’ texture, color, flavor and nutrition. But using novel methods like pulsed light, he hopes to reach an allergen level that will protect most people. Yang, whose study was published online in the journal Food and Bioprocess Technology, cautioned that more research, including clinical trials on animals and humans, is needed. Two years ago, Yang was using his technique on peanut extract. He’s now testing it on the peanut itself. In his 2012 study, he removed up to 90 percent of the allergic potential from peanut protein extracts. “This process proves that pulsed light can inactivate the peanut allergenic proteins and indicates that pulsed light has a great potential in peanut allergen mitigation,” Yang said.

About 1.9 million people, or 0.06 percent of U.S. residents, are allergic to peanuts, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. Reactions can range from skin rashes to anaphylaxis, which can be fatal. Currently, the best way for those allergic to peanuts to stay safe is to avoid them, according to the NIH. Many people carry epinephrine injectors that help offset their allergy symptoms until they reach a hospital. In the latest study, Yang and his colleagues applied the pulsed ultraviolet light technology to whole peanuts. That makes the findings more useful, because peanut processing usually starts from whole-peanut roasting, and roasted peanuts are then packaged to sell as whole peanuts or made into peanut butter, he said. “The latest study moves one step closer to the actual production,” Yang said. For the study, Yang used a pulsating light system — two lamps filled with xenon, two cooling blowers, one treatment chamber with a conveyor belt and a control module — to direct concentrated bursts of light to modify the peanut allergenic proteins. That way, human antibodies can’t recognize them as allergens and begin to release histamines. Histamines create allergy symptoms such as itching, rashes and wheezing. The pulsing light reduced the allergenic potential of the major peanut proteins Ara h1-h3.

“This

process proves

that pulsed light can inactivate the peanut allergenic proteins and indicates that pulsed light has a great potential in peanut allergen mitigation.”

— Wade Yang

Wade Yang, wade.yang@ufl.edu

Brad Buck

Explore 5

Emerging Pathogens Institute

Relief organizations need to think long-term, UF research shows

“We

need to rethink

the way we respond to disasters.

need to

rethink the approach that basically says you come in, do good deeds for a little while and then you walk off and leave the problems with the people that are still there.”

— Glenn Morris

When a magnitude-7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, the world wanted to help. People gave blood. Communities organized bake sales. International and nongovernmental organizations visited the area to dig wells and provide access to safe water. But University of Florida researchers say NGOs dropped the ball by not providing the long-term follow-through needed for their assistance projects to be truly effective. In fact, researchers say that routinely happens in NGO assistance projects in other crisis-stricken countries. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published the results online. NGOs need to make longrange plans to maintain the programs they use to help crisis-stricken countries, said Glenn Morris, director of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.

Map of study region, with water sources shown by blue dots

Fall 2014

“You came in and did the easy part: You dug the well,” he said. “Then you left before you did the hard part … monitoring it.” In Haiti, monitoring the wells was critical because dirty water can spread cholera. Haiti is still in the middle of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call the intestinal disease’s worst recent outbreak in modern public health. When the UF research team, headed by Jocelyn Widmer, surveyed 345 wells in Haiti two years after the earthquake, they found more than a third of the wells contained fecal bacteria. “The people who are drinking the water … have a risk of getting sick not just from cholera but from a variety of other diarrheal diseases,” Morris said. The average cost to have a contractor dig a well in Haiti is between $7,000 and $11,000, so NGOs can create them quickly and cheaply and then report it to their backers. But maintenance to keep the water clean costs money, and it’s rarely included in budgets. The study’s results show that NGOs’ preliminary relief efforts aren’t enough, Morris said. Contamination is a constant threat, especially after storms: In the flooding that followed Hurricane Sandy, 51 percent of the wells showed evidence of fecal contamination.

Chlorinators and trained professionals could help keep the water clean, but the researchers found no coordinated strategy for the water sources installed after the earthquake. “We need to rethink the way we respond to disasters,” Morris said. “We need to rethink the approach that basically says you come in, do good deeds for a little while and then you walk off and leave the problems with the people that are still there.” For example, NGOs had built 56 percent of the water points in the study region, but only 25 percent had any evidence of a management strategy. Sixteen percent were non-functional. Although about half reportedly had a “pump keeper,” they had no power to repair or run the wells. Instead, Haiti’s resource-deficient government faces the maintenance challenge. While issues with some NGOs’ transparency and credibility have been documented in news accounts, Morris said the Haiti situation should serve as a strong reminder that the follow-through problem needs to be addressed. “It’s easy to go in and do good deeds for a short period of time,” he said. “What’s hard is sustainability.” Glenn Morris, jgmorris@epi.ufl.edu

Julia Glum

Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory

o tr

lle vi e s t ro l

st vi

“Our results indicate that interactions between mosquitoes and arboviruses are really complex … these things that haven’t really been taken into account previously might make a difference,” Alto said. The researchers found that warmer temperature shortened survival. Also, for the most part, the Vero Beach mosquitoes lived longer than those from Gainesville, indicating that some groups, or strains, of mosquitoes might just be genetically hardier than others. They found that in general, the mosquitoes fared better at cooler temperatures. But they also found that the West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes from Gainesville fared worse than their counterparts at the hotter temperatures, and to their surprise, that the Vero Beachbred mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus lived longer than all other groups at the cooler temperature, including control-group mosquitoes not exposed to the virus. Ingesting virus-infected blood may take a toll on the mosquito’s health, Alto said, but it’s clear that other factors — immune response, genetics and the environment — are also at play and need more study. “It’s quite complex, there’s a lot of stuff going on here,” Alto said. “But I think the take-home message is that these viruses, when they’re in mosquitoes, not only can they alter parameters like survivorship that are really important to disease transmission, but they can alter them in nonintuitive ways — sometimes enhancing, sometimes decreasing survivorship, and that those situations arise when you

It’s just math: The longer a mosquito lives, the better its odds of transmitting disease to humans or animals. But as it turns out, factors such as the mosquito’s own genetics and the climate it lives in have a big — albeit complicated and not wholly understood — role to play in its lifespan. University of Florida researchers, hoping to better understand how West Nile virus affects mosquitoes, set up an experiment they outline in the Journal of Vector Ecology. Mosquitoes can transmit any number of pathogens to humans, including protozoan malaria, West Nile, dengue and chikungunya viruses. Malaria cases range between 350 million and 500 million each year, with 1 million to 3 million deaths every year. In the experiment, UF researchers examined survival rates for mosquitoes from two laboratory-reared colonies, one from Gainesville and one from Vero Beach. Half of each of the mosquito colonies was fed West Nile virus-infected blood, the other half kept as a control population, and fed blood without the virus. They divided the groups once more, this time keeping the mosquitoes at two temperatures, one group at 80.6 degrees, the other at 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit — a rather large difference in temperature for cold-blooded insects. Their findings were both unexpected and illuminating, said Barry Alto, a UF assistant professor of arbovirology based in Vero Beach at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, or FMEL, a part of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

long

Climate, genetics can affect how virus- carrying mosquitoes live

start considering other factors of the environment, like temperature.” Adding to scientists’ knowledge base of how disease affects insects is key to finding the best ways to limit disease spread, Alto said. “In the most general sense, in order for humans to control disease, we really need to know how the mosquito interacts with these viruses,” he said. “In the absence of a human vaccine, the best way to control any sort of mosquito-borne virus is to control the mosquito. Simply put, if the mosquito doesn’t bite you, you’re not going to get the pathogen.” Besides Alto, the research team included Stephanie Richards, an assistant professor at East Carolina University; Sheri Anderson, a former graduate student at the FMEL and Cynthia Lord, an associate professor at the FMEL. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and UF/IFAS.

“In

the absence of

a human vaccine, the best way to control any sort of mosquito -borne virus is to control the mosquito.

Simply

put, if

the mosquito doesn’t bite you, you’re not going to get the pathogen.”

— Barry Alto

Barry Alto, bwalto@ufl.edu

Mickie Anderson

Explore 7

Florida Museum of Natural History

Great White Shark population in good along California coast, UF study finds

“That

we found

these sharks are

OK, better OK, is a real

doing than

positive in light of the fact that other shark populations are not necessarily doing as well.”

— George Burgess

Great White Shark Habitat (North America)

Fall 2014

The Great White Shark is not endangered in the Eastern North Pacific, and, in fact, is doing well enough that its numbers likely are growing, according to an international research team led by a University of Florida researcher. George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, said the wide-ranging study is good news for shark conservation. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, indicates measures in place to protect the ocean’s apex predator are working. Scientists reanalyzed 3-year-old research that indicated white shark numbers in the Eastern North Pacific were alarmingly low, with only 219 counted at two sites. That study triggered petitions to list white sharks as endangered. “White sharks are the largest and most charismatic of the predator sharks, and the poster child for sharks and the oceans in general,” said Burgess, whose research program is based at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “If something is wrong with the largest, most powerful group in the sea, then something is wrong with the sea, so it’s a relief to find they’re in good shape.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service, NMFS, was petitioned to add white sharks to the endangered species list but declined, based on its own research, bolstered by a preview copy of the study by the international team, said Heidi Dewar, a fisheries research biologist. NMFS estimated the Eastern North Pacific population at about 3,000 sharks and likely growing. Burgess and his colleagues assembled a 10-member team with expertise in all facets of shark biology: demography, population dynamics, life history, tagging and movements, fishery biology and conservation, and mathematical modeling. The team has studied sharks from Florida to California, Alaska to Hawaii, and around the globe. White sharks can be notoriously difficult to count. They are highly mobile and migratory and group themselves by age, sex and size. Unlike marine mammals, they do not surface to breathe. Some gather at aggregation sites to dine on seals, others stay at sea, dining on fish. Most tagging studies use photographic tags — pictures of unique markings, such as nicks on fins or scars — and those markings can change over time. Population estimates, however, are important to conservation. Sharks are sensitive to overfishing, both as bycatch for fisherman seeking other fish and as targets for sport or in areas where shark meat is a delicacy. White sharks are protected in many areas internationally, including the west

health

coast of the United States, but because they swim in and out of jurisdictions, they are still vulnerable, and the older study raised concerns. For their reanalysis, the international team examined the two aggregation sites where the earlier count was obtained, the Farallon Islands and Tomales Point, which attract seals and the sharks that feed on them. They found that the sub-populations at both sites were so fluid, with both resident and transient sharks, that it would not be possible to extrapolate a total population number. To get a better picture of the white shark population in the Eastern North Pacific, the team decided to examine several other known aggregation sites, from Mexico into British Columbia and Alaska. The team also conducted a demographic analysis to account for all life stages for the sharks at Farallon Islands and Tomales Point and found that the total population is most likely at least an order of magnitude higher — rather than just over 200 sharks there likely were well over 2,000. “That we found these sharks are doing OK, better than OK, is a real positive in light of the fact that other shark populations are not necessarily doing as well,” said Burgess, a co-founder of the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. “We hope others can take our results and use them as a positive starting point for additional investigation.” George Burgess, gburgess@flmnh.ufl.edu

Cindy Spence

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Endangered

elephants’ outlook bleak without more room to roam Intelligent and beautiful, the Asian elephant is running out of time unless humans step aside and give it some room. Shrinking habitat and conflicts with humans could hurt the endangered elephant’s numbers and throw the species’ viability into question. In a study in the journal Biological Conservation, University of Florida researchers looked at what must happen for the species to avoid extinction. The researchers created a population model to look at future land- and human-conflict scenarios the elephants might encounter, to determine what kind of effect shrinking acreage set aside solely for elephants and other wildlife would have in conjunction with increasing instances of human-elephant conflict. They simulated elephant

populations over a 500-year period and found scenarios that led to more than 90 percent decreases in elephant population during that time span. Scientists term that kind of population drop “quasi-extinction.” They found that even moderate levels of conflicts with humans led to large drops in elephant numbers, and those problems got worse as humans and elephants continued to occupy the same spaces. “One of our findings is that if human-caused elephant deaths continue to increase, elephant populations will not do well in the long term. They’ll need more and more space free of human habitation. That’s a really tough task in countries like India, where you have high densities of people and limited space,”

india said Varun Goswami, the study’s lead author. “Therefore it’s imperative that thailand human-elephant conflict is effectively managed.” Elephants are large and indonesia their space and food needs Asian Elephant Habitat are, too, Goswami said. Farmers whose crops are trampled and homes damaged Residents often try crude by elephants are understandmeasures, such as flashlights ably unhappy, he said, and that scare elephants, or fences often retaliate. Sometimes made of hot pepper, to try to people chase the elephants keep the animals off small away — or worse. farms, but those measures The population-model don’t always work. study showed that if the Asian Insurance policies that give elephant is to survive, even agricultural producers better small increases in conflictcompensation for elephantinduced elephant deaths must induced damage could help, be offset by having more he said. “inviolate” habitat set aside Madan Oli, olim@ufl.edu solely for the pachyderms. Varun Goswami, That’s not easy, however, varun.goswami@gmail.com in the world’s second-mostMickie Anderson populated country.

CROC CROP

Stacy Jones, UF/IFAS

UF scientists counted a record number of threatened crocodile hatchlings.

Explore 9

College of Medicine

developing mixed-reality simulators for training in treatment of injured soldiers On the battlefield, wounded soldiers depend on how quickly and efficiently medical personnel can treat and stabilize their life-threatening injuries. To help military medical personnel acquire, practice or maintain these key skills while deployed, University of Florida and U.S. Army Research Laboratory Simulation and Training Technology Center researchers have received a $1.75 million grant to design, develop and validate a set of portable, rugged simulators to help military clinicians train — no matter where in the

routinely used in civilian medicine. Each of the proposed simulators will fit inside a military-spec padded case that meets airline-checked luggage size requirements so they can be readily deployed.” With funding from the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center, a subcommand of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Lampotang’s team is building and testing mixed-reality simulators for five different medical procedures. The proposed simulators are based on innovative technologies developed at UF,

needle tip and activity is shown on a linked laptop. As soon as the user correctly places the needle tip into the target vein, the syringe lights up blue to simulate blood that would flow out of the vein. The simulator also alerts users when the needle tip has inadvertently struck the lung or an artery. Another simulator originally developed for UF’s Department of Neurosurgery will help military clinicians practice relieving pressure in the brain after injury. In this procedure a catheter needs to be precisely placed through a hole drilled in the skull to remove fluid from the brain. Practice is crucial because guiding the catheter into the wrong part of the brain could be fatal. The third simulator researchers are adapting involves regional anesthesia. 2012: ShadowHealth, a UF spinoff UF's Simulator 1996: Stan, the human patient 2014: UF begins developing The last two software company that designs mixed-reality simulators for trainDevelopment simulator is developed. programs to train medical students, ing military medical personnel in simulators under at a glance graduates from the Innovation Hub treatment of injured soldiers. development involve chest tube insertion and a procedure which UF Health researchers world they happen to be. called focused assessment with L ampotang’s team is are tailoring and improving to “If something happens, sonography for trauma, or meet the military’s needs. The like 9/11, personnel may get FAST, which enables medics building and testing first simulator enables health shipped out with little or no to pinpoint internal wounds. care workers to practice central time for training stateside,” In addition to developing mixed-reality simulators venous access — placing a said the study’s principal the simulator technology, the for five different medical central line — to quickly intro- research team, which includes investigator, Samsun “Sem” duce medication and fluids Lampotang, Ph.D., a profesUF Health Jacksonville facprocedures. The simulators into the body. The procedure sor of anesthesiology in the ulty, will assess whether the are designed to work in simulators are effective as requires precise skill because UF College of Medicine and training tools, change actual the needle can puncture the director of the UF Center low-tech environments patient care practices, improve lung or artery if not guided for Safety, Simulation & using the same hand-held patient outcomes and are properly, Lampotang said. Advanced Learning Techcost-effective. During the simulation, nologies. “But while stationed equipment and tools trainees attempt to place the overseas in combat zones or Samsun Lampotang, health care workers waiting for hostilities to start, tip of a tracked needle into the slampotang@anest.ufl.edu reservists may still need train- vein of an anatomically correct Rossana Passaniti employ during actual ing to become proficient with 3-D model. Each movement medical procedures. is tracked through a miniature unfamiliar military medical sensor embedded near the procedures or equipment not

10 Fall 2014

UF Health

granted $11 million to establish comprehensive sepsis research center University of Florida health researchers will use a $11 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to create a one-of-a-kind center to generate treatments and prevention strategies for one of the most devastating issues critically ill patients face. The Sepsis and Critical Illness Research Center, the first in the nation, will study long-term outcomes in patients treated for sepsis in the surgical and trauma intensive care units at UF Health Shands Hospital, to develop clinical solutions for sepsis as well as illnesses that stem from it and their enduring, dismal effects. Sepsis is a severe, systemic combination of infection and inflammation that can shut down organs, depress or overactivate the immune system and cause death. Death from sepsis was once common, but improved treatments help many people survive. Severe sepsis leaves lasting effects, however, that scientists are only beginning to understand. In 2012, after decades of research, UF scientists identified a condition they call persistent inflammation, immunosuppression and catabolism syndrome, or PICS. The syndrome afflicts thousands each year, mostly elderly people who survive sepsis but do not recover fully. PICS will be a focus of the UF Sepsis and Critical Illness Research Center. “They get sent to longterm acute care facilities and many of them never really ever rehabilitate,” said Frederick A. Moore, head of the new center and chief of acute care surgery at UF Health. “This is increasingly being recognized, and we think we at least have a partial

reach 92 million by 2060, sepsis and PICS are poised to WORLDWIDE PER YEAR demand more resources. Moore will lead one of four main projects in collaboration with the UF Institute on Aging, to examine the course and outcomes of chronic, critical illness that follows sepsis in patients who have been in ICUs and will look at longterm cognitive and physical effects. This and other projects will draw on a database of information on markers of PICS in patients’ blood, tissue 18M 8M and urine samples, as well as Cases end Total Cases in death data on patients’ cognitive and understanding of how this hap- physical function. Mark Segal, associate pens. It’s really just a chronic professor and chief of the UF inflammatory disease and Department of Medicine’s divipeople lose a lot of lean body sion of nephrology, hypertenmass. After they lose all their sion and renal transplantation, lean body mass, they really and Azra Bihorac, assistant can’t get rehabilitated.” professor of anesthesiology, UF Health work on sepsis medicine and surgery in the got another boost with pubCollege of Medicine, will lead lication of a New England a project to study how sepsis Journal of Medicine article describing similarities between affects the kidneys and how these organs may contribute to the body’s response to cancer PICS and other chronic illness. and inflammatory diseases. Moldawer, Philip Efron, Lyle Moldawer, professor and assistant professor of surgery vice chair of research in the and anesthesiology, and ChrisUF College of Medicine’s tiaan Leeuwenburgh, professor department of surgery, and and chief of the division of Richard Hotchkiss, professor of anesthesiology, medicine and biology of aging in the Department of Aging and Geriatric surgery at Washington UniResearch, will explore the role versity in St. Louis, wrote the article promoting the testing of of immature immune system anti-cancer drugs in inflamma- cells in the onset of PICS. The fourth project will tory and immunosuppressive focus on the debilitating effects diseases, and the other way of muscle wasting. A. Daniel around. Martin, professor in the Col“If these drugs are effective lege of Public Health and in one of these diseases, they Health Professions’ Departmay well be effective in many ment of Physical Therapy, will others. The article is a plea to lead the project. investigators not to work in silos,” Moldawer said. Frederick A. Moore, frederick.moore@surgery.ufl.edu With the U.S. population age 65 and older expected to Laura Mize CASES OF SEPSIS

Sepsis

is a severe,

systemic combination of infection and inflammation that can shut down organs , depress or overactivate the immune system and cause death.

Stages of Sepsis SIMPLE INFECTION LOW RISK INFLAMMATION

10% Risk of Death SEVERE SEPSIS

34% Risk of Death SEPTIC SHOCK

50% Risk of Death

Sources: Global Sepsis Alliance, UK Sepsis Trust, European Commission

Explore 11

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Invasive lizards a potential threat to Florida’s nesting reptiles

“The

lesson is we’ve

got to leap, we cannot wait.

we focus on

answering all the questions about how many there are and what their impact will be, there will be too many tegus to do anything about.”

— Frank Mazzotti

12 Fall 2014

Research cameras trained on the nests of Florida reptiles have caught giant, invasive lizards in the act of pilfering eggs — making them a potential threat to native turtles, alligators and crocodiles. The Argentine black and white tegu, which can grow 4 feet or longer, is already found in areas populated by threatened species, including the Eastern indigo snake, Cape Sable seaside sparrow and gopher tortoise. And if the tegus’ range expands, the list of native species potentially at risk could grow to include sea turtles, shore birds and groundnesting migratory birds. The research team, which included scientists from the University of Florida, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, outlined its findings in the journal Biological Invasions. Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecology and conservation professor in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the study’s lead author, said researchers are acting quickly to extinguish the tegu threat, before the population is beyond control. “The lesson is we’ve got to leap, we cannot wait,” he said. “If we focus on answering all the questions about how many there are and what their impact will be, there will be too many tegus to do anything about.” During routine work in the southernmost part of MiamiDade County in March 2013, researchers found old nests of an American alligator and an American crocodile. Knowing tegus had been seen in the area, they set up cameras on the nests and kept photographic tabs on the alligator nest for

two months and the crocodile nest for four. They downloaded images and checked camera batteries at least once a week and opened the alligator nest once a week to count eggs. Cameras captured 50 images of at least one tegu at the crocodile nest, but those eggs hatched successfully, with video showing an adult crocodile removing hatchlings July 30-31. When they checked the alligator nest June 10, they found no alligator eggs, but 15 Florida red-bellied cooter eggs. They saw a tegu at the nest area, and when they checked seven days later, the turtle eggs were gone. In late June, 30 alligator eggs were found in a cavity near the nest, and from Aug. 12-18, cameras recorded two tegus swiping up to two eggs a day until the nest was empty. Mazzotti said the researchers believe it was probably

chance that the tegus didn’t find or eat the crocodile eggs. The lizards enjoy a broad, omnivorous diet, and “there is no reason for us to think crocodiles wouldn’t be in danger.” In the last five years or so, tegus have established themselves in Miami-Dade, Hillsborough and Polk counties and in one documented case survived at least one winter in Panama City. Wildlife officials ask that Floridians report any tegu sightings to the exotic species hotline at 1-88-IveGot1 (1-888-483-4861) or online at Ivegot1.org. Frank Mazzotti, fjma@ufl.edu

Mickie Anderson

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Research

could improve how companies ship fresh produce A University of Florida-led research team’s development of a tracking system could change the way companies ship fresh fruits and vegetables, letting them know which produce is closest to expiration and providing consumers the freshest products available. Jeffrey Brecht, director of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Center for Food Distribution and Retailing, studied strawberries from their harvests in fields in

Florida and California to their delivery to stores in Illinois, Washington, Alabama and South Carolina. Colleagues from the University of South Florida, Georgia Tech and industry partners collaborated on the project, funded by a $155,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation. The researchers placed two radio frequency identification (RFID) devices into each pallet of strawberries as they were

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

“Little

janitor” merits attention in Florida springs’ health debate, UF/IFAS research shows in springs-health discussions, enters the aquifer and emerges at the springs from municipal sewage treatment and disposal, agricultural and residential fertilizer use, livestock farms and residential septic systems. Matthew Cohen, a UF associate professor and Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty member who specializes in ecohydrology, says while controlling nitrate is a worthy goal, doing that alone “will not be enough to restore springs ecology.” Cohen’s former doctoral student, Liebowitz, now a postdoctoral researcher at the California Ocean Science Trust, spent nearly six years studying the springs. She and colleagues collected samples at 11 springs with high and low levels of nitrates, oxygen and algae. In all, they took hundreds of samples from three parts of each spring, at different times of the year, she said. Among the study’s strongest findings, outlined in a

paper posted online in the journal Freshwater Biology, was a strong negative correlation between snails and algae, Liebowitz said. Where they found more snails, in general, there was less algae. And their later experiments found that the snails could keep algae from accumulating in the springs. That doesn’t mean that other factors aren’t part of the equation, she said, “but it suggests pretty strongly that snails are an important factor in keeping algae levels down.” The researchers say, however, the ecosystem may resist restoration if the amount of algae present is more than they can graze back to low levels. That means even if snail populations bounce back, mature algae would need to be cleared for snails to keep the young algae in check, she said. While snail population declines have been well documented in the southeastern United States, there are only

picked. The devices allowed them to track the strawberries’ temperature from the field, to distribution centers and then on to stores. Their theory is that if you know the quality of the produce and the temperatures to which it has been exposed, you will know which produce to deliver first to stores. Companies normally measure only the temperature of an entire truck. But individual pallets can vary greatly in temperature, depending on what time of day berries were picked and even their placement on

the truck. Strawberries picked in the cool of the morning and placed on a refrigerated truck would stay fresher longer than strawberries picked in the afternoon heat. Brecht said under perfect conditions, strawberries maintain a good quality for up to 14 days. Less than perfect conditions, mainly due to a lack of temperature control, drastically reduce the berries’ postharvest life. It can take as long as four days to go from field to store for a cross-country trip, such as from California to South Carolina.

Maintaining good quality, he said, helps consumers buy what is freshest and reduces food waste. “If you improve the efficiency of postharvest handling, you reduce waste and losses and that improves sustainability,” Brecht said. “Because, of course, if you ship something to market that’s not going to end up being eaten by consumers, every single bit of input in growing it, harvesting, packing, cooling, shipping — everything is wasted.”

a few older studies Liebowitz could use as a baseline. Her study found far fewer snails than were reported before. Studies suggest pesticides and herbicides could be partly to blame for the snails’ decline, she said. The researchers also examined whether oxygen levels at locations in and near springs had any correlation with snail population and found a connection. Water oxygen levels can drop during drought or when humans are pumping out the “new” water at the top of the aquifer, she said. The research team included former UF postdoctoral researcher James Heffernan; Lawrence Korhnak, a UF senior biological scientist, and Tom Frazer, director of the UF School of Natural Resources and Environment. The National Science Foundation funded the study. Matthew Cohen, mjc@ufl.edu Dina Liebowitz, dina.liebowitz@gmail.com

Mickie Anderson

Tyler Jones

A small, slow-moving resident who enjoys a vegetative diet and keeps things tidy may be the overlooked player in public debates over Florida’s ailing freshwater springs, University of Florida researchers say. North Florida has the world’s highest concentration of large freshwater springs. For decades, crystal-clear water bubbling from the ground has driven tourism in the form of scuba divers, canoeists, boaters and swimmers, but today, many of those springs don’t bubble like they used to; green scum often obliterates the view. Although the blame for algae-choked springs is often pinned on excess nitrate, the scientists say the absence of algae-eating native freshwater snails known as Elimia — which UF researcher Dina Liebowitz calls the “little janitor of the springs” — may be a key factor. Nitrate, which has gotten the lion’s share of attention

Jeffrey Brecht, jkbrecht@ufl.edu

Kimberly Moore Wilmoth

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14 Fall 2014

H O T U P G E

BY DAVID NOONAN Photography by Bob Croslin

ike most people in need of major surgery, Rodney Haning, a retired telecommunications project manager and avid golfer, has a few questions for his doctors. He wonders, for example, exactly how the planned treatment is going to alleviate his condition, a severe tremor

in his left hand that has, among other things, completely messed up his golf game, forcing him to switch from his favorite regular-length putter to a longer model that he steadies against his belly.

“Can anyone tell me why this procedure does what it does?” Haning asks one winter afternoon at UF Health Shands Hospital, at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Well,” says Kelly Foote, his neurosurgeon, “we know a lot, but not everything.” The vague answer doesn’t seem to bother Haning, 67, an affable man who has opted for the elective brain surgery. And it’s hard to fault Foote for not going into greater detail about the underlying science, since he is, at that very moment, boring a hole in Haning’s skull.

“Can you hear the drill?” Foote asks his patient as he presses the stainless steel instrument against bone. When Haning, whose head is immobilized by an elaborate arrangement of medical hardware, asks why it doesn’t hurt to have a dime-size hole drilled in his skull, Foote calmly explains that the skull has no sensory nerve receptors. (The doctors numb his scalp before making the incision.) The two continue to chat as Foote opens the dura — “It’s the water balloon that your brain lives in,” he says. “It’s sort of like a tough leather, for protection” — and exposes Haning’s brain.

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I'VE GOT ABSOLUTE TRUST IN THOSE GUYS. — Rodney Haning

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, combines neurology, neurosurgery and electrical engineering, and casual conversations in the operating room between doctors and their wide-awake patients are just one of the surprises. The entire scene is an eerie blend of the fantastic and the everyday, like something from the work of Philip K. Dick, who gave us the stories that became Blade Runner and Total Recall. During surgery, DBS patients are made literally bionic. Tiny electrodes are implanted in their brains (powered by battery packs sewn into their chests) to deliver a weak but constant electric current that reduces or eliminates their symptoms. DBS can improve a shaky putting stroke; it can also help the disabled walk and the psychologically tormented find peace. More than 100,000 people around the world have undergone DBS since it was first approved, in the 1990s, for the treatment of movement disorders. Today, besides providing relief for people with Parkinson’s disease, dystonia (characterized by involuntary muscle contractions) and essential tremor (Haning’s problem), DBS has been shown to be effective against Tourette’s syndrome, with its characteristic tics, and obsessivecompulsive disorder. Add to that a wave of ongoing research into DBS’ promise as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and other neuropsychiatric conditions, as well as early signs that it

16 Fall 2014

may improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients. Suddenly it’s one of the most exciting treatments in modern medicine. With seemingly millions of potential DBS patients, it’s easy to imagine a future where brain implants may become as common as hip replacements. As co-directors of the UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration, Foote and neurologist Michael Okun are at the forefront of the DBS field, refining operating techniques and establishing a rigorous standard of care that attracts patients from around the country and the world. Since teaming up at UF in 2002, Okun and Foote have done more than 1,000 DBS procedures together and grown their two-man effort into an interdisciplinary program with more than 40 staffers, including eight neurologists, a psychiatrist, a neuropsychologist and physical, speech and occupational therapists. The treatment, for patients whose symptoms aren’t sufficiently controlled by medication, carries the usual risks associated with neurosurgery, including stroke and infection. Side effects range from headaches to speech and memory problems, and, in some cases, seizures. But Okun says more than 90 percent of their patients rate themselves as “much improved” or “very much improved” on standard postoperative outcome scales. In the 12 years since they joined forces, Okun and Foote have seen DBS

evolve, in Okun’s words, “from crazy, to kind of cool but not completely accepted, to accepted.” Okun, 42, recalls: “When I first got hired here, my chief said to me, ‘You’re a nice kid, you’re a polite kid, but don’t embarrass us.’” Together, Okun and Foote breached the wall that has forever separated neurology and neurosurgery — blew it to smithereens, actually — and formed a partnership that defies tradition as it advances the science of DBS. While it might sound logical to the layman — of course neurology and neurosurgery go together — it’s hard to overstate how very differently the two disciplines have been practiced. And perceived. Foote, 48, whose smile comes easily and often, captures the old thinking with an old joke: “What’s the difference between neurology and neurosurgery? Well, both types of doctor treat people with disorders of the central nervous system. And if there’s something you can do about it, it’s neurosurgery. If there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s neurology.’” It’s all too true that neurologists have had to deal with more than their share of incurable conditions with unknown causes. Multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, myasthenia gravis. The list goes on, and watching Okun at work in the OR during a DBS procedure, it’s as if he’s out to make up for all those decades of frustration in the specialty he loves. “Mike has a very surgical personality,” says Foote. “And I am much more of a neurologist than most neurosurgeons.”

Patient Rodney Haningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s head is held in place and covered with an adhesive drape containing orange iodine, which prevents infections.

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KELLY FOOTE

NEUROSURGEON grew up in

SALT LAKE CITY undergraduate major

MATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

MICHAEL OKUN NEUROLOGIST

grew up in

WEST PALM BEACH

undergraduate major

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HISTORY

Okun and Foote met as residents at UF in the 1990s. Foote grew up in Salt Lake City and was in high school there when, in 1982, the town produced the biggest medical story in the world at the time — the saga of Barney Clark, the first human recipient of a permanent artificial heart, the Jarvik 7. The operation was performed at the University of Utah, and though Clark died after 112 days, Foote’s fascination with the case endured. He earned a degree in materials science and engineering at the University of Utah, intending to become an inventor of artificial organs. He entered medical school at Utah, where two things changed his course. First, he realized that biological solutions such as improved antirejection therapies, not mechanical organs, were the future of transplant medicine. Second, he did his

18 Fall 2014

neurosurgery rotation and saw the brain for the first time. “What could be more fascinating than the brain?” he asks. Okun’s path was also turned in medical school. Though he majored in history as an undergraduate at Florida State University, he made a late decision to go to med school and become a “black bag doctor,” a general practitioner caring for families and making house calls. “Then I got my first introduction to the brain,” he recalls, “and I said, ‘This is really cool.’” Twenty years later, his enthusiasm is fresh as he describes his neurological satori. “A lot of people were saying all these pathways and everything are really complicated, and they just wanted to get through the class and get a grade. But to me it made perfect sense. You could localize diseases and networks within the brain and figure out where things were and actually make a difference.” Later, as Okun’s interest in movement disorders grew, he realized

MIKE HAS A VERY SURGICAL PERSONALITY, AND I AM MUCH MORE OF A NEUROLOGIST THAN MOST NEUROSURGEONS. — Kelly Foote

he had been exposed to them his whole life. “The Jews have some of the highest incidences of movement disorders,” says Okun, who grew up in a Jewish family in West Palm Beach. “If you go to temple you see it, a lot of people are blinking, they have tics, they have tremors. One of the reasons I was fascinated by this field is I would look back and remember seeing people shaking and shuffling and thinking to myself, ‘Why is that?’” He knows the answer to that question now. “There’s an abnormal conversation going on between different regions of the brain,” he explains. DBS interrupts those abnormal conversations. The challenge for Okun and Foote is to identify the tiny spot in each patient’s brain where the electrodes will do the most good, to locate, amid the cacophony of a hundred billion chattering neurons, the specific neural network that is causing the patient’s problem. “Location is everything,” says Okun.

“A couple of millimeters in the brain is like the difference between Florida and California.” Before setting up shop at UF, Okun and Foote both studied with DBS legends. Okun trained at Emory University with neurologist Mahlon DeLong, who pioneered the “brain circuit” approach to understanding and treating movement disorders. (DeLong is one of six 2014 recipients of a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, created last year by Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley leaders to recognize major achievements in medical science.) Foote, after completing his residency, went to Grenoble, France, where he worked with Alim-Louis Benabid, who developed DBS as a treatment for Parkinson’s and performed some of the first procedures in the early 1990s. Foote then joined Okun at Emory, where the two continued their DBS training with DeLong and neurologist Jerrold Vitek.

Now, as the two of them try to better understand and manipulate neural circuitry, they are working in what could be called a golden era in brain science. Each week seems to bring news of another advance, like a report in January from England affirming the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for acute migraine, which followed reports about the successful use of the non-invasive procedure for depression and some symptoms of schizophrenia. And research interest is booming too, as evidenced by the ambitious, multidisciplinary White House BRAIN Initiative. DeLong, after four decades studying the functional organization of the brain and neuromodulation, has never seen anything like it. “The pace of change and discovery is just unprecedented,” he says. “We’re forging really great advances in almost every disorder you look at, for both neurology and psychiatry. And this will pay off.”

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Surgeons, as a rule, do not like sharing power. The stereotype of the domineering OR general is rooted in the simple fact that cutting open human bodies is a high-risk business and someone needs to be in charge. Foote, tall and commanding in his scrubs, gladly cuts against this expectation in his collaboration with Okun. He treats the neurologist as an equal partner in the procedure, a co-operator, to be exact, though the neurologist does not scrub in or get near the sterile field that surrounds the opening in the patient’s skull. Okun, several inches shorter than Foote, is focused and intense in the OR, a forceful presence from the moment he enters, though he doesn’t say much at first. On this day, he is too busy studying the computer screen where Rodney Haning’s MRI is being compared with a brain atlas that Okun, Foote and other UF colleagues created with data from the dissection of dozens of postmortem brains; because every brain is slightly different, matching structures in Haning’s brain with the atlas helps the doctors map their targets. Standing side by side, Okun and Foote discuss their planned approach, pointing to familiar landmarks, which are outlined on the screen in bright red, green, yellow and blue. When the skull has been opened, Foote slowly feeds a microelectrode on a hair-thin wire down into Haning’s brain. This is not the lead that will be permanently implanted in the brain; rather, it’s a kind of electronic advance scout, a radio receiver that picks up and amplifies the electrical signals of individual brain cells, while canceling out ambient electrical noise. As the probe moves deeper into the brain, the sound of the cells fills the OR, like static from

Foote and Okun go over scans of Haning’s brain to chart their course to the area they believe is causing his tremors. During the course of the surgery, Okun has Haning try to draw a spiral. The effect of the electrodes is apparent in the before and after spirals.

deep space. Okun, who has taken up his position at the patient’s side, manipulates Haning’s left arm and fingers, and strokes his arm, chin and lips, triggering electrical activity in the brain. As he does this, he listens to the screech of individual neurons — their electrical signatures — as they are pierced by the microelectrode. With his trained ear, Okun distinguishes between normal neurons and the abnormal neurons that are causing Haning’s tremor, and he guides Foote to their target, a malfunctioning network of cells located in Haning’s thalamus, near the center of his brain, about four inches down from the hole in the top of his head. “That’s a tremor cell,” he says at one point. “Can you hear it?” Keeping movement disorder patients awake during DBS procedures makes it possible to track the effects of the surgery in real time. One of the quirks of the treatment is that the operation itself alters brain tissue and interrupts the abnormal signals, reducing the patient’s symptoms before the current is even turned on. (This temporary effect is an echo of past practice; years ago, before DBS, surgeons treated movement disorders by creating tiny lesions in the brain.) Several times over the course of his operation, Haning uses his left hand to draw spirals on a clear plastic clipboard that is held up for him. His first spiral, made before the procedure begins, is jagged, unsteady. His last one is smooth, the work of a tremor-free hand. As the operation winds down, with the lead in place in Haning’s brain, a pleased Okun tosses Foote a compliment. “Kelly, I don’t know how you did it, but you’re all hand,” he says, referring to the way Foote hit the target area, the circuit that was causing the tremor in Haning’s left hand. “Imagine that,” Foote replies, deadpan.

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DBS isn’t an option for everyone. It offers hope to selected patients who, despite expert medical management, remain disabled by their symptoms. While it usually works, it is hardly a panacea. It’s brain surgery, after all, arguably the most invasive of all invasive procedures. And besides the usual surgery risks, it requires follow-up outpatient surgery every four years to replace the battery pack. But it has shown itself as an effective and generally safe treatment for many, including Rodney Haning. With those successes, Okun and Foote, like other leaders in the field, are looking beyond movement disorders. That’s why they added the word “neurorestoration” to the name of their UF treatment center, and why they are already performing experimental DBS procedures on patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. Similar DBS research is going on at academic medical centers across the country. DBS has even attracted attention from DARPA, the research arm of the Department of Defense, which is launching a five-year effort specifically targeting four neuropsychiatric conditions — PTSD, major depression, borderline personality disorder and general anxiety disorder — as well as traumatic brain injury, addiction and chronic pain. It’s a dreadful and daunting list. It evokes a universe of suffering even as it speaks to the promise inherent in every successful DBS procedure: If we can do this, then perhaps we can do that. Faced with the challenge to take DBS further, Okun and Foote offer a measured view of the state of their art. “Right now, our understanding of the circuitry in the brain is fairly rudimentary,” says Foote. The technology is “pretty crude,” especially when compared with the human

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brain, with its 100 billion neurons and an estimated 100 trillion synapses. In the past, Okun explains, the big debate in the field was whether DBS worked by inhibiting abnormal circuits or exciting other brain activity. Both sides ended up being right: The neurons closest to the implanted leads are inhibited by the electrical current, while axons leading away from the targeted cells are stimulated. In addition to these changes, says Okun, in the last few years we’ve learned that DBS also alters brain chemistry and blood flow, and even leads to the growth of new brain cells. And recent studies using electroencephalography show that DBS causes what Okun calls “neurological oscillations,” diseasespecific changes in the electrical wave patterns that ripple through the brain. In Parkinson’s disease, for example, DBS suppresses the beta wave, while in Tourette’s syndrome, it stimulates the gamma wave. Okun and Foote have seen firsthand the power of their “pretty crude” technology to affect mood and emotion. They even filmed it and presented it to an audience as part of a talk they gave in 2012. In the video, a woman undergoing a DBS operation to alleviate her debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder beams with joy and laughs when, during the normal course of the successful procedure, Okun and Foote “tickle” a region near her nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain associated with pleasure, reward, motivation and other complex phenomena. “Describe what you’re feeling right now,” Okun says. With an ecstatic smile on her face, in a voice giddy with joy, the woman replies, “I feel happy.” It’s an extraordinary moment, and a powerful demonstration of DBS’s potential as a treatment for disorders like major depression. It’s also unsettling, a peek into a possible future where human happiness is the product not of the experiences and relationships that

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make up a life, not even of mood-altering medications, but of an elective surgical procedure, a face-lift for the brain. Okun and Foote are acutely aware of the ethical issues raised by their DBS work. They have adopted a guiding principle that defines their goals and proscribes anything that might be considered outside the bounds of proper medical practice: The purpose of DBS, they insist, is to alleviate pain and suffering. It’s a clear standard. The question is, will it endure over time as the specialty continues to evolve? Standing just outside the OR after Rodney Haning’s operation, still in his scrubs, his surgical mask dangling from his neck, Foote tries to imagine a day when healthy, normal people will choose to undergo DBS in order to enhance their lives. He understands the appeal. Referring to early results from Alzheimer’s research, he says, “What if we were able to make people remember better? Who’s not going to want that?” But it’s still brain surgery, he argues. “Can you imagine,” he says, “if I take a perfectly normally functioning human being who wants to have some enhancement, and I do an operation, and I hurt them, and they end up a not perfectly normally functioning human being? Imagine the liability there.” He can’t see how the surgical boards and the FDA would ever allow such a thing. Of course, “If it ever got to the point where it was essentially risk-free,” he says, “then you would let the line go a little further, probably.” Foote ponders that idea as the subject of cosmetic surgery comes up. Sixty years ago, plastic surgery, a technically challenging specialty with one of the longest training regimens in medicine, was centered on the treatment of facial trauma and disfigurement. Today, ordinary people think nothing about undergoing multiple cosmetic procedures to make themselves more attractive, and surgeons are happy to perform them.

“That’s actually a really good analogy,” Foote says. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. If you’re not dysfunctional, should you be able to get functional surgery? And I think DBS is going to be a similar battleground.” He hesitates a moment, then finishes the thought. “And we will ultimately cave in. Just like we did with cosmetic surgery.” This is a revelation for him, and not a good one. “I hadn’t really gone that far in my head, but now that I think about the whole cosmetic surgery thing ... yeah.” Foote returns from the future and his mood brightens immediately when he’s asked how it feels to watch patients like Haning leave the OR smiling and waving their tremor-free hands. “It’s still a rush,” he says, “every single time.” A few days after his operation, Rodney Haning is back home in The Villages, the Florida golf community where he lives with his wife, Barbara Jo. He’s been practicing in his den with his favorite putter, looking forward to a busy spring and summer playing the game he loves. He’s tired from the surgery, but feels stronger every day. His tremor is gone, and he hasn’t experienced any side effects from the ongoing treatment. Except for the small scars on the top of his head (his golf hat will cover them when he’s back on the course), there are no signs of his recent adventure in the OR. “I’ve got absolute trust in those guys,” he says of Okun and Foote. “I thought it was real neat during the operation when he said ‘That’s your tremor right there.’ It’s surreal, that’s why I was chuckling every now and then.” He pauses, recalling the details. Then, with a laugh: “There was a hole in my head.” Kelly Foote Professor of Neurosurgery foote@neurosurgery.ufl.edu Michael Okun Professor of Neurology okun@neurology.ufl.edu

In September 2014, Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN’s Vital Signs joined doctors from around the world to observe groundbreaking deep-brain stimulation surgery by Drs. Kelly Foote and Michael Okun of UF’s Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration. Foote and Okun performed the surgery on 25-year-old Amber Comfort to address the frequent ticks and involuntary movements characteristic of her Tourette’s syndrome.

Amber’s procedure began at 8 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m. During the procedure, Foote performed six separate operations. Amber was fully conscious throughout most of the procedure, during which she had four holes drilled into her head.

Related website: http://movementdisorders.ufhealth.org/

This story originally appeared in Smithsonian Magazine

Scan the QR code to view the three-part episode of Vital Signs, or go to http://goo.gl/KMlqhN

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Photography by John Jernigan

24 Fall 2014

PLANT the

HORTICULTURAL SCIENTIST KEVIN FOLTA IS DECODING PLANTS’ RESPONSES TO LIGHT ACROSS THE SPECTRUM

by cindy spence

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Kevin Folta is the Dr. Dolittle of the plant kingdom. Folta is interpreting a new language, spoken between the sun and the Earth’s plants — where blue means one thing, red another — so that one day farmers can use light to give plants instructions: grow faster, bigger, more nutritiously. Through this language of light he coaxes more antioxidants from kale, better flavor from strawberries. One day, he says, plants will come with a recipe for light. Much as farmers today know to use this much water or that much fertilizer, one day they will have instructions for light exposure. “You may have a plant under a blue light in the morning, a green light in the afternoon and a far-red light overnight, with a two-hour dark break before the blue light comes on again,” says Folta, chair of the Department of Horticultural Sciences in UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “We can put together combinations of light in a prescription that will change how the plant grows and develops.” What’s more, those instructions may extend beyond harvest, to the lights in the produce section at the supermarket or in your refrigerator at home.

The

colors in the

spectrum of light give a plant information

—

the time of day, the

season , its proximity to its neighbors

—

and the plant uses the information to change its gene expression and growth habits .

26 Fall 2014

“Our hope is that we could make food products last longer, especially since 40 to 50 percent of food that’s harvested in the U.S. goes to waste because of afterharvest decay,” Folta says. Right now, the work is in the early stages, as scientists try to determine how plants respond to different light exposures across the spectrum. Plants possess many light-sensing receptors, like 15 eyes, each one able to “see” a different part of the spectrum. The plant adapts as its receptors sense the presence of each color. This goes way beyond photosynthesis. Light visible to the human eye represents just a fraction of the light spectrum. From infrared on one end to ultraviolet at the opposite end, much of the spectrum is invisible to humans, but not to plants. The colors in the spectrum of light give a plant information — the time of day, the season, its proximity to its neighbors — and the plant uses the information to change its gene expression and growth habits. Changing the light — the information — changes the way a plant grows and develops. So far, Folta says, experiments have shown that it is possible to affect the size of leaves and stems, important factors in growing a crop like spinach or lettuce. With Assistant Professor Thomas Colquhoun of the environmental horticulture department, they have shown that light also affects flavor and aroma. Going forward they will examine light effects on nutritional content and enhancing nutriceutical compounds with potential roles in cancer prevention. “We’re really just learning what we can control,” Folta says. “We’re just starting to understand how different parts of the spectrum affect different aspects of plant growth, development and nutritional content.”

“You may have a plant under a blue light in the morning, a green light in the afternoon and a far-red light overnight, with a two-hour dark break before the blue light comes on again.”

— Kevin Folta

Kevin Folta has come a long way from homemade light arrays as an undergraduate to a laboratory equipped with LEDs that mimic the colors in the spectrum of light.

Fridge

of the

Future

Folta began working with plant genes that were affected by light in his undergraduate years and remembers building light arrays from parts bought on eBay and empty shipping boxes. The equipment needed made the research expensive. “For a long time, we had to build our own arrays, do our own electronics,” says Folta, who remembers threading tiny LEDs — light-emitting diodes — through the holes in pipette shipping boxes. Today, the cost of LEDs is dropping, and companies now make custom fixtures that can replace Folta’s homemade contraptions of years past. “We can now realistically use and deploy this technology at an industrial level,” Folta says. The research has advanced to the point that appliance companies are interested in redesigning refrigerator lights, perhaps even using ultraviolet light to provide an anti-microbial environment. The refrigerator of the future, Folta says, could operate the opposite of today’s refrigerator: instead of the light going on when you reach in for a cold snack, it would go off. The light would go on again, perhaps in different combinations in different compartments, when you close the door. Light conditions, Folta says, could help retain the nutritional value that is already in a vegetable or fruit in storage. The refrigerator of the future may use lights across the spectrum to keep produce fresh, with lights that go off when the door is opened and back on, perhaps in different combinations in different compartments, when the door closes.

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“We’re

changing plant

gene expression in a way that never occurs natu rally.

create a recipe

of lights that, when we turn on that switch , there’s never been a plant that has seen that before.”

— Kevin Folta

28 Fall 2014

Even more exciting, lights could be used to amp up the nutritional value. “We’re testing now how to get plants to produce more beneficial compounds like folate or vitamin C, or important anti-cancer compounds,” Folta says. The technology was tested using Arabidopsis thaliana, horticulture’s version of a white lab rat, on a grant from the National Science Foundation. Folta’s lab moved up the food chain from there to test kale, strawberries, blueberries and tomatoes. In kale, sequential treatments of darkness, blue light, red and far-red light produced variations in growth, development and nutritional value. Colquhoun and Folta's labs also showed that specific light treatments altered fragrance and flavor of blueberries, strawberries and tomatoes. The key is figuring out which wavelengths to use at which intensity, duration and direction. Once the combinations are worked out, a small farmer with a relatively simple light array could use them to add value to a crop by changing its color, size or nutritional content. “This allows us to be the plant whisperers,” Folta says. “It allows us to tell the plant how to behave, what we want and how to produce it.”

12,000 Years Folta calls the resulting plants EMOs — environmentally modified organisms — in contrast with GMOs — genetically modified organisms, which have become a flashpoint in agriculture globally. As a scientist, Folta doesn’t understand opposition to modifying plants by methods that have been proven to be safe and effective. He argues — on dozens of radio programs and online forums annually — that from the moment humans began cultivating crops 12,000 years ago, they started changing

them, cross-breeding to enhance desirable traits, and today’s food crops only remotely resemble their genetic forbears. One online segment last year on the Huffington Post drew more than 500 comments in an hour. If people only understood GMO technology, he thinks, they would embrace it. So far, Folta says, no one objects to using lights to tinker with plants, even though the changes are dramatic and sometimes quite unusual. “We’re changing plant gene expression in a way that never occurs naturally. We create a recipe of lights that, when we turn on that switch, there’s never been a plant that has seen that before,” he says. “It’s way, way, way more involved than genetic modification, but nobody really cares.” As a teacher, Folta says, he takes it seriously when he hears people make claims that are not scientifically accurate. He says it’s his duty as a scientist to communicate facts — with kindness — to offset a growing anti-science bias he fears will lead to lost opportunities to use beneficial technologies. Lights are only one tool; using all the tools available will be the key to feeding the planet. Folta predicts the next wave of genetic modification — he calls it GMO 2.0 — will be crops that provide more nutrition with less impact to the environment. And genetic modification may be the best hope for keeping a glass of orange juice on the breakfast tables of Floridians. Beleaguered citrus

Once the combinations are worked out, a small farmer with a relatively simple light array could use them to add value to a crop by changing its color, size or nutritional content.

growers have struggled for years with diseases like canker and citrus greening. Several trials using plant defense genes to impart bacterial resistance to citrus plants look promising, Folta says, and may play a key role in Florida continuing to be known for citrus. “These are the same genes and same gene products people consume every time they eat a fruit or vegetable, so it shouldn’t be something they’re afraid of,” Folta says, “and when they realize that, they’re not afraid.” Folta began his career at UF working on strawberry genomics, promoting open access to discoveries as they were made and playing a key role in an international research effort. Thanks to that synergy, in 2010, the strawberry was the 12th plant genome to be sequenced.

Today, thousands of plant genomes are sequenced. Folta hopes to see the work with light modification of plants take off in the same, collegial way, with scientists sharing information between labs to speed up the pace of discovery. The potential exceeds even Earth’s boundaries, he says. “This technology could be used in outer space. LED lights are very portable and last a long time, 50,000 hours,” says Folta, who is only one UF researcher with his sights on space. Colleagues Anna-Lisa Paul and Rob Ferl have sent plants into space five times to learn more about how plants can support future space missions. The LED experiments may be the contribution of Folta’s lab to such missions.

“If you’re using lights in space to grow crops,” Folta says, “you don’t want to be changing light bulbs.” So far, from farmers to hobbyists, the people he speaks to are excited about the potential of gardening with LEDs. “It brings to light how we think about our food,” Folta says. “When I talk about environmental modification, with lights, people ask ‘Where can I get it, can I set it up in my house?’” So the plant whisperer keeps working on new light recipes. Kevin Folta Associate Professor and Chair of Horticultural Sciences kfolta@ufl.edu Twitter: @kevinfolta Related websites: http://www.facebook.com/UFFoltaLab http://kfolta.blogspot.com/

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30 Fall 2014

oce ans of

oppor t uni t y scientists turn to the sea for breakthroughs in brain research

By Cindy Spence

hink of your memories: a first kiss, a broken bone, a heart-wrenching good-bye. They all changed your DNA.

Neuroscientists have long sought clues to memory — what we remember, what we forget — and increasingly, they find genomics plays a key role, says University of Florida neuroscientist Leonid Moroz. For the brain to hold onto something for 20 years, 30 years, a lifetime, what is happening? “It’s a fundamental question in neuroscience: How do you remember your first kiss for the rest of your life?” says Moroz, distinguished professor of neuroscience, genetics, chemistry and biology in the UF College of Medicine and the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Biosciences. “How does it fundamentally

change you, modify something in your brain, and how is this modification maintained, if you’re lucky, for 60 to 80 years?” For answers to this and other questions about the human brain, Moroz has turned to the sea. In Aplysia, also called the sea slug or sea hare, he uses neurons, the largest in the animal kingdom at up to 1 millimeter in diameter, visible even without a microscope. In the ctenophore, or comb jelly, he has discovered a different evolutionary path to neural complexity, with a different chemical language. Recently, he has turned his attention to the cephalopod, or Octopus, in hopes of discovering how it developed an elementary intelligence independent of mammals.

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The Not-so-common Sea Slug The sea slug, Aplysia californica, holds the distinction in the animal kingdom of having the largest brain cells. These colossal cells make Aplysia an excellent paradigm for the study of neurons as they learn and remember, Moroz says. Early in his research, Moroz says, he became frustrated with white lab rats and dropped them to study genomics of sea slugs with their giant neurons, against the strong advice of more senior scientists. Then, on Christmas Eve 2002 he was working in his lab when

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he got a call. He figured it was his wife, telling him to come home, but it was Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, suggesting a collaboration. “My jaw dropped,” Moroz says, especially after the years of being discouraged from studying sea slugs and neurogenomics. Kandel shared the Nobel in 2000 for research using sea slugs as a model for human memory formation, and was interested in the work Moroz was doing to sequence individual neurons. The research team reported in Cell in 2006 that more than 10,000 genes in a single sea slug brain cell could be expressed at one time. They also found that sea slugs and humans share more than 100 genes associated with common neurological disorders, a finding that could help in the study of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. The ability to sequence individual neurons in memory circuits could shed light on fundamental questions: how neurons work and why they work in a particular way, Moroz says. One of the goals of the research is explaining why memories are stable, although the environment of the brain is not, with most of its molecules replaced every week or so. Memories, Moroz said, change the connections between brain cells morphologically, creating

a structural basis for memory. But what are the molecular bases for longterm persistence of memory? He was surprised by what he found in Aplysia. “Half of the Aplysia genome in neurons is chemically modified within two hours of memory forming,” says Moroz. “Memory, indeed, has a home in DNA.” The challenge, Moroz says, is figuring out how, so quickly, signals that travel from your eyes or ears pierce the neuronal membrane to reach the nucleus and modify half the genome in a specific cell. Via computer analyses, scientists can monitor the activity of the entire genome in each cell of Aplysia memory circuits as they learn and remember, and “already we see it’s not random,” Moroz says. Although the nervous system in the sea slug is simpler and has only about 10,000 neurons, that actually is ideal, because it is more easily studied. With their huge neurons, sea slugs provide an opportunity to do genomic analysis of the entire brain and combine it with physiology and memory studies, perhaps pointing the way to help scientists better target research in humans. Paraphrasing a quote, Moroz says, “It’s not the days you live, it’s the days you remember.’ “How does the brain do it?”

Maria Belen Farias/University of Florida

The brains of these creatures, though complex, do not approach the complexity of the human brain with its estimated 86 billion neurons, but they can present alternative solutions to help scientists test theories and learn more about brain functions and origins. A census of cell types in the brain is one of the program areas at the UF McKnight Brain Institute, with which Moroz is affiliated. And with the federal BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative swinging into gear, now is the perfect time to forge ahead. With the help of sea creatures, Moroz says, great strides are possible.

“One of the goals of the research is explaining why memories are stable , although the environment of the brain is not, with most of its molecules replaced every week or so . Memories change the connections between brain cells morphologically, creating a structural basis for memory.” — L eonid Moroz Explore

In typical style, human hubris extends to evolution, the common belief being that simple organisms are at the bottom of the tree of life and humans, with their neural complexity, at the top. The fragile ctenophore, however, achieved neural complexity following an evolutionary path all its own, a recent finding by Moroz and a research team that challenges 100 years of textbooks on evolution of neural complexity. Comb jellies, in fact evolved traits that human brains did not: the ability to regenerate, even multiple times. Moroz has studied the sea creatures for years, often finding his work stalled by specimens that declined so quickly after collection that they were dead or deteriorated by the time they reached the lab. The waste of the beautiful creatures saddened him — he was forced to collect extra samples in hopes of some surviving — and the delay in collection, examination and research was frustrating. His solution: take the lab to sea. The idea was simple but the execution was complicated. Without major funding, he needed to convince someone else the idea would work, and he found a receptive ear in UF College of Engineering alumnus Steven Sablotsky, who was willing to turn his 141-foot yacht into a research vessel. The Copasetic went to sea in February and March. Moroz collected comb jellies, and processed and sequenced them onboard in his Ship-Seq mobile lab, which was linked by satellite to UF’s newest high-performance supercomputer, HiPerGator. In hours, he had the data — and proof that an at-sea genomics lab could work.

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Maria Belen Farias/University of Florida

Evolutionary Detour

UF C ollege of Engineering alumnus S teven S ablotsky lent Moroz his 141foot yacht, C opasetic , as the platform for the first real-time genome sequencing at sea . In two weeks last February and M arch, Moroz ’s team was able to perform sequencing of 22 organisms , among them zooplankton and rare comb jellies .

As his work progressed, he and his team discovered the secret the fragile ctenophore had been guarding was its own, very different, evolutionary path, so different, in fact, that Moroz calls them aliens of the sea. The work was published in Nature. “Our concept of nature was that there was only one way to make a complex brain or neural system. We oversimplified evolution,” Moroz says. “There is more than one way to make a brain, a complex neural system.” The ctenophores’ novel genomic toolkit with its rapid regenerative capabilities could reveal new ways to look at brain diseases, which Moroz describes as a “one-way ticket” to decline. “Ctenophores show us there is more than one way to build a neuron and a complex nervous system.” Moroz likens the study of genomics and the brain to the study of dark matter and dark energy in physics. The universe we observe is 5 percent of what exists; the rest is dark energy and dark matter. Genomics, too, has come to a similar conclusion about DNA. “We used to think all the major stuff was proteins and protein-coding genes, the rest of it was garbage. Then garbage was upgraded to junk, and now junk turns out to be a key player,” Moroz says. “So we do have dark matter and dark energy in the genome, and amazingly, this dark matter and dark energy in the neural genome contributes substantially to everything we can imagine about our brains: wiring, learning, memory, diseases, aging, mortality. The dark matter, dark energy of the genome, the so-called non-coding RNAs, tells us a lot about function.”

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The Ocean as Testbed An Octopus, like a dog, has about a half billion neurons. An Octopus is capable of learning by watching, and it is highly adaptable. The cephalopod memory center has 20 times more neurons than the memory center of mice, and they can perform some tasks more efficiently than rats or rabbits. Their arms can do much more than other appendages in the animal kingdom, even learn. Moroz says some may exhibit personality, and although the analysis of cephalopod cognitive function is still new, cephalopod neural machinery is remarkable. Moroz is hoping to get funding to further study cephalopods, which he calls primates of the sea. The creatures develop memory centers apparently independently from other creatures, and Moroz is hoping to figure out how their form of intelligence works. The Octopus, he says, is just one of the billions of experiments nature has already performed, awaiting discovery by scientists. Life on this planet, Moroz says, is an experiment 3.5 billion years in the making. Studying different organisms and their adaptations to different environments is important because it could reveal a variety of evolutionary solutions to performing the same task, like learning and memory.

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“Nature has performed countless numbers of experiments for us,” Moroz says. “The advantage of genomics is that we can obtain the genetic blueprint of virtually any creature in the sea to study these experiments. Different cells learn differently, but also different cells age differently. Some neurons in the sea slug age fast, some never age at all, they have already discovered Fountains of Youth. Some animals can regenerate their elementary brain, like comb jellies, some don’t, so nature provides us with millions of enormously efficient experiments already done. “This is why biodiversity is so important.” Moroz points out that eyes have evolved about 40 times independently in the animal kingdom. If there is more than one way to make an eye, it stands to reason, he says, that there would be more than one way to make a brain, a neuron, a memory circuit. Looking at the solutions nature puts forth, he says, can help humans. If something is broken in the human brain, nature may show an alternative way to fix it.

“Nature has performed countless numbers of experiments for us . The advantage of genomics is that we can obtain the genetic blueprint of virtually any creature in the sea to study these experiments .”

— L eonid Moroz

“We need to look at these alternative designs,” Moroz says. “We are brainwashed to look for similarity but I say vive la diversité. The differences tell us more.” Working only on humans, or lab rats, is not the most efficient path to discovery, Moroz says, adding that work on starfishes led to understanding of immunity. The creatures of the sea hold potentially unique solutions for all branches of science and medicine. Moroz

points out that about 50 percent of drugs today are derived from natural products — bacteria, algae, plants or animals. With 70 percent of the planet covered by oceans, scientists estimate that 14 million to 20 million compounds remain to be discovered at sea. The discoveries, however, hinge on public and agency support of research, Moroz says. “Some people still think of slugs and jellies as freaks of nature. They do not feel these guys are our cousins, our friends to help with disease,” Moroz said. “We have to see the ocean’s animals not as freaks of nature but as a friend.” There is no time to waste; scientists estimate a species is lost every six hours. Moroz laments the natural heritage being squandered, along with the opportunities to learn. Who would have predicted, he asks, that ctenophores would be so neurally

different, but it took five grant applications before that research was funded and the support of private organizations. Science, technology and computing power have converged today, creating new possibilities. In 2001, Moroz says, scientists were working manually, and sequencing a thousand genes took several weeks. Today, on a flat, one-inch chip, a whole genome can be sequenced in a few hours, with data feedback an hour later. One of the chips he uses today has 160 million reactors to sequence DNA. The next chip in development will be able to do six times more, he says. Questions can be asked today that could not be addressed 10 or even two years ago, he says; it would have been like trying to “use a steam engine to fly to the moon.” It is possible now, he says, to get the genomic blueprint of all the

animals in the sea, and he chafes at the delays in the race to save species. The molecular heritage of the planet is in our hands. “We have capabilities we are not maximizing,” Moroz says. “The technology is here, the animals are here, the opportunity is here. If we wait, on a global scale, think what we lose. We need to do this faster, do it today, and disseminate the information at the speed of light using supercomputers and satellites. “What are we waiting for?” Moroz asks. “We need to shake the tree of life.” Leonid L. Moroz Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience, Genetics, Chemistry & Biology (904) 461-4006 moroz@whitney.ufl.edu Related website: http://www.whitney.ufl.edu/research/faculty/ leonid-l-moroz/

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RATING

RISK UF SCHOLAR MARK FLANNERY IS SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION’S NEW CHIEF ECONOMIST BY CINDY SPENCE

38 Fall 2014

Ray Carson

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“Having government economists encouraged to do their own research and to publish their research in refereed journals is a really important part of making the economic staff credible to the rest of the world.”

— Mark Flannery

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he mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” That mission, says University of Florida finance Professor Mark Flannery, is at the heart of the American financial sector, and as the new director and chief economist for the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), he is eager to help the SEC meet that goal. Although Flannery says he has much to learn about his new post, which he assumed in September, he does know that he would like to bolster economic research at DERA. The SEC’s substantial legal staff pores over documents of companies that want to sell securities in the public market to make sure the documents highlight the relevant risks. “So the question is, what are the relevant risks?” Flannery says. DERA’s role is to identify the economic factors in weighing risk, bringing economic as opposed to legal insight to rule writing and regulations. Flannery says the SEC has decided that it will adopt no rule without a complete economic cost benefit analysis. “The economic analysis has to be done right in order for the rule to be

considered, and that’s what interested me in the job,” Flannery says. Flannery was quite happy in his role as the Bank of America eminent scholar at UF’s Warrington College of Business Administration, teaching graduate and MBA students and conducting his own research into government regulation of the financial sector. When he was approached about the job, however, the opportunity to use his research and classroom skills in the government sector intrigued him. “One of the things I hope to do is find intuitive ways to explain to people why the markets behave the way they do,” Flannery says. “The SEC has a big public education program, and that is one of the things I hope to participate in.” Flannery got a chance to put his gift for explaining financial research to work in a chat with an SEC commissioner during his selection process. The commissioner brought up a frequently misunderstood economic theorem. “He said, ‘There’s this theorem, the Modigliani-Miller Theorem, that everybody talks about, and I don’t know anybody who understands it. What’s it about?’” Flannery recalled. Experienced at teaching MBA students from diverse backgrounds,

“We’ve got all these economic issues. What are the most important ones and why? Explaining the why in an intuitive, non-technical way is a lot of what I do in the classroom and a lot of what I think I’m going to be doing up there.” — Mark Flannery

Flannery deftly explained the theorem, which led to Nobel Prizes for its two originators. “He told me it was the first time the theorem made sense,” Flannery says. The SEC was created during the Great Depression, in the wake of the stock market crash, when half of the securities offered in the post World War I era became worthless. The Division of Economic and Risk Analysis was created in 2009, and Flannery is the third chief economist to lead the division, which now numbers about 130 economists. He thinks published research is important in maintaining a good regulatory agency research department and hopes to foster more research. “Having government economists encouraged to do their own research and to publish their research in refereed journals is a really important part of making the economic staff credible to the rest of the world,” Flannery says. “The things these economists learn in their agency work can inspire or motivate refereed research papers.” Flannery brings to DERA a wealth of experience in academics and in other government advisory roles. He served as senior adviser to the Department of Treasury in the Office of Financial Research,

and resident scholar for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also was an advisory committee member on the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Center for Financial Innovation and Financial Stability and served on the Federal Reserve’s Model Validation Council. The one-year appointment is open to renewal but whenever he returns to the university, he expects his experience at the SEC to provide fuel for research and classroom discussions. “This will familiarize me with institutions, data sources, behavior patterns that I’ve never been familiar with before, so I expect it’s going to generate a lot of research questions,” Flannery says. “My hope is that I’ll have a chance to start on some of them while I’m there. I’ll certainly store them up, so I think in that sense it’s going to make a big difference to my research program. “It’s also going to make a big difference to what I can teach and the way I teach when I come back,” Flannery says. “I’m excited about the ability to come back and implement these things I learn.” Flannery acknowledges public suspicion of the financial sector. He says a couple of people have half-jokingly asked him to be sure “somebody goes

to jail.” He says education and prudent regulations can help allay suspicions and promote a more vigorous market. “The public is very offended by what they view as some of the inequities,” Flannery says, “the stuff about how the banks got a big bailout, the managers got big pay, and we got unemployment.” Flannery says the financial sector is more complicated than that, but the fact that notions of unfairness are so easily accepted points out the importance of one of the commission’s three goals: maintaining fair and orderly markets. If investors think the market is rigged, they will be less interested in putting their savings into the market, and that interferes with the ability of the economy to generate new capital. “We’ve got all these economic issues. What are the most important ones and why? Explaining the why in an intuitive, non-technical way is a lot of what I do in the classroom and a lot of what I think I’m going to be doing up there,” Flannery says. “This is an opportunity actually to make a difference based on the economics I’ve learned over the course of my career.” Related website: http://www.sec.gov/dera

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UF Pumps Up Muscle Research New hires, new institute to focus on muscles

s part of its goal to become a world leader in the development of therapies for muscular conditions and cancer, the University of Florida has recruited a world-renowned expert on neuromuscular diseases and pioneer in muscular dystrophy research. H. Lee Sweeney, Ph.D., will join UF in July as the Thomas H. Maren, M.D., Eminent Scholar Chair in Pharmacology and Therapeutics in the UF College of Medicine. Sweeney currently is the director of the Penn Center for Orphan Disease Research and Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to serving as a leading scholar, Sweeney will develop an institute specifically devoted to the study of muscles, pulling together resources and expertise already housed at UF. “Dr. Sweeney embodies the characteristics of a preeminent investigator,” said David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., UF’s senior vice president for health affairs and president of UF Health. “He is just the kind of scientific leader that we seek as we move UF as a whole toward preeminence. In addition, his bringing together all of UF Health’s expertise in muscular diseases in one center with a focus on translational science will allow us to make new breakthroughs in this field, benefiting patients well into the future.” Sweeney, who served as chair of the Department of Physiology at Penn from 1999 until 2013 and has authored more than 200 scientific papers, is perhaps best known for a gene therapy approach he developed to prevent age-related muscle loss in mice. For this work, Esquire magazine named Sweeney to its list of “Best and Brightest” in 2004. In addition, he and colleagues developed the first drug approved in

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H. Lee Sweeney Europe for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The most common form of muscular dystrophy in children, Duchenne muscular dystrophy results in muscle deterioration and ultimately death in those born with it. This discovery earned Sweeney the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence. “Lee is studying muscular dystrophy at its most basic level and is truly committed to making strong headway toward therapeutic approaches,” said Jeffrey Martens, Ph.D., chair of the College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. “He is approaching the treatment of muscular dystrophy in any and every way he can. I am really convinced he is going to move treatment of this disease forward in a significant way.” In addition, some of the scientific concepts derived from his research on muscles relate to cancer cells, and Sweeney plans to use this knowledge to develop new techniques to fight cancer cells as well.

“Much of my most basic research focuses on myosin motors that move cargoes inside of cells and move the muscles of the body,” Sweeney said. “Cancer cells depend on these myosin motors to grow rapidly and move. I am now applying my knowledge of how these myosin motors work to cripple cancer cells.” In addition to continuing his own research, Sweeney will lead a newly created Myology Institute, the goal of which will be to join and extend all of the research already being conducted by UF faculty in the fields of muscle biology, neuromuscular medicine and cancer. “UF has so many outstanding scientists working at many levels of muscle biology and neuromuscular disease that it will be easy to build upon those strengths to create a world-class program,” Sweeney said. Sweeney, who earned his doctorate at Harvard University, has been on the faculty at Penn since 1989. In addition to his scientific work, he also serves as the scientific director for the advocacy group Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and has lobbied Congress for more funding for research for neuromuscular diseases. “Dr. Sweeney is a true leader in his field and we are excited to welcome him to the University of Florida,” said Michael L. Good, M.D., dean of the UF College of Medicine. “His recruitment demonstrates the tremendous growing momentum of UF Rising, UF’s preeminence journey to become a top 10 research university.” Website UFPreeminece.org

April Frawley Birdwell

ent Fuchs, provost of Cornell University, was named the 12th president of the University of Florida on Oct. 15, by the UF Board of Trustees. He will take office on Jan. 1, 2015. “Dr. Fuchs brings to the University of Florida all of the important qualities we have been seeking in our next president,” said Dr. Steve M. Scott, chair of the Board of Trustees. “He is a distinguished academic who has very effectively served as provost and chief operating officer of the nation’s 15th best institution among all universities.” Fuchs, 59, brings 20 years of leadership at member institutions of the Association of American Universities, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University. Fuchs (pronounced Fox) has served for the past 12 years as dean of the College of Engineering and then provost at Cornell, which, like UF, is a land-grant institution that has a wide range of colleges and professional schools. “With the great privilege and responsibility you have given me, I will devote all of my energies, talents and abilities to helping move the University of Florida toward its preeminence goals,” Fuchs said. “We won’t be complacent. We will focus on being an even greater institution than we are today.” At Cornell, Fuchs developed a strategic plan for achieving preeminence as one of the world’s top-10 universities and launched a universitywide initiative to enhance Cornell’s academic stature. Among his major accomplishments was his role in the university’s selection by New York City to build a graduate school of applied sciences on Roosevelt Island. Fuchs led the effort for Cornell, which in partnership with TechnionIsrael Institute of Technology is building Cornell Tech on 12 acres the city provided. Like UF, Cornell has an extensive research enterprise that had $802.4 million in research expenditures in 2012, ranking 16th among all universities in the National Science Foundation’s annual report.

In August, Forbes Magazine called Cornell the “Silicon Ivy” and named it the nation’s fourth most entrepreneurial university — just behind Stanford, MIT and Berkeley — for its more than 11,000 alums and students who identify themselves as business founders and owners on LinkedIn. In addition to construction of Cornell Tech in New York City, Fuchs has overseen construction of numerous new research buildings, including Weill Hall, home to the university’s genomics research; the Physical Sciences Building, which includes more than 80 research/teaching labs and a series of noise-free, shielded, vibration-proof facilities in the basement; and Gates Hall, a $60 million home to Cornell’s computer and information science research that opened in January. “Dr. Fuchs has been a strong advocate for research at Cornell, and we look forward to working with him to continue to grow the University of Florida’s research enterprise,” said David Norton, UF’s vice president for research. “He clearly appreciates that research will be vital to UF’s emergence as a top-10 national university.” Fuchs’ distinguished academic background includes designations as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery. Fuchs received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Duke University, a master’s in divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.

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Ray Carson

Cornell University Provost Kent Fuchs Named UF’s Next President

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Florida Museum of Natural History herpetology researchers spent several months reconstructing the skeleton of a Burmese python that was 17 feet 7 inches long. The animal was brought to the museum after it was captured in Everglades National Park in 2012 and when museum researchers performed a necropsy they discovered it weighed 164.5 pounds and contained 87 eggs, both Florida state records for this invasive species. Native to Southeast Asia and first found in the Everglades in 1979, the Burmese python is one of the deadliest and most competitive predators in South Florida. With no known natural predator, population estimates for the python range from the thousands to hundreds of thousands.

To see a time-lapse video of the skeleton being rearticulated, visit http://youtu.be/0qsHKueBhoQ or scan the QR code.