Pathways
RESEARCH REPORT 2011
Pathways
UWM RESEARCH REPORT 2011
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Interim Chancellor’s welcome
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Foreseeing the fate of stem cells
Protecting Lake Michigan through design
Easing the burden for family caregivers
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Informal settings, serious learning
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Physicist’s work yields another UWM startup
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New inspiration for American Indian studies
Baby-stepping toward physical therapy options
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Bringing down the cost of nanomaterials
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doc|UWM makes it real
The ‘expat’ experience: a family affair
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A new approach to harnessing discovery
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Uncovering a trend toward earlier springs
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A national center on children’s environmental health
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Public transportation leads to innovation
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A shield for developing immune systems
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Smoothing out wind power
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Limiting the danger of new technologies
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The breadth of research life
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UWM: Opening new pathways to results
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Advancing the rate of discovery
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Messages from Lake Michigan’s carbon cycle U.S. Census expert adds up the past Microbial genes give clues for new cancer drugs
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Factors behind forest diversity
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Physics initiative unveils the ‘people’s pulsar’
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New insights on aging
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Toward a brighter future for Malawi
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A drug-free option for Tourette syndrome
On the Cover: Our cover image is a montage of different stem cells, each overlaid with color-coded outlines representing patterns of shape and motion over time. Andrew Cohen, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has developed new approaches to computationally sensing subtle differences in dynamic behaviors by analyzing live cells with time-lapse microscopy image sequences. The tools can not only predict the type of cell each stem cell will produce, but also foresee the outcome before the stem cell even divides. (See story on page 2.)
Written, designed and produced by University Communications & Media Relations. Photography: UWM Photo Services; courtesy Andrew Cohen (cover and this page); Marcos A. Guerra (p. 11); Joe Sacco (p. 17); Lance Weinhardt (p. 25); courtesy Margaret Shaffer (p. 30); Mario R. López (back cover). This publication may be requested in accessible format.
Powerful ideas are the catalyst for proven results
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owerful ideas at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are fueling our research engine forward along the pathway to proven results, to the benefit of the city, region and state. Research expenditures reached an all-time high in the most recently completed academic year and showed remarkable growth over the past decade. At the heart of this growth are the outstanding members of the UWM faculty. We have facilitated their ability to seek research dollars by creating new opportunities for collaboration and have strategically invested state resources in adding to their ranks. Growing research expenditures has been a focal point of UWM over the past decade. They have increased more than 200 percent in that time – from just more than $21 million in 1999-2000 to $68 million in 200910. This latest total is an all-time high for the university.
allowed the university to hire highly qualified faculty in several targeted areas, including 20 positions in the College of Engineering & Applied Science. Looking to the future, several new developments will facilitate research: Specific locations have been determined for our two new academic endeavors: • The School of Public Health will locate in the historic Brewery development district in downtown Milwaukee; and • The School of Freshwater Sciences, the first in the country, will be the major tenant of the multi-story building to be constructed next to the current Great Lakes WATER Institute on Milwaukee’s inner harbor. Construction plans also are under way for: • The Kenwood Integrated Research Complex on the East Side campus; and • The first new building at UWM’s Innovation Research Park. To guide our actions over the next decade, a Strategic Plan for Research is being developed that will help us establish more formal goals and a road map for research and scholarship that is not solely based on research dollars.
Many researchers have found success working with regional academic institutions and industries. Such new opportunities include the National Science Foundation Industry & University Cooperative Research Center on Water Technology, Clinical and Translational Science Institute of Southeastern Wisconsin, and UW-Milwaukee/UW-Madison Intercampus Research Incentive Grants.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee knows that nurturing powerful ideas will keep this ambitious research agenda moving forward along the pathway to proven results. This will strengthen our university while also invigorating regional economic development. Please read the following pages and see how UWM is proceeding.
UWM has carefully and strategically invested the approximately $11 million in annual funding that the State of Wisconsin allotted for new UWM faculty, staff and research during the 2007-09 budget cycle. This
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– Michael R. Lovell Interim Chancellor
Foreseeing the fate of stem cells
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completely novel approach to analyzing the behaviors of stem cells has yielded a software tool for successfully predicting what kind of cell they ultimately will become. In fact, the software program, developed by UWM computer engineer Andrew Cohen, not only predicts the types of specialized cells a stem cell will produce, but can foresee the outcome before the stem cell even divides. The software could lead to discovery of what controls stem cell specialization, the main obstacle in advancing the use of stem-cell therapy for treatment of disease. It also offers fresh opportunities for research into the causes of cancer, which involves cells that continuously self-renew. “This is a brand-new set of tools for developmental biologists,” says Cohen, an assistant professor with a background in designing software for highperformance graphics. “And it supports an area where no other predictive solutions exist.”
The software is 87 percent accurate in determining the specific “offspring” a stem cell will produce, and 99 percent accurate in predicting when self-renewal of these stem cells will end in specialization.
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Creating such a tool has been hampered by the fact that there are very few markers that can foretell cell-division outcomes. Cohen’s system takes a different approach, using time-lapse images of live stem cells to identify the subtle behaviors that characterize stem cells with different fates. “Part of the programming mechanism is determined by surrounding cells,” says Cohen. “But once these cells begin to develop in a particular way, their offspring continue down that path even if the environment changes. So at some point, they have been programmed to their fate.” The software, which runs on a standard PC, outperforms the human eye in detecting differences in how the cells change over time. To manage the predictive aspects of the program, Cohen used a uniquely sensitive mathematical approach based on algorithmic information theory. The work was published in Nature Methods. “It is very rare for engineers to publish in Nature journals,” says UWM Interim Chancellor Michael Lovell. “This achievement signifies the quality of our faculty and the value of interdisciplinary work in biomedical technology.”
Andrew Cohen has created a new kind of predictive tool for use in stem cell research.
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Physicist’s work yields another UWM startup
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roteins carry out most of the body’s functions, but scientists’ understanding of these products of DNA is limited because most proteins are impossible to image. With about 100,000 unique proteins in the body, it’s important to see their structures in order to unravel what they all do. Using high-tech bio-imaging equipment that he developed, UWM physicist Valerica Raicu and his lab members have become the first scientists to determine the molecular structure of a group of proteins (a “complex”) interacting within a living cell. The work forms the basis of the newest startup company to license technology from the UWM Research Foundation. Co-founded by Raicu and entrepreneur Thomas Mozer, Aurora Spectral
Technologies (AST) LLC has already raised more than $500,000 through local angel investors, such as Jeff Rusinow, founder of Silicon Pastures. Raicu’s method has potentially widespread applications for other researchers. Because some 60 percent of drugs target proteins, better molecular imaging techniques are vital to new drug discovery and for understanding the molecular basis of illness. Proteins are too small to be seen with a traditional optical microscope. AST’s product will be an “add-on” to a laser-scanning microscope that allows high-speed, high-resolution pictures. Researchers will be able not only to view proteins being transported within the cell in real time, but also to detect interactions among them. For the latter, Raicu attaches fluorescent tags of different colors to the various kinds of proteins in a sample. Then he takes advantage of a specific exchange of energy that occurs when two molecules, each tagged with a different color, come within a nanometer of each other. One laserexcited molecule transfers energy to the other, and only the receiver emits its color. Laser microscopes, however, can only view one tag color at a time. To determine whether proteins are working in combination, Raicu’s invention gives laser microscopes the capability of showing multiple tag colors.
research and innovation at UWM through a variety of programs, including patenting and licensing. Valerica Raicu (left) and Thomas Mozer, co-founders of Aurora Spectral Technologies.
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The research was supported by a Bradley Catalyst Grant from the UWM Research Foundation, the nonprofit corporation that supports
Bringing down the cost of nanomaterials
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rmed with a cost-effective method of producing nanomaterials that he discovered, UWM engineer Junhong Chen has launched a Milwaukee startup company that has licensed the research from the UWM Research Foundation. Chen, UWM associate professor of mechanical engineering, founded NanoAffix Science LLC to develop nanoscale products and devices with these materials, created by deposition of nanoparticles onto carbon nanotubes (CNTs). It is one of two startup companies established this year involving UWM research. “We have found new ways of combining nanocomponents to produce valuable technologies, which are superior to existing approaches,” said Chen. His methods of combining structures are not only low-cost, but also yield high-performance materials that have potential uses in medical diagnostics, green energy technology and sensors. NanoAffix Director Ed Corrigan says the company objective is to bring practical nanosensor products to market and pursue other innovative manufacturing technology applications. The company currently has a federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to focus on commercial development of sensors that can detect gas in very low concentrations. Members of Chen’s lab, directed by project scientist Ganhua Lu, focus on combining CNTs, invisibly thin sheets of graphite that are rolled into a
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Carbon nanotubes decorated with smaller nanoparticles.
cylindrical shape, and nanoparticles, bits of matter that are nanoscale in all three dimensions. CNTs are the rising superstar structures of molecular engineering because of their remarkable properties, like strength, conductivity and flexibility. Already they are used in making electronics, such as flat panel display screens. By decorating CNTs with nanoparticles, the resulting hybrid takes on additional novel properties. This technique arranges nanoparticles on CNTs so that they stand up, like bristles on a hairbrush, allowing the hybrid nanomaterial to be further “fine tuned,” which is very difficult at nanoscale.
Messages from Lake Michigan’s carbon cycle
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uring every crossing of Lake Michigan by Milwaukee’s high-speed ferry, UWM aquatic scientist Harvey Bootsma adds to his growing database of vital signs from the lake.
“Right now, the Great Lakes are a black box in regard to that question,” says Bootsma, who was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune. “We don’t know if they are a net source or a sink for CO2.”
With monitoring equipment installed aboard the ferry, one of several conditions he is logging is levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), a tracer of biological processes.
With five years of data gathered from the ferry crossings so far, the team is beginning to see some patterns, but the reasons for those patterns are still unclear.
Working with Qian Liao, assistant professor of civil engineering and mechanics, Bootsma hopes to determine if invasive species, such as quagga mussels, are changing the flow of nutrients in the lake, as he suspects.
Bootsma, an associate professor in the School of Freshwater Sciences, says the lake shows a slight net CO2 sink. But he’s also found that much of the photosynthesis that produces food has been diverted from the open waters of the lake to the nearshore area, where most of the quagga mussels are. The mussels filter feed on plankton so voraciously they clarify the water, allowing photosynthesis to occur deeper. This condition, coupled with the phosphorous produced by the mussels, are contributing to excessive growth of an alga called Cladophora.
Ultimately, the team wants to find out how changes in the carbon cycle influence the lake’s ability to sustain a food web – especially under altered conditions, such as those caused by climate change or invasive species. The U.S. government also is interested in Bootsma’s carbon cycle data, but for a different reason. In order to develop a “carbon budget” that will help monitor greenhouse gases like CO2, federal agencies need to know if the photosynthesis in the Great Lakes soaks up CO2 from the atmosphere as oceans and forests do.
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But it’s still unknown if either is important to the food web. The research team also has documented an increase in photosynthesis over large parts of the lake after storms because of an influx of nutrients from rivers. If such events become more common in the future, as climate-change models suggest, they may promote higher algal production in the lake – and potentially more mussels and Cladophora.
Harvey Bootsma (foreground) and research associate Jim Weselowski calibrate CO2 sensors mounted on a stationary buoy.
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U.S. Census expert adds up the past
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efore 1970, everyone got a knock on the door, says Margo Anderson, a UWM historian of the U.S. Census. Though methods of contact change each decade, some aspects of the census remain the same. As Anderson, a professor of history and urban studies, told a congressional committee in 2006, results of the census almost always hold surprises. “Every time a new demographic phenomenon occurs, we don’t know how to count it,” she says. In 2010, for example, a particular challenge involved accounting for the country’s undocumented immigrants. Since the last census, the undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. has grown, and the 2010 census results will be used to estimate that count. Anderson’s historical research on the census has described how statistical methods and technology have improved accuracy; how current events have affected or changed the process; and how social prejudices have tainted the count throughout its history. The author of several books on the U.S. Census, Anderson also is a favorite commentator in the national media. In 2010 alone, she was quoted in nearly every large mass media outlet, from USA Today to Newsweek. The census, which is mandated by the U.S. Constitution to take place every 10 years, determines political representation in Congress, the number of a state’s electoral votes, and the distribution of government services and federal aid. But it’s also unique.
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Margo Anderson shows a map of the redistricted South after the 1860 census.
“It’s the first census in the history of the world that is used to apportion political power,” she says. “That’s an innovation in democratic governance that Americans can take credit for.” But, Anderson points out, census outcomes also contain demographic information that has shown how Americans lived from decade to decade. From the first census in 1790, for example, the results have revealed who was eligible to be drafted into military service and who could be liable for taxes, she says. The census is a repository of insight into the state of social issues such as civil rights, family dynamics, characteristics of the labor force, American spending power and racial identity in an increasingly multicultural country. “Until the count is complete,” says Anderson, “the true dimensions of the changes of the previous decade are unclear.”
Microbial genes give clues for new cancer drugs ”
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he classical method of drug discovery is to identify crude natural-product extracts that have therapeutic properties first,” says UWM biochemist Yi-Qiang “Eric” Cheng, “then purify the compounds responsible.” Working with bacterial DNA, Cheng’s lab has turned that process around – looking for new drug leads by comparing the genetic makeup of different microbes to those that have yielded existing successful compounds. The approach, called “chemogenomics,” helped Cheng hone in on a specific microbe with potential very quickly. Last year, he uncovered two cancerfighting chemical compounds derived from a bacterium commonly found in tropical soil. The compounds, from Burkholderia thailandensis, were tested recently by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), one of the funders, and found to be effective against about 20 different kinds of cancer.
He began with a compound called FK228, discovered by Japanese pharmaceutical company Fujisawa. It inhibits histone deacetylases, a class of enzymes that are often hyperactive in cancer cells. Then he cloned the genes involved in making FK228 and searched for other gene clusters that contain a similar stretch of genes. The compounds he discovered, which he named thailandepsins, also inhibit the functioning of histone deacetylases, but are structurally different from the Fujisawa compounds. Thailandepsins also proved to be active against a different portfolio of cancers than FK228. Even more exciting, Cheng speculates thailandepsins may also be useful in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory disorders and diabetes.
It is the first time an anti-cancer compound from a UWM lab has been tested by the NCI with such encouraging results. Cheng has also mined the genome of another bacterium that produces the same novel class of anti-cancer compounds. An organism’s genome is a kind of blueprint for groups of genes governing the various life functions. By manipulating the compounds’ similar gene clusters, the researchers can create structural variations, called analogs. “We have established an excellent platform for engineering this class of compounds that no one else is doing,” says Cheng, who has two patent applications out on the work.
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Yi-Qiang “Eric” Cheng (right) and graduate research fellow Vishwakanth Potharla.
Factors behind forest diversity
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hat determines plant diversity and abundance in a forest? It’s a question even Charles Darwin pondered. With so many variables, UWM ecologist Stefan Schnitzer’s approach is to investigate what he calls “the outlaw – the one that doesn’t fit the model.”
With considerable backing from both the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where he also is a researcher, Schnitzer has launched one of the most comprehensive community-level studies on liana-tree interactions ever conducted.
In tropical forests, that outsider would be woody vines, also called lianas.
The study is testing his “dry season advantage hypothesis.” In it, he asserts that many plants in tropical forests, including lianas, thrive during seasonal droughts because they keep growing, while trees and other competing plant species suspend their growth and lose their leaves.
Lianas are important players in tropical forest dynamics because they are so successful in dry conditions where most other plants struggle to survive. In fact, Schnitzer has found the growth rate of lianas is seven times that of trees in dry conditions, compared to only twice as much as trees in the rainy season. Growing evidence suggests that lianas are becoming more abundant with rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, choking out trees. While all plants remove and store the greenhouse gas CO2, lianas do not sequester as much as trees do, a cause for concern in controlling climate change. Schnitzer, an associate professor of biological sciences, believes lianas could be increasing for reasons other than rising CO2 levels.
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The tropical forests Schnitzer studies in Panama have distinct wet and dry seasons, making Panama an ideal location to test his theory. But the “dry season advantage” might also explain the dominance of particular tree species in seasonal forests, he says. In another study, published in Nature, Schnitzer and his lab members have determined another mechanism of forest diversity – that certain tree species are abundant because they are less susceptible to pathogens in the soil than rarer tree species. Finding the mechanisms responsible for plant diversity and abundance is a major focus of ecological research today, says Schnitzer, because most of what’s known only describes patterns of distribution. Since not all species suffer from the same pathogens in a diverse community, his research indicates that diversity is important in limiting disease and thus increasing plant growth.
Stefan Schnitzer travels to Panama to study lianas and their role in forest dynamics.
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Physics initiative unveils the ‘people’s pulsar’
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WM’s Einstein@Home project proves what can be accomplished when a quarter-million science buffs in 192 countries volunteer idle time on their computers to help look for rare events in space. This summer, Einstein@Home made its first deepspace cosmic discovery – a previously unknown radio pulsar in our own galaxy. It is the first astronomical find by such a citizen-scientist project. At the helm of this data-processing supercluster at UWM is Xavier Siemens, an assistant professor at the Center for Gravitation and Cosmology, who helped to develop and now maintains Einstein@ Home. The project is based at UWM in the U.S. and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany.
Einstein@Home was created in 2005 to aid an international effort to analyze data from detectors that are searching for gravitational waves in space. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that are produced when massive objects, like stars, move violently. Direct detection of these elusive waves will open up a new means of studying the universe. But now, about one-third of Einstein@Home’s time is dedicated to searching for radio pulsars in observations from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. And for good reason. Searching for pulsars can lead to detection of gravitational waves. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the remnants of supernovae. They emit lighthouselike beams of radio waves that can sweep past the Earth at extremely regular intervals and are received as pulses, making them highly accurate celestial clocks. Passing gravitational waves can be detected because they affect the arrival times of pulses from pulsars. Besides the work of Einstein@Home, Siemens has funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to lead two other pulsar-hunting initiatives at UWM. In one, called the Arecibo Remote Control Center (ARCC), both high school and UWM students take remote control of the Arecibo radio telescope from the campus Physics Building and search for signals from pulsars.
Xavier Siemens (left) and Einstein@Home system administrator David Hammer.
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That has spun into Siemens’ participation in a $6.5 million grant from NSF that supports a global consortium of researchers and students (the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav) using observations of millisecond pulsars to detect gravitational waves.
Protecting Lake Michigan through design
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ilwaukee’s industrial harbor corridor, with its salvage yards, fallow smokestacks and open salt and coal storage, is more than just unsightly. The estuary has been designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as an Area of Concern since 1987. “It hasn’t been re-imagined in a long time,” says James Wasley, associate professor in the UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning (SARUP). “With such ecologically harmful contaminants so close to the water, and so much underutilized land so close to downtown, we should be trying to redevelop the inner harbor to make it both ecologically healthier and economically more productive.” In the center of this area, just south of downtown and situated on the water, is the future site of UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences. “The school could be the catalyst that spurs the redevelopment of this area, putting Milwaukee on the map as a global green city and water industries hub,” says Wasley. He and other faculty members involved in SARUP’s Institute for Ecological Design (I4ED) have seized this opportunity to orchestrate a twoyear project focusing on Milwaukee’s inner harbor. The project already involves students, faculty, business owners, elected officials and the general public, all brainstorming with green design in mind, says Wasley. With support from the Brico Fund to add Christine Scott Thomson, Plunkett Raysich Visiting Professor, as the institute’s coordinator, the I4ED brings the resources of SARUP to the inner harbor project, and acts as an umbrella for other ongoing research projects, including parallel green infrastructure research on campus.
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Christine Scott Thomson and James Wasley survey Milwaukee’s inner harbor.
The cornerstone of the I4ED’s inner harbor work this year is participation by internationally recognized water artist, landscape architect and urban planner Herbert Dreiseitl, whose German firm has been given the school’s Urban Edge Award this biennium. The Urban Edge competition, sponsored by the law firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren and the Wisconsin Preservation Trust, brings visionary designers of public spaces to Milwaukee to teach and lead a local project. Together, Dreiseitl and Wasley are teaching a studio in which students take on the environmental challenges in the area.
Informal settings, serious learning
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earning can happen anywhere, outside of school and over the course of a life span.
“Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in research about informal learning and what people take away from field trips and informal experiences,” says Sandra Toro Martell, an assistant professor of educational psychology in the School of Education. Martell is the Informal Learning Strand Coordinator for the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) and also teaches in UWM’s Museum Studies certificate program.
Museums that encourage hands-on activities can help make students more receptive to subject areas that they might otherwise find boring, like classroom science, says Martell. As the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation Intersection Project, Martell works with researchers and educators to link what’s already known about learning with current teaching practices in science museums and other informal sites. She is helping edit a collection of articles for the journal Science Education to help share this knowledge. Martell’s own research focuses on measuring learning at sites like planetariums and museums, but she sees benefits in working with people who study and teach in all sorts of settings and use varied methods. In her work with NARST, she is
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bringing together researchers and educators who use video games and mobile phone apps to help children and their families learn science. Among those involved are Northwestern, Vanderbilt and Central Florida universities, the University of Washington and Penn State. Group members will present their findings to high school science teachers and others who work with learners of all ages to help improve both theoretical understanding and teaching practices. Martell is also working with Jean Creighton, director of the UWM planetarium, studying leisure-time visitors who attend the planetarium’s public shows – examining the impact of teaching approaches on what and how visitors learn. Martell and Creighton have found, for example, that repeating information and using words and pictures instead of just words can help people remember challenging scientific information. What happens at the planetarium and other informal settings can spark leisure-time science learners’ interest in astronomy, in particular, and science, in general, according to Creighton and Martell. If visitors can learn how to learn about constellations, why not other, more challenging topics? It’s that question that drives Martell’s work.
Sandra Toro Martell’s work with institutions like the Milwaukee Public Museum encourages informal learning.
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New inspiration for American Indian studies
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he name and memory of a pioneering educator are offering new inspiration for American Indian studies at UWM.
The Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education, named for a Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican woman recognized as Wisconsin’s first public school teacher, will be a catalyst for American Indian education and policy initiatives, says David Beaulieu, Electa Quinney Professor and director of the institute. The institute grew out of the endowed professorship in American Indian education, established through a gift from Milwaukee’s Indian Community School to honor Quinney. In 1828, she established a one-room log school, open to all, in Kaukauna, Wis. Beaulieu, a nationally known expert in American Indian education, came to UWM in 2009 to head the institute. He has served on the board of directors and as president of the National Indian Education Association, as editor of the Journal of American Indian Education and as director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education. While the institute will have oversight of American Indian-related education initiatives, it will also have a broader mission, says Beaulieu, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. UWM educators’ vision for the Electa Quinney Institute includes developing new programs, services, research and learning opportunities in partnership with the university’s established American Indian research and academic programs.
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David Beaulieu heads the newly opened Electa Quinney Institute.
The institute has been working collaboratively with the Indian Community School and Wisconsin American Indian tribes and communities. “We’re having dialogues with community leaders and others about what their needs are that the university can respond to, and how we can help provide solutions that work in real communities,” Beaulieu says. “Too often, American Indians are seen as the subjects of research and teaching, but increasingly American Indian tribes and communities have sought to be consumers defining their own needs directly,” he adds. Research, service and learning opportunities will focus on both American Indians and non-Indians interested in working with tribal and urban Indian communities, says Beaulieu, who adds that this approach is very much in line with the educational views of Electa Quinney. “We need educated people who not only have the professional skills, but also the knowledge of the unique community contexts in which solutions must be developed.”
doc|UWM makes it real
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oc|UWM, the documentary media center in UWM’s Peck School of the Arts Film Department, bridges academics with realworld experience. “We give students the unique opportunity to work on professional productions before graduating,” says Ryan James Sarnowski, project director and instructor, who holds an MFA in film from UWM. Since 2007, these documentarians have produced work for organizations as diverse as the National Poetry Foundation, Milwaukee County Department on Aging, Peace Learning Center of Milwaukee, the national StoryCorps project, the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, the Helen Bader Foundation and the Greater Milwaukee Committee.
Dao Chang filming along the Mekong River for “My Way Home.”
give firsthand accounts of the effects of elder abuse and elder fraud, and are designed to help “first responders” identify it.
In addition, doc|UWM filmmakers create featurelength documentaries for broadcast on public television. “All of our productions have a serious mission and serious intent,” says Jenny Plevin, program director and also a Film Department grad.
Currently in production is a feature-length documentary about the Joe Sims’ Milwaukee Striders track club. This organization has provided profound support for central city youth since 1975 and is now headed by inspiring new leaders.
“My Way Home,” a doc|UWM feature-length film, chronicles a young Hmong-American woman’s journey to reconnect with her past. It won an award at the Wisconsin Film Festival, was screened at the Milwaukee Film Festival, has been aired on Wisconsin Public Television twice and is slated soon for Milwaukee Public Television.
A series of 60 short documentaries by doc|UWM will showcase Milwaukee as a hub for water research, technology and industries. Partners in this project include the Greater Milwaukee Committee, UWM School of Continuing Education and Milwaukee Water Council (whose website will feature the finished documentaries).
“S.A.N.E – Stop Abuse and Neglect of Elders” is a curriculum developed by the Milwaukee County Department on Aging and the title of a series of five short documentary videos doc|UWM produced to be used with it. The documentaries
“Organizations are realizing that they need to put forth a video presence – something that people can watch online,” says Sarnowski. “Our students, hopefully, will be that next generation of videomakers.”
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UWM
is taking a new approach to harnessing discovery. In the collaborative centers featured here, we join with regional and state partners to merge our diverse paths of expertise and form one road to economic and social vitality.
Wisconsin Energy Research Consortium (WERC)
Center for Advanced Materials Manufacturing (CAMM)
The state’s largest academic energy research organizations have merged to form a single entity, headquartered in Milwaukee, with a mission of making Wisconsin a nationally recognized center of expertise in energy, power and control technologies. WERC brings together UWM and three other engineering schools – the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette University and Milwaukee School of Engineering – with 10 industry partners: American Transmission Company, DRS Technologies, Eaton Corporation, Helios USA, Johnson Controls Inc., Kohler, LEM USA, Rockwell Automation, We Energies and ZBB Energy Corporation.
Backed by a $1.2 million federal grant, UWM has launched CAMM, which will support the transfer of UWM research in bulk nanostructured materials to the manufacturing industry in both Wisconsin and the nation. These high-performance metallic materials hold the potential to revitalize foundries if they can be mass-produced. CAMM researchers will work with Oshkosh Corporation and other companies to develop an infrastructure for scaling up their production.
Great Lakes Transportation Enterprise Institute (GLTEI)
UWM School of Public Health
Through GLTEI, four universities have joined forces with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and regional industry to jointly develop innovative products related to highway safety and green technologies. In addition to UWM, the universities include the University of WisconsinMadison, Marquette University and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Business members are led by Traffic & Parking Control Co. (TAPCO) Inc., of Brown Deer, and TrafficCast International, based in Madison.
Building on the multidisciplinary nature of public health, this new graduate-level school was created in concert with the City of Milwaukee Health Department. Through its many partnerships, the school aims to identify the urban area’s worst health threats, address health disparities and guide public health policy. Some of the affiliated organizations are the Center for Urban Population Health and Milwaukee Public Schools.
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Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) of Southeastern Wisconsin
NSF Industry & University Cooperative Research Center on Water Technology
Backed by $20 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a consortium of eight Milwaukee institutions, including UWM, shares resources to accelerate the translation of research discoveries into new medical treatments. Other members are the Medical College of Wisconsin, Marquette University, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, BloodCenter of Wisconsin, Children’s Hospital and Health System, Froedtert Hospital and the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center.
Combining their individual strengths in freshwater technology research, UWM and Marquette University have joined with six area industries and the Milwaukee Water Council to form this collaboration funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). With the goal of applying research to industry projects and producing intellectual property around the resulting discoveries, the center is one of only two such NSF centers in the country focused on freshwater. Industry partners are A.O. Smith Corporation, Badger Meter Inc., Baker Manufacturing Company LLC, Gannett Fleming Inc., Pentair Inc. and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District.
UWM School of Freshwater Sciences Unique in the nation, this new graduate-level school and its research arm integrate four themes: freshwater system dynamics; human and ecosystem health; freshwater technology; and freshwater economics, policy and management. The school is linked with a wide range of partners, including the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Milwaukee Water Council, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and UW Sea Grant Institute.
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Children’s Environmental Health Sciences Core Center (CEHSCC) See next page.
A national center on children’s environmental health
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esearch into children’s environmental health is a multifaceted team sport in Milwaukee, where a new center, housed administratively at UWM, has united some of the best scientists in the country to study the impact of environmental factors on the origins and development of childhood diseases. The Children’s Environmental Health Sciences Core Center (CEHSCC) is one of 17 environmental health centers in the nation funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the only one devoted solely to children’s issues. This unique interinstitutional partnership involving UWM, the Children’s Research Institute (CRI) of Children’s Hospital and Health System, and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), provides researchers with the tools to facilitate interdisciplinary research, fellowships to attract scientists into this field, and financial support for pilot projects with the potential to compete for national funding. The center is directed by David Petering, UWM Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His counterparts are Deputy Director Ronald Hines and Clinical Director Gail McCarver, both professors of pediatrics at MCW. Several pilot projects illustrate center activities. Michael Carvan, a Shaw Associate Scientist in the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences, leads the planning of the zebrafish “phenome project” that will investigate how thousands of individual genes
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contribute to the developmental toxicity of chemicals, from alcohol to mercury. The center is nationally recognized for using zebrafish to understand how chemicals affect development. Understanding the relationship between childhood gastrointestinal disease and infectious agents in Lake Michigan is the topic of collaborative research by Marc Gorelick, director of emergency medicine at Children’s Hospital, and Sandra McLellan, UWM associate scientist. Another pilot project studies the hypothesis that bisphenol-A causes neurobehavioral deficits during development. It involves CEHSCC scientist Daniel Weber and Robert Tanguay, professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at Oregon State University’s NIEHS Center. Community engagement also is an important part of the center. Jeanne Hewitt, associate professor of nursing; Rebecca Klaper, associate professor in the School of Freshwater Sciences; and others work with regional communities and elected officials to inform decision-making about the health of residents. The center’s funding comes at an important time for UWM. The intersection of freshwater with health is the subject of joint research at the university’s new schools of Public Health and Freshwater Sciences. The School of Public Health also emphasizes children’s environmental health. The center and its resources stand at the fulcrum of these efforts.
Michael Carvan tests the genetic changes in zebrafish in response to exposure to aquatic toxins.
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A shield for developing immune systems While the concentrations may be too low to make adults sick, developing fetuses and infants are much more vulnerable. “We’re all exposed,” Laiosa says. “So the question is, ‘Who is the most susceptible and why?’ One of the things we like to know is where the critical windows of vulnerability are.”
Michael Laiosa is one of the new faculty members in public health.
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hildhood immune diseases, such as allergies, asthma and even leukemia, have risen steadily in the last 30 years. To reverse this frightening trend, researchers like Michael Laiosa first have to figure out the causes. “For most of these diseases, we don’t understand the underlying reasons they develop,” says Laiosa. “And some of the diseases, like asthma, stay with the child into adulthood and become chronic. That makes them important public health issues.” Laiosa is investigating evidence that chemicals that permeate and remain in the environment for a long time are more harmful during the developmental stage of human life. Pollutants such as dioxins and PCBs, for example, move efficiently through the environment, often becoming integrated into the food chain.
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Laiosa says researchers in his lab have observed changes to stem cells that are exposed to environmental stressors, which may form the basis for childhood onset of leukemia. But he suspects a more complex array of circumstances, including how environmental and genetic factors work together to disrupt a developing immune system. Laiosa is one of the new faculty members at the new UWM School of Public Health. He and Peter Tonellato, who specializes in biostatistics, began in the fall. Ten others, with expertise in areas like health disparities, public health policy, epidemiology and behavioral health, will begin by year’s end. Other susceptible communities, like the elderly and the poor or uninsured, are the focus of myriad public health studies at the school. Working hand in hand with the City of Milwaukee Health Department, the Center for Urban Population Health and other regional health organizations, the School of Public Health is in the middle of a multiple-year study aimed at reducing infant mortality in Southeastern Wisconsin. Other research topics are under way, such as exercise promotion among African-American women, teen fatherhood and healthy eating initiatives with students in Milwaukee Public Schools.
New insights on aging
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s director of the Center on Age & Community (CAC) in UWM’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, Associate Professor Anne Basting has helped UWM focus the university’s talent and ingenuity on the needs of older adults. With a joint appointment in the Theatre Department of the Peck School of the Arts, Basting has made the arts an integral part of CAC’s work. “We are expanding the tradition of community-based arts into the community of long-term care,” she says. “We aim to create enduring and meaningful projects in which staff, residents, families, students and artists can learn and grow through collaboration.” An example is “TimeSlips,” a project that empowers persons suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia to imagine and tell their own stories. The CAC Residency in Applied Arts has attracted acclaimed artists − photographer Wing Young Huie, artist/musician David Greenberger and playwright Laura Jacqmin.
living community and the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. The Penelope Project is a two-year exploration of Homer’s Odyssey. “Penelope waited 20 years for her husband Odysseus to return from war,” says Basting. “She fended off suitors, raised her son alone and oversaw the kingdom. We’re examining the complex inner life and trials of Penelope – the heroine who did not go out to conquer the world, but stayed at home. “People avoid care facilities and assume their residents don’t have complex inner lives,” says Basting. “The project nurtures self-expression and creativity by all members of that community by using their input to create a script. We’ll then invite an audience to engage with participants and their creation, performed by our students and Sojourn Theatre company members.”
Other efforts include bringing the National Public Radio StoryCorps booth to Milwaukee and advising/evaluating the StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative; gathering national experts for “Think Tanks” to probe aspects of long-term care; and creating three manuals widely used in applied gerontology. Basting also has created dynamic training and student service-learning projects, and has used new technology to reach the next generation of learners. Most recently, Basting is at work on “The Penelope Project: The Power of Myth in Long Term Care,” a collaboration among CAC, UWM’s Theatre Department, Sojourn Theatre, Luther Manor senior
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Anne Basting (right) and a Luther Manor day center participant.
Toward a brighter future for Malawi
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UWM scientist is among the leaders of an international research project in one of the poorest countries in Africa.
Loren Galvao, a medical doctor and senior scientist in the UWM College of Nursing’s Center for Cultural Diversity and Global Health, is co-principal investigator on the Tiphunzitsane Project in Malawi. The name comes from the words “learning together” in the local Chichewa language. “It’s a two-way process,” says Galvao. “We are all learning from each other.” The project’s goal is to find out which approaches work best to address the complex, intertwined public health and economic problems of rural Malawians. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds the project, which involves U.S academics, CARE workers and local Malawian field researchers who travel to remote areas of the countryside by motorbike. Almost 2,000 Malawian households are involved in the baseline studies. Between the transportation and translation challenges, “the logistical difficulties are incredible,” says Galvao, “but they are overcome with a strong research team on the ground.” The team, co-led by Galvao and Lance S. Weinhardt of the Center for AIDS Intervention Research at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is near the halfway point of the five-year project.
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Women and children in rural areas are particularly hard hit by poverty, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition, says Galvao. The country’s annual Gross National Income per capita is $290 (UNICEF, 2008) and the adult HIV prevalence was 11.9 percent in 2007. As fathers and husbands die, women become the sole family support, sometimes taking in orphaned relatives. CARE is working to assure food security, set up microfinance programs and develop sustainable agriculture. Galvao and her academic colleagues are evaluating the long-term impact of these multilevel interventions on public health. Few such controlled, “quasi-experimental” studies have been done. “This project will help us develop scientific knowledge and information on successful interventions so they can be applied in other regions in Malawi and other countries.” Since its inception, the project has attracted additional NIH funding, and interest among other UWM researchers, graduate students and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Fellowship Program. CARE USA and CARE Malawi, the University of Malawi, the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania are also involved. “This is an exciting time, when we are creating a global health research team in Milwaukee,” Galvao says.
A group of Malawian women welcomes a team of Milwaukee researchers with a song.
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A drug-free option for Tourette syndrome
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arents of kids with Tourette syndrome have a difficult decision to make. Do they simply wait and hope the physical tics that plague their child go away? Or do they resort to medications that control the tics, but carry undesirable side effects?
compared a comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics, called CBIT, to a form of supportive psychotherapy and education about tic disorders. One-third of the study patients were also on medication.
The work of UWM clinical psychologist Douglas Woods now offers a third option – a treatment shown to be effective in managing tics without medication.
“In both treatments, we educated the parents and offered support on living with the condition,” says Woods, professor of psychology and director of the UWM Tic Disorders and Trichotillomania Clinic. “But, in CBIT, we gave children specific instructions on how to deal with their tics.”
Tourette syndrome is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by motor and vocal tics, such as eye blinking, body twisting or word repetition, which affects about six in 1,000 children and adolescents. When severe, tics can lead to academic problems and social isolation.
In CBIT, children learn to recognize the uncomfortable feelings that lead to and are relieved by tics. They then substitute a voluntary action for the tic until the unwanted sensation passes.
In a study led by Woods and conducted for the National Institute of Mental Health, researchers
“The study’s results do not mean that tics can simply be suppressed,” says Woods, “but they can be managed.” The study showed that almost 53 percent of children receiving CBIT were rated as significantly improved, compared to 19 percent of those receiving the comparison treatment. Benefits were observed in children regardless of whether they were on medication.
Douglas Woods (right) and graduate student Michael Walther working with a young patient.
In fact, the degree of improvement with CBIT was similar to that experienced by patients taking anti-tic medication, but without the side effects. Treatment gains for CBIT also were maintained, with 87 percent of respondents showing continued benefits six months after treatment had ended. Results of the study, which included researchers
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Easing the burden for family caregivers
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aregiving for a relative with dementia is often stressful and can lead to depression,” says Professor Rhonda Montgomery, Helen Bader Endowed Chair in Applied Gerontology at UWM’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. “Sometimes those of us who do it simply cannot continue without physical and emotional support.”
“
Seeing this need, Montgomery has designed a program with partner agencies nationwide that helps professional care managers design individualized care plans for family caregivers. The TCARE (Tailored Caregiver Assessment and Referral) protocol guides caregivers to the specific support services that can help ease their workload and reduce stress. An exciting development is the use of TCARE to help family caregivers who are in other situations – caring for wounded soldiers, for example. The Helen Bader School of Social Welfare is working with U.S. Army Soldier and Family Assistance Centers, located on 27 bases in the United States and Europe. Through a current pilot study, HBSSW faculty are training care managers to use TCARE at six centers in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. In addition, Montgomery and her team are partnering with the Georgia Department of Aging to bring TCARE to care managers who provide services to those providing care for developmentally disabled relatives. Despite the particulars of the caregiver/ care-receiver situation, the strains of caregiving are the same – often related more to the emotional aspects than the actual care tasks. “Each person who becomes a caregiver undergoes a systematic process of identity change as they take on more caregiving responsibilities,” says
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A son and his mother embody a caregiver/ care-receiver relationship.
Montgomery. “As their caregiving role grows, their relationship with their relative changes in ways that are uncomfortable.” Further evidence of the national impact of TCARE came this fall, when Montgomery received the Rosalynn Carter Leadership in Caregiving Award, presented personally by the former First Lady. The award recognized a UWM partnership with the Washington Association of Area Agencies on Aging to implement TCARE in Washington State. The development of TCARE has been funded by grants from the Helen Bader Foundation, the National Alzheimer’s Association, the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation and contracts with the states of Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington.
Baby-stepping toward physical therapy options
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or UWM Assistant Professor Victoria Moerchen, “there are real children behind the data we collect.”
She brings a different sensibility to her research than her basic-science collaborators. Moerchen was a pediatric physical therapist for 15 years and so has “one foot in the research world and one foot in the treatment world.” As director of the Pediatric Neuromotor Laboratory in UWM’s College of Health Sciences, she studies both “typically developing infants” as well as infants with disabilities such as Down syndrome and spina bifida, a birth defect that involves the spinal cord. Moerchen and her collaborators are completing a five-year study of infants with spina bifida that asked, “Can we tap the residual motor activity that we observe in the legs of these infants, by using an infant treadmill to get their legs active earlier?” “Remarkably, we found out that yes we can,” says Moerchen. “We were taking these babies, who really should have a considerable degree of paralysis, and they were stepping at 2 months of age.”
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For this physical therapist turned researcher, the implications are profound. Waiting for traditional therapy may mean missing the most potent period of neuroplasticity (the residual potential in the nervous system). Moerchen describes it as tapping into circuitry that wouldn’t ordinarily be used, but can be used. How these results in the lab translate into interventions in the clinic motivates Moerchen’s research. She’s conducted studies to enhance the utility of the treadmill, has developed a clinical decision-making algorithm to integrate the treadmill into traditional therapy, and is currently leading a team of UWM researchers in studies to examine the parent-child interaction during treadmill intervention. This is critical to translation of the treadmill intervention from lab to clinical practice and, ultimately, to homes. “Just because you do a controlled trial with a group of children and show that something works doesn’t mean that it’s going to work as a treatment intervention. It’s vital that we ask how this work best translates to the clinic and into families’ lives.”
Victoria Moerchen runs an infant treadmill study with the assistance of graduate student Jeffrey Konrad.
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The ‘expat’ experience: a family affair
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t’s a scenario that affects more and more workers and their families. With globalization and removal of barriers between countries, an increasing number of employees are taking jobs outside of their home countries. Professor Margaret Shaffer, Richard C. Notebaert Distinguished Chair of International Business and Global Studies at UWM’s Lubar School of Business, has an international reputation for her pioneering work on expatriate issues. Shaffer has published comprehensive studies examining how organizations can facilitate expatriates’ adjustment to their host countries and the factors that contribute to job success. She also is well known for her research on the challenges of international assignments for the “trailing spouse” and how dual-career issues impact employee decisions to accept international assignments.
Funded through a $192,000 grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, Shaffer and her research partners are gearing up to test their model of how the work/home “spillover” influences behaviors of expatriates as employees and as partners. “It’s not just the employee who is affected by all of this global travel, or global interaction, or global mobility – it’s the family that’s affected as well,” says Shaffer. (Traditionally, families move with the employee.) “Too often as organizational researchers we tend to just look at what happens in the workplace, and we don’t realize that people do have lives beyond the organization,” she explains. “Their families, their spouses, their partners, their children and even extended family members are affected.” Overseas postings can be good news for employees and their families, says Shaffer. International assignments are often portrayed as disruptive and demanding on the expatriate family, and the expatriate partner in particular. Partners may forego their own careers and become household caretakers and stay-at-home parents, and even those not employed before the move find themselves faced with new tasks and expectations. However, Shaffer says, research also shows that expatriates with accompanying partners tend to adjust better. “And, living in a new country offers the promise of new opportunities and successes – professional and personal.” She does emphasize that access to personal, work and family resources is vitally important in helping expatriates and their partners respond effectively to the demands of a move abroad.
Margaret Shaffer visits the Taj Mahal.
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Uncovering a trend toward earlier springs
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or climatologists like Mark D. Schwartz, there can never be too much data.
An expert in the field of phenology, the study of how plants and animals respond to changes in seasons and climate, Schwartz has developed models based on the first-leafing and blooming of lilacs and honeysuckles. Using 40 years of weather observations and studies of lilacs, the UWM Distinguished Professor of Geography not only showed a correlation between temperature and the onset of spring, but also created models that predict when first-leafing will happen under differing environmental conditions. Specifically, he determined that spring is now arriving five to six days earlier in the U.S. than before 1960 – with the most dramatic change beginning in the mid-1980s.
Mark Schwartz has created models that predict when spring will arrive.
His phenology models were included in a report issued last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as one of 24 climate-change indicators in the country.
“To find trends, we need large numbers of simple measurements, and that is really the goal of the network,” he says. “We want to track change in the biological community using this dynamic information.”
To pump up the volume of data, Schwartz and his collaborators decided to ask interested citizens to record simple observations from their own backyards. So in spring 2007 he co-founded and now leads the National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey. Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the project gives ordinary people the chance to participate in climate-change research. There are now more than 3,000 members.
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Schwartz had an existing pool of data to begin his bud-burst models. Now he is establishing a similar database for native trees, charting both spring bud-burst and when autumn leaves turn color and drop. His lab has been monitoring spring and autumn phenology of trees in UWM’s Downer Woods since 2008 and just began a similar autumn study in northern Wisconsin near Park Falls. One goal is to separate the genetic and environmental factors that cause phenological variability among the tree species.
Public transportation leads to innovation
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f you want to put more Americans to work, put them to work on trains.
During a recent visit to the White House, UWM labor and transportation economist James Peoples encouraged the President’s Council of Economic Advisers to get construction workers out of the unemployment line and into jobs updating and renovating America’s crumbling public transportation infrastructure. “The first 12 months of stimulus spending have revealed that money invested in public transportation infrastructure projects creates twice as many jobs per dollar as investment in highway infrastructure,” says Peoples. “Yet, over 90 percent of the stimulus package has targeted highway infrastructure.” As current president of the American Economic Association’s Transportation and Public Utilities Group, Peoples notes that transportation infrastructure of every kind is in desperate need of maintenance and repair. But with a large portion of the 2008 stimulus funds already spent on roads, bridges and the Interstate, Peoples thinks it’s time to give public transportation its due. “Saying that better public transportation options are too expensive, or that no one would use them in mid-market cities, addresses only half the equation,” says Peoples, who also has published internationally on the deregulation of the commercial trucking and shipping industries, and wage disparities in professions like nursing and long-haul trucking. “A full discussion of public transportation in the U.S. has to consider what public transportation infrastructure can contribute to cleaner air; to reduced traffic congestion. Plus the dollars that
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James Peoples stands next to the Amtrak Hiawatha in Milwaukee’s Intermodal Station.
could be saved diverting more consumers to better public transportation options, which we know require less infrastructure and employ more people over the longer term.” The employment figures are compelling on their own, says Peoples, explaining that Smart Growth America and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found that 19,000 job-months were created per $1 billion spent on public transportation, compared with 10,000 job-months created per $1 billion spent on highway infrastructure. Combine those numbers with supporting figures: 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry, low federal interest rates and competitive pricing on construction materials due partly to declining construction activity. Here’s another: “Public transit use exceeds population growth by threefold since 1995, so there is a demand for more and more efficient public transportation options,” says Peoples.
Smoothing out wind power
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ind energy provides less than 2 percent of our nation’s demand for electricity. In order for the U.S. to increase that sliver to a substantial slice, scientists must first find methods of overcoming the main obstacle – the intermittent nature of wind. UWM engineer Adel Nasiri and his lab have created a system that captures and stores electricity generated by turbines during high winds and wind gusts. When the wind falls below average, the stored energy is released to the grid, the interconnected network that manages energy flow to the public.
Center for Renewable Energy Systems (CRES), will be the structure that applies the research to sponsored product development. WERC industry members include American Transmission Company, DRS Technologies, Eaton Corporation, Helios USA, Johnson Controls Inc., Kohler, LEM USA, Rockwell Automation, We Energies and ZBB Energy Corporation. Other UWM engineering faculty members working in wind energy research include David Yu in electrical engineering, and Ryo Amano and Yaoyu Li in mechanical engineering.
Nasiri’s system uses different forms of energy storage, rotor inertia and power conversion to extend the mechanical operating life of the turbines and improve power efficiency. His research group has teamed with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Eaton Corporation, JSR Micro Inc. and We Energies. Nasiri has a pending patent for the work, which is among seven projects being funded through a new Midwest energy research center formed by a historic partnership of the engineering schools at UWM, Marquette University, UW-Madison and the Milwaukee School of Engineering. The Wisconsin Energy Research Consortium (WERC) is the framework for stimulating basic energy research discovery from funded projects, while its sister organization, the Madison-based
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Adel Nasiri’s work improves the efficiency of wind turbines.
Limiting the danger of new technologies
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he Internet, the Web, search engines, social media and other communication/information technologies offer both new potential and new danger. “We get information through search engines and we interact socially online,” says Michael Zimmer, assistant professor of information studies at UWM. “These tools are powerful, sexy and alluring, but we don’t always know what’s going on behind the scenes. We can’t get under the hood.” Zimmer has received national attention for his work in critically exploring and carefully explaining the ethical issues and privacy challenges posed by new communication tools. National Public Radio has sought Zimmer’s expertise on Facebook privacy issues for its “Morning
Edition” and “Science Friday” programs. He was invited to provide expert commentary on the DVD version of “Eagle Eye,” a thriller touching on potential dangers of cell-phone tracking technology. He consulted for the New York Public Library recently on the potential privacy issues involved in a new homework app for teens. He sees his work not just as critiquing communication ethics, but also as an opportunity to work pragmatically with companies to help them develop new information products in an “ethically sensitive way.” He’s been invited to the Googleplex to review products before they are launched, and serves on a number of advisory councils on ethical and privacy issues. A troubling consequence of new technology has been the rise in cyberbullying and violations of personal privacy, says Zimmer. “It’s one thing to peek through a window and another to have a webcam transmitting what’s happening over the Internet.” Young people who have grown up with new media don’t always understand the power of the tools they’re using. “Students have expectations that only certain people will see something – only their 50 or so friends,” says Zimmer. They don’t consider that future employers, lawyers or a much wider audience around the globe might see that information, too. Education is one way to offset the problems and harness the value of the technology. “It’s good to be out there,” he says, “but you need to have tools and skills to navigate this new world. You need to have the digital literacy to know how to use the Web safely and responsibly.”
Michael Zimmer’s research investigates the promise and potential dangers of new technologies.
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The breadth of research life It takes scholars from across the university to give a true picture of the breadth of an institution’s research life. Included here are more examples of UWM’s wide-ranging expertise. A Home to Milwaukee Poet Laureates Brenda Cardenas, assistant professor of English, was named the latest Milwaukee Poet Laureate in 2010. Four of the city’s six named laureates have come from the ranks of UWM’s faculty, while one – the poet Antler – is a UWM alumnus. Cardenas’s most recent book, Boomerang, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2009, and her work is featured on the PBS website Poetry Everywhere. More UWM Authors In the last 18 months, more than 100 new books or monographs by faculty and staff members were added to Special Collections at the UWM Libraries, including the following sampling: • The Marvelous Hairy Girls (2009, Yale), by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, UWM Distinguished Professor of History. • The Flight Cage (2010, Tupelo Press), by Rebecca Dunham, assistant professor of English. • Nixon’s Super-Secretaries: The Last Grand Presidential Reorganization Effort (2010, Texas A&M University Press), by Mordecai Lee, professor of governmental affairs. Grusin heads 21st Century Studies Richard Grusin has been named director of the Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) and a professor in the English Department. Grusin has extensive experience building programs that emphasize global, urban and technological issues in the context of the humanities. His latest book is Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11 (Palgrave, 2010). Graduate School Research Awards 2010 • Jolien D. Creighton, Associate Professor, Physics • Jennifer A. Jordan, Associate Professor, Sociology
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Merry Wiesner-Hanks is among the many faculty and staff members who have published books or monographs in the last 18 months. • Lindsay J. McHenry, Assistant Professor, Geosciences • Adel Nasiri, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science • John Buntin, Professor, Biological Sciences • Michael F. Fendrich, Director, Center for Addiction and Behavioral Health Research; Professor, Social Work • Marleen C. Pugach, Professor, Education • Vladislav V. Yakovlev, Professor, Physics UWM Distinguished Professors Three faculty members were named by the University of Wisconsin System this year as UWM Distinguished Professors, bringing the total number in this prestigious group to 20. • Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee, Economics • Erik Christensen, Civil Engineering and Mechanics • Mark D. Schwartz, Geography
UWM: Opening new pathways to results research that occurred as a result of multiple projects done in conjunction with the Medical College of Wisconsin. Perhaps the most prolific area of research activity in 2010 was in engineering – from energy to materials to imaging technology. Considering a surge in new faculty, particularly in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, where 22 professors were added, it isn’t surprising that UWM’s research expenditures for this period have also increased – reaching a record $67,997,194. Though much of that funding came from federal sources, local support also rose. More than $2 million in seed funding has been awarded to date through the UWMRF Catalyst Grant program, which is backed by local industry and foundations. Colin G. Scanes (front) and Brian Thompson
With so many new ideas and faces at our institution, one question remains: How can UWM partner with you in 2011?
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esearch and its applications don’t materialize in a vacuum. Nowhere is that more evident than at UWM, where linking the university’s expertise with other institutions, research centers and businesses is beginning to turn the wheel of economic development in Milwaukee.
– Colin G. Scanes Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, and Dean of the Graduate School
By linking with partners in Southeastern Wisconsin and adding scientists in target areas, UWM is advancing the rate of discovery, while also attracting much more external support to fuel it.
– Brian Thompson President of the UWM Research Foundation
A case in point is the expanding pool of intellectual property managed by the UWM Research Foundation (UWMRF). With 10 completed licensing or option agreements to date – including two startup companies spun from UWM research in 2010 – it was a milestone year for our nearly four-year-old foundation.
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67.997
60
Expenditures (in Millions)
In the area of water technology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came to Milwaukee to broker an agreement with UWM on joint research intended to grow green infrastructure technology. The National Science Foundation and regional companies also acknowledged the potential of research to stimulate and support water-related businesses in the area by funding a center that brings together the expertise of UWM and Marquette University.
TOTAL RESEARCH EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year 2004 though 2010
50 40 30 20 10
Last year also saw a jump in the amount of health care 0
2004
2005
2006
2007
Fiscal Year
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2008
2009
2010
Advancing the rate of discovery UWM RESEARCH EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year 2010 FEDERAL SOURCES – By Agency ($29.66 million)
Energy 4.7% $1,402,767
DHHS – Other 5.1% $1,503,959 FED – Other 5.5% $1,624,042 Defense 6.2% $1,832,138 Education 8.1% $2,401,666
NOAA 2.6% $766,823 Agriculture 1.7% $504,204 EPA 1.4% $422,470
NIH 31.4% $9,301,661
Transportation 1.0% $302,199
RESEARCH EXPENDITURES All Categories FY 2004 through 2010
NSF 32.4% $9,601,874
29.664
30
27.115
20 15 10 7.443
5 Federal Extramural State (Fund 101) Non-Federal Extramural
2.618
0 04
1.744
05
06
Year
07
Indirect Cost Reimbursement 08
09
Other Internal 10
ALL RESEARCH EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year 2008 through 2010 By Division
18.523 17.610
20 18 10.516
s)
16 14
Expenditures (in Million
Expenditures (in Million
s)
25
12
5.384 6.029
10 8
4.720
Letters & Science Engr & Appld Science Graduate School Freshwater Sciences Nursing
3.978
2.992
6
Education
2.447
4
Health Sciences Social Welfare
2 0
0.839 1.720
08 09
Fiscal Year
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Administrative Units Public Health Other Academic
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research.uwm.edu
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee makes its home along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, just a few miles north of the economic and industrial center of Wisconsin. Almost 31,000 students, 180 majors and degree programs, and a world-class faculty drive UWM’s progress as a top research university and engine of economic development for Southeastern Wisconsin and beyond.
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