“Just like our eating habits basically shape anything in our body, the way cells ‘eat’ matters for the health of the cells,” said Comert Kural, associate professor of physics at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “And scientists did not, until now, understand the mechanics of how that happened.”

The study, published recently in the journal Developmental Cell, found that the intercellular machinery of a cell assembles into a highly curved basket-like structure that eventually grows into a closed cage. Scientists had previously believed that structure began as a flat lattice.

Membrane curvature is important, Kural said: It controls the formation of the pockets that carry substances into and out of a cell.

The pockets capture substances around the cell, forming around the extracellular substances, before turning into vesicles – small sacs one-one millionth the size of a red blood cell. Vesicles carry important things for a cell’s health – proteins, for example – into the cell. But they can also be hijacked by pathogens that can infect cells.

But the question of how those pockets formed from membranes that were previously believed to be flat had stymied researchers for nearly 40 years.

“It was a controversy in cellular studies,” Kural said. “And we were able to use super-resolution fluorescence imaging to actually watch these pockets form within live cells, and so we could answer that question of how they are created.

“Simply put, in contrast to the previous studies, we made high-resolution movies of cells instead of taking snapshots,” Kural said. “Our experiments revealed that protein scaffolds start deforming the underlying membrane as soon as they are recruited to the sites of vesicle formation.”

That contrasts with previous hypotheses that the protein scaffolds of a cell had to go through an energy-intensive reorganization in order for the membrane to curve, Kural said.

The way cells consume and expel vesicles plays a key role for living organisms. The process helps clear bad cholesterol from blood; it also transmits neural signals. The process is known to break down in several diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

“Understanding the origin and dynamics of membrane-bound vesicles is important – they can be utilized for delivering drugs for medicinal purposes but, at the same time, hijacked by pathogens such as viruses to enter and infect cells,” Kural said. “Our results matter, not only for our understanding of the fundamentals of life, but also for developing better therapeutic strategies.”

Emanuele Cocucci, an assistant professor in Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy, co-authored this study, along with researchers from UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, Iowa State University, Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

This is our fifth annual contest, and the winner receives a trophy from Ohio State News and a $500 award from the Ohio State’s Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge.

We’ve written over 170 science stories this year, making it a difficult task to select the list of five finalists. But whittle down to that finalist list we did:

Black hole is closest to Earth, among the smallest ever discovered: Scientists discovered one of the smallest black holes on record – and the closest one to Earth found to date. It was dubbed “The Unicorn,” in part because it is, so far, one of a kind, and in part because it was found in the constellation Monoceros – “The Unicorn.”

COVID-19 in our dust may help predict outbreaks, study finds: A study done in rooms where COVID-19 patients were isolated shows that the virus’s RNA – part of the genetic material inside a virus – can persist up to a month in dust, a finding that offers another option for monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks in specific buildings, including nursing homes, offices or schools.

Newly identified saber-toothed cat is one of largest in history: Researchers completed a painstaking comparison of seven uncategorized fossil specimens with previously identified fossils and bone samples from around the world to describe a new species: a giant saber-toothed cat that lived in North America between 5 million and 9 million years ago, weighing up to 900 pounds and hunting prey that likely weighed 1,000 to 2,000 pounds. 

A quantum step to a heat switch with no moving parts: Researchers discovered a new electronic property at the frontier between the thermal and quantum sciences in a specially engineered metal alloy – and in the process identified a promising material for future devices that could turn heat on and off with the application of a magnetic “switch.”

Think leisure is a waste? That may not bode well for your mental health: Feeling like leisure is wasteful and unproductive may lead to less happiness and higher levels of stress and depression, a series of studies revealed. Researchers examined the effects of a common belief in modern society: that productivity is the ultimate goal and time’s a-wasting if you’re just having fun.

Voting starts today and is open for one month, until 5 p.m. Jan. 21, 2022. The process is decidedly unscientific: Participants may cast one vote per day until the poll closes.

Thank you in advance for deciding which story will reign as Ohio State’s Coolest Science Story of 2021!

Sixty years ago, the Buckeyes were invited to the game but, because of a faculty council vote, did not participate. This decision led to protests on campus and in downtown Columbus. The vote and its outcome were “second only to a chimp zooming around the earth,” Shkurti said, referencing the front-page coverage the controversial decision received.

In 1961, the university’s football team, coming off an 8-0-1 season, was invited to play in the Rose Bowl. The Woody Hayes-coached team included Heisman runner-up Bob Ferguson and starters Paul Warfield and Matt Snell, and outscored their opponents 221-83. The team was all but guaranteed a trip to Pasadena for the game known as “The Grandaddy of Them All.”

Jones said that at the time, regional games received more attention than national championships.

“What was important to Ohio State was to win the Big Ten and to go to the Rose Bowl,” he said.

The issues that led to Ohio State’s thwarted Rose Bowl trip began more than five years earlier when Sports Illustrated reported on a recruiting scandal involving Hayes. According to the reporting, Hayes had been providing financial assistance to players with his own funds.

In 1957, the university released what came to be known as the Fullington Report in response to this coverage. The report called for more athletic oversight, including the expansion of Ohio State’s faculty council to give it additional control of the athletics program. (The Athletic Council, a University Senate committee of faculty, students, alumni, athletes, administrators and staff, now carries out this role.)

Two years after the release of the Fullington Report, several Big Ten schools, including Ohio State, chose not to sign a contract with the Rose Bowl after tempers flared over game negotiations.

“[There was] a tiff with the Rose Bowl people about the contract and visiting schools not getting their fair share,” Shkurti said. “So the negotiations dragged on for two years and, as a result, there was no contract.”

With Ohio State lacking a formal tie to the Rose Bowl organization, the faculty council controlled whether the university could send a team to the game at all. At the same time, tensions over metrics for academic and newly created athletic scholarships left the faculty council frustrated by what they considered to be differences in treatment between students and student-athletes.

It is with this background that the faculty council voted against sending the football team to the Rose Bowl in 1961. Protests began on campus almost immediately, with a group of students eventually marching downtown to voice their frustrations.

Despite eventual statements from Hayes and team members supporting the decision, the university and Columbus communities became more hostile – spurred, at least in part, by what Shkurti called inflammatory coverage of the events by the Columbus Dispatch. The paper “stood to lose money by not selling papers related to the Rose Bowl, so it gave this decision big coverage,” Shkurti said.

Reporters leaned heavily into the drama of the event, going so far as to publish contact information for members of the faculty council, some of whom received death threats, he said.

In time, fans came to accept the outcome and the protests died down. Ohio State still finished the season in second place in national polls and headed into the 1962 season ranked No. 1. In an interesting twist, football recruiting was initially damaged by the vote.

“Players in Ohio think that Ohio State’s deemphasizing football: ‘They don’t want to go to bowl games,’ and talent started leaving the state,” Jones said.

This led to Hayes expanding his recruiting base, which ultimately resulted in Ohio State recruiting players like Jack Tatum, a North Carolina and New Jersey native and a member of the 1968 team’s “Super Sophomores.” That team took Ohio State back to the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 1961 vote, where it beat the University of Southern California 27-16, earning the national championship.

To avoid a repeat of this situation, the faculty council voted 36-20 to approve a new Big Ten contract with the Rose Bowl the following year.

While the disappointment stung at the time, the Rose Bowl That Wasn’t is likely more well-known than the game would have been, with impacts that went far beyond the 1961 season.

In the study, transplanting brown fat tissue into the abdomens of obese mice protected the animals from developing glucose intolerance, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes, after a mild heart attack.

Gene activation linked to negative effects after the heart attack was dampened in the transplanted mice, suggesting that brown fat – or adipose – tissue “talks” to other tissue in the body in ways that affect a variety of metabolism-related processes. The research team is continuing to tease out the substances and mechanisms behind that cross talk and how it affects whole-body physiology.

“In this study, the mice transplanted with brown adipose tissue were still obese but more metabolically healthy. The heart attack-induced glucose intolerance was negated by brown adipose tissue. The findings make a pretty powerful statement,” said senior study author Kristin Stanford, associate professor of physiology and cell biology in The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

“We think brown fat is secreting something, and if we can identify what’s being released we can target that as a therapeutic.”

The research is published online in the International Journal of Obesity.

Clinical research has shown that after a mild heart attack, people are more likely to develop insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, and are consequently more susceptible to having a second heart attack. Stanford said that what remains unclear is the cause for those increased risks: Does the first cardiac event itself make people more insulin resistant, or does the condition develop because people tend to be more sedentary after a heart attack?

“Our primary thought process was, if we could improve glucose metabolism and reduce insulin resistance, would that have a protective effect later?” said Stanford, whose lab is based in Ohio State’s Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute.

All mice in the study were fed a high-fat diet for eight weeks before being divided into experimental or control groups. Researchers transplanted brown fat from donor mice into the abdomens of the experimental group. Sixteen weeks later, half of all of the mice underwent a surgery in which one coronary artery was obstructed, inducing a mild heart attack.

The mice, all males, were kept on the high-fat diet and monitored for 24 weeks after the heart attack. At this point, the mice that had a heart attack but did not receive brown adipose tissue transplants had developed type 2 diabetes. The mice that had received brown adipose tissue transplants, while still obese, maintained normal glucose tolerance.

“These results showed brown adipose tissue was protective against glucose intolerance even throughout the duration of the heart attack and the massive high-fat diet these mice were on for 40 or so weeks,” Stanford said.

The transplanted tissue had additional long-term protective effects against problems seen in other mice after the heart attack, staving off an increase in the size of the heart’s left ventricular chamber – a sign of scarring that can lead to heart failure – and preventing a drop in exercise tolerance.

Brown fat is known for its heat-generating properties – it helps keep babies warm, for example – but is hard to come by in the adult human body, with small amounts interspersed between the shoulder blades.

Stanford’s lab had previously shown that exercise can drive up a beneficial lipid that comes from brown fat, a finding that helped explain how exercise boosts metabolism at the cellular level.

“We didn’t know whether brown adipose tissue would increase duration of exercise, and it did, suggesting that it improves whole-body health, which is an important marker,” she said. “We still need to figure out whether the protection comes from something secreted from the brown fat or from just increasing its mass.”

The transplantation method could help the researchers in their pursuit of the tissue cross talk theory. Brown fat tissue was lodged in the animals’ abdomens among folds of visceral white adipose tissue – the far more abundant type of fat in mammals’ bodies.

The team analyzed post-heart attack changes in expression of almost 100 genes linked to inflammation, scarring, insulin signaling, glucose metabolism and specific cell functions in the brown and white fat, the liver, heart and muscles of all of the mice. The increased presence of brown fat negated a host of damaging post-heart attack gene activations, leading the researchers to suggest that brown fat could be a key to preventing metabolic changes that harm the health of obese patients with cardiovascular disease.

“Our hope is that we could eventually translate that to see how increasing brown adipose tissue could be a potential therapeutic in humans to protect them against insulin resistance or subsequent heart attacks,” Stanford said.

“Our data show that brown fat is affecting other tissues – we’re just not exactly sure how. There could be several subtle changes working together as opposed to one direct tissue being modified,” she said. “Brown fat is such a small tissue, but it is so active.”

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.

Co-authors, all from Ohio State, include Carmem Peres Valgas da Silva, Vikram Shettigar, Lisa Baer, Eaman Abay, Kendra Madaris, Mikayla Mehling, Diego Hernandez-Saavedra, Kelsey Pinckard, Nickolai Seculov and Mark Ziolo.

This earlier detection by the Self-Administered Gerocognitive Examination (SAGE test) is critical to effective treatment, especially as new therapeutics for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are being developed and approved.

“New disease-modifying therapies are available and others are currently being evaluated in clinical trials, and we know that the earlier cognitive impairment is detected, the more treatment choices a patient has and the better the treatments work,” said Dr. Douglas Scharre, director of the Division of Cognitive Neurology at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and lead author of the study published in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy.

While the test does not definitively diagnose problems like Alzheimer’s, it allows doctors to get a baseline of their patients’ cognitive functioning, and repeat testing allows them to follow their memory and thinking abilities over time.

“Often, primary care physicians may not recognize subtle cognitive deficits during routine office visits,” Scharre said.

The eight-year study followed 665 consecutive patients in Ohio State’s Center for Cognitive and Memory Disorders. Researchers found that the SAGE test accurately identified patients with mild cognitive impairment who eventually progressed to a dementia diagnosis at least six months earlier than the most commonly used testing method called the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Among the 164 patients with baseline mild cognitive impairment, 70 patients converted to dementia. This is a 43% conversion rate over three to four years, which is similar to rates from other academic center-based studies, Scharre said. The distribution of dementia diagnoses included 70% Alzheimer’s disease dementia, 7% Lewy body dementia and 9% pure or mixed vascular dementia.

The test can be taken anywhere whenever there are cognitive concerns. It takes only about 10-15 minutes to complete, and the four interchangeable forms are designed to reduce learning effects from recurrent testing over time. The cognitive domains tested with the 11-item test include orientation, language, calculations, memory, abstraction, executive function and constructional abilities. The MMSE does not test abstractions or executive function abilities.

“Any time you or your family member notices a change in your brain function or personality, you should take this test,” Scharre said. “If that person takes the test every six months and their score drops two or three points over a year and a half, that is a significant difference, and their doctor can use that information to get a jump on identifying the causes of the cognitive loss and to make treatment decisions.”

Scharre has worked closely with BrainTest Inc. SEZC to develop a scientifically validated digital version of the SAGE test called BrainTest that can be taken anywhere on a tablet or touch screen computer. This digital version will also be integrated with the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center’s electronic medical records system to better facilitate self-testing, storing and reviewing results for patients and their health care providers.

“Based on cognitive score changes, clinicians and families may decide it is time to act on safety and supervision needs. This might include, for example, medication oversight, financial assistance, driving limitations, setting up durable Powers of Attorney and other legal arrangements/trusts, change in living arrangements, and enhanced caregiving support,” Scharre said.

More than 6 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are expected to rise to more than 13 million by 2050. Deaths from Alzheimer’s and other dementias have increased 16% during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Access SAGE or BrainTest at wexnermedical.osu.edu/SAGE

Access BrainTest at BrainTest.com

Scharre is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board and is Head of Medical Affairs for BrainTest.

The ceremony will be held Sunday, Dec. 19, at the Schottenstein Center. Approximately 3,600 graduates will receive diplomas during the ceremony, which begins at 2 p.m.

“Dr. Bertley – or simply ‘Dr. B’ as he’s better known to his WOSU fans - has perfected the art of taking complex scientific concepts and distilling them down into easily understandable explanations of how they impact our daily lives,” said President Kristina M. Johnson, who will preside over the ceremony. “He is a consummate science communicator who has spoken at high-profile venues like the United Nations and the White House, and as a fellow scientist, I am particularly pleased he has accepted our invitation to speak at autumn commencement. Dr. Bertley is a great friend and partner to our university, and I know his insights will be both entertaining and important for our graduates and their guests to hear.”

Bertley is a scientist, scholar, and evangelist for innovative thinking, ideation and challenging the status quo. Bertley joined COSI in 2017 with the goal of “shepherding the leading central Ohio science center to its next great iteration in a legacy of successful science center history.”

Earlier this year, he partnered with Ohio State to host “QED With Dr. B,” a WOSU series exploring the scientific issues that play such a vital role in our daily lives.

Prior to joining COSI, Bertley was the senior vice president for science and education at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, where he oversaw a diverse portfolio of initiatives supporting innovation in STEM learning as well as departments and programs that capture the history and legacy of The Franklin Institute, such as the Benjamin Franklin Awards Program.

Bertley is a graduate of McGill University, where he studied physiology, mathematics and the history of science, and also earned a PhD in immunology. He worked internationally in preventive medicine and basic vaccines in Haiti, The Sudan and the Canadian Arctic and continued this focus by joining a vaccine research group at Harvard Medical School focusing on the development of DNA vaccines for HIV/ AIDS.

Among his numerous honors, Bertley has received an honorary doctorate from Otterbein University and the Harvard Medical School Dean’s Service Award, and was named CEO of the Year by Columbus CEO magazine.

But creating those rings and forming them in a way that is tailored to each individual disease has always been a cumbersome and expensive process in medicinal chemistry.

New research, published today in the journal Chem, proposes a way to simplify that transformation. The discovery will likely make it easier to produce new drug candidates, the researchers say.

David Nagib, senior author of the study and associate professor of chemistry at The Ohio State University, likened the chain of molecules to a belt with no holes: With no way to fasten the circle and no measurements for where holes might go, the belt can’t be assembled in a way that keeps it closed.

“The problem we were trying to solve is how do you punch the hole so that it fits you perfectly, and get it right on the first try without measuring,” Nagib said. “The trick here was we had to put the holes in just the right place, but we had to figure out precisely where the holes should go, without any markings to tell us where that might be.”

The “belt” in this case is a string of carbon-hydrogen bonds, the most ubiquitous bonds in all of nature and medicines. Most drugs contain rings of carbon-hydrogen bonds, linked together by a “bridging” nitrogen atom, within complex structures that interact precisely with cellular components in the body – like a key fitting into a lock. The most common ring found in all medications are six-sided ones, called a piperidine.

But piperidines have long been difficult and expensive to produce, primarily because chemists could not quickly or cheaply replace a carbon-hydrogen bond with other chemical bonds.

Researchers in Nagib’s lab at Ohio State found a way to replace that bond – establishing the “hole” that allowed them to close the belt – by oxidizing two carbon-hydrogen bonds. Doing that allowed them to select hydrogen molecules and remove them from the molecule chain. Then, they used light and a copper catalyst to turn one of those bonds into the needed nitrogen ring. The light worked to excite catalysts in a chain process similar to photosynthesis, the way plants use light to create food for themselves.

The process solves a problem for making early-stage drug candidates still in development ­– it is still too expensive to be used to mass-produce medication. Nagib said future work will focus on using a cheaper starting material to scale up production.

“This discovery is something that can make it possible to more rapidly create a library of drug candidates for testing, so you can identify the right, most potent, most effective one more quickly,” Nagib said.

Ohio State researchers Leah M. Stateman, now at Merck and Co., Ross M. Dare and Alyson N. Paneque contributed to this work. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The program brings together a team of advanced reconstructive surgeons, military specialists and rehabilitation experts to help restore the health and well-being of severely injured military members.

They address complicated combat injuries sustained during modern warfare and extended conflicts. Increasingly, troops have suffered severe injuries from improvised explosive devices that shatter bones, tear limbs and damage muscles and nerves. Survivors often suffer from uniquely debilitating wounds that can require a lifetime of physical and mental care.

“I knew early on in my career that I wanted to dedicate my research and skills to helping those who served in the military,” said Amy Moore, chair of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the medical center and a peripheral nerve surgeon.

“There’s more to living than just being alive, and with this program we are really focused on helping service members thrive. It’s an honor to be able to give back to these amazing men and women who are in pain or are living with an injury suffered while serving our country.”

Using leading-edge procedures and technologies, the team of reconstructive surgeons, peripheral nerve surgeons, microsurgeons, neuroplastic surgeons, orthoplastic surgeons, rehabilitation experts and other multidisciplinary specialists work together to provide individualized, comprehensive care.

They’re advancing relief of nerve pain through innovative reconstruction and rewiring of nerves. Moore said the team developed a new procedure to improve prosthetics by anchoring them into the bone rather than bearing weight on a socket. These types of advancements are reducing chronic pain, increasing mobility and improving the lives of combat-wounded veterans.

“Communication is a key feature of the program. No injury is the same, so we have to think creatively to come up with the solution that is best suited to the individual patient, and then construct a plan that best leverages our surgical capabilities,” said Jason Souza, director of the Orthoplastic Reconstruction Program and associate professor in plastic and orthopedic surgery.

“Once we’ve identified a need, we look at what tissues we have to work with, assess how best to apply new technology, and then we try our best to use both to restore function and improve pain management.”

The Military Medicine Program is already having a major impact on veterans like Nick Vogt. He lost both legs after an IED exploded while he was leading his platoon in Afghanistan in 2011. Even after recovering, daily life was extremely difficult and he couldn’t sit upright for more than a few minutes at a time. Finally, he found Souza, who performed a 12-hour surgery that changed his life, allowing him to be more engaged with his wife and two children every day.

“For years I couldn’t even enjoy a meal with my family without having to lay on my side because there was just skin on bone under my pelvis, which easily degrades and is very painful,” Vogt said. “Dr. Souza was able to take a flap of skin from my back, along with layers of fat and the vessels underneath, and put that under my pelvis where I needed the padding.”

Post-surgical recovery for patients like Vogt is customized to meet individual care needs, such as amputee rehabilitation, neurological rehabilitation, physical therapy of lower and upper extremities, and specialty hand therapy. For especially challenging injuries, experts may recommend support groups or personalized counseling.

Souza, a Navy physician who was recruited from Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, said Ohio State is the perfect location for establishing a military medicine program. Ohio is home to one of the nation’s largest veteran communities, and almost 500 military members or veterans work at the Wexner Medical Center.

“My military experience has left me with a lasting commitment to do everything in my power to ensure that our wounded warriors get the quality care that they deserve,” Souza said. “We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who chose to serve our country and sustained combat or training injuries. Their patience, perseverance, courage and determination to push the boundaries of what can be achieved through reconstructive surgery has reshaped the conversation for all patients presented with a devastating injury or illness.

“Technology and techniques that were born out of the last two decades of military conflict have been widely applied to cancer and civilian trauma care. The Ohio State University is well positioned to return the favor, by offering these veterans state-of-the-art care.”

Research grants from the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies are enhancing the military medicine program, which is also designed to educate more providers on how to treat complex combat injuries.

One such example is diphtheria toxin, which is produced by Corynebacterium diphtheriae and causes diphtheria, a serious and potentially fatal bacterial infection of the nose and throat. But the mechanics of how these proteins enter human cells were a scientific mystery.

A recent study, published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology, answers that mystery. The study identified the ways in which proteins cross a cell membrane, a finding that could create a scientific foundation for better ways of delivering drugs into cells in the future, or for treating illnesses caused by bacterial toxins.

“It is almost like a magic trick, the way the membrane encapsulates these toxins,” said Dehua Pei, senior author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

Pei’s research team at Ohio State has spent years trying to understand how biomolecules such as bacterial toxins get inside a human cell, with the goal of finding ways to get medications into those cells. It was through that work that the researchers discovered how some toxins were getting across the cell membranes, said Ashweta Sahni, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Pei’s lab at Ohio State.

Researchers have known how small molecules penetrate cell membranes, typically by binding to the membrane and then diffusing through it. But they knew that proteins do not have that ability because they are too big. Until now, the most popular hypothesis was that proteins pass through small holes, known as pores, in the membrane, akin to the Parisian statue, Le Passe-Muraille, of a man passing through a wall. But Pei’s previous work did not support that hypothesis.

While working on the team’s other projects, Sahni noticed that some fragments of proteins, known as peptides, cross membranes by pushing against them. The peptides deformed the membrane into small circular buds. The buds then detach as small bubbles, known as vesicles, which eventually “pop,” allowing the peptides to be released inside the cell. The team subsequently observed that two structurally different bacterial toxins also employed this same mechanism. This discovery led them to conclude that this budding-and-collapse mechanism is a common mechanism employed by many large biomolecules.

“This budding-and-collapse phenomenon was previously unknown, but we were able to witness it because we had the equipment, training and experience to know what we were looking at,” Sahni said.

The team witnessed the budding-and-collapse in live cells through confocal microscopy, an imaging technique that allowed them to focus in on what was happening inside the cells, and on the cell membranes, with these specific proteins.

Pei said the discovery could potentially open the door for new drug therapies that use this finding to manipulate the ways drugs enter a cell.

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

By Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Associate Professor of History, The Ohio State University

Civil rights activist Bob Moses founded The Algebra Project to help Black students develop strong math skills. Princeton Public Library/Flickr, CC BY-ND

As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s, Bob Moses traveled to the most dangerous parts of Mississippi to help African Americans end segregation and secure the right to vote. But it would be tutoring students in math 20 years later at his daughter’s racially mixed middle school in Massachusetts that would lead to his life’s work – The Algebra Project.

The Algebra Project is a nonprofit dedicated to helping students from historically marginalized communities develop math literacy, which is an individual’s ability to formulate, employ and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. Moses founded it in 1982.

After researching Moses’ role in the civil rights movement for my book – “Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt” – and later interviewing him for various projects about SNCC, it became abundantly clear that The Algebra Project sprang directly from his civil rights work in Mississippi. That work helped transform Mississippi from a segregationist stronghold into a focal point of the civil rights revolution.

In his book “Radical Equations,” Moses recalls that in 1982 he was surprised to discover that his daughter, Maisha, who was entering the eighth grade at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, would not be taught algebra because the school did not offer it. Without knowledge of algebra, she could not qualify for honors math and science classes in high school.

Math endeavors

As explained in his book, Moses had a background in mathematics. In 1957, before joining the civil rights movement, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Harvard University and then taught middle school math for a few years in the Bronx, New York, at Horace Mann School, a prestigious private school just north of where he grew up in Harlem. And from 1969 to 1976, he taught algebra in Tanzania before returning stateside to work on a doctorate in the philosophy of math.

Moses asked Maisha’s teacher if he could provide his daughter with supplemental math lessons in class since Maisha refused to be tutored at home – she opposed doing what she called “two maths.” The teacher consented, but on the condition that Moses instruct some of Maisha’s classmates as well, according to his book.

Moses agreed. Like the teacher, he believed that all children, including those from historically marginalized communities, deserved a chance to take advanced math and science classes in high school.

At the end of the school year, Maisha and the three students who studied with her passed the citywide algebra exam. They were the first from their school to do so, according to his book.

Excited by this success, Maisha’s teacher asked Moses to work his math magic with more students.

But it wasn’t magic.

Moses succeeded in teaching algebra to the students who were frequently tracked into less rigorous classes and courses of study because he believed that Black, brown, working-class and poor children could master algebra - or other advanced classes - even at an early age.

He also knew that these same students would be eager to study math if instruction revolved around their lived experiences. Rote memorization would not work; content had to be relatable.

Moses agreed to teach the incoming eighth graders, even though none of his children were in the class. “I was beginning to think I had found my work,” he wrote in “Radical Equations.” And his work was teaching math literacy in the emerging digital age.

Math literacy for African American children was an essential aspect of Moses’ philosophy and work. Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Key to a better life

Moses believed that math proficiency was a gateway to equality in a post-industrial society. He explained in 2007: “In our society, algebra is the place where we ask students to master a quantitative literacy requirement. And so hence, algebra becomes available as an organizing tool now for educational rights and for economic rights.” In other words, math literacy would provide access to the kinds of computer-driven careers that would enable African Americans, and other historically marginalized youth, to permanently improve their life circumstances and the social and economic conditions of their communities.

But Moses wasn’t interested in teaching just a few students, much as he wasn’t interested in registering just a few Black Mississippians. He wanted to instruct as many young people as possible, in the same way he wanted to organize as many Black people in Mississippi as possible.

Reaching more youth, however, required a dramatic shift in the culture of learning at the school. Expectations regarding when young children from marginalized groups should study algebra had to change, which was no small task considering many children weren’t expected to study algebra at all.

Just as he once organized sharecroppers, he began organizing parents.

Emphasis on independence

In the civil rights movement, Moses routinely deferred to the wishes and desires of the people he was organizing, so much so that he left the movement in 1965 when he felt people were turning to him too often for solutions to their problems. This was the approach of his mentor, veteran activist and SNCC adviser Ella Baker, who led by asking questions, rather than by providing answers.

Moses talked to parents at the school about the lack of opportunities to take algebra, which, he recalled, led them to initiate a survey that showed that – as explained in his book – “All parents thought their child should do algebra, but not all parents thought that every child should do algebra.”

The parents were shocked and somewhat embarrassed by the survey results, leading to a consensus for allowing any seventh or eighth grader to take algebra.

Only two years after Moses’ daughter passed the citywide exam, the King school offered algebra to students in the seventh and eighth grades, and even provided Saturday classes for parents.

Today, The Algebra Project is fighting to ensure students receive the quality math education they deserve by supporting learning cohorts in dozens of schools across the country where students have historically performed poorly in math on eighth grade state tests. The impact of the project at Mansfield Senior High School in Mansfield, Ohio, is illustrative. In the eighth grade, the math proficiency of The Algebra Project cohort was 17%. By the 10th grade, that number had risen to 82%.

Ella Baker was fond of saying, “Give light and people will find the way.” Few did that better than Bob Moses, who died on July 25, 2021.

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Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor of History, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a paper presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium, the scientists said that the coming decade will likely offer the last chance for policymakers at all levels to prevent coral reefs “from heading towards world-wide collapse.”

The paper, developed by the International Coral Reef Society, pushes for three strategies to save the reefs: addressing climate change, improving local conditions and actively restoring coral.

“The model projections show that up to 30% of coral reefs will persist through this century if we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said Andréa Grottoli, distinguished professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, society president and a contributing author of the paper.

“But if we are to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, we have to do it now: The science and the models show that we have only a few years left to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that put us on that path. It has to happen this decade, or we won’t make that target.”

Coral reefs are at an inflection point, the researchers say. Stop climate change now – and start to reverse it – and some reefs might survive, with the possibility that they could be rebuilt in the future and provide the seeds to regrow damaged reefs elsewhere.

“From a coral reef perspective, we go from 30% of reefs surviving to only a few percent surviving if we don’t act now,” Grottoli said. “We are already faced with a grand challenge in trying to restore the reefs. Once we do eventually reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the planet is no longer warming at an accelerated rate, trying to restore from just a few percent is much more difficult.”

This year, policymakers from around the world will create updated global frameworks for addressing both of those crises, via the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) and the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15). Grottoli said the society created its policy paper to influence those frameworks.

The society’s paper makes three asks of policymakers:

• Commit to addressing biodiversity loss and the effect climate change has had on coral reefs, ensure policies are ambitious enough to address those crises, and ensure that policies are implemented.
• Build coordinated actions across related policy fields at all levels of governance, from local councils to international bodies. This includes efforts in conservation, management and restoration, as well as policies that address climate change adaptation, biodiversity and sustainable development.
• Innovate new approaches to help coral adapt to climate change. Global warming is here, and adaptation is unavoidable. A small percentage of reefs and some coral species have been successfully managed. “Studies of these ‘bright spots’ provide important lessons to guide future actions, such as how local community participation can improve management outcomes,” the scientists wrote.

“As bad as climate change has been for the last decades, we also have lost vast amounts of coral reefs through overfishing, pollution and other local actions, and we need to tackle both of those fronts simultaneously,” said Nancy Knowlton, lead author of the paper and Sant Chair for Marine Science Emerita at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

“Climate change is important but it’s important that these other things aren’t neglected. There’s no time for arguing about which is most important; we need to do all of them.”

Coral reefs are crucial ecosystems, housing about a third of the known ocean species despite covering less than 0.1% of the world’s oceans. They are also critical for local food supplies and economies. Reef-related tourism alone generates some $36 billion per year and the global economic value of reefs across all sectors approaches $10 trillion per year.

They are sources for important biochemical compounds, including drugs that treat cancer.

And they protect coasts from storm flooding: A healthy reef can break waves and buffer more than 90% of incoming wave height and energy. In the United States and its territories alone, according to the ICRS paper, the annual value of flood risk reduction provided by coral reefs is more than 18,000 lives affected by flooding and $1.8 billion. Without reefs, researchers have estimated that annual flood damage would more than double, and that flooding would increase by 69%.

But reefs are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of climate change, which causes ocean temperatures to increase and ocean waters to acidify. Those environmental changes can cause coral to bleach, stop growing and die.

“The window for opportunities to act both on coral reef adaptation and on climate change mitigation will soon close for good,” said David Obura, contributing author to the paper and director of CORDIO East Africa, a nonprofit research organization focused on coral reefs and sustainability in Africa. “We need a massive increase in commitment now and even more in coming years, coherence across all scales and jurisdictions, and innovation – new mindsets, approaches and techniques. More than anything we need everyone to act, including us scientists by providing our approaches and knowledge, to do our part in saving coral reefs.”

The ICRS policy paper was authored by scientists from the U.S., Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. The mission of the ICRS is to promote the acquisition and dissemination of scientific knowledge to secure the future of coral reefs, including via relevant policy frameworks and decision-making processes. The policy statement released in coordination with the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium is the most comprehensive in the society’s history.

The full document, along with translations of this press release and the paper’s executive summary (Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Mandarin), are available online at http://coralreefs.org/publications/rebuilding_coral_reefs/

With fewer options available to them, low-income people had to double down on what they had always done: regular trips to the local dollar stores and small groceries to get their family’s food.

That’s the conclusion of a new study that analyzed traffic to Columbus grocery sellers before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown.

Dollar stores and small local grocers in neighborhoods housing mostly low-income people of color didn’t see as much of a decline in customers during the lockdown as did large grocery and big-box stores, said Armita Kar, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in geography at The Ohio State University.

“Most low-income people still had to shop for groceries in person during the COVID lockdowns and may not have had the economic ability to stock up on food,” Kar said.

“They took fewer trips to mid- and high-end grocery stores outside their neighborhood and continued to go regularly to the stores that were nearest to them, which were the dollar stores and local grocers.”

The problems faced by poor people during the pandemic lockdown were not new, said study co-author Huyen Le, assistant professor of geography at Ohio State.

“COVID-19 exacerbated the existing problems of unequal access to food for low-income people,” Le said.

The study was published online recently in the journal Applied Geography.

The researchers used anonymized and aggregated cell phone location data to analyze 2020 travel patterns to nearly all Columbus area grocery stores (393 in total) during pre-lockdown (Jan 6 - March 15), lockdown (March 16 – April 19) and initial reopening (April 20 – May 31).

The goal was to find out how different kinds of grocery stores were affected by the lockdown and how travel to stores differed between high- and low-income neighborhoods.

Results showed that mid- and high-end grocery stores and big-box food retailers in the city saw their in-person customer levels plunge when COVID-19 lockdowns began, presumably because their mostly affluent clientele could shop online and stock up on supplies, so they went to stores less often.

But dollar stores and smaller independent grocers, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and those housing people of color, saw only a small decline in their customer levels during the lockdown.

When the initial reopening occurred in April, the larger grocery stores and big-box retailers saw their customer numbers recover quickly – with an important caveat.

Most of the returning customers lived in the immediate area, results showed. Customers who used to come from longer distances – often from low-income neighborhoods – did not return in the same numbers, Kar said.

“We believe the transportation options for people in low-income neighborhoods were limited,” she said. “Public transit was still less regular, and some may not have been able to combine work and shopping trips as they once did.”

COVID-19 exposed many of the inequalities in our food system in a way that made them harder to ignore, said study co-author Harvey Miller, professor of geography and director of Ohio State’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis.

“The rich and poor were mostly shopping at different food stores before COVID-19, and those differences became even more stark when the lockdown came,” Miller said.

And these results point to the need to support better food shopping options for low-income people living in food deserts, Le said, so they don’t have to rely on dollar stores.

“Dollar stores mostly offer packaged and highly processed foods that aren’t healthy,” Le said.

“Policymakers should examine ways to provide better shopping options for people in low-income areas, so they have better access to healthy foods.”

Other co-authors on the study, both from Ohio State, were Yasuyuki Motoyama, assistant professor of city and regional planning, and Andre Carrel, assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering.

Trotman joins Ohio State from the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, where she is associate dean for faculty development and chair of the Department of Orthodontics.  Subject to Board of Trustees approval, her five-year appointment will be effective Aug. 15, 2021.

Trotman will build on the achievements of the college’s current dean, Patrick M. Lloyd, who announced in November that he would be stepping down after his term ends in August. Throughout his decade of leadership, the College of Dentistry has continued its ascension as one of the nation’s outstanding dental schools.

“It’s a great honor to serve the College of Dentistry as dean, and I look forward to working with Dean Patrick Lloyd and my other colleagues as I prepare to join Ohio State,” Trotman said. “I am thrilled to be part of the president’s and provost’s bold vision for the college and university.”

Trotman has deep experience as an educator, clinician, researcher and academic leader focused on integrating clinical training, patient care, didactic education and research. Throughout her career, she has also demonstrated her commitment to faculty development and diversity and inclusion, Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron said in a statement announcing the appointment.

Specializing in the treatment and care of patients with cleft lip and palate, she is the principal investigator on two National Institutes of Health-funded grants through her Facial Animation Laboratory. Using three-dimensional modeling of facial soft tissues, she has developed measures that enable surgeons to more accurately assess facial soft tissue movements and, ultimately, to tailor corrective surgeries to individual patient needs. More recently, this research has been extended to assessing surgical outcomes in patients with facial paralysis.

Before joining Tufts, Trotman was a professor and associate dean for academic and student affairs at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry. Previously, she taught at the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry, serving as interim associate dean for academic affairs and then assistant dean for graduate education. She began her teaching career at the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of orthodontics.

Trotman is a diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics, a fellow of the American College of Dentists and a fellow of the American Council on Education. She has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and edited or contributed to nine books.

Trotman received her Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from University of Dundee, Scotland, and her orthodontic certificate and MA in oral biology from Columbia University. She completed a fellowship in craniofacial anomalies at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She earned an MS in clinical research design and statistical analysis from the Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan.

When researchers analyzed the dietary intake of more than 30,000 American adults according to body mass index (BMI), the results also showed that people with BMIs in the obese range were the least likely to adhere to the dietary recommendations intended to reduce the risk for cancer.

The analysis measured self-reported dietary recalls and diet quality. Though the percentages of American adults who met each food source category differed, between almost 63% and 73% fell short of the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and roughly 90% failed to meet the 30 grams of fiber per day recommendation.

The cancer-prevention guidelines updated by the American Institute for Cancer Research
(AICR) in 2018 and the American Cancer Society nutrition and physical activity guideline closely mirror the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – suggesting that most U.S. adults are eating a suboptimal dietary pattern when it comes to nutrition-related disease prevention.

“We’re looking at individuals to move toward a primarily plant-based type of dietary pattern rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains and beans, peas, lentils, seeds and nuts – and cutting back on saturated fats and sodium,” said senior study author Colleen Spees, associate professor of medical dietetics in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The Ohio State University. “Modifying our current dietary and physical activity patterns to better align with these evidence-based guidelines over time is important to reduce the risk of noncommunicable disease and promote lifelong health and wellness.

“If Americans adopt these recommendations, they can reduce their risk of obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke and high blood pressure.”

The study is published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The research team used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which collects health information on a nationally representative sample of about 5,000 individuals in the U.S. every year through interviews, laboratory tests and physical exams.

The sample for this study included 30,888 adults age 18 and older. The Ohio State researchers analyzed data from 24-hour dietary recalls participants completed as part of the NHANES survey as well as their BMI.

Almost 70% of the sample were classified as overweight or obese, and adults in the obesity range (35.9% of all participants) were significantly less likely than other adults to meet recommended intakes of fiber, fruit, non-starchy vegetables and whole grains. Adults with obesity were also more likely to exceed the recommended 18 ounces per week of red meat and to have consumed fast food on the day of survey participation.

All groups, on average, consumed more added sugars than the recommended maximum of less than 10% of overall daily calories.

While basing the analysis on what survey participants reported eating over the previous 24 hours is a limitation of the study, Spees noted that previous studies have shown that 24-hour recalls can provide a representative snapshot of American dietary patterns.

Spees said these results may also reflect common “reductionist” views of dietary patterns among Americans – namely, the fixation on fad diets that often exclude certain food groups that the public is led to believe can cancel out a lifetime of marginal eating patterns.

“Is coconut oil good for me? Is a single egg good for me, or not?” she said. “That’s a reductionist view and perspective when what really shapes and defines our health outcomes throughout life are dietary patterns – the cumulative patterns over time, and over years – as well as our patterns of behaviors, including our physical activity, our sleep patterns, our stress levels.

“It almost appears as if many Americans believe that if they can’t follow all of the recommendations, why should they adhere to any of them? And that’s just not the case. These guidelines don’t have to be so prescriptive. Even little changes in behavior can have a huge impact. For instance, reducing added sugars can help individuals achieve and maintain a healthy weight status over time.”

The USDA and cancer-prevention agencies are the most reliable sources for not just what the guidelines are, but how to incorporate them into daily life, said Spees, also an investigator in Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Meeting some of the guidelines is far better than disregarding expert advice altogether, she said: Eat out at fast food restaurants a little less often and find tasty ways to incorporate more vegetables, grains and beans into meals prepared at home. If you can’t exercise the suggested 150 minutes per week, then simply sit less and move more. And as you make such changes, do it gradually, in a way that is sustainable – and ideally, for the rest of your life.

While this study found that people whose BMIs classify them as obese were the least likely to adhere to the guidelines, Spees said there is a bigger problem to consider: “Most Americans, regardless of weight status, have much to improve when it comes to dietary patterns.”

Co-authors include Madisyn Good, Ashlea Braun and Christopher Taylor, all from Ohio State.

By Tracy Tylka

Professor of Psychology, The Ohio State University

Engaging with people who accept and appreciate your body as it is can help you feel more at peace with how you look. Hinterhaus Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Being able to socialize again may bring enthusiasm and a sense of normalcy – but it may also increase anxiety over how your body might have changed.

I am a psychologist who has studied body image for over 20 years, and I’ve seen how the COVID-19 pandemic could affect health and well-being in numerous ways, including body image. Gyms were closed. Self-care rituals may have fallen by the wayside as stress and hardships like homeschooling and strained finances piled up. The pandemic also took away a major way people cope: Social support through physical contact.

Pandemic stress has led many people to turn to other coping mechanisms, with some harmful to both physical and mental health. In one study of 5,469 adults in Australia, 35% reported increased binge eating, or eating large amounts of food in a short amount of time, due to pandemic life. In another study of 365 adults in Italy, 25.7% reported increased emotional eating over the course of lockdown. And in a survey of 3,000 adults in the U.S., 61% experienced undesired weight changes since the start of the pandemic. It’s no wonder that people may feel anxiety over what others think about their changed appearance.

What is body image?

Body image is a person’s “inside view” – or feelings, perceptions, thoughts and beliefs – of their body. Body image can be positive, neutral or negative, and it can fluctuate. Situations that provoke negative body image – like not fitting into formerly comfortable clothes, noticing age-related changes in appearance, seeing an unflattering picture of yourself and comparing your body to a social media influencer – are called body image threats.

Body image threats have been part of the COVID-19 experience for many people. The pandemic has also seen an increase in struggles with eating too much or too little, preoccupation with food, and anxiety about weight and body shape.

Fortunately, there are healthy ways to manage body anxiety and cultivate a positive body image while reemerging from the pandemic.

1. Focus on what you appreciate about your body

Rather than focusing on what has changed or what you don’t like about your body, focus on what your body does for you. This is different for everyone. For example, my arms allow me to hug my dogs, my legs allow me to take them for walks, my stomach allows me to digest food so I have energy and my brain helped me write this article. Your body is much more than its appearance. Appreciating your body and what it does for you is central to cultivating positive body image.

2. Engage with others who accept and appreciate all bodies

Be selective with who you want to spend time with after the pandemic. Start with people who are “body accepting,” meaning they don’t talk badly about your body, their body or anyone else’s body – they may not even focus on appearance at all. Positive body image increases when people engage with others who are body accepting. You can also practice being a person who shows body acceptance to others and pay it forward.

3. Practice self-compassion

People’s bodies have helped them survive the trauma of a global pandemic. It’s important to be kind to yourself and your body if your appearance has changed. Self-compassion is being as kind to yourself as you would to a loved one going through a hard situation. Many studies have found that self-compassion is linked to higher positive body image, and self-judgment is linked to a higher negative body image. Try to be mindful, or aware, of your experiences without judging them, and understand that others are in these difficult experiences with you.

4. Engage in mindful movement

If you are able, move your body in ways that bring you joy and rejuvenation and help you connect with and listen to your body. Bodies and abilities are different, and what is mindful movement for someone else may not be for you. Some activities, such as yoga, have been shown to promote positive body image as long as they don’t focus on appearance. Move in ways that help you focus on how much you enjoy moving rather than how you look while moving.

Physical activity that focuses on how your body moves can help you connect with your body. Luis Alvarez/DigitalVision via Getty Images

5. Practice self-care

Ask your body what it needs every day. Bodies need a regular supply of fuel, hydration, relaxation, stimulation and sleep. Self-care can be hard to fit into a schedule, but it is very important to plan actions and activities that restore you to your best self.

6. Engage with nature

Interacting with nature is associated with a variety of health benefits, including higher positive body image. Activities that engage with nature, like hiking, may help you focus less on your appearance and more on how your body functions. Experiencing the beauty of nature can also help create opportunities for self-care, such as through rejuvenation and mindful movement.

7. Refrain from body comparison

It’s common for people to compare themselves to others. However, when they frequently compare their appearance to others perceived as more attractive, their body image becomes more negative. Body comparison can occur in many settings, and not just through social media – it can also happen in commonplace settings such as the beach, supermarket and school. When you find yourself comparing your body to others and start to feel negatively about your body, try one of the strategies above to restore a positive body image.

8. Avoid the diet hype

Studies show that dieting does not work: It is not associated with long-term weight loss and often decreases overall well-being. Instead, focus on fueling your body when you are hungry with foods that provide your body with lasting energy. Eating intuitively – using your natural hunger, appetite and satiety cues to determine when, what and how much to eat – is linked to health and well-being.

Reemerging from the pandemic with confidence

There are many strategies to help build a positive body image, and resources are available to help you find one that works best for you. For those struggling with an eating disorder or severe negative body image, professional help is the best path forward.

Positive body image isn’t just about feeling good about your appearance – it’s also accepting and loving your body regardless of how it looks, and engaging in self-care to attend to its needs. Practice these strategies regularly to promote and maintain positive body image as you safely and confidently reenter your social world.

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Tracy Tylka, Professor of Psychology, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

But her story doesn’t stop there – in some ways, a whole new life, overshadowed by trauma, has only just begun, Ohio State University graduate student Morgan Podraza posits in an article published in the journal Horror Studies.

Consider actor Jamie Lee Curtis’ depiction of Laurie Strode in the Halloween film released in 2018, 40 years after her friends were murdered by Michael Myers on Halloween night. In that original film, she survived his attacks by wielding a knitting needle, a coat hanger and a knife that he dropped.

The grownup Strode lives an isolated life in a fortress in the woods, always on the lookout for the looming threat of Myers’ return. Earlier in her adult life, viewers learn, her paranoia had rendered her an unfit mother in the eyes of authorities and her daughter was taken away.

In the article, Podraza, a PhD student in English, examines the representation of Strode’s trauma in the 2018 Halloween sequel to the 1978 original, and how the depiction of her struggle after survival – how she has been vilified and dismissed, but ultimately proven right – might offer trauma survivors the chance to see a bit of themselves on the big screen.

“The way this film specifically deals with cycles of trauma and their connection to the experiences of survivors was really important to me because I think it is indicative of how we talk about trauma and survivors of trauma even today, and ways that people are spoken about negatively – their trauma is not acknowledged or they’re not given an opportunity for healing,” Podraza said.

“We can use the final girl trope now to reimagine spaces for healing or futures for people with trauma. A survivor’s future will always include memories of that trauma, and it’s important to acknowledge that trauma exists and continues to affect the reality of people who experience it.

“They deserve happy, healthy futures, too. People don’t have to only be defined by the negative parts of this experience.”

Podraza’s scholarship centers on comics and animated film, but as a life-long fan of horror movies, she saw an opportunity to tie her interest in women-centered narratives and narratives of trauma to a favorite genre after the 2018 sequel release, which coincided with the #metoo movement.

When the sequel came out, Curtis herself called attention to the intersection of fiction and reality, telling Variety that she thought women battling their own trauma would be able to relate to Strode’s desperate attempts to convince skeptics that Michael Myers was still a threat: “It feels like a confluence of that frustration and that rise of empowerment has come together in this movie in a beautiful way.” Those promotional interviews resonated with Podraza.

“The scholarship hasn’t looked beyond the final girl’s survival and triumph. The final girl context has always been that she survived and that’s enough. Or she killed the monster and that’s enough. That’s fine, but that’s not how people’s experiences work,” she said. “Trauma is about the effects after the event is over.”

The final girl trope was defined by scholar Carol Clover in the 1992 book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. The Laurie Strode character was central to Clover’s definition of the trope, and while she emphasized that trauma helped characterize the final girl, the analysis stopped short of examining its effects.

Podraza cites scholarship in her article noting that survival of trauma itself is a crisis, that moving forward with life after a traumatizing event is also traumatic. The Laurie Strode character shows how this might look: Her obsession with protecting herself and others is tethered to her survival, and her outlook on life – a life saved by her own hand – remains grim because she’s convinced she is subject to a continuing threat.

An analysis like this isn’t intended to detract from the thrill of watching horror and slasher films, said Podraza, who advises her students to consume media for enjoyment first, and then re-watch or re-read the material with an eye toward asking critical questions.

“It’s perfectly fine to just enjoy media, but it’s always important to be aware of how media is framing experiences, especially experiences of people who are marginalized in any way. Survivors of trauma often are marginalized,” she said. “The danger is to absorb media and never ask questions about it – that means you’re not aware of how it’s structuring your own behaviors and habits.”

The franchise is slated to continue with the release of Halloween Kills in October and, in 2022, Halloween Ends. Based on the closing scene of the 2018 sequel, of Strode’s granddaughter holding a bloody knife that she used to defend herself, Podraza sees potential for a depiction of intergenerational trauma.

“The structure of the franchise implies the cycle will just continue,” she said, “and I am interested in how these concepts will perpetuate.”

The four endowed professorships will attract and retain highly sought-after professors who are committed to scholarship, teaching and leadership in their professions and community. As an ardent supporter of both colleges, Trott created the Richard Trott Distinguished Visiting Professorship to honor her late father, Richard Trott, a 1961 architecture graduate of Ohio State.

“Kara’s ongoing support of Ohio State and continued leadership demonstrate her abiding commitment to the future of our university and is a testament to the strength and longevity of the connections our students establish during their time on campus,” said President Kristina M. Johnson. “Her remarkable gift to our colleges of architecture and law will bolster our efforts to recruit the very best, most dedicated professors as we grow the ranks of our tenure-track faculty and continue to build on our foundation of academic excellence.”

Trott, who received her law degree from Ohio State in 1991, is the founder and chief executive officer of Columbus-based Quantum Health. Launched in 1999, Quantum Health focuses on employers’ benefits delivery, helping participants better navigate the health care system and producing better health outcomes while reducing unnecessary costs. The organization serves more than 300 clients and more than 1.7 million people.

“Kara Trott’s gift to honor the memory of her late father — renowned architect Dick Trott — will contribute significantly to the enrichment of the Knowlton School’s educational mission,” said Dorothée Imbert, Hubert C. Schmidt Professor and director of the Knowlton School. “This gift further elevates the Richard W. Trott Distinguished Visiting Professorship, bringing distinguished practitioners and academics to carry sustained interactions with Knowlton students and faculty, as well as to strengthen the connection between architecture, landscape architecture, planning and urban design. Kara’s generosity will allow us to provide exceptional experiences to our design community, while strengthening Dick Trott’s legacy.”

To show appreciation for her two former law professors who helped her to succeed in law school and inspired her career path, she created The Lawrence “Larry” Herman Endowed Professorship in Law and The Morgan E. Shipman Endowed Professorship in Law, in addition to establishing the Kara J. Trott Professorship in Law.

“One professor can touch thousands of students’ lives during their career. The enduring impact of this gift will be immeasurable. Adding three new endowed professorships to our faculty is a deeply meaningful investment in the future of generations of students at Ohio State Law,” said Lincoln L. Davies, dean of the Moritz College of Law and Frank R. Strong Chair in Law. “We are so incredibly grateful for Kara’s generosity and her commitment to elevating and enriching our law school. We could not be prouder to count her as an alumna and friend.”

Since graduating from Ohio State, Trott has consistently demonstrated her dedication and commitment to the university. She currently serves as a member of The Ohio State University Foundation Board and on the Moritz College of Law National Council.

“Through Moritz, I received an amazing education, and Professors Shipman and Herman were instrumental in helping me develop my critical thinking skills,” said Trott. “My father, a pivotal force in my life, was heavily involved at the Knowlton School, and I hope that these four endowed professorships will help launch more leaders in law and architecture.”

That is nearly double the screen time found before the pandemic in similar children, according to other research.

Caregivers from low-income households may have faced more difficulties than those from more advantaged families in managing the time their children spent watching TV and using computers, phones and tablets when child care was shut down, according to the researchers.

Still, the results are concerning, said Rebecca Dore, lead author of the study and senior research associate at The Ohio State University’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy.

“We found a high level of media use compared to what many experts think is appropriate for this age group,” Dore said.

“Some of that time spent using media was positive: watching educational videos and connecting with friends and family. But the amount of time they spent is something we should be aware of.”

Dore conducted the research with Ohio State colleagues Kelly Purtell, associate professor of human sciences, and Laura Justice, professor of educational studies and executive director of The Crane Center.

The study was published online recently in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.

The study involved 151 low-income caregivers of kindergartners in Ohio who completed online questionnaires between May 1 and June 30, 2020, as part of a larger study.

Caregivers responded to 12 questions assessing children’s media use on the most recent weekday and weekend day. Media use included any kind of video, including television, movies or short clips on any electronic device, and using apps or games on any type of device.

Results showed that children averaged 6.6 hours a day of media use. Contrary to previous research, weekday use (6.8 hours) was higher than weekend media use (5.8 hours).

“That suggests parents might have been using media as a substitute for the time their children would have been spending in some type of child care that was closed because of the pandemic,” Dore said.

“Increased screen time may be particularly concerning for children from low-income households who had higher levels even before the pandemic: over 3 and a half hours per day compared with less than 2 hours for children from high-income homes.”

Remote schooling didn’t seem to be the main reason driving the results. Findings showed 84% of children had direct contact with their teachers once a week or less, with 53% reporting no direct contact.

Still, 61% of caregivers reported their child was using media for learning more than usual, perhaps watching educational TV or using educational apps unrelated to formal schooling. Also, 47% reported increased entertainment use, 45% said there was more use as a way to occupy the child’s time, 42% reported increased use for maintaining relationships with remote family and friends, and 34% said their child was spending more time using screens for family bonding.

“Importantly, we saw increases in media use in a lot of areas often condidered positive, such as learning and fostering friendships, suggesting that caregivers may have been using media to supplement children’s educational and social experiences at a time when in-person options were not safe,” Justice said.

“But these families don’t have some of the resources that more advantaged families have to help with children while the parents work or do other things. For low-income families, occupying a child’s time may also be very important and necessary at times.”

Results showed that children living in families with more kids had higher levels of screen time, potentially reflecting the pressures that caregivers have with larger families, Dore said.

Girls in the study spent more time than boys did using media to connect with family and friends. Dore said caregivers should be encouraged to provide more support to boys in maintaining relationships through technology when they can’t meet in person.

It is not clear whether the high levels of media use found in this study would also be found in higher-income families.

“Other reports would suggest children from all backgrounds had higher media use during this time,” Dore said.

“But use may be even higher in lower-income families because they are less likely to have flexibility to manage children’s activities during work hours or be able to afford other child care options.”

Study findings are published online in Explore: The Journal of Science & Healing.

MIM offers small-group sessions teaching health care providers and other interested employees specific techniques in mindfulness and resiliency for the high-stress environment health care can create.

Successful completion of this program has been shown to significantly decrease perceived stress and inflammation, as well as increase sleep quality and work engagement.

“However, you could argue these results mean nothing for the organization if a month after the program ends, usual stress and burnout levels return to base levels,” said Maryanna Klatt, the study lead author and creator of the Mindfulness in Motion intervention, which is the core offering of the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center.

“Demonstrating sustainability of the results of an intervention is nearly as important as demonstrating the effectiveness of the intervention, yet this is rarely done. Organizations need to be assured the return on their investment to reduce burnout and build resilience produces results that are maintained long after the intervention ends,” said Klatt, who is a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Klatt collaborated with researchers with the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative and the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion at the Ohio State College of Public Health.

Klatt said she embarked on this research to learn if this intervention if worth their time for the individual participants, and worth the money and return on investment for the organization to invest in this program.

“After analyzing date from 66 participants, we found that three of the four outcomes (burnout, perceived stress, resilience) remained significantly improved beyond a year after completing the intervention. Work engagement remained improved, but was not significantly different than baseline levels,” said Klatt, who is now sending former participants “mindful moment” emails on a weekly basis and offering monthly virtual “booster” sessions to continue to reinforce the mindfulness techniques.

“As a health care organization focused on improving health for patients and communities, we also recognize the importance of prioritizing health and well-being for our faculty and staff. Interventions to address current levels of burnout among health care professionals must demonstrate long-term success to help our employees thrive,” said Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president and chancellor for health affairs at The Ohio State University and chief executive officer at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. 

“More than 580 employees have participated in the Mindfulness in Motion program since 2017, and we are proud that this program is strong and growing, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Ohio Hospital Association asked Klatt if the Mindfulness in Motion intervention could be shared outside of Ohio State; now three health systems across Ohio and the Mercy Health System in Michigan are offering the program to their employees.

The Ohio Hospital Association also partnered with the Gabbe Health and Wellness Initiative to share free mindfulness resources and videos that Klatt developed to address provider resilience, especially as the pandemic continues to burden health care teams.

“We also plan to repeat the sustainability study every other year to see if the positive results may even be sustained longer than the 14+ months we found in this study,” Klatt said.

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff: 

I write today with exciting news. 

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has announced guidelines for employer-based vaccine programs starting the week of April 12. Beginning that week and consistent with those guidelines, we are pleased to announce the ability to dedicate 25% of the Wexner Medical Center’s first-dose vaccine allocation to any Ohio State student, faculty or staff member, while maintaining our commitment to our patients and the central Ohio community. This is possible because of the increasing number of doses available to the Wexner Medical Center and the Governor’s work to secure additional vaccines for college and university students in Ohio. 

Appointments under this new opportunity will be displayed in MyChart beginning April 9, with the first available appointments beginning Wednesday, April 14, and running through April 20. Each week, additional appointments will be released after we receive information about the brand and the number of doses for our next weekly allocation of vaccine. 

Between now and the week of April 12:

• We have been provided the opportunity by the state to offer dedicated appointments to Ohio State students so that they can complete both their first and second doses of vaccine prior to the end of the semester. The response from our students has been outstanding, with all appointments filled for this week. Additional student appointments will be available for the week of April 5.
• Faculty and staff of all ages remain eligible to sign up for public appointments at the Wexner Medical Center or any other vaccine provider – and we strongly encourage everyone to continue to do so. More information on the dedicated appointments for faculty and staff will be released in the next week. 

Currently, we estimate that more than 30% of the university community – students, faculty and staff – has already received or is scheduled to receive a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. This next step means that even more of our campus community can be vaccinated this spring and throughout the summer – potentially allowing for greater safe and robust in-person experiences in the fall. 

Our thanks go to Governor DeWine and his team for their close collaboration throughout this process. As Ohio State is the largest employer in central Ohio, the fourth-largest employer in the state, and the largest institution of higher education in the state, more vaccinations for more Buckeyes are good for Ohio.

The dedicated doses will be distributed at our Schottenstein Center vaccination location.

Both dedicated and public appointments can be scheduled via the Wexner Medical Center by logging into MyChart. You can also follow this step-by-step guide. If you are not a patient of our medical center or don’t have a MyChart account, call 614-688-VAXX (8299) for assistance. If no appointments are available when you try to schedule, visit this website to sign up to be notified when additional appointment times are posted. Click on the “Get Notified” box and follow the instructions to enter your contact information.

In addition to our Wexner Medical Center sites, the COVID-19 vaccine is available at more than 1,300 locations across Ohio and more than 110 locations in Franklin County, including retail pharmacies, hospitals and public health departments. To search for locations, visit the Ohio Department of Health website; new vaccine appointments are updated often, so please do not get discouraged if initial options are filled.

In addition to continuing all of our safe and healthy behaviors, getting vaccinated is the strongest step you can take right now to combat the COVID-19 variants that are trending toward becoming dominant among cases here at the university as well as nationally and internationally. These variants are more contagious and can cause more serious illness, even among younger people.

If you have questions about the vaccine, I encourage you to review these Frequently Asked Questions from the Wexner Medical Center or visit the Safe and Healthy Buckeyes website for more information. There will also be an opportunity to have questions answered by our experts on April 12 at the next COVID-19 Town Hall. You can register by clicking this link.

Our work to combat the spread of COVID-19 has been outstanding and proves what we can do when we come together as a community. Vaccinating as many people as possible is a critical step in keeping our community and our surrounding communities safe from the virus. Let’s do this together – so we can stay safe and stay Together As Buckeyes. 

Sincerely yours,

Kristina M. Johnson, PhD
President

The study, published recently in the Journal of Agriculture, Food and Environment, suggests that floating gardens might not only help reduce food insecurity, but could also provide income for rural households in flood-prone parts of Bangladesh.

“We are focused here on adaptive change for people who are victims of climate change, but who did not cause climate change,” said Craig Jenkins, a co-author of the study and academy professor emeritus of sociology at The Ohio State University. “There’s no ambiguity about it: Bangladesh didn’t cause the carbon problem, and yet it is already experiencing the effects of climate change.”

Bangladesh’s floating gardens began hundreds of years ago. The gardens are made from native plants that float in the rivers – traditionally, water hyacinths – and operate almost like rafts, rising and falling with the waters. Historically, they were used to continue growing food during rainy seasons when rivers filled with water.

The farmers – or their families – layer the plants about three feet deep, creating a version of raised-bed gardens that float in the water. Then, they plant vegetables inside those rafts. As the raft-plants decompose, they release nutrients, which help feed the vegetable plants. Those vegetable plants typically include okra, some gourds, spinach and eggplant. Sometimes, they also include spices like turmeric and ginger.

Floating gardens are also in use in parts of Myanmar, Cambodia and India. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization has named Bangladesh’s floating gardens a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System.

But as climate change has affected the volume of water in those rivers – creating extreme highs and floods, along with extreme lows and droughts – floating gardens have become a way for rural farmers to keep producing food during unpredictable weather. Climate change increases weather extremes and the severity of flooding, and droughts as well.

The researchers wanted to understand whether Bangladesh’s floating gardens could be a sustainable farming practice as climate change continues to cause floods and droughts, and to see whether the gardens bring better food security to individual households.

“They’ve got to be able to grow specific crops that can survive with minimal soil,” said Jenkins, who is also a research scientist and former director of the Ohio State Mershon Center for International Security Studies. “And in Bangladesh, a lot of small farmers that had typically relied on rice crops are moving away from those because of the effects of climate change and better returns from alternative crops.”

For this study, the researchers interviewed farming families who use floating gardens, and found strong evidence that floating gardens provide stability, both in the amount of food available to feed rural populations and in a farming family’s income, despite the instability created by a changing climate.

They found that farmers typically use hybrid seeds, which must be repurchased each year, to grow a diverse range of vegetables in the floating gardens. The gardens are also susceptible to pests, so farmers end up spending some money on both pesticides and fertilizers. But even with those expenses, they found, benefits outweighed costs.

Generally, entire families work on the gardens, the researchers found: Women, children and the elderly prepare seedlings and collect aquatic plants to build gardens. Men cultivate the gardens and protect them from raiders. Some families also farm fish in the waters around their floating gardens.

One farmer told the research team that he earns up to four times as much money from the gardens as from traditional rice paddies.

Still, the system could use improvements, the researchers found. Farmers often take out high-interest loans to cover the investment costs of building the beds and stocking them with plants. Lower-interest loans from responsible government or non-governmental organizations could alleviate that burden, they found.